On the 70th Anniversary of VE Day - The Good War and the War We're In

 

By Don Feder
GrassTopUSA.com

       It was the good war, fought by the Greatest Generation. It was a war for the survival of civilization. It was the deadliest conflict in history. It was America's finest hour.

       May 8 marks the 70th anniversary of VE Day – the end of World War II in Europe.

       Images flash before us – Neville Chamberlain waving a piece of paper said to guarantee "peace for our time," Hitler giving a stiff-arm salute at a Nuremberg rally, a Czech woman weeping as panzers rolled into Prague, a smiling FDR wearing his naval cape, his cigarette holder at a jaunty angle, Churchill flashing a victory sign, GIs wading ashore on Omaha Beach, skeletal survivors in a liberated death camp, and a Russian soldier raising the Soviet flag on the Reichstag building above the ruins of Berlin.

       The war that ended on May 8, 1945 began with the Treaty of Versailles (June 28, 1919), which, despite its reputed harshness, did little to stop a resurgence of German militarism. When he saw the treaty, Marshal Ferdinand Foch, France's last World War I commander, famously remarked: "This is not peace. It is an armistice for 20 years." Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939 – 20 years and 65 days later.

       Over 60 million died in the Second World War – 3% of the world's population in 1939. The death toll included 291,557 U.S. servicemen. More than 800,000 were wounded. There were 464 Medals of Honor awarded, many posthumously.

       In the three months leading up to Germany's unconditional surrender – Soviet troops liberated Auschwitz, where an estimated 1.1 million were murdered, on January 30th. On the Western Front, 1.5 million Germans were taken prisoner. FDR died on April 12th. Mussolini was executed on April 28th. The U.S. Seventh Army's 45th Infantry Division entered Dachau, on the outskirts of Munich, on April 29th. GIs who were no strangers to carnage were so appalled by the condition of survivors that some of them machine-gunned German guards. Hitler committed suicide on April 30th.

       May 8 was the end of the war in Europe. In the Pacific, fighting raged for another three months. On June 22, the Marines captured Okinawa after 82 days of brutal fighting and more than 14,000 Americans dead. On August 6, a mushroom cloud sprouted over Hiroshima. On August 14, 1945 crowds in Times Square celebrated VJ Day.

       On November 20, 1945, the Nuremberg Trials began, offering a small degree of justice to Nazism's victims. And on May 14, 1948 – almost three years to the day after Germany's surrender – the State of Israel was proclaimed. The people Hitler tried to annihilate rose from the ashes to reestablish a Jewish state after 2,000 years of exile.

       World War II isn't ancient history. In the United States, more than a million veterans of the war are still alive, though their median age is 92 and we are, on average, losing 423 every day.

       Who will remember them when they and their children are gone?

       In a 1998 National Assessment of Education survey, more than half of 12th graders couldn't pick out one of our WWII allies from a short list. Some thought Germany and Italy fought on our side. A 2008 survey found that about a quarter of teens were unable to identify Adolf Hitler as the leader of Germany during World War II.

       In a poll by London's Daily Telegraph, 61% of British youth didn't know the war was sparked by the invasion of Poland. One in 10 thought Germany was invaded. For Millennials, Eisenhower, Patton, MacArthur and Montgomery might as well be the starting lineup of the Patriots' Super Bowl team.

       Ignorance will not save us. The Europe of 2015 looks increasingly like the Europe of 1935.

       In the last year, Jews have been murdered by religion of peaceniks in Paris, Brussels and Copenhagen. (Heil jihad?) From Malmo to Marseille, assaults on men wearing skull caps and women wearing the Star of David are common.

       Shouts of "Hitler was Right!," and "Death to the Jews!:" are SOP at anti-Israel rallies on the continent. Writing in Mosaic Magazine, French Jewish author Michel Gurfinkiel notes, "Polls show as many as 40% of Europeans holding the opinion that Israel is conducting a war of extermination against the Palestinians." This is doubtless why the Arab population of the West Bank has grown by 29% since the year 2000.

       Iran is the Third Reich reborn.

       Before the Wehrmacht began goose-stepping across Europe, who took Hitler seriously? The funny little man with a Charlie Chaplin mustache can't actually mean what he says, Europeans told each other. Today, apologists for Iran tell us Ahmadinejad never vowed to wipe Israel off the map. It was a mistranslation. Besides, he didn't mean it.

       Britain and France gave Hitler the Sudetenland, making the rest of Czechoslovakia indefensible. The dismemberment of Israel to create a terrorist enclave would give the Jewish state what's been called Auschwitz borders.

       In 2012, President Obama told a Jewish audience "I have Israel's back." By the end of June, the administration and its partners in appeasement are set to enter an agreement with Iran's psycho-killer regime that will result in lifting sanctions, which in turn will facilitate Tehran's nuclear weapons program.

       Speaking in the Rose Garden on April 2, the president said the pact would be an "historic understanding with Iran, which if fully implemented will prevent it from ever obtaining a nuclear weapon." All that was missing was the umbrella.

       But the analogy is imperfect. Hitler never led his people in chants of "Death to England" or promised to wipe France off the face of map. Roosevelt prayed publically, including in his D-Day prayer. Obama says Christians have to get off their high horse. Naïve though he was, Neville Chamberlain loved his country.

       On VE Day plus 70, "never again" has a hollow ring – the rising tide of anti-Semitism in Europe, an ideology set on world conquest, and appeasement by leaders so detached from reality that they may as well inhabit an alternate dimension.

       If you meet a World War II vet, thank him, gratefully shake his hand, and make a silent vow that the sacrifices his generation made shall not have been in vain.

Don Feder is a former Boston Herald writer who is now a political/communications consultant. He also maintains his own website, DonFeder.com.