Is anyone more intrested in WW2 than 9/11?

Question

I am an avid historian, a lot of my posts on here are all about history. I want to ask, without any irony or maliciousness, whether, like me, WW2 is a more interesting event to study as a social changer, rather than 9/11. I am not insulting nor mocking losses from either event, merely asking a serious question.

I am a historian. I study the past. Are you saying we should never examine the past, and immediately move on from it? I have moved on from 9/11, im not american and it no longer bothers me. WW2 is an interesting and shocking event, one which people MUST study. It cannot merely be ignored so we can "move on"...

Answer 1

9/11 was just one event in a long struggle/relationship between Western/Christian Enlightenment values and those of the fundamentalist version of Islam. Because it was a particularly spectacular and 'successful' terrorist act, Americans are apt to make it more important than it is, to see it as a defining event and not one event in a chain of cause and effect.

This is made worse because people like Perle and Wolfowitz, who had long wanted to attack Iraq regardless of the Islamic terrorist issue, used the 9/11 event to enact a whole agenda of their own.

And the causes of this religious confrontation go back centuries. Islamic terrorism is built around stories and 'values' from the earliest events of post-Muhammad Islam. The totally different, secular values of the West they fight are the result of events in the 18th and 19th Centuries, when science and reason finally became the supreme virtues of Western society- though less so in America than Europe.

WW2 interests me more because it is an event of that Western mindset, the ultimate result of the conflicts associated with our past. The nature of the war was decided by our industrialisation and technology.

It is very immediate for me but to work our way toward the future we must learn that to people in developing countries WW2 was a very different conflict- to some one that crippled the European overlords, spread industrialisation and modern political consciousness, and produced a way forward. To others, it is irrelevant, a blip in someone else's history,a small event that cannot compare to a centuries-old clash of civilisations.

Answer 2

Yes, WW2 is more interesting. WW2 was that a world war and included so many countries and people. the 9/11 is all about one country and after that is what is happening right now with Iraq and Afghanistan and the Middle East. WW2 is more impacting than the 9/11 tragedy, because that's what it is a tragedy.

Answer 3

Your question is unfair because one could argue that the events caused by WWII caused 9/11. During the World Wars European powers cut up the Middle East and backed the Zionist movement which ultimately ended in the creation of Israel. WWII is a larger social changer because it impacted more people then 9/11.

Answer 4

The true significance of 9/11 will not be known for decades. With growing violence between Islam and the rest of the world, 9/11 may be recorded as the event triggered what could become a world wide struggle.
WW II is equally important as it is a lesson of the depravity man can do to man.

Answer 5

Without some understanding of WW2, indeed WW1, 9/11 will be misunderstood.

The current tensions in the middle east can be traced back to political events in WW1, and started to bear fruit post-WW2.

After WW2 came the founding of Israel, out of the holocaust, myriad refugees and the weary British retreat from empire.
After WW2 came the cold war, "domino theory" and proxy wars, leading to Afghanistan and the Mujahadin...

History is important. It's the study of what made NOW.

The distrust, hatred, of Americans that led to the storming of the US embassy in Iran there in 1979 was not something irrational, from nowhere. But I'm not sure how many Americans realise it, starting their view of Iran from just that event.

Answer 6

Of course. Compared with WW2 9/11 was a flea bite. More Americans are murdered by their fellow citizens in 3 months than died in the WTC.

Answer 7

I’m interested in both. I was at the World Trade Center on 9/11 and the event not only changed my life but has many ramifications for the future that we haven’t as yet experienced. WW II was a cataclysmic event for many of the nations of the world, causing tens of millions of deaths. We can’t fully understand and address the current problems of the world unless we understand the history that got us here.

Answer 8

in my opinion WW2 is one of the most, if not the most interesting events in history. 9/11 is a serius event, but its just not to scale with WW2. WW2 had, if im not mistaking, around 60 million deaths. dats ALOT!

Answer 9

WW2 shaped all our lives. And that goes from where I write this in a tip of Spain to I guess most of the people posting here.

Answer 10

Well the problem is that WW2 happened over 60 years ago. 9/11 just happened 6 years ago. 9/11 is still extremely relevant to modern society, as WW2 is not as much.