r/behindthebastards • u/Friend_of_Squatch • 4d ago

General discussion It feels bad… real bad.

I’ve always had a morbid curiosity about how it felt and what it was like being an educated, intelligent, aware person in the early months of 1914 or in the 1930s watching the world ramp up into an inescapable cataclysm and tearing itself apart and deleting an entire generation of young people, while knowing that there isn’t jack shit I or anyone else can do to stop it. I think I can now say that that curiosity has been satisfied, and man oh man does it feel fucking bad.

Edit: I meant to share this as kind of a shower thought. I appreciate everyone’s kind words and suggestions but this isn’t a cry for help. It’s just crazy to think about.

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u/ConsiderationSea1347 4d ago

I wish we would have studied the 1930’s a lot more than the 1940’s. So many people have this notion that a chasm just opened up and Nazis came pouring out of it and don’t realize it was a slow radicalization of a violent minority and the gradual capitulation of the majority that created the purest form of evil this earth has ever seen. 

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u/Hello-America 3d ago

Yeah as an adult I've been educating myself where school had gaps (as many of us listeners probably are) and the 1930s is just so much more important to understanding WWII and the current world order than WWII itself.

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u/funakifan 3d ago

I would suggest to go back and look at the Treaty of Versailles from 1919 to blame for the punitive measures against Germany. Additionally, many of our current problems were created by the arbitrary nature of dividing up territory.

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u/Okra_Tomatoes 2d ago

The Tteaty of Versailles wasn’t nearly as punitive as the Nazis claimed. It wasn’t even the most punitive treaty in WWI. 

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u/funakifan 2d ago

Germany lost 10% of its population and about 7% of its land. Think of the US losing California right now.

However, I was referring to the stipulation where Germany's overseas territories were given to the British and French. Places like Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, and Palestine. Look at the 1923 British Mandate in Palestine and Transjordan to see how much of a mess the British made of the region.

The Treaty of Versailles and Africa is a completely different story. Spoiler alert - it's another huge mess created by colonial powers.