Why is Europe the most violent and destructive continent?

Why is Europe the most violent and destructive continent in the world and, in recent centuries, the most rapacious with its colonial collection of peoples and countries around the world?  All this, despite its adherence to Biblical teaching for centuries with love of God and neighbour and love the enemy/other being so prominent!

This kind of British values/patriotism is totally unnaceptable

Even with the wisdom of hindsight, after 100 years, and with the knowledge that 20 million humans were killed horrifically (perhaps, a total 100 million casualties) to stop Germany controlling Europe, we still all think, it was well worth it to be on the 'winning' side!!  Even, when it was a Pyrrhic victory, too leading onto the 1939 European and global war.

The Very Necessary War

For me, a very necessary war because:

1. We were the superpower of the day and, therefore, had to intervene as the policeman, judge and jury of the world.
2. In 1914, UK had seen centuries of warfare on the mainland of Europe, anyway.  More war there would not seem unusual.
3. Britain had a culture and tradition of war and, war first and foremost.  Churchill's magnanimity in victory and jaw, jaw came much later.
4. Patriotism, militarism and nationalism were also the norm.
5. Every citizen knew Britain was right and on the side of upholding civilised values throughout the world.
6. It had always been unheard of not to do your patriotic duty to King and Country.
7. Throughout every country in Europe and Russia, every subject of these monarchs believed their kaisers, czars and kings were God's representatives on earth and, therefore, knew best.  When they wanted war, war it had to be.
8. It was widely believed in the readership of the penny dreadfuls and the ever so popular 'Daily Mail' that the Germans were less than human - Gerhuns not Germans.  They were evil and had to be fought when they invaded our fellow industrialised and colonial power of Belgium.
9. We had to honour our alliance with France and Russia.  We always honoured our treaty obligations and we were always men and women of our word.  "Perfidious Albion" was a disgraceful slur on our nation.
10. Better to die gloriously as a hero with your name engraved in stone for ever, than risk being ruled by Germany.
11. Violence was the done thing; non-violence was non-existent in European thinking and absent from the English vocabulary (still to this day)

FOOTNOTE:

Ten million combatants and a further ten million non-combatants were killed in the industrial slaughter that was the 1 WW of four and a quarter years.  This was the price that Max Hastings (in the one hour long documentary on BBC2, 'The Necessary War') and everyone of his interviewees agreed was worth paying and that made this war necessary to stop German hegemony in Europe and to maintain the British Empire.  In addition, each side believed God was on their side.   The poor, deluded Empire soldiers were killing and being killed for the noble and glorious cause of God, King and Country - and to avoid any chance of coming under Berlin's control.  Why God should ever want to have anything to do with such a stupid creation does make me doubt the wisdom of such an all powerful and all knowing God of justice.

Dear Mr Weller,

Thank you for this. 

I agree with some but by no means all of your views. Ultimately, Britain fought the First World War because Germany posed a threat to its security.

Best wishes

Gary Sheffield

Sent from my iPhone

Dear Prof Gary

Thanks so much for reading my piece, that was partly tongue in cheek - and for having the decency to reply.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing, I know but, could Britain not have waited until it was obvious that Germany was moving to invade our shores and then launched a pre-emptive attack of self defence?  Our island location should have given us a tremendous advantage in being the last to be invaded (if we ever were) by the Germany of 100 years ago.  Was not Kaiser Bill pre-occupied with conquering certain countries on the European mainland?

Thankfully, that bloodbath and this century's attacks on weak Iraq and Afghanistan have given us such a bloody nose that we have not gone in, with all guns blazing, in Syria or Crimea.

I think, as has the SNP, the UK as a whole would be wise to learn from Norway as regards both energy (North Sea oil and gas) policy and peacemaking.

Best wishes

ISLAM IS ALL SWEETNESS AND LIGHT - when ...

... compared with the Christian West and Israel!

1. The 20th century was the most violent, destructive and horrific in the history of humanity, it seems to me. But we can't blame the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists or the blacks. It has to be us - the Christians and the whites, in my opinion!
2. Centuries of persecution of Jews by Christians and not Muslims.
3. You can't blame Islam for the holocaust. It was a Christian nation that did it.
4. Centuries of on/off warfare in Europe between the Christian nations cannot be blamed on Islam. In fact, centuries of interference, invasions, attacks and occupations around the world by the white man was much more widespread, harmful and longer lasting than Islamic empires like the Mogul Empire in India.
5. Those European centuries of violence ended in the Great (magnificent) War to end all wars that Islam did not start. The Christian European nations started it and such was their unsatisfactory and unjust settlement that it then led to World War part 2 in 1939!
6. It was not Islam who also gave the world WMD and were the first to use them.
7. You can't blame the Muslims for vapourising Pacific Ocean islands on which nuclear bombs were tested.
8. The traditional Christian and Bible based, Western nations made 11 mega tonnes bombs that are 1,000 times more destructive than the Hiroshima bomb. Our half a mega tonne thermo-nuclear bomb makes it the most powerful weapon of mass destruction ever. All this evil intent is nothing to do with the much criticised (and even despised) Arabs, Muslims, Middle East nations!
9. It is our good friend and ally, the President of the USA who has the means to annihilate most of humanity; not a Muslim president or President Ahmadinejad of Iran.
10. The richest and most economically and military powerful nations and empires have been the Christian ones. They have dominated the world for centuries. Yet, their founder rejected any kind of domination in the Temptations of Christ.
11. It was the Christian nations who had the most slaves and indulged in the most slavery when compared with the Arab nations.
12. It was not Islam who that was responsible for Bloody Sunday and other horrors over 800 years of our occupation, settlement planting and colonial rule in Ireland.
13. Islam is not responsible for the thousands of men, women and children that our friend and ally, Israel has killed in its 62 yrs. 1,400 alone in the 2008/9 war on Gaza. In contrast, 13 Israelis were killed in that same war.
14. It was not Islam that introduced concentration camps. It was, guess who? Us - the UK in the Boer War. The camps killed 20,000 women and children!
15. It was not Islam that was responsible for Bhopal and decades of indifference, carelessness and complacency in the USA.
16. You cannot blame the the Islamic nations for the most greenhouse gas emissions and the most "help yourself to the most natural resources in the world" mentality and behaviour of the West.
17. The Christian nations and the Church waged their holy Crusades against 'evil' Islam. Evangelical Christian, GW Bush Jnr did the same with the War of Terrorism launched on 7 October 2001 that continues to this day. He called it a crusade until he was told not to.
18. We can't blame Islam for attacking Iraq to remove their WMD, only to find there were none, after all!
19. We can't blame Islam for the West's hypocritical behaviour in removing leaders it doesn't like but preaching the importance of electing governments and their leaders.
20. We cannot blame Islam for wiping out so many of the very long established, original peoples in both North and South America. It was Spain, France and the UK taking God, guns and the white man's germs. God led them to believe He had given them the new lands across the Atlantic. Guns helped to kill the original peoples; and, germs brought diseases that, again, led the colonisers to sincerely believe it was the hand of the good Lord in using the Western, European brought diseases to make it easier for them to claim the land for themselves as the Indians succumbed to foreign diseases and died in their hundreds of thousands (from BBC Radio 4, 'America: Empire of Liberty')
21. Unlike the Christian nations, Islam did not interfere or involve itself in affairs to bring Muslim culture, Shariah law, governance and Islamic faith to the Western, white nations. Rather, we have seen attempts by the hegemonic, white, Western European and Christian nations to impose their culture, commercialism, democracy and Christianity on the Middle East nations - and, SE Asia in the immediate post-war years.
22. We can’t blame Islam for the Korean War of 1950–1953 when, according to Lord Alton, nearly 3 million died (mostly Korean) but of which 38,000 were US and UN soldiers, 600,000 Chinese combatants and 1,000 UK servicemen. (‘Today’ programme on 27.11.10)
23. It was not Islam that was responsible for slaughtering 2-4 million men, women and children in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos in the West's war from 1959 to 1975.
24. It was not Islam that was responsible for apartheid. Rather, it was the Dutch Reformed Church from Western Europe - yet, again, the stamp and authority and dictat of supposedly enlightened, forward thinking and so very democratic and civilised and traditional Christian nations!
25. We can't blame Islam for running the world in such a partial, lopsided way that the traditional Christian, white and very powerful nations have it all their own way on the world stage.
26. Muslim convert and heavyweight boxing champion at 32 yrs, Mohammed Ali, went to prison rather than fight in that crime of aggression, the Vietnam War. I have not heard of any Christian who had that same moral courage as that famous Muslim. Rather, some dodged the draft by fleeing to Canada.
27. We have proved to be the worst or the real terrorists down the centuries with our empires that were founded on violence throughout the world. Many Western European nations, in order to found their empires, went out to explore, conquer and decimate local populations of black people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone.
28. The Bible based and Christian European nations, if you look through history from today back down through past centuries, have killed many more humans than the Islamic nations.
29. It was not Muslims who invented poison gas, nor were they the first to use it.
30. The vast bulk of prison mistreatment, abuse, rape, torture and murder in Iraq and Afghanistan was done by foreign, NATO soldiers and not the home-grown prison officers and soldiers.
31. British intelligence was complicit in the mistreatment and even torture of Muslim detainees.
32. It was not Muslims who killed 23 people in Oklahoma in 1996.
33. It was Muslims who killed nearly 3,000 men and women on 11 September 2001. The Quran frequently asserts that their God is forgiving and merciful. Our nine years and continuing reaction of furious warfare shows that our version of God is the exact opposite. Our Bible says, “ ‘Vengeance is mine. I will repay’, says the Lord.” We believe the Lord needs a little help with his revenge!
34. Even taking into account that the Bible is very much bigger than the Quran, from my reading of both, there is clearly much more bloodshed in the Bible than the Quran. In fact, there are no stories of bloodshed in the Quran. In the Bible, we have 'Rules for waging holy war' in Deuteronomy 20 v 1-20. My commentary has: " ... holy war is not a human enterprise ... but is an action in which the Lord himself is engaged and in which his people respond with fanatical devotion." Does that help to explain the much greater violence and aggression by the Christian nations than the Islamic ones?

We are the problem, not the solution!

THE ORIGINS OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR - the war that started a century of wars by the West

We were talking about the origins of the World War in two halves at Llanrug. Here is a fuller explanation from the history according to me!

The 20th century was the most violent, destructive and horrific in the history of humanity, it seems to me. But we can't blame the Muslims, the Hindus, the Buddhists or the blacks. It has to be us - the Christians and the whites, in my opinion!

It was British imperialist attitudes that led to us joining the other nations of W Europe in 1914.

There was and still is a culture of warfare, after centuries of attacks and invasions by us on our neighbours in Europe and around the world. There were seven wars with France, alone, in 290 years! The 1914-18 war was simply the greatest, the best, the most violent by that time.

A great world power like ourselves can do nothing but go to war to prove its might to all and sundry.

The Great War was about protecting and extending our Empire from more recent upstarts like Germany.

We Brits love our war fighting or hard power (Tony Blair's phrases). We were tripping over each other to get on out there, thinking it would all be over by Christmas, 1914.

That war and its aftermath led, inevitably to dealing with the unfinished business of 1918/19 that brought such injustice that one of our own European men, Hitler came to dominate Germany and, who clearly, had to be dealt with. But we can't blame the foreigner, or even the blacks or the Arabs for Hitler! Hitler was a manifestation of our own violent past - and present.

Then, the second half of the century saw yet more killings by the mighty victors in 1945 - killings of the inhabitants of SE Asia, directly and of the people of the Middle East with our Western manufactured weapons (and the Russians)! Apparently, the USA has bombed nineteen countries since our '45 victory. Our friend and our ally in the Middle East is Israel whom we arm to the teeth to represent our interests against the Arab nations. With her, we are responsible for the wholesale collateral damage in Lebanon, Palestine, Afghanistan, Iraq and the rich nations induced climate change that brings famine and flood, drought and fire.

I think we slid into the war to end all wars¹ for all the reasons previously mentioned plus, it was due to our re-armament to keep up with German re-armament. There was also a mistaken belief, it seems, that we were obliged to keep to our alliance - one is attacked and the others in the alliance come to that nation's help. In fact, according to my brother in law, Tony Verduyn – the barrister and historian - we could have broken away from the alliance, not declare war and could have been neutral. On the other hand, it seems to me, our ships could have been attacked, anyway until we were forced to retaliate and declare war against the country sinking our shipping. This was how the US was brought into both world wars - in 1917 and 1941or 42, I think were the dates.

It was the mindset of the time (1914) that failed to put the brakes on the slide towards war, once more in W Europe. There was, in no way a sufficient abhorrence of war fighting amongst countries like ourselves. We all too readily took to violence, as in past centuries. This was the mindset in 1914, when war was second nature to both politicians and people - as it still seems to be today if and when it's going to be miles from our shores!

Some weeks went past after the shooting in Sarajevo before the nations started the warfare. Hence, the slide, the drift, the inevitability of it all, with none of the UK politicians of 1914 realising the horrific consequences of their far too relaxed stance towards launching yet another war! 100 years on, we are still seeing the consequences of how victors in war fighting, like ourselves, have their aggression reinforced to the detriment of countries who are chosen to be our enemies.

NOTES:

¹ Our so sincere and well intentioned phrase, of course, but in reality, more self-delusion and hypocrisy!