Keith
"Jim, I was only talking about the beliefs of the men who volunteered for the war."
My very first venture into collecting was in the late sixties when I recorded an old Liverpool docker, Tommy Kenny.
Little more than a child, Tommy had lied about his age, enlisted, and was sent off to the trenches 'somewhere in Europe'.
He had been sold the idea, not out of any sense of 'cause' or 'duty', but purely as an 'adventure that would make a man of him'.
I spent two incredibly harrowing days recording those 'adventures'.
The climax of the 'adventure' was when he burst into tears after describing the men who 'just walked away from the noise'. They made no effort to hide or evade capture; just turned around and walked the other way.
They were rounded up like straying sheep, tried, invariably found guilty, sentenced to death by shooting and locked up to await execution.
If there was a push on, they were taken out of the prison, put in the front line and ordered to fight.
If they survived that, they were then taken out and shot.
Tommy burst into tears when he described the several occasion when he came across notices pinned up naming men he had been fighting next to a day or so previously who had undergone this barbarity.
Of course, he could have stayed at home and waited to be given 'a white feather' - to help his 'beliefs along maybe!
I have to say that Tommy, when I recorded him, regarded the 'Great' war and those who brought it about with as much contempt as I do.
I'm sure those who flocked to The Hitler Youth and the Nazi Party (including the present Pope) did so for a variety of reasons.
Regarding the German atrocities; isn't it always the victor who writes the history books and decides which is an atrocity and which 'necessary' or even 'a glorious victory' - that's why Dresden, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are described as such and not what they really were - the wholesale slaughter of non-combatants; and that's why we now have 'special rendition' and 'collateral damage' and (most cynical of all 'friendly fire' instead of torture, 'killing civilians' and killing off your own men.
Jim Carroll