When I was little, I learned in history about World War I. All about how the Germans had tried to take over the world and England, France, and the US banded together to help stop them. I was ashamed it had taken the US until 1917 to get into the war. And naturally I was on the Allies' side. Naturally...
Then one day I decided to do a little more research. I was older. Much older. And through my research I learned a much different story...
A story of a new, uncertain little country, just making its way into a world hundreds of years old, with centuries of history to back it up. A world of excessive imperialism and militarization, where everyone was splitting up the second-biggest continent on the planet to add to their domains, and a world where newly-formed Germany found itself completely surrounded by several massive military powers: England, France, Russia, and Austria-Hungary. A scared little country who scrambled to make alliances, and who accidentally festered a life-long hatred in a neighboring country when doing the only thing they knew how to do, which was make war. A proud little country, that managed to worm its way into Africa and make the world respect her, despite her lack of solid history, her backwardness, and her military obsession. An inept little country, who bungled her way through alliances, accidentally alienating their one old friend of England and raising tensions with their old enemy France. A nervous little country, who, when France and Russia made an alliance, made frantic plans of how to war against them both without being caught between two strokes of a hammer and destroyed, plans that required bypassing the massively strong forts on the German-French border to destroy France before Russia could make it to Germany. An unfortunate little country, who just meant to back an old friend, Austria-Hungary, in a clear affront, and didn't expect or want a world-wide war. And an excited little country, full of proud young men ready to answer the call of the country they so desperately loved, going off to do what they'd trained for all their lives, expecting to be home within the month, because surely Britain wouldn't get involved in other people's wars when they never had before, and surely the military might of Germany could destroy the mustering army of France before France and Russia destroyed them, surely...
In my research, I relearned a lesson I've been taught so many times and so few people understand...that there are two sides to every story. There's two sides in every conflict, and so often in a fight, we can't arbitrarily choose a side and declare them to be good and righteous in their cause. So often, there are good men on each side, and bad men too. Very seldom can we see all sides. So very little do we ever understand. We always make the other sides out to be these horrible monsters who are out to destroy our homes, when really, many of them are fighting for the same reasons we are. We cannot ignore all the bad things our "side" does in war. We cannot ignore all the good things the other "side" does. We cannot pretend to be righteous when we are not. We cannot pretend our enemies are the devil when they are not. Maybe we should simply try to be honest, not propagandize and make the enemy out to be monsters, but simply show them for what they are and us for what we are. Maybe if we were honest about war, soldiers would not come home as often shell-shocked, suddenly aware that they were killing not mindless monsters, but ordinary men. Maybe if we admitted that we don't do everything right, that we may not be fighting the other side because they are evil, but simply to protect our families and our homes, there would be less hate in the world. We might believe countries when they say they thought they were blowing up a troop ship and not a passenger ship and blame the right party when our people die after being warned not to enter war-torn and blockaded waters. We might be able to move on past war and rebuild our lives and our friendships when we stop fighting and not leave the war-torn region a powder keg ready at any moment to blow. We might stay out of wars we have no business fighting, and we might resist the impulse to utterly punish the losing side as if all the death and destruction and misery was all their fault, when it never is, and cause pain and devastation and open up doors for a starving, angry people to accept the leadership of a madman and become a terror to the world.
Maybe, next time you read about a war, instead of being filled with passion and pride for your "side" and anger for the side you feel was in the wrong, you should stop and try to see it from their side. Read their stories, told not by their enemies, but by themselves. And try to understand that, in a war, we are only fighting people that might have been ourselves, in another time, another place. That war is never truly good, no matter what side you're on. And that all sides, the Germans, the Confederates, the Saxons, the Druids, the Trojans...
Everyone needs their story told.
