I don't understand war

This is going to sound really autistic, but war just doesn't make sense to me. I don't understand why someone would risk their life - their LIFE - for something as minuscule as a land dispute. What is the motivation? It seems fucking crazy to me that people would put their life on the line to help some monarch, or some country, secure more land or defend its religious values. And yet if you read history, you see countless wars and countless of people dying for the most petty squabbles.

I mean, it's your life. It's all you have. And you're going to risk your life over a trade dispute? I just don't get it.

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youtube.com/watch?v=JnPPhn-fvAg
youtube.com/watch?v=NCGk1WimO2I
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany#1815.E2.80.931918
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#Casualties_by_1914.E2.80.9318_borders
twitter.com/SFWRedditVideos

>Not wanting to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentations of their women

You are assuming that people will make racional decisions for themselves or will try to fight a system that obligates them to fight in war.

of course it's crazy.

that's probably why we do it anyway. we were crazy to make it this far as a species, and had to be crazier still keep on top.

soldiers fight for money and land. 99 percent dont' care about ideology or trade disputes.

That's because you've never known anything in your life that was worth dying for.

>I don't understand why someone would risk their life - their LIFE - for something as minuscule as a land dispute.
>He doesn't know what conscription is
>He thinks most soldier throughout history CHOSE to fight

KEK

Are you American?

this
do you really think 34 million soviets voluntarily decided to join the red army from 1941 to 1945?

Throughout the entirety of history, you can either live an incredibly boring and hard life trying to grow food and probably end up getting murdered by raiding armies anyways, or join the army and see some adventure in your life. Dumbass kids won't listen to their parents no matter how bad the warstories they tell them.

Life wasn't all that precious for most of history. You would have almost certainly seen several of your siblings die by the time you were a man, and even then death was only one bad harvest or seemingly minor illness away. The knowledge that you were going to die, and probably pretty soon, was with you all the time. While you were waiting for your impending doom, your life was pretty awful. And at the same time, you would also believe in God and the afterlife with far greater fervor than people today do.

The idea of dying just wasn't that big of a deal. You weren't losing anything you didn't expect to lose in the next couple of years, and what awaited on the other side was better than the life you'd be leaving behind.

Well the choice was between probably dying soon in the war and definitely dying later in a German concentration camp. You can bet Soviet propaganda reminded people of what was awaiting them in the event of defeat.

>I don't understand why someone would risk their life - their LIFE - for something as minuscule as a land dispute.

youtube.com/watch?v=JnPPhn-fvAg

youtube.com/watch?v=NCGk1WimO2I

You have to realise that these people have spent their entire life filling their mind with spooked bullshit.

Where is the glory of being one of hundreds mowed down in the third pointless attack on a fortified position?

>The idea of dying just wasn't that big of a deal.

is this...actually true?

Who gives a shit about glory anyway

War is fun, goy
Enlist now!

user you're right to not get it with regards to petty land disputes

...But some things are worth war, for instance removal of tyrants like Hitler, to prevent the slaughter of millions of innocent people

/thread

but ofcourse edgy kids will keep posting and eventually turn this into a waa waaa fascism is awesome and commies are evil

What's the matter you sons of whores? Do you want to live forever?

No it's a common meme perpetuated by people who have never read any works of medieval literature

So you'd give up land to someone willing to risk their life to take it?

People more willing to risk their lives are more likely to impose their will on others and achieve fame and wealth.

>t. Nu Male

>die in a war for King Chad
>King Chad pumps and dumps your qt oneitis
>"ur teh cuck lel xD"

You'll just give up yours to Chad without a fight though. There's something to be said for a man that does what he must to keep what is his even when faced with death. You can call it romanticism if you want, that's not really the point, I just think its worthy of respect even when it ends ingloriously in a puddle of ones blood face down in the mud.


Either way, at the end of the day our society is based around the rule of law and the rule of law is based on violence or the will to inflict violence unto those who transgress the rule of law.

War was seen as something romantic and more exciting than plowing some fields.
You get glory and plenty of loot and women.
Would you really prefer plowing fields as some peasant everyday, for the rest of your life and die when you're 40?

There's two answers to this question.

The first one is a modern realistic polsci approach, which says that war is perfectly rational in certain confined circumstances.

The second approach is more of a psychological one, namely that human nature includes warring and war-like behavior, as much as it includes love, peace-making and cooperation, and that collective peoples can under the aegis of a dictator for example, fall in love with romantic myths about violence.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori etc.

>This is going to sound really autistic

Yep. Have you never believed in something? A land dispute isn't petty, and even if it is petty, you are fighting for your city-state/emperor/lord/etc because it's your duty to do so. Either you swore fealty, or an oath or whatever the cultural equivalent is. So you just have to fight. And whoever is in charge of you will have plenty of arguments to convince it's a just, worthy fight. You're not thinking "I'm fighting for that county, and some favorable trade deals" but "I'm fighting those damn Spaniards and bloody Austrians because they're our eternal enemies. Have you heard about the atrocities they did? Enough is enough".

And once a national consciousness, ideology and religion gets factored into it, then it's more than easy to find people to fight. That land? It's the sacred land of the eternal glorious motherland, and right now it's held by those bastards. Or you fight to spread Republican ideals and free the people of Europe, or to spread the revolution and free the comrades, or against those fucking heretics or mahometans. And in the case of religion, life is but the first step towards eternal life near God, so if fighting the ennemy of the true religion puts you on the fast track to paradise, why wouldn't you sign up?

Also, money, and plenty of opportunity to pillage.

Pride is perhaps the single most important motivator for warfare in all of history. Nobody wants to look weak, and so they end up fighting over bullshit that they otherwise wouldn't care about. You can very clearly see this in the lead up to WW1; everybody knows that the war is likely to be a disaster, but nobody is willing to lose face by backing down. Kaiser Wilhelm wanted to prove that Germany was just as strong as Britain. Czar Nicholas wanted to prove that Russia was still a major world player after being humiliated in the Russo-Japanese war. The Ottomans wanted to prove that they were still worthy of being called an empire. France wanted to avenge their humiliating defeat in the Franco-Prussian War. The same mechanisms come into play on a smaller scale in lesser conflicts.

user, 12,000 jews died on the front lines in the German army.

And the result was America winning.

According to Wikipedia there were 615,000 Jews in Germany in 1910. Thus less than 2% of the Jewish population perished in the war compared to 3.39% to 4.32% of the general German population. Thus being Jewish statistically you were twice as likely to survive the war.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Germany#1815.E2.80.931918
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties#Casualties_by_1914.E2.80.9318_borders

Just wanted to point it out.

>t.female

Implying you give a shit. You havnt got off your lazy ass for Saddam, Gaddafi, Assad, Putin, or Drumpf.

>54% white
>winning