War's Unwomanly Face - Vol. 2 Ch. 11.3

[MangaDex]

 

[Nikostr8]

Pain

 

[SuperOniichan]

It may seem difficult to understand for someone outside the former USSR or Russia, but in my country World War II is indeed a religious cult and one of the basic things of national identity, for better or worse. To the point that even as the authorities became more tolerant of different points of view on the history of the party and politics in the USSR, the desire for different points of view on the War was still seen as an attempt to downplay the importance of the Soviet victory.

 

[aister]

@SuperOniichan It was the same in my country. There was this very good piece of poem that were banned from circulation becuz it talked about the deaths and suffering of our soldiers, despite its praising of said sacrifices. The ban has been lifted now and that piece is now taught in highschool across the country. However, it was apparent that there is a certain mental image that needed to be had during the war: strong, manly, courageous, protective, and about killing enemies, not deaths.

the stories of the women in this manga (and probably many many many other women and men at that time) goes the exact opposite of that image. There were deaths and sacrifices, there were womanliness, homesick, weakness, romance, etc. It is not that hard to understand when stories about those who show weakness, yet part of the army, would not be allowed to publish.

 

[Carmichael]

It's the same in all the involved countries I feel.
In France there is also a taboo about the Collaboration. "La France Résistante", France Resisted, no one collaborated, all the evil done during the Occupation was the result of the traitors of the far-right anti-semitic Vichy Government. This was a myth created by necessity after the war in order to allow the mending, but even today that myth still lives on.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@aister I don’t know about weakness, but my grandfather didn’t like to talk about how he was seriously wounded and almost all of his unit was killed due to the fact that one idiot mistakenly sent soldiers at night directly to the position of the Germans. This was not something impossible or unusual in the war, but for the rest of his life he was disappointed that so many Soviet guys died because of our mistake.

 

[InsaneAwesomeTony]

Thanks for the translation 👍🏼❤️

 

[kalton]

that statue on page 28 in the bottom panel is a huge monument in what is now Volgograd called The Motherland Calls

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Motherland_Calls

It was built to commemorate those who fell in the Battle of Stalingrad

it's not really well covered by Western sources but the scale of the Eastern Front of World War 2 was really something insane

 

[nutjob]

@Maru_chan
Repetition on page 25: "She removed the the amusing lines ..." >> "She removed the amusing lines ..."

 

[KochengOren]

@aister
Yes indeed that human have so many kind of emotions. But to survive the war, most of the time, human needs to revert to the basic psychology, i.e. anger is better than desperate; revenge is better than grieve.

 

[Kaiser92]

thanks for the feel dose 😥

 

[sunshinelemons]

@SuperOniiChan

Hey man, good to see you around.

It's the same in the US for WWII. Had a thriving Nazi party in the US leading to the war? We don't talk about that. The massive amount of antisemitism and anti-Japanese sentiments, including our internment camps? Don't talk about that. The fact that we turned away a boatload of Jewish refugees in 1938 with the claim of them being spies? I didn't know that until a couple of years ago and found out even the littlest child on that boat ended up dead in the death camps.
That war became a cult for all the world "superpowers" involved. It's sick that we can't talk frankly about it.

 

[pihip]

@sunshinelemons

That war became a cult for all the world "superpowers" involved. It's sick that we can't talk frankly about it.

It's the victors who write the history books. Think about it, aren't the "Allies" of old the permanent members of the UN Security Council and, more or less, the ones who choose who says what, what happens when, and so on?

I don't want to start a stale debate that the Axis powers suffered too, that's for other places, but it's way too easy to demonize Hitler and claim he was possessed, or to condemn Japanese human experimentation, and yet keep quiet about things like Operation Paperclip, the atomic bombings, and so on.

War is neither a religion nor a cult. It's a fucking tragedy and a senseless waste.

 

[sunshinelemons]

@pihip You're right. I didn't even think about Paperclip. It is indeed a tragedy and a waste, so we are in complete agreement.

 

[SuperOniichan]

@sunshinelemons Hah, in my country you can still find people who are simultaneously saying things like "Russia is a great country, because we saved the world from the Nazis" and "Hitler was right when he killed Jews." That is, many people have a very weird idea of ​​war.

@pihip I am deeply grateful to all the Americans who participated on our side in this war, and at the same time I completely and without any reservations condemn the atomic bombings of Japan. Is it that hard? I absolutely hate hypocrisy, so I will never say "hey, those were our guys, so we better not talk about it."

 

[Okuu]

That panel juxtaposition on page 16 is so satisfying to see; proper use of the visual medium.

 

[ohms]

NGL, This chapter hit me the hardest because it's the most detailed one, perhaps?

 

[Deathhappens]

It's the same in all the involved countries I feel.
In France there is also a taboo about the Collaboration. "La France Résistante", France Resisted, no one collaborated, all the evil done during the Occupation was the result of the traitors of the far-right anti-semitic Vichy Government. This was a myth created by necessity after the war in order to allow the mending, but even today that myth still lives on.

It's the same in every country, and the more complex it is the more people try to avoid talking about it. In Greece there was a huge divide between pro-communism left and pro-West right (an early sign of what the Cold War would bring to every country near the "disputed" spheres of influence) and while both sides had a strong presence in resisting the Nazi occupation, they worked separately and sometimes even at cross-purposes to one another. Almost as soon as the occupation ended, before the war was even really over, Greece launched into a civil war that left tens of thousands of people dead in a country that had already taken devastating losses during the war and even further during the occupation (it was reported, not sure if this is still considered true, that the famine of '41 killed more people than the war before). But of course, they don't cover anything beyond the basics in school and if you try to dig further into it you will find wildly different narratives from each side, typically painting the other side as monsters.