VE Day plus 60
English history writer Geoffrey Wheatcroft casts a cold eye on the Good War, on the 60th anniversary of its end. And he explodes some cherished national myths. This, for instance, will please those of us who consider France to be the only country to have lost World War II twice, once on each side:
But the balloon-popping is not limited to any one side or nation:
For my part, born in 1960, the war to me means my two uncles, one now dead, who participated in the liberation of France. My uncle Bill was a radioman deep in the bowels of a destroyer. He always knew that if the ship ever got hit, he'd never see it coming, and he'd have the least chance to get up on deck and out to safety before it sank. He used to sit there and hear the depth charges going off in the sea below him, as the ship played cat-and-mouse in the Mediterranean with German submarines. When he had his first heart attack, in the 1970s, they revived him by chest-pounding, and his first conscious thought, back from death, was that he was still in that ship, inches from eternity, hearing the underwater explosions again.
My Uncle Bob was in the Navy, too -- for a while. He piloted an LST at D-Day, got his men to the beach, but then the thing got hit and blown up in the surf and he was thrown up on the sand, unhurt but unable to return to his ship. He asked a GI what to do, and the grunt told him, "dig!" So he grabbed a shovel and dug in. He never did get back to the Navy, which throughout the rest of the war sent mu Aunt Renee telegrams saying her husband was missing in action, even while he was sending her letters describing his progress through France with the Army.
When I think about their attitudes toward the war, there was no hint of romance or mythologizing in it. It was a Bill Mauldin war all the way for them: cynical, profane, grim. The purpose was survival and victory. They'd rather have been home. But after a few encounters with the enemy, they all realize we had to win this one. Or else. And nobody could go home till then.
The French suffered a catastrophic defeat in 1940, and the compromises many Frenchmen made with their conquerors thereafter ranged from the pitiful to the wicked. More Frenchmen collaborated than resisted, and during the course of the war more Frenchmen bore arms on the Axis than on the Allied side. Against those grim truths, Charles de Gaulle consciously and brilliantly constructed a nourishing myth of Free France and Resistance that helped heal wounds and rebuild the country.
But the balloon-popping is not limited to any one side or nation:
From the beginning to the end of that war, whenever the British Army met the Wehrmacht on anything like equal terms, the Germans always prevailed. And that pretty much goes for the US Army too, from their first disastrous encounter with the Germans, at Kasserine Pass in North Africa, in early 1943. American and British commanders always took good care thereafter that they had an overwhelming superiority in men and especially in weaponry before engaging the enemy.
For my part, born in 1960, the war to me means my two uncles, one now dead, who participated in the liberation of France. My uncle Bill was a radioman deep in the bowels of a destroyer. He always knew that if the ship ever got hit, he'd never see it coming, and he'd have the least chance to get up on deck and out to safety before it sank. He used to sit there and hear the depth charges going off in the sea below him, as the ship played cat-and-mouse in the Mediterranean with German submarines. When he had his first heart attack, in the 1970s, they revived him by chest-pounding, and his first conscious thought, back from death, was that he was still in that ship, inches from eternity, hearing the underwater explosions again.
My Uncle Bob was in the Navy, too -- for a while. He piloted an LST at D-Day, got his men to the beach, but then the thing got hit and blown up in the surf and he was thrown up on the sand, unhurt but unable to return to his ship. He asked a GI what to do, and the grunt told him, "dig!" So he grabbed a shovel and dug in. He never did get back to the Navy, which throughout the rest of the war sent mu Aunt Renee telegrams saying her husband was missing in action, even while he was sending her letters describing his progress through France with the Army.
When I think about their attitudes toward the war, there was no hint of romance or mythologizing in it. It was a Bill Mauldin war all the way for them: cynical, profane, grim. The purpose was survival and victory. They'd rather have been home. But after a few encounters with the enemy, they all realize we had to win this one. Or else. And nobody could go home till then.
