The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #158525   Message #3754808
Posted By: Keith A of Hertford
01-Dec-15 - 04:54 AM
Thread Name: BS: Jingoism or Commemoration
Subject: RE: BS: Jingoism or Commemoration
Piss off Keith - neither can you -(find no historian who still believes that old shit you cling to)

You can not. I can.
Examples just from this thread,

"Britain certainly thought it had legitimate reasons for going in, and I think it did," she says. "
http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jul/25/margaret-macmillan-just-dont-ask-me-who-started-war

"Soldiers did not fight just because they were afraid of their officers. The toughest discipline was in the Italian army, which had the highest rate of desertion among the Allies. Soldiers fought for something. Indian soldiers, as their letters reveal, for honour, the British for king and country. As one French soldier said simply, 'I do not want to become a Boche.' "

"Stevenson argues persuasively that we must believe that men and women meant what they said when they talked about duty and sacrifice, that they accepted the war, even willingly."

" A series of retrospective myths have built up that suggest ordinary British and Irish people backed the war because they were deluded, brainwashed and naïvely duped into supporting the conflict. My research shows that this was simply not the case."
Whilst enthusiastic crowds certainly existed in August 1914, the new research suggests that this didn't reflect the whole picture. "Other gatherings around late July and early August opposed the war," Dr Pennell explains, "and many more people were shocked and disbelieving that such an event could happen."
"Once the decision to go to war was made on 4th August, the public rallied around what was perceived as a just cause. Their support was very often carefully considered, well-informed, reasoned, and only made once all other options were exhausted. People supported the war, but only because they felt it was the right thing to do in light of the circumstances.""
Dr. Catriona Pennel
http://www.exeter.ac.uk/news/featurednews/title_219199_en.html

American military historian Max Boot.

"World War I continues to be misunderstood by most ordinary people who have not yet caught up with the evolving consensus of historians. Three big myths, in particular, dominate the popular perception. First, that it was an accident, a war nobody wanted — a view immortalized in Barbara Tuchman's beautifully written if factually questionable 1962 book "The Guns of August." Second, that it didn't really matter who won — that there was scant difference between the Central and Entente Powers. And third, that soldiers were needlessly sent to slaughter by unfeeling and cloddish generals

Paxman/Open University
"Britain now had a tactically smarter, better organised army, capable of deploying men and machines to devastating effect"