Wars And Genocides: Guilt Seems To Be A Major Force In Historical Omissions

 Wars And Genocides: Guilt Seems To Be A Major Force In Historical Omissions

       

Winners write history of wars.

People in power continue to write history during peacetime.

This means what becomes history is often far from what actually took place.

During the second world war many genocides of civilian populations were committed. Today our history books detail the Holocaust by the Nazis. The genocidal mass killings of Japanese and German civilians in Dresden, Tokyo, Hiroshima and Nagasaki are rarely mentioned. After the second war in Vietnam the genocidal mass killings of civilians – some 1.5 million – have also been not adequately recognized as genocide.

We don't see many movies about the civilian victims of Dresden ,Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki or Vietnam.

Why such silence?

 Ghostly guilt.

I suppose it is excruciatingly painful for us to realize that we too engaged in horrific acts against humanity, and indeed did commit some despicable crimes against innocent civilians in order to win the war.

Hundred years after the 1915 Armenian genocide the Turkish government continues to deny the genocide.

I understand it. It is guilt. No one wishes to face the failings of our past heroes.

And I suppose had we lost the war our heroes would be tried in German and Japanese versions of the Nuremberg trials. Not surprisingly a great statesman Robert M McNamara thought our actions in Vietnam could have been judged harshly in a Nuremberg like trial.