After the war, he and the local kids played with live guns that the German soldiers just threw away. They used a Flak (anti aircraft cannon) as a carousel, played with the shells of it and used the local bunkers to play "soldier", with some playing the Germans and some playing the Americans.
So I'm not sure whether or not spending the childhood in a war zone actually changes the perspective of children (to the better). It sure can later, when they become adults, though.
I mean: would children prefer to be Allies (because they won) or Germans (because, well, they were Germans)...
Some older kids only wanted to play as the Germans or Hungarians (at the end of the war, apparently some Hungarian troops were stationed in the local bunkers to fight off the Americans).
I don't know what the other kids in his age group prefered, though.
They very much play war games, even incorporating the realities around them into the games, like checkpoints, airstrike alarms, and such.
Either that, or they are dealing with a scary, unknowable, potential direction their life might take and working through it by playing. This is normal, and how kids try to understand situations they might find themselves in. A kind in a war zone knows war and does not have to play to understand it.
Not sure if it would imply less war. Around the Napoleonic wars, many officers started their careers as teenagers or pre-teens. Nelson joined the navy as about 12-year old, which wasn't unexceptional age during the Napoleonic times. Napoleon was 10 when he was enrolled in a military academy. He was admitted to Ecole Militaire around 15 years old, graduated in one year, and got a commission as 2nd lieutenant.
Wars don't make people peaceful. Instead, they normalize violence, hate and desperation.
What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?
What exactly is your solution to the sort of [war] by Hitler in [war]. Is war not a solution to [war]?
You do not get to choose whether someone else is violent or not. If you aren't prepared for violence, you can only be a victim of it.
I was just suggesting that offering war as a solution to the problem of already being at war is pretty circular.
Whether it's circular or not isn't a meaningful property when bombs are dropping.
In that spirit of providing clarity: what is your answer to the un-translated question I asked?
> What exactly is your solution to the sort of naked aggression by Hitler in WW2? Is war not a solution to that problem?
With a 70–85 million death toll, I find it hard to describe it as a success. Saying there was no other choice seems fair but calling it a solution seems a bit far-fetched.
Well an idealized version of war that’s designed to glorify it could be fun.
Is actual war fun? Is the Ukraine war fun? I doubt it’s fun for any of the participants. It’s not fun for Ukrainian soldiers, it’s not fun for Russian soldiers, and it’s not fun for Russian or Ukrainian civilians.
Maybe it’s fun for some onlookers that like to cheer and spectate, but I would argue that speaks more to the nature of the spectators than to the nature of war.
War seems to rewrite the brain. People are miserable and bored most of the time, are terrified while in combat, and come back with psychological issues we're still just beginning to understand. It's hell. And yet, people do get addicted to the mayhem and the rush. The mercenary life is attractive to a lot of people. There's still a lot being debated here, but one of the theories about PTSD is that much of the damage is done (or, at least, is made permanent) when people return to civilian life. Having been exposed to life-or-death situations, they find daily life to be low-stakes and artificial; the time in which they were most alive as in combat (even if they hated the experience and what it did to them).
Still, I agree that actual war is not at all "fun".
Robert E. Lee
There definitely seem to be combatants that enjoy at least some aspects of war. If you look at the historical military literature, including poetry, it is not all just negative.
It is true that with increasing industrialization of war during the last 150 years, the overall tenor has changed.
To such men, please note: life never really ends, and you and your offspring gets eternally impacted by all miserable and soulless destruction of life's beauty you may have caused, inflicting more hardship and perpetuating novel state of misery upon flocks of others.
Every reality has at least two versions of it, or more.
I think there is an argument to be made that Battlefield doesn't involve any warfare.
Obviously it's better than Grand Theft Auto, but it definitely falls short of pure pacifism.
Younger boy of mine spent years fighting and smashing and destroying other avatars /players in Minecraft, not so interested in _building_ anything. One's experience may vary.
This seems like it's essentializing psychology into core biological elements (with a shaky, uncited relationship to evolutionary psychology) without question. When statements are made this way, don't you think it closes off possible avenues for research beyond the bare facts of war and competition in future societies, at least without genetic modification? I think questions like these should be left open rather than dismissed as "war is fun, testosterone".