Quote:
Originally Posted by Moekou
I'm obviously not saying massacres didn't happen before. Attrocities have been happening since the stone age, and quite often at that. What I mean is that honor and chivalry were not deemed stupid ideas until more recently. In the Civil War, despite how bloody it was, it was very common for generals to publicly shed tears for opponents. In fact, in the case of Joseph Johnson, he even died because he refused to wear more in bone-chilling cold despite his poor health at his enemy rival's funeral, as he deemed it disrespectful to a man responsible for killing a lot of his friends and underlings. As Kiritsugu said, soldier were often still lead by the illusion of glory. Even if atrocities were happening, the population still believed in heroism. It was the trench warfare of WWI that really changed the way people thought about war.
But even then, when the Red Baron, famous for killing nearly a hundred Allies, was shot down, the Allies gave him a burial in the highest honor, and some even reportedly wept for the loss of such a great "hero" despite him being on the other side.
But yes, this is not going to happen today. Just imagine some Taliban fighter being honored for being skilled! For warfare today it is just us vs the enemy. I wonder if that's for better or for worse?
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the American civil war was a anomaly as almost every general on both side went to west point around the same time and serve together in the Mexican war. You are talking about people who were best man in each others wedding before the war.
if you look at continental Europe and do some research on the 30 yr war and Napoleonic war, you would realize while Honor and chilvary were on people's lip. It was only lip service, armies in Europe and elsewhere routinely did what had to win regardless of any notion of Honor or fair play.