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Comment by kendalk | Hacker News Reader

Quark: "Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They’re a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts, deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time and those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don’t believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes." -- Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Siege of AR-558 (#7.8) (1998)

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Meh, it's not particularly insightful: "make someone fight for their survival and they'll fight for their survival" is what that quote boils down to. A sci-fi race that doesn't fight for survival when pressed is usually depicted as an uber-pacifistic race.

The fascinating thing about the Second World War is that several countries weren't fighting for survival, but for victory and power. Surely the big winner was the US. However Britain was in it to win from early on, as survival wasn't really the issue. The richer you were, the better you fared, unsurprisingly.

Very well put

Survival wasn't really the issue? At the height of the U-Boat campaign we had a only few weeks worth of food supplies left in the country. We were loosing well over half a million tons of ships a month. If Japan had never attacked Pearl Harbour, the US would have just sat on it's hands and watched Britain collapse.

Yes we broke the U-Boat codes, but without US ships and aircraft covering the western Atlantic, we wouldn't have been able to use that information to mount an effective anti U-Boat campaign.

> Yes we broke the U-Boat codes

The Enigma encoding was actually cracked by Polish mathematicians and handed to the UK during the summer of 1939. In exchange, Poles expected the UK to join them, were they to be attacked by Germans. Unfortunately, that part of the bargain never materialised.

Britain kind of volunteered to join the war in the first place though.

And yet the army was built up and arms manufacturing was built up, at the expense of food production. Troops and tanks were being sent to Africa, even as Germany looked poised to in invade Britian. Yes, it was tight, but Britain was in it to win, not defend. British production outstripped Germany and when the Empire was included, it was vastly superior. It took time to ramp up, but Britain wasn't facing defeat. The tonnage of ships controlled and owned by Britain actually increased (though numbers fell), and additionally those controlled by not owned by Britain also helped. The actual loses weren't that big. In a bad patch, Nov 1940 to June 1941 it was 3.4%. There were later times when it reached similar rates. The British diet was vastly better than those on the continent by and large. Britain wasn't starving.

You're promoting a false dichotomy: "If you're fighting for victory, you can't be fighting for survival".

In WWII if you weren't victorious, you didn't survive. The governments of Hitler? Mussolini? Antonescu? Even Tiso? Japan did keep it's emperor, but he was always a figurehead and Japan's governance was heavily reformed.

The British Empire was rapidly weakening. It didn't have the resources to maintain it's massive navy, and the head-start it had in the Industrial Revolution had waned. Germany was an ascendent power and the UK was no match for it. The UK was very much fighting for survival - the counterbalancing alliances of European powers had been in considerable tension since at least Germany unified.

Look what it took to bring Germany and its allies down down - the immense manpower and resources of the Soviets, the industrial might of the US, and the naval power and combined might of the UK and the Commonwealth. And good old General Winter working for the Soviets. And this was only 20 years after WWI's peace treaty where the factories of Germany were stripped of heavy machinery. The UK was certainly fighting for survival. When you get bankers training to use catapults seriously intending to use them (however comical the Home Guard was at times), you really are in the grip of total war, fighting for your survival.

Britain made more planes than Germany except in 1944, made more tanks, except in 43 and 44 (when imports radically increased. It's navy was growing throughout the war. It out produced Germany in many important measures. The army grew and the workforce grew. Yes, it was hard, but total war was what the Russians and Germany fought, not the British. Casualty figures tell us that.

Total war refers to how a society mobilies resources for war, not the casualties it sustains. The UK shipped children out of London, introduced rationing, blackouts, sustained and conducted bombing runs against civilian centres to strike at production, engaged in conscription, sustained and conducted sinking of merchant vessels, and used its political power to pull in every ally it could find. Just because an army didn't land on Great Britain and lay waste to the land doesn't mean it wasn't total war.

How would you describe the difference between the war experiences of those from USSR and Germany compared to Britain? There is a fairly striking difference. Part of this is due to a totalitarian regime, but more is due to the catastrophic effects of the war. Rich countries had a considerably easier war than poor countries. Britain was a rich country. While it didn't finish paying for its World War Two loans until 2006, it is a sign of an incredible wealth that it got the loans in the first place. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/6215847.stm

Edit: And to more directly address a couple of those points, many countries had starvation, with vast numbers of deaths in both civilian and military populations. Britain didn't as far as I know. Children fought in many battles and the elderly and infirm too (as much as possible). These things also didn't occur in Britain, with the exception of children who lied to get into the armed forces, which at times may have been officials turning a blind eye. Perhaps it was total war in Britain, but it was certainly an easier and cheaper war than others experienced. A low grade total war?

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