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The Lost Generation
Many of the youth who came of age and served in the First World War were traumatized by their experiences. While short term mental problems from direct action in the trenches was quickly recognized by scholars and given the name shell shock, another longer term psychological effect, never clearly studied by scholars but recognized by many, was called by authors such as Gertrude Stein "the lost generation," or a generation whose entire lives were negatively effected by their experiences with war. The effect of the war was often denied by people of that generation, but 100 years later it may be easier to see.
JRR Tolkien, who served as an officer in WW1, claimed that the war had little of no effect on his writing, but the effect can be plainly seen in the words said by his main character in the book series The Lord of the Rings. For example Frodo was speaking to his loyal servant and fellow adventurer Samwise (who had a relationship similar to that of a British batman and officer) when he made this statement near the end of Return of the King:
“How do you pick up the threads of an old life? How do you go on, when in your heart, you begin to understand, there is no going back? There are some things that time cannot mend. Some hurts that go too deep...that have taken hold."
He would explain that his efforts during the ring war were for civilization and the good of his home, but had resulted in his never being able to enjoy the fruits of the victory:
“We set out to save the Shire, Sam and it has been saved - but not for me.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the key philosphers of the twentieth century, was another example of a person profoundly effected by his service in the war. Fighting for the Austria-Hunagarian army, he was decorated for his service, but he returned a far different person than when he left. Bertrand Russell, a fellow scholar and admirer, would comment that Wittgenstien had returned from the war darker, with a more spiritual and fatalistic view of the world. The profound effect the war had on the Lost Generation can be seen in fact by the effects it had on the lives of people who never served in the war. Bertrand Russell himself was changed profoudly by the experiences of being arrested for speaking out against the conflict.
One aspect of the Lost Generation is the sense by the people living in it that their numbers and possibilities had been robbed of potential. With so many dead, the survivors returned home to a feeling of fatalism. The Edwardian confidence was replaced by a hectic over reaction to peace that would create the seeds of the next war. Adolph Hitler, traumatized and depressed from his service in the trenches and Germany's loss, sought any way to justify the horror he went through, eventually becoming political and leading the German lost generation into the irrational rise of National Socialism. Imperial Russia even before the end of the war was shattered by the experiences of its own yooung men and women at the front, resulting in the rise of radical communism that would plague Russian thinking until this day.
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