I read your original War essay to which this post linked, it took me a very long time to finish reading it all, and I learned a great deal in so doing. I have a few comments to add from all of that reading.
On the movie Saving Private Ryan, the most horrible scene that I remember most vividly is when several German tanks are moving through the town where the movie's heroes are making their final stand. One German soldier's head and shoulders appear very briefly moving upwards through the round hole that lets one of the tank's occupants look outside and all around the tank. Instantly that soldier's entire head disappears and is replaced by a small, round, cloud of pink spray, indicating that his head was probably struck by a bullet from a machine gun, and perhaps that bullet had an explosive tip on it. His whole head appeared to explode into pink spray in a fraction of a second. Nothing was ever said in the movie about this event, but I just happened to be looking at that one tank when this one-second event occurred. I remember much about the whole movie, but that one second is the one event most memorable for me.
You also wrote "Native Americans often had such delusions. They would go through involved rituals to magically protect themselves in battle, to make them bulletproof or invisible." These delusions were also common among the anti-foreigner Chinese Boxers in the Boxer Rebellion in Peking in 1900-1901. They were called "boxers" because they all were training in the particular style of Chinese martial arts known as "I ho chüan", which means "righteous harmony fist." It was one of the hundreds of styles of Kung Fu that have been practiced in China beginning about 500 A.D. at the Shao Lin (small forest) Buddhist monastery in Hunan Province. Monks today at this monastery still train in this martial art. In addition to all the amazing natural physical abilities that these students develop, the Boxers in 1903 also believed that their physical training, along with meditation and breathing exercises, gave them invulnerability in battle. The 8 foreign nations whose diplomatic and military assets were located in the Foreign Legation part of Peking had no trouble killing these self-deluded invulnerable Boxers with their European bullets.
Howard Zinn was a soldier in the generic sense of the word, but he was not in the infantry on the ground. He was a bombardier in the Army Air Corps, and he dropped napalm in France where he later visited the city that he had bombed. This greatly helped in his becoming outspoken against war, and it is described in detail in the Wikipedia article Howard Zinn, beginning with the section titled World War II.
Some of the rewards that are dangled before the "young, naïve, immortal-feeling men" are medallions and ribbons of various colors to honor everyone who took part in certain battles, exercises, operations, etc. These are then proudly attached to the young persons' military uniforms just below their left shoulders. The more of these one accumulates, the prouder one can stand erect in public and convincingly talk other young and unwise people into going into military "service", which actually is slavery and not simply service. And Audie Murphy's service was so honorable that there is now even an Audie Murphy Memorial at Holtzwihr, France, a photo of which is online.
Thanks also for the excellent details of how Smedley Butler foiled the 1933 coup against the White House. I have never seen such detail anywhere else before.
Thanks Bill, yes, agrarian peoples do not stand much of a chance against industrial ones in war, and magic never helped much. :) The Soviets beat the Nazis by just throwing more people into battle than the Nazis could provide. You can go on Wikipedia and read about the major battles between the Soviets and the Germans, and even in the battles that the Soviets won, they usually had multiple times the casualties that the Germans had. Like with Japan, when the element of surprise was gone and it turned into a war of attrition, the Germans never stood a chance. The Germans and Japanese were tough soldiers, but they did not have the industrial capacity to continue waging the war, especially after the USA joined the party.
I read your original War essay to which this post linked, it took me a very long time to finish reading it all, and I learned a great deal in so doing. I have a few comments to add from all of that reading.
On the movie Saving Private Ryan, the most horrible scene that I remember most vividly is when several German tanks are moving through the town where the movie's heroes are making their final stand. One German soldier's head and shoulders appear very briefly moving upwards through the round hole that lets one of the tank's occupants look outside and all around the tank. Instantly that soldier's entire head disappears and is replaced by a small, round, cloud of pink spray, indicating that his head was probably struck by a bullet from a machine gun, and perhaps that bullet had an explosive tip on it. His whole head appeared to explode into pink spray in a fraction of a second. Nothing was ever said in the movie about this event, but I just happened to be looking at that one tank when this one-second event occurred. I remember much about the whole movie, but that one second is the one event most memorable for me.
You also wrote "Native Americans often had such delusions. They would go through involved rituals to magically protect themselves in battle, to make them bulletproof or invisible." These delusions were also common among the anti-foreigner Chinese Boxers in the Boxer Rebellion in Peking in 1900-1901. They were called "boxers" because they all were training in the particular style of Chinese martial arts known as "I ho chüan", which means "righteous harmony fist." It was one of the hundreds of styles of Kung Fu that have been practiced in China beginning about 500 A.D. at the Shao Lin (small forest) Buddhist monastery in Hunan Province. Monks today at this monastery still train in this martial art. In addition to all the amazing natural physical abilities that these students develop, the Boxers in 1903 also believed that their physical training, along with meditation and breathing exercises, gave them invulnerability in battle. The 8 foreign nations whose diplomatic and military assets were located in the Foreign Legation part of Peking had no trouble killing these self-deluded invulnerable Boxers with their European bullets.
Howard Zinn was a soldier in the generic sense of the word, but he was not in the infantry on the ground. He was a bombardier in the Army Air Corps, and he dropped napalm in France where he later visited the city that he had bombed. This greatly helped in his becoming outspoken against war, and it is described in detail in the Wikipedia article Howard Zinn, beginning with the section titled World War II.
Some of the rewards that are dangled before the "young, naïve, immortal-feeling men" are medallions and ribbons of various colors to honor everyone who took part in certain battles, exercises, operations, etc. These are then proudly attached to the young persons' military uniforms just below their left shoulders. The more of these one accumulates, the prouder one can stand erect in public and convincingly talk other young and unwise people into going into military "service", which actually is slavery and not simply service. And Audie Murphy's service was so honorable that there is now even an Audie Murphy Memorial at Holtzwihr, France, a photo of which is online.
Thanks also for the excellent details of how Smedley Butler foiled the 1933 coup against the White House. I have never seen such detail anywhere else before.
Thanks Bill, yes, agrarian peoples do not stand much of a chance against industrial ones in war, and magic never helped much. :) The Soviets beat the Nazis by just throwing more people into battle than the Nazis could provide. You can go on Wikipedia and read about the major battles between the Soviets and the Germans, and even in the battles that the Soviets won, they usually had multiple times the casualties that the Germans had. Like with Japan, when the element of surprise was gone and it turned into a war of attrition, the Germans never stood a chance. The Germans and Japanese were tough soldiers, but they did not have the industrial capacity to continue waging the war, especially after the USA joined the party.
I wrote about Zinn here:
https://ahealedplanet.net/war.htm#justify2
Zinn's Wikipedia bio is OK. It would be nice if Ed's bio had something approaching it:
https://ahealedplanet.net/wikiprop.htm#cross
My Butler account is rare out there in cyberspace, and a Butler site links to it. Few Americans know about Butler and the 1933 coup attempt.
There is nobody in the USA like Murphy today, and it is understandable that Tower wanted to tell his JFK story to Murphy:
https://ahealedplanet.net/cover-up.htm#tower
Thanks again.