Voldemort vs. Hitler

[bluesqueak]

No: HPFGUIDX 68518

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "DariaJones" <dariajones at y...> 
wrote:

> Owlery 2003>>>> OK, given the mod's caution, here's a superficial 
> stab. I've studied the World War eras pretty extensively, and the 
> rise of nazism ties in quite well with Voldy's quest to dominate 
> the Wizarding world. We don't know enough about Grindelwald to 
> claim he's the precursor equivalent to WWI. <<<<<
> 
> Daria:
> I thought that the first Voldemort war was the analogy for WWI.  
> If you are working from a British perspective they had to go to 
> war with the same people twice in thirty years.  This doesn't hold 
> together very well at a detailed level but it is close enough be a 
> loose metaphor.

There are definite analogies between VW1 and WW1. For one thing, the 
high death rate. The Order of the Phoenix suffered 50% casualties in 
VW1; this is on a par with certain regiments slaughtered in major 
battles like Ypres or the Somme. Total British and Commonwealth 
casualties were around a million killed. No one knows the exact 
figure, because many bodies were never found. 

And this isn't some remote, distant history. It's only just passing 
out of living memory. Even today, bodies from WW1 are being 
discovered, and sometimes identified, and then buried with full 
military honours after the Ministry of Defence has traced any 
surviving descendents/relatives.

I was told, by my grandmother, that everyone was completely 
terrified at the start of World War Two, because they thought it was 
going to be the same terrible slaughter as the First war. A mother 
like Molly, with six boys all of (or shortly to be) fighting age, 
would have been completely convinced that only some kind of miracle 
would see all her children survive. 

So yeah, the analogy is definitely there. Not exact, but that same 
feeling of disbelief and despair that all the slaughter the first 
time round had somehow not solved the problem. And the same period 
of pre-war hoping that if we just stuck our heads in the sand it 
would all go away.

Daria: 
> This is my first post to this list.  I hope I have not strayed too 
> far from the topic at hand.  I could go on for hours about my  
> theory that the WW is in fact a society that is stuck in the 1930s 
> and that JKR is actually going to destroy the WW society in the  
> last two books in the same way that British society of the 30s was 
> destroyed by WWII and that this will NOT be a bad thing because 
> the society itself is corrupt.  But I will leave that to another 
> time.

I'd agree that the WW is likely to be changed beyond 
recognition. 'The old order changeth, giving way to new'. There are 
too many signs. The last of the Blacks is dead. The last of the 
Crouch's is dead. The last of the Potters is on Voldemort's hit 
list. JKR keeps using that phrase - 'the last of..'. This is a 
society that is dying. 

Whether it will be *completely* destroyed, I don't know. 

JKR keeps including this Phoenix in the plot. ;-)

Pip!Squeak