[lit-ideas] Anzio and the meaning of war

I took a break from reading about the colossal Athenian blunder at Sicily by
watching Anzio, another Edward Dmytryk movie.  At the end the war weary war
correspondent Robert Mitchum believes he has the answer, the reason why men
go to war.  He tells Major General Jack Lesley (Arthur Kennedy) who
amazingly seems to credit this puerile insight that the reason men go to war
is that they like to kill each other.  "War never solves anything. History
tells us that," Mitchum tells Kennedy.  And maybe, just maybe if this
insight of Mitchum's can be spread abroad, men will learn to live with one
another.  Kennedy thinks that would be just wonderful.

 

What drivel.   Who invented this nonsensical "war never solves anything"?
And why do so many find this nonsense profound?     Is there a puzzle that
someone is having a war to solve?  No.  No one is saying that.  Well what
sort of solution is being sought?  Is there anyone in the world who doesn't
know that the winners of wars get to dictate the terms?  We defeated
Hitler's army and now Nationalist Socialism is not the predominate form of
government in the West.   I wouldn't call that a solution, but it was an
effect of the allies winning the war and of the axis losing it.  Didn't
Dmytryk think that important?  

 

Also, Communist forms of government are well on their way to oblivion.
Liberal Democracy on the other hand, the form of government Khrushchev
banged a shoe against, is in the ascendancy.  The Cold War was fought to
decide which form of government would win and which would lose.   It would
be hard to get "solution" out of what happened, but the fact that the West
won, has had its notable effect.  The world is this way, the way it is now,
rather than the way Hitler or Stalin wanted it and war did that.  Gad!  I've
lost respect for Mitchum as well - you should have heard him.  It was
embarrassing.

 

I suppose it is fitting that I watch a dumb movie after reading about a very
dumb military operation.  Why would the Athenians want to attack the
democratic Syracuse it in the middle of the Peloponnesian War?    Had they
defeated Syracuse perhaps that would have cut off some of the food going to
land-locked Sparta.  That's the only thing I've read that makes any sense,
but the war was badly planned, badly led and ultimately a military disaster
for Athens - one of the several major reasons Sparta was able to defeat
Athens. . . I hope it wasn't Thucydides who invented the expression "war
never solves anything."  Not only did Athens lose the war, but Syracuse was
so debilitated by the battle with Athens it was soon defeated, and Sparta's
victory exhausted them.   No participant was a clear winner.  The next
powers to come on the Greek scene were barbarians Philip and his son
Alexander.

 

Nations have started wars that didn't end the way they hoped, but that is
just another way of saying someone wins and someone loses (unless it is a
dray or a Pyrrhic victory).  In our Civil War, the North won.  Is there
anyone who thinks that didn't make any difference?  Would our nation have
been like it is today if the South had won?  

 

Wars often, perhaps usually, decide things.    I would defy anyone to say
that they never do.  Maybe that is why they never say that but instead utter
mulishly the nonsensical "war never solves anything."  Since that statement
doesn't mean anything sensible or rational, no one can challenge it.  They
can only nod like Arthur Kennedy at Robert Mitchum's profundity.

 

Lawrence Helm

San Jacinto

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