Pride

 

Posting this again:

In the summer of 1939 much of the world was either at war or about to be. Nazi Germany had broken its promises of the year before and occupied more of Czechoslovakia. Franco’s nationalists had won the Spanish civil war. Japan’s invading forces had seized much of the coastal and some of the interior areas of China. The three most powerful armies in the world were the German, Soviet, and French, with the French army along with the British navy considered to be the bulwark against Hitler’s Germany. The United States at that time had a powerful navy (though not one ready for a two ocean war) and an army smaller than the one Belgium would field in 1940. In August Hitler and Stalin made an agreement of partnership, splitting up east central Europe between them. In September Germany and Russia invaded and partitioned Poland, starting World War II in Europe. In May of 1940 Germany attacked and defeated France, destroying the French army. By the end of that awful summer, Hitler was master of continental Europe with almost every continental nation allied with, occupied by, or friendly toward Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union as a de facto ally in the east, Asia’s greatest power Japan an ally in the Pacific, and only the British Empire as an active enemy. That was a crisis of civilization.

The United States responded by aiding and supplying Britain and later the Soviet Union after Hitler the broke the pact and invaded Russia and by strengthening its own defenses while remaining officially neutral in the war. Neutrality ended on December 7^th 1941 when Japan attacked the American navy base at Pearl Harbor, sinking or damaging the battleships of the Pacific fleet. In the next few days Germany declared war on the United States leaving America at war with great powers in both Europe and the Pacific. In less than four years after Pearl Harbor and despite early defeats, American forces accepted the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, ending history’s greatest war in complete victory.

Over twelve million men served in the U.S. armed forces in the war, and millions of American women and older men worked on the home front to produce the arms and equipment for both America and its allies and co-belligerents. My father and most of my uncles served in the war. My mother and several of my aunts worked on the home front in various jobs. I am proud of them and grateful to them for it. Americans today should remember and be proud of all the Americans who helped win that war. Early June is an especially appropriate time to express that pride. Between June 4^th and 6^th in 1942 an outnumbered and outgunned U.S. naval force decisively defeated the Japanese navy at Midway in the most historically important naval battle since Trafalgar, ending Japan’s offensive in the Pacific. On June 6^th 1944, American forces landed in Normandy, securing their beachhead and beginning the great campaign leading to the destruction of Nazi Germany.

It’s a free country, and people can select what they want to be proud of and when they want to show their pride. For me each June, it will be the men and women of World War II. They deserve it along with our gratitude and remembrance. They made the world we enjoy. Very few of them are still alive. Soon all will be gone.

Eighty Years

 

Yesterday was V-J Day, the eightieth anniversary of Japanese surrender ending World War II. My father and several of my uncles served in that war, my father and one of his brothers in the Pacific. They are all gone now, as are almost all of the other men who fought. Those of my generation, the generation of those men’s children, are getting old. V-J Day is now as far in the past as Appomattox was on V-J Day. I wonder if we boomers, most of whose fathers fought the war and almost all of whose parents lived through it, will be the last generation for most of whom it is more than somewhat remote history. I hope not, but regardless this is a good time to remember those men and what they did.

Pride in June, and also Remembrance and Gratitude

 

In the summer of 1939 much of the world was either at war or about to be. Nazi Germany had broken its promises of the year before and occupied more of Czechoslovakia. Franco’s nationalists had won the Spanish civil war. Japan’s invading forces had seized much of the coastal and some of the interior areas of China. The three most powerful armies in the world were the German, Soviet, and French, with the French army along with the British navy considered to be the bulwark against Hitler’s Germany. The United States at that time had a powerful navy (though not one ready for a two ocean war) and an army smaller than the one Belgium would field in 1940. In August Hitler and Stalin made an agreement of partnership, splitting up east central Europe between them. In September Germany and Russia invaded and partitioned Poland, starting World War II in Europe. In May of 1940 Germany attacked and defeated France, destroying the French army. By the end of that awful summer, Hitler was master of continental Europe with almost every continental nation allied with, occupied by, or friendly toward Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union as a de facto ally in the east, Asia’s greatest power Japan an ally in the Pacific, and only the British Empire as an active enemy. That was a crisis of civilization.

The United States responded by aiding and supplying Britain and later the Soviet Union after Hitler the broke the pact and invaded Russia and by strengthening its own defenses while remaining officially neutral in the war. Neutrality ended on December 7^th 1941 when Japan attacked the American navy base at Pearl Harbor, sinking or damaging the battleships of the Pacific fleet. In the next few days Germany declared war on the United States leaving America at war with great powers in both Europe and the Pacific. In less than four years after Pearl Harbor and despite early defeats, American forces accepted the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, ending history’s greatest war in complete victory.

Over twelve million men served in the U.S. armed forces in the war, and millions of American women and older men worked on the home front to produce the arms and equipment for both America and its allies and co-belligerents. My father and most of my uncles served in the war. My mother and several of my aunts worked on the home front in various jobs. I am proud of them and grateful to them for it. Americans today should remember and be proud of all the Americans who helped win that war. Early June is an especially appropriate time to express that pride. Between June 4^th and 6^th in 1942 an outnumbered and outgunned U.S. naval force defeated the Japanese navy in the most decisive and historically important naval battle since Trafalgar, ending Japan’s offensive in the Pacific. On June 6^th 1944, American forces landed in Normandy, securing their beachhead and beginning the great campaign leading to the destruction of Nazi Germany.

It’s a free country, and people can select what they want to be proud of and when they want to show their pride. For me each June, it will be the men and women of World War II. They deserve it along with  gratitude and remembrance. The made the world we enjoy. Very few of them are still alive. Soon all will be gone.

Pride in June

 

In the summer of 1939 much of the world was either at war or about to be. Nazi Germany had broken its promises of the year before and occupied more of Czechoslovakia. Franco’s nationalists had won the Spanish civil war. Japan’s invading forces had seized much of the coastal and some of the interior areas of China. The three most powerful armies in the world were the German, Soviet, and French, with the French army along with the British navy considered to be the bulwark against Hitler’s Germany. The United States at that time had a powerful navy (though not one ready for a two ocean war) and an army far smaller than the one Belgium would field in 1940. In August Hitler and Stalin made an agreement of partnership, splitting up east central Europe between them. In September Germany and Russia invaded and partitioned Poland, starting World War II in Europe. In May of 1940 Germany attacked and defeated France, destroying the French army. By the end of that awful summer, Hitler was master of continental Europe with almost every continental nation allied with, occupied by, or friendly toward Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union as a de facto ally in the east, Asia’s greatest power Japan an ally in the Pacific, and only the British Empire as an active enemy. That was a crisis of civilization.

The United States responded by aiding and supplying Britain and later the Soviet Union after Hitler the broke the pact and invaded Russia and by strengthening its own defenses while remaining officially neutral in the war. Neutrality ended on December 7^th 1941 when Japan attacked the American navy base at Pearl Harbor, sinking or damaging the battleships of the Pacific fleet. In the next few days Germany declared war on the United States leaving America at war with great powers in both Europe and the Pacific. In less than four years after Pearl Harbor and despite early defeats, American forces accepted the unconditional surrenders of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, ending history’s greatest war in complete victory.

Over twelve million men served in the U.S. armed forces in the war, and millions of American women and older men worked on the home front to produce the arms and equipment for both America and its allies and co-belligerents. My father and most of my uncles served in the war. My mother and several of my aunts worked on the home front in various jobs. I am proud of them for it. Americans today should remember and be proud of all the Americans who helped win that war. Early June is an especially appropriate time to express that pride. Between June 4^th and 6^th in 1942 an outnumbered and outgunned U.S. naval force defeated the Japanese navy in the most decisive and historically important naval battle since Trafalgar, ending Japan’s offensive in the Pacific. On June 6^th 1944, American forces landed in Normandy, securing their beachhead and beginning the great campaign leading to the destruction of Nazi Germany.

It’s a free country, and people can select what they want to be proud of and when they want to show their pride. For me this June, it will be the men and women of World War II.

VE Day

 

Today is VE Day. On May 8^th 1945 Nazi Germany surrendered unconditionally, ending World War II in Europe. These days it is an anniversary that does not get much attention. The American men who fought that war are almost all gone. Polls show that large percentages of young people are mainly or totally ignorant of the war’s history. Our schools and media should do better. My father was in the Pacific in World War II, but a couple of my uncles served in Europe. This is a good day to remember them and the millions of others from many countries who defeated Nazism and saved civilization. It also should be a day to try to teach young people who perhaps never knew any of them about what they did and what it meant.

A Salute

 Eighty years ago this weekend at Midway the United States navy fought and won the most historically decisive naval battle since Trafalgar against superior Japanese forces. The victory was the turning point in the Pacific and perhaps in the entire war – ending the Japanese strategic offensive and allowing the United States to follow its Germany first strategy. Seventy eight years ago tomorrow American, British, and Canadian forces successfully landed in Nazi-occupied France, beginning a series of battles that in less than a year led to the defeat and destruction of Nazi Germany. Almost all the men who did those things are dead now. We owe them a salute, now and every year in the first week of June.

V-E Day

 

Yesterday was V-E day. It has been seventy seven years since the allied victory ending World War II in Europe. V-E and V-J day are now farther in the past than Lee’s surrender to Grant at Appomattox was on the day Pearl Harbor was attacked. It took millions of Americans to win that war. Few of them are left, and soon all will be gone. My father and one of his brothers served in the Pacific. Another brother served stateside. Two of my mother’s brothers served in Europe. At least two uncles by marriage also served. They and all the rest need to be remembered. They saved civilization.

The End of World War II

Today is the 75^th anniversary of the last act of World War II, the ceremony of Japan’s surrender on the battleship Missouri in Tokyo Bay.  (The actual surrender had happened earlier on August 15^th .)  I don’t know how many people will notice or care.  Most of the men who fought the war are gone. The youngest people legally serving in 1945 would be ninety one or two now.  

My contemporaries and I grew up in the shadow of the war.  Over fifteen  million men had served in it in the armed forces. My father and both his brothers were three of them. As a kid I heard their stories and the stories of the fathers of relatives, friends and schoolmates.  Every president of the United States from 1953 to 1993 served at least briefly in the armed forces during the war.

Now the war is as remote in time as the Civil War was when the Nazis invaded Poland. I hope Americans will remember it – honoring the valor of the men who won it,  understanding that civilization is not a given and  the  need for powerful and prepared armed forces to preserve it, and learning what is necessary to keep something like World War II from happening again. I hope, but  I have no idea whether I should expect. 

This is a good day to offer thanks to all the men of World War II – the young men and the old, the ones who came home and the ones who did not. They saved civilization and made our world possible. 

Memorial Day

There is a small area in Saint Paul’s cathedral in London called the American chapel. There is a book in it with the names of every known American serviceman who was killed operating out of Britain in World War II – flyers mostly, around twenty eight thousand in all if I remember correctly from my visit . It does not include the many more Americans killed operating  on the continent after the invasions of Italy and France. It is an easy place to cry and a fine place to remember and honor the men who fought and won the war, so many of whom did not make it back, for  their valor, their dedication, their perseverance, their fidelity, and their  glorious success.  

We live in a time plagued by a traditional media culture of people  seemingly unwilling to or even incapable of appreciating such qualities. So at times such as Veterans Day and Memorial Day we get endless maudlin paeans to service people’s “sacrifice”. It is though they  know or feel they should know there is something worth honoring, but steeped in the notion that only victims and victimhood really count, they cannot say just what.

Well it isn’t sacrifice.  It would have been a greater and purer sacrifice for the men who served in the war  to just line up and let the enemies kill them without putting up any fight. The men and more recently women who fought  America’s wars did not do that. They did something quite different, and it is that we should be honoring, respecting, and talking about.

Midway at Seventy Five

Seventy five years ago in the seas near Midway Island in the Pacific  the United States navy fought and won the most important and decisive naval battle since Trafalgar.  American forces with three carriers and their escort ships (including one carrier which had been patched up in short order after being damaged  heavily in an earlier battle)  defeated a far  larger Japanese force led by  four large and two small carriers – sinking all four of the large Japanese carriers and deciding the war in the Pacific.  In the six months before Midway the Japanese had enjoyed a remarkable series of victories and conquests over American, British, Dutch, and other forces in the Pacific. After Midway the Japanese never launched a successful offensive operation against American forces.  Only a few weeks after the battle American forces went on the offensive with the invasion of Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and remained on the strategic offensive until the end of the war.

Most of the men who fought at Midway are now gone.  Soon all of them will be. While Americans rightly remember and celebrate the great deeds of their army  at Normandy in early June of 1944, they should equally remember and honor the great deeds of their navy in early June 1942. 

Midway 2014

In June of 1942 outnumbered and outgunned American forces of the Pacific Fleet engaged the Japanese Navy in the world’s most important and decisive naval battle since Trafalgar, a battle which determined  that World War II in  the Pacific would end with a Japanese defeat.  The American task forces’ three aircraft carriers, including the recently patched up Yorktown which had been made battle ready in an astoundingly short time after suffering damage in an earlier battle, faced a Japanese force of four large and two small carriers.  The balance in surface firepower was even more in favor of the Japanese, as the Americans went to sea with no battleships and fewer cruisers and destroyers than their enemy.  The main battle was fought on June 4, 1942 though some action continued for a couple of days later. It ended with all four of the large Japanese carriers sunk and most of their pilots and planes lost, with the Japanese abandoning their plans to occupy Midway Island, and with the United States losing only one of its carriers, the Yorktown. It was both one of the most complete victories in military history and perhaps the quickest reversal in the strategic positions of two adversaries in world history.  

After Midway the Japanese, who has swept through Asia and the Pacific in the six months after Pearl Harbor, conquering Malaysia, Burma, Hong Kong, Singapore, what is now Indonesia, the Philippines, and half of New Guinea, and occupying numerous islands in the Pacific including Guam and two in the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, never went on the offensive against the United States again.  Instead, just two months after the battle, the United States began its first major offensive of the war at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands and remained on the offensive until the defeat of Japan in 1945.

 

If the victory had gone to the Japanese, they would have been able to remain on the offensive, probably severing  the line of bases in the South Pacific connecting America to Australia and New Zealand  and perhaps even threatening American control of the Hawaiian Islands.  There would have been no opportunity for American offensives until at least well into 1943, and the Japanese would have had much additional time  to strengthen the perimeter of their empire, and perhaps make the war so costly the United States would accept a negotiated peace leaving them with it.

Yet for all that, this year once again I find little or no mention of Midway in the news media.  The men who fought the war continue to die off, and soon will all be dead. The memory of what they did should not. Writing about it every year or so seems the least a person ought to do. 

Forgetting History

World War II is fading from people’s memory as surely as its veterans are fading from the scene. That fact seems particularly odd to those of my generation. We boomers grew up in the shadow of that war. Most of our fathers served in it. The years of our childhood and youth were commonly called the post-war era. The books, movies, TV shows, and comics we read and saw were full of stories from the war. Even as children we understood that it had been a life changing event for our parents, and as we grew older we learned what it meant for the life of the country and the history of the world. Now we see generations of Americans to whom the Second World War is apparently as remote and dimly understood as the war with Spain in 1898. It’s strange and sad and I think wrong that the awareness and understanding are fading so much and so quickly.
I thought of this today when I noticed the absence of notice in the media of the fact that this is the 70th anniversary of one of the most important events of World War II – the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union and the start of the war on the eastern front in Europe. The four years of battles that followed that invasion were among the bloodiest and most brutal in history, and their ultimate outcome did much to determine the course of the war and the shape of the post-war world. The crimes and atrocities committed in eastern Europe by the Nazis until they were defeated in 1945 and by the Soviets until the collapse of their empire almost fifty years later were among the most horrible in history. It’s not an anniversary or a story we should be forgetting.

Nimitz

Chester Nimitz was one of the truly great commanders of World War II. Taking command of a decimated Pacific Fleet after the disaster at Pearl Harbor, he directed the recovery and developed strategies for first containing and then reversing the tide of Japanese success. Within six months he and his gifted subordinate Spruance won a victory at Midway that was as decisive in World War II as Trafalgar had been in the wars against Napoleon. From that point the United States Navy seized the strategic initiative in the Pacific and two months later at Guadalcanal, began offensive operations on land as well. Over the next three years Nimitz commanded the Pacific Fleet through a series of great battles, managed it through explosive growth into the largest and most powerful naval force in history, and led it to complete victory over Japan.

This is all well known, at least to people who study World War II. The details of his life and character are far less known. That is one reason it is a good thing that the naval institute biography of him by E. B. Potter is now out in paperback. Nimitz was an interesting, thoughtful, dedicated, brilliant, and admirable man whose life is worthy of contemplation and whose story is pleasing, interesting, and instructive. His path from boyhood in Fredericksburg, Texas to five stars is a fine tale. The book is well written and full of first hand information from Nimitz, his family, and his contemporaries. It covers his entire life with particular attention to his early career and development. It both sets and presents the large context and shows small and telling details. One of my favorites of the latter is the fact that during the war Nimitz kept a picture of MacArthur in his office to remind himself “not to make Jovian pronouncements complete with thunderbolts.” That story by itself is worth the price of the book.

It is a fine book about a great man. I recommend it.

A Grim Anniversary

Seventy years is a long time, three generations, long enough to erase a lot from the popular consciousness. So I doubt there will be much notice given to the coming seventieth anniversary of the most disastrous single event of the 20th Century, the fall of France in the late spring of 1940. The Great War of 1914-1918 was more consequential, making possible and leading to much of the decline, horror, and disaster that followed including the calamities of 1940, but it was not a single event. It took four gruesome years to have its full effect. The collapse of France in 1940 took just six weeks.

Even after the Great War, there had been a hope and perhaps even a possibility that things in Europe could return to something like normal. Superficially the world of 1925 was in many ways not so different from the world of 1910. Europe remained the world’s center of science, art, and scholarship. The British Empire was intact with all its overseas possessions. So were the French, Dutch, and all the others except the German. The Royal Navy continued to rule the seas. Outside Russia, there had been few deep changes to the social order. London and Paris still enjoyed their preeminent positions. World civilization was seen mainly as European civilization as was world power.

The fall of France changed all that. Coupled with the character of the Nazis, it guaranteed that however the war might end, post-war Europe would be something very different from even the 1930’s. Those six weeks were a turning point in world history.

Afterward came the Battle of Britain, Lend Lease and the arming of the United States, the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, Pearl Harbor and America’s entry into the war, the Nazis’ horrific crimes, the Soviets’ conquest and enslavement of Central Europe, the rise of the United States as a world power, the dissolution of the British, Dutch, and French empires, the Cold War, and the Europe we know today.

We can conjecture what might have happened if France had not fallen - if its army had held out as it did in 1914. It is probable that Italy would had stayed cautiously neutral, resulting in no war in Africa or the Mediterranean. Since Japan might have been reluctant to take on both the United States and the intact British and French empires in the Pacific, the United States might never have entered the war and might not have become the power it is today. The Nazis and the Soviets might never have fought. The Nazi government, if defeated or stalemated in France, might even have fallen before it could commit its worst crimes. Or something much worse than the actual events could have happened, such as the war in France dragging on until an unconquered Nazi Germany got the atom bomb first.

We can never know,but we can see what those six weeks in the spring of 1940 caused and in what terrible danger they placed civilization. We can also see our rather minor problems in better perspective by making a comparison to the world situation during the awful summer and fall of 1940. The Nazis with the world’s strongest army were the masters of continental Europe. Imperial Japan with the world’s strongest navy was their formal ally. The Soviet Union with the world’s second strongest army was their partner and de facto ally. Only Britain with a poorly armed and defeated army remained against them. That really was a crisis of civilization.