I finished this book (subtitled "Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War") over the weekend. Fussell was badly injured in France in 1945; he got a PhD at Harvard and became a respected professor of literature; late in life he wrote books about war that are stripped of all cant and that are filled with anguish and sadness and truth about war and which can easily be read to understand the wars of today. (There is a priceless section about the myth of "precision bombing," for example.) Here's an excerpt from p. 285-286:
* * * *
Revenge is not a rational motive, but it was the main motive in the American destruction of the Japanese Empire. A compiler of An Oral History of the War Years in America observes, "I distrust people who speak of the [atom] bombings today as in atrocity they strongly opposed in 1945... I don't believe them. At the time virtually everyone was delighted that we dropped the bombs, not only because they shortened the way and saved thousands of American lives, but also [quite irrationally, notice] because the "Japs" deserved it for the terrible things they had done to our boys at Pearl Harbor, Bataan, Guadalcanal, and all the way through the Pacific."
Those who fought knew this, just as they know that it is as likely for the man next to you to be shot through the eye, ear, testicles or brain as (the way the cinema does it) though the shoulder. A shell is as likely to blow his whole face off as to lodge a fragment in some mentionable and unvital tissue. [...]
How is it that these data are commonplaces only to the small number who had some direct experience of them? One reason is the normal human talent for looking on the bright side, for not receiving infomation likely to cause distress or occasion a major overhaul of normal ethical, political or psycholgical assumptions. But the more important reason is that the large wartime audience never knew these things. The letterpress correspondents, radio broadcasters, and film people who perceived these horrors kept quiet about them on behalf of the War Effort. As John Steinbeck finally confessed in 1977, "We were all part of the war effort. We went along with it, and not only that, we abetted it... I dont mean that the correspondents were liars. ... It is in the things not mentioned that the untruth lies" By not mentioning a lot of things, a correspondent could give the audience at home the impression that there were no cowards in the service, not thieves and rapists and looters, no cruel or stupid commanders. It is true, Steinbeck is aware, that most military operations are examples of "organized insanity," but the morale on the home front must not be jeopardized by an eye-witness saying so. And even it a correspondent had wanted to deliver the noisome truth, patriotism would join censorship in stopping his mouth.
* * * * *
The book is, of course, very highly recommended.
