A Time to Reflect on World War II

It's funny how we call it World War II. Did people name the first one World War I, assuming there would be another? No. It was just called the World War, or the Great War, or even The War to End All Wars. Well, we can see how far that got us.

Many people will debate that Germany should have been crushed at the end of that first war. Then they wouldn't have gone away with a sense of revenge and the ability to have a charismatic demi-god convince them that they really were superior to the rest of the human race. Deutchland Uber Alles!! Germany over all! So, if you were not blond, blue-eyed, and Teutonic, you'd better pack your bags while you could because there would be Hell to pay.

I recall seeing films made by propaganda minister Josef Goebbels in which he portrayed Jews as rats -- which everyone recognized as vermin, pests, or nuisance animals that threaten human society. Germany must rid itself of the vermin that would threaten the Master Race with their impurities. It's a testament to Goebbels' talents that he could so skillfully manipulate an entire nation.

That made it easy to convince the German people to invade Poland, Austria, Czechoslovakia... all the way to Russia on the eastern front. They had France. They tried to take England, but the British fought back too hard, with America as its ally. The goal was to have a world dominated by Germans for a thousand years.

Even Americans were carried along by the Nazi fervor. In New York City, a Nazi rally was held. The US already had restrictions on Jewish entry into colleges. Jews were also restricted to certain neighborhoods. We justified it by saying that the Jews killed Christ, so this is their payback. A boatload of Jewish refugees tried to enter Cuba, but they were barred. They were also turned back from the United States. They were taken in by Belgium, only to be killed later when the Nazis invaded.

A friend of mine once said that his earliest memory as a boy in Holland was looking through the letter slot in his front door to see Nazi soldiers goose-stepping down the street. Audrey Hepburn nearly starved to death during the Nazi occupation of her native Belgium.

Now as we celebrate 70 years since the end of those terrible events, it's difficult not to remember the men and women who served as part of the wartime effort in the US. Every man who could walk and talk had been conscripted into military service "for the duration" -- until the end of the war, win or lose. It was literally a fight to the death. If Germany could not be stopped, it would have trooped on over to North America. Already, it was in an unholy alliance with the Japanese, keeping the US fighting to the east and to the west.

When I was growing up, we all knew fathers who had served, who had come back wounded, psychologically or physically. Sometimes both. Nearly all of them had seen the horrors of war -- not from afar, as we see it today, with our computer-controlled weapons. But up close, where the war became a personal thing. Where you saw the dead bodies. Where you saw your friends screaming for  help. Where you hoped you would not be the next to go down.

One of the men in our neighborhood was captured by the Japanese on Wake Island just after Pearl Harbor was bombed. He served the entire war as a slave in a Japanese POW camp, where they were known for their cruelty. He wore those scars for the rest of his life. Other fathers refused to talk about the war, saying it was in the past. They simply did not want to discuss what they had seen. My father-in-law landed at Anzio and watched as one soldier was machine-gunned in half as he ran across the beach. His legs continued to run.

My father died in 1993 from emphysema... the result of a smoking habit he picked up as an Army Air Corps lieutenant. He almost never talked about the war, having suffered from PTSD. His squadron of B-17s flew over France after D-Day, each mission with a nearly 100% chance of taking anti-aircraft fire. As a bombardier, he watched on one mission as the tail gunner bled to death. But you couldn't turn back just because someone had been hit. At the end of each mission, they'd patch up the plane and send it back out the next day.

I never understood my father's mood swings when I was young. But before he died, Dad and I talked finally about his war experiences. It was at that point that I realized just how much he and my friends' fathers had endured to ensure that the United States survived.

To all of them -- and to the mothers, wives, girlfriends, and children who waited behind -- a cheer of gratitude. Your sacrifice saved the world.