Tilted Forum Project Discussion Community - View Single Post - V-E DAY LET US NOT FORGET THE DAY EVER

roachboy · 05-11-2005, 07:53 AM

i dont understand what is at stake for the folk above who resist the simple fact of the matter.
world war 2 was won by a coalition--you know, a multilateral type arrangement---and that the soviet union, like it or not, played an overwhelming role in what that coalition was able to do.
to say this is simply to acknowledge what actually happened.
it has nothing to do with the ways in which the post-hoc sentimentalization of those who died has come to be shaped. it has nothing to do with how one might feel about those who were killed. you can remember what you like as you like--just dont substitute that for history.
how ww2 is remembered in general is a seperate process, shaped with seperate ends in mind: remember the cold war?

the fact of the matter is that the relation of the americans to the ussr were not pretty even at the height of the war...
remember that stalin asked the americans to open a second front to take some of the pressure off the ussr from 1942: remember that the americans decided on a sequence of actions that did almost nothing to reduce pressure on the ussr until 1944. remember that lovely speech by harry truman, in which he encouraged this--it was among the first moves in the cold war--it was in 1942---the culminating phrase was lovely: let them bleed each other white.

the point is that the erasure of the soviet role in winning ww2 is a coldwar relic. to adjust for that erasure is just that. but if you push at the question, things grow ugly really quite fast. that this sort of thing rarely if ever enters into the nationalist fetish outing that is memorialization is a good index of the void that seperates the past from the official "memory" of the past.

05-11-2005, 07:53 AM	#15 (permalink)
roachboy Super Moderator Location: essex ma	i dont understand what is at stake for the folk above who resist the simple fact of the matter. world war 2 was won by a coalition--you know, a multilateral type arrangement---and that the soviet union, like it or not, played an overwhelming role in what that coalition was able to do. to say this is simply to acknowledge what actually happened. it has nothing to do with the ways in which the post-hoc sentimentalization of those who died has come to be shaped. it has nothing to do with how one might feel about those who were killed. you can remember what you like as you like--just dont substitute that for history. how ww2 is remembered in general is a seperate process, shaped with seperate ends in mind: remember the cold war? the fact of the matter is that the relation of the americans to the ussr were not pretty even at the height of the war... remember that stalin asked the americans to open a second front to take some of the pressure off the ussr from 1942: remember that the americans decided on a sequence of actions that did almost nothing to reduce pressure on the ussr until 1944. remember that lovely speech by harry truman, in which he encouraged this--it was among the first moves in the cold war--it was in 1942---the culminating phrase was lovely: let them bleed each other white. the point is that the erasure of the soviet role in winning ww2 is a coldwar relic. to adjust for that erasure is just that. but if you push at the question, things grow ugly really quite fast. that this sort of thing rarely if ever enters into the nationalist fetish outing that is memorialization is a good index of the void that seperates the past from the official "memory" of the past. __________________ a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear it make you sick. -kamau brathwaite Last edited by roachboy; 05-11-2005 at 07:57 AM..