KREW KUTS: War and daily life

By Bernie Krewski

The word “remembrance” means present consciousness of a past event. It can unexpectedly and paradoxically bring forth beneficial memories, those that are disturbing, or a combination of both. This may explain why it took more than a decade in the aftermath of World War I to formally establish Remembrance Day as an honourable act of commemoration in Canada.

Beginning in 1923, “Armistice Day” (marking the official end of WWI) and “Thanksgiving Day” were celebrated simultaneously. Not until 1931 was November 11 independently and permanently established as “Remembrance Day.” Memories of war, we now know, often take time to become incorporated and rooted into the fabric of our society and daily lives.

The first publicly documented expression of remembering WWI in this community was a news item, coincidently, a century ago. Editor Charles Dunford wrote this in The Oyen News on October 14, 1924: “Wear a poppy on Armistice Day in memory of those who made the supreme sacrifice in the Great War.”

Like most people of my generation, I grew up in my youth thinking of “poppies, Flanders Field, and the loss of soldiers on the battlefields.” 

The occasion of my birth less than three months before Canada declared war on September 10, 1939, was of no great significance to me. My much older brother Frank sending airmail letters and postcards from Europe and not returning to Canada until March 1946 was simply a fact of life in my childhood. So was brother Stan training as a navigator in various stations in Canada and coming home on leave in an RCAF uniform.

The sounds of CBC broadcasts from Europe on our battery-operated radio in Alsask were nonetheless memorable. Reporters like Matthew Halton, raised in Pincher Creek Alberta, offered lessons in geography – “Berlin, Brussels, Prague” - before I started school, as Ken McGoogan describes in “Shadows of Tyranny” (2024). Quiet conversations between my parents expressed concerns about their ancestral roots in what historian Timothy Snyder calls the “Bloodlands of Europe” (2010). 

An awakening came when I was unpredictably drawn towards historical studies at the University of Alberta. Then I encountered the “Wars of Religion” waged in Europe during the 16th, 17th and early 18th centuries and military conflict elsewhere - and seemingly everywhere. What happened, I wondered, to the Biblical lessons: “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God?” (Matthew 5:9).

More intense studies of the Holocaust in Germany and later the Vietnam War, disrupting my graduate studies in American history, raised more profound questions why nations go to war.

Margaret MacMillan is a highly esteemed Canadian scholar. In “War: How Conflict Shaped Us” (2020), she examines the role of war in shaping the behaviour of Canadians. Her writing interprets my life story.

British military historian Richard Overy goes further and deeper in addressing this complex subject in his new book, “Why War?” (2024), noting there was not one year in the 20th century without an international or civil war being fought somewhere.   

Ironically, Professor Overy begins his story in 1931 when Canada’s Parliament was finalizing a date to remember the deaths of 60,000 Canadian solders.

In that year the League of Nations (forerunner to the United Nations) was pursuing an unusual initiative. It offered Albert Einstein, one of the world’s most influential scientists and an ardent pacifist, the opportunity to connect with another prominent figure on a subject of his choice. Einstein chose to engage with psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud with this question: “Is there a way of delivering mankind from the menace of war?”

Freud’s response offered Einstein little reassurance. Freud said every human possesses a “death drive” – the impulse and drive toward death and destruction, often expressed through behaviours such as extreme aggression and self-destructiveness. Even as people become more civilized and educated, Freud argued, we remain prone to descend into primitive violence.  

Overy explores the history of war from two perspectives. Part 1 is a review of the scientific literature - biology, psychology, anthropology, and ecology. Part 2 focuses on human agency and mankind creating cultures that sustain and exalt warfare through belief (e.g. religion), power, competition for resources, and the need for security.

Biology was the first science to tackle the question of why humans make war, often associated with Charles Darwin’s theories and the concept of “survival of the fittest.” However, this was far from Darwin’s scientific interest in evolution.

Psychological factors may come into play due to the in-group-out group phenomenon and identifying a hateful “enemy.” In these instances, the “in group” dehumanizes the “out group,” persuading themselves to commit acts of violence without feeling any guilt.

Anthropologists for half a century argued prehistoric societies were peaceful. That is, until the 1960s when four areas of evidence tipped the balance: skeletal trauma from innumerable massacre sites, cave drawings, fortified sites, and massive collections of weaponry. An example is Crow Creek in South Dakota where a mass burial of 415 identifiable skeletons from the 14th century reveals that 89% has been scalped and nearly half of one hundred skulls had stone-axe injuries.

“Ecology,” a term coined in the 1860s, is the study of relationships between living things and their environment - climate change, droughts, harsh winters, and acquiring food necessary for survival. Professor Overy found, for example, that 453 phases of extremely cold weather in China produced a total of 603 wars, but that 459 years of warmer climate led to only 296 wars. Human populations can outgrow the land required to support them. Hitler’s expansion into Poland and Eastern Europe called Lebensraum, triggering WWII, conveys that story.

Patterns of recent human behaviour reveal how wars arise from competition for Resources (oil and the Gulf Wars), Beliefs (jihad), Power (Putin & Ukraine), and Security (Palestine & Israel).

Richard Overy’s basic conclusion is there is no single straightforward cause for wars to occur. What is undeniably constant from earliest times is that human groups resort to collective, lethal violence against other groups when prompted by ambition, fear, need, or prejudice.

Desires for peace, I believe, need to be strengthened. “Lest We Forget!”