Re: [OT] We Were Soldiers

>>
>>As far as I have been able to determine these friendly acts happened
when 
>>the soldiers on both sides considered the conflict to be a
politician's 
>>war, not an ideological sruggle (which would require indoctrination a
la 
>>NVA/VC) or a war for survival (Germans vs Russians in WW1 or WW2). In 
>>such conflicts the "soldiers like us" attitudes come out after the
war, 
>>possibly long after.
>>
>>
>>Please be gentle with replies, this is still a rough concept of mine.
I'm 
>>still roughing out the terminology.
>>
>>
>>K.H.Ranitzsch wrote:

Professional soldiers often have more in common with each other than
their 
own civilians. In WW1 at Xmas British and German soldiers in France
played 
a football match in no man's land (they won as usual at football).
Whereas 
in WWII had the Germans landed in Kent there would have been a bloodbath
as 
we through everything at them including poison gas. National survival
was 
at stake and elderly ex-servicemen were told to try and kill a German 
soldier with anything that came to hand, shotguns, knives, clubs, before

they were shot. The Germans intended to enslave all British men and use
the 
women as 'Aryan Breeding Stock (in German racial theory the English were

also master race). With that background it would have been war to the
death.

I think you have it right, KH.
J.

Dr PJD Lambshead
Head, Nematode Research Group
Department of Zoology
The Natural History Museum
London SW7 5BD, UK.
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Fax +44 (0)20 7942 5433
http://www.nhm.ac.uk/zoology/home/lambshead.htm
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