• Blaine
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    11 months ago

    Would you include literal child soldiers who had no idea slavery was a cause of the war in that “slaver scum” category?

    https://youtu.be/IBMcYCb9NDA

    If you watch that video, you can hear from someone who fought in the 26th Virginia Cavalry. Towards the end of the video, he celebrates the end of slavery, and blames the politicians for bringing them into the war. Many of the folks buried in these cemeteries were uneducated, rural children who only knew they were “defending their homeland from invasion”.

    Do we really need to piss on their graves?

    • PugJesus@kbin.social
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      11 months ago

      Would you include literal child soldiers who had no idea slavery was a cause of the war in that “slaver scum” category?

      Literal children? No, because children are generally accepted to have reduced independent moral agency for a variety of reasons.

      Many of the folks buried in these cemeteries were uneducated, rural children who only knew they were “defending their homeland from invasion”.

      My guy, that Lost Causer myth hasn’t been accepted in historical academia since the 70s. There was broad understanding and acceptance on the Confederate side, amongst the rank and file, that the war was being fought for slavery and white supremacy. You wanna roll out John Smith from Nowhere, Atlanta, and say he’s a very special boy who didn’t understand what was going on? Sure, whatever makes you feel better. I’m sure there were a couple of innocents in the Wehrmacht and the SS as well who were simply too dumb to understand what was constantly and loudly repeated by both sides of the conflict. But unless you want me to single out his grave to be spared, I don’t really know what relevance your saintedly ignorant theoretical individual has to the discussion.

      • Blaine
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        11 months ago

        Only on Lemmy could “pissing on the graves of child soldiers isn’t cool” be a controversial take.

          • Blaine
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            11 months ago

            Exactly. One in every six Wehrmacht troops fighting on D-Day was a non-German, many of which were prisoners who’d been forced to fight for the Nazis. You might actually be pissing on the grave of a Korean POW who’d been shipped to the German frontlines by their Japanese captors.

            Source: https://militaryhistorynow.com/2014/06/02/germanys-foreign-volunteers-helped-man-the-atlantic-wall/

            “In one more memorable encounter, members of the American 101st Airborne stumbled upon a group of surrendering Asiatic troops in German uniforms. Despite repeated attempts, Allied interrogators were unable to communicate with their curious Wehrmacht prisoners. Only later was it discovered that the soldiers originally hailed from Korea and had absolutely no interest in fighting for the Third Reich. How they ended up in German uniform is one of the Second World War’s most outlandish sagas.”