national pride

Last week I watched the movie Ip Man, which is a Chinese film about the person who would eventually be Bruce Lee's martial arts trainer While it is a well-made film, liberties were obviously taken to make the protagonist into a national hero. It is further obvious that the movie is meant to inspire patriotism in Chinese viewers in the same way that The Patriot was meant to inspire patriotism in American viewers. Most of the film takes place during World War II in occupied China after Japan has ravaged the country, so while it is not a war movie it is a movie that depicts a well-known war.

Something that stuck out to me was that in the closing credits the film notes that China eventually defeated Japan and won its freedom. That stuck out to me more as an American viewer than it would to a Chinese viewer. Regarding the war with Japan, I am more likely to think that Japan's losses across the Pacific and the nuclear warheads dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki are the reason Japan lost the war. This got me to thinking about how people from different countries view wars that their country has participated in, and World War II in particular.

I don't know this for a fact, but I would bet most British people view their nation's role in World War II as the most important because they offered the last staunch resistance to Germany in Western Europe. I would bet most Russian people (and perhaps Ukranians) view their nation's role in World War II as the most important because Germany's failed invasion of Russia marked the beginning of the end of the war in Europe. Most Chinese people probably view their nation was instrumental in defeating Japan because the conflict between Japan and China predated World War II. For my own part, I am pretty certain that most Americans believe that the United States is almost single-handedly responsible for Germany's and Japan's defeat. In such a large conflict people from every nation involved on the Allied side can point to something that their countrymen did that was pivotal to the outcome of the war.

This nationalistic pride is intriguing in part because most people alive today did not have any role in the things that happened during World War II. I can be proud of the people I know and have known who went through the war and contributed to the effort, and I can be thankful that an earlier generation sacrificed to make the geopolitical situation better today. Do I have any right to feel more personal pride in regard to World War II because I was born in the United States than I would if I had been born in one of the countries that did not fare as well in the war, though? I don't believe I do.