It's really not necessary for me to comment on the absurd statements
made by Niall Ferguson below--men fought in the First World War because it was "fun."
Nine million died in the First World War and the accompanying photos
and descriptions of the experiences of soldiers--tell the story. Why would someone
make such a bizarre statement? I have no idea.

Part of the disintegration of academia, where lying and refusing to encounter 
truth seems to be a trend (along with the firing of high-status professors).
The scholars who write for my Newsletter are held to higher standards.

But some academics, apparently, feel it's more advantageous to make
a lot of noise and get people to read one's blogs or watch one's video. Perhaps they embrace the view,
 "What's truth got to do with it" (Tina Turner). 

Richard Koenigsberg

PS: And the fantastic notion that an idea which is "liked" is a superior idea. Everyone nowadays
is in the quest for "likes." No problem if we're in the domain of music.
                          But most of the great ideas proposed in history (which eventually became the most important ideas)
were those that were NOT LIKED.

Richard Koenigsberg on Niall Ferguson's view of the First World War

 

 Niall Ferguson makes the following statement in his
The Pity of War: Explaining World War I

"MEN...FOUGHT (in the First World War) BECAUSE FIGHTING WAS FUN."
(Scroll down for photos and descriptions of the First World War

“Men were squashed. Cut in two or divided from top to bottom. Blown into showers; bellies turned inside out; skulls forced into the chest as if by a blow from a club.”

“You eat beside the dead; you drink beside the dead, you relieve yourself beside the dead and you sleep beside the dead.”

“To die from a bullet seems to be nothing; parts of our being remain intact; but to be dismembered, torn to pieces, reduced to pulp, this is the fear that flesh cannot support and which is fundamentally the great suffering of the soldier." "I 

"I saw a man drinking avidly from a green scum-covered marsh, where he lay, his black face downward in the water, a dead man lying on his stomach and swollen as if he had not stopped filling himself with water for days."