D-Day, the Normandy Invasion, Omaha Beach, wasn’t all that long ago. Not in terms of human history. June 6, 1944 was just 65 years ago. Veterans of that day are still with us today, thank you God. Survivors of the Holocaust are still alive and with us as well, thank you again God. Unfortunately, there are many questions that also live on. These are the ‘what-ifs’ that come from hindsight.
What if the world had reacted sooner to Hitler and the Nazis? Could the war have been avoided? What if Roosevelt had ordered the bombing of the crematoriums, would many of us have great grandparents, aunts and uncles alive today instead of a branch to nowhere on our family trees? What if the Treaty of Versailles that ended World War I had been different? This list of questions could go on forever. Perhaps there is one question that above all, we need to think about, debate, and challenge our leaders on.
What can we learn from the, ‘what if’ questions, what insight can we gain from this anniversary and the sacrifice made by so many people in the fight against tyranny?
For me, the great insight is that World War II is much more a part of the present than of the distant past. The evil that brought about WWII is still alive in the world. There are people that created Nazism and that cheered this evil on that are still alive today. There are even more people alive that grew up hearing the stories, learning the hatred, from the people that were there. Not just in Germany but throughout Europe. Even, though to a lesser degree, here in America. The Holocaust, the other atrocities, the overall war dead, the Cold War that arose in the aftermath, and all the hot wars of the last half of the 20th century were a part of a world wide phenomena of anti-Semitism and an incredible primeval hatred for the “Other,” that needed only a megalomaniac and the right conditions to bring them to fruition.
The good guys won World War II but the victory did not eradicate the hate that fueled the war. That hate is alive today in the racism that plagues everything from European soccer to the immigration debates. Anti-Semitism is alive in Europe from the neo-Nazi skin heads to the Norwegian labor movement and the automatic anti-Israel reactionary European governments and people. The anti-Americanism rampant in Europe, the mid-East, and parts of Asia, was not a result of Bush-era policies but of Cold War feelings and surviving WWII grudges modified to fit the present. Genocide did not end with Hitler’s suicide but continued in Stalin’s Russia, Pol Pot’s Cambodia, and the former Yugoslavia, among the list.
We seem to ignore, or more precisely, dismiss the reality that the same evil still exists, as though the human race somehow changed in the blink of an eye that is the last 65 years. Unfortunately, not enough has changed in the world for the United States to lightly dismiss the threats from Ahmadinejad or Kim Jong-il and others. Not the threats to us or any other nation.
Not enough has changed in the world for United States to give up being different, separate, and better than the rest of the world. The evil is still out there.
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Very good post written in a great spirit. This greatest generation lived up to our ideals of fighting tyranny as much as any military force can.
I think it’s important to point out that anti-American sentiment may also be related to fears of our military power. As much as we want to see ourselves as the good guys, there are current reasons to worry about our being an imperial power. Before 9/11 we had military stationed to protect our interests in the Persian Gulf. These interests? Oil that belonged to other soveriegn nations. In the service of these interests, we helped overthrow a democratic government in Iran in favor of a monarch. I hope we always live up to the ideals we espouse, but, sadly, we don’t.