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The war that made us the way we are

2020-08-08T00:04:26.293Z


In the summer of 1945 a new world was discovered. Europe ceded the scepter of planetary power to the United States and the USSR, but, in return, laid the foundation for their union. The crisis that now lives has resurrected the ghosts of then. They all feel victims


Now that the world is chaining one crisis after another, it pays to pause every now and then to remember that things can always get worse. 75 years ago, in this same month, the world was emerging from a catastrophe that dwarfs our current problems. We still live in its shadow today.

World War II was probably the most destructive event in history. As of August 1945, between 50 and 70 million people had died violently, and tens of millions more were in danger of starvation. Thousands of cities in Europe and Asia had been reduced to rubble. In the last days of the war, the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki showed us just how destructive we had become: with the fiery flash of the world's first nuclear weapons, we finally glimpsed the apocalypse.

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The war changed everything. For centuries, the nations of Western Europe had occupied the center of world power; but six years of destruction had reduced them to mere seconds on the world stage. The United States and the USSR were to take their place, and the rivalry between the two new superpowers was to define the rest of the 20th century.

The list of social transformations due to war is truly overwhelming. The war was responsible for the spread of communism in Asia and Eastern Europe, but also for American consumer culture around the world. The war transformed our architectural heritage, as new ones emerged from the ashes of old cities. He provided us with the rockets, the jet plane, and nuclear power; but also the computer, the microwave oven and the instant glue. Before the war, antibiotics were little more than a medical curiosity with almost no practical application; By the end of the conflict, thanks to targeted research and massive public investment, the United States was manufacturing 646 billion doses of penicillin per month.

But the greatest transformation brought about by the war was perhaps psychological. The world experienced a gigantic trauma between 1939 and 1945, and in the years after, had to find ways to cope.

The Greeks are compared to the victims of the Nazis; Brexiters, with their war heroes

The first reaction was to get to work. Everywhere, people started like crazy rebuilding and planning for the future. The economic miracles of the 1950s and 1960s, which occurred not just in Europe but around the world, were born out of this new spirit of enthusiasm and energy.

At the global level, statesmen came together to try to find ways to avoid another catastrophe like the one they had just experienced. In July 1944, when the war was not yet over, there was a meeting of economists in Bretton Woods, United States, to discuss how to end the financial collapses that had led to the war. The institutions they created - the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - were to rule the world economy for the next 27 years, and today they remain tremendously important.

In the summer of 1945 an even larger and more ambitious organization was created: the UN. His main purpose, set out in the first sentence of his Letter, was "to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war."

In the years immediately following, international cooperation became fashionable. Military, political and economic associations of all kinds were established, from NATO and the Warsaw Pact to the World Health Organization and the OECD.

enlarge photo An American tank in the liberation of the Netherlands, in October 1944. Galerie Bilderwelt / GETTY IMAGES

One of the most successful international institutions is the European Union, which also has its roots in the Second World War. According to Robert Schuman, one of the founders of the EU, the fundamental aim of the organization was to make another European war “not only unthinkable, but materially impossible”. He and his colleagues believed that the key to achieving peace in Europe was to bring their nations closer together. For this reason, since its founding, the EU has always declared its commitment to work for an “ever closer union”.

Unfortunately, these were not the only lessons we learned from the war. The traumas of 1945 also taught us to fear our friends, distrust our neighbors, and blame our current misfortunes on the historical grievances that many of us have suffered.

In recent decades, the hope and idealism of the 1950s and 1960s have been replaced by an increasingly widespread culture of victimhood. In each new crisis today, we cannot help but hear the echoes of war.

During the euro crisis in 2012, Greek and Italian newspapers compared their countries to the victims of the concentration camps. They started calling Germany the “Fourth Reich” and posting photos of Angela Merkel with her arm raised, as if she were doing the Nazi salute.

During the Brexit referendum, British newspapers repeatedly compared supporters of leaving the EU to war heroes. Britain had faced a hostile continent alone in 1940, they said, and it could do so again.

We owe nuclear energy, computers and instant glue to the world conflict

Today, in Poland and Hungary, the EU is often compared to the Nazis and the Communists. To those who remember the communist era, it seems that the powerful from abroad cause nothing but misfortune. It is not surprising that so many people in those countries have come to the conclusion that their respective nations are the only cause worth believing in it.

International cooperation, once so valued, is now despised, in many cases. There are many reasons, but one of them is that the echoes of the war are still present.

The United States considers the superpower position it achieved in 1945 to be a natural right. You long to be "great again," but you refuse to accept the responsibilities that come with that greatness. Russia has a similar nostalgia: Vladimir Putin makes constant references in his speeches to Russian bravery during the war, while drawing a low veil to cover the sins of the Red Army in the months and years that follow.

In Asia, too, the traumas of war are being increasingly remembered. In China, which for a long time kept silent about its war with Japan, museums and monuments dedicated to her memory have sprung up all over the country since the 1980s. And television today fills its programming with documentaries and dramas about Chinese sufferings. The same is true, albeit to a lesser extent, in South Korea.

Now that we are beginning to emerge from our own crisis, perhaps we can learn a valuable lesson from this legacy. We can be thankful that the coronavirus was not worse; certainly not as bad as the catastrophe that shook the world 75 years ago. And we can console ourselves by thinking that any crisis, even a world war, always has benefits as well as costs. But we have to be aware that the full consequences of what we have experienced in recent months will not be known for another generation. Hopefully we will be able to manage our current traumas and stresses better than in the past. If not, we may one day be haunted by the events of 2020, just as the echoes of World War II still haunt us.

Keith Lowe is the author of "Fear and Freedom: How World War II Changed Us." Gutenberg Galaxy.

Translation by María Luisa Rodríguez Tapia.

Source: elparis

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