70: Personal War

 

 

Today is the 70th Anniversary of V-E Day (or Victory in Europe Day) when World War 2 ended in Europe. Like most people I have family that participated in the war. My paternal Grandfather fought in the war. He had wanted to join the Army Air Corps. (this was before the Air Force was established), but they didn’t take him because he wore glasses so he waited to be drafted into the regular Army. I have his original draft registration card. In the course of the war he served in the European Theater (as did his brother who received a Bronze Star.) My Grandfather went from England through France and into Belgium where he was in the Battle of the Bulge. From Belgium he went into Germany where he helped liberate concentration camps. I have the pictures he took of the camps. On V-E Day he was in southern Germany where he stayed until around 1946 as part of the occupation forces before returning home. I never really talked to my Grandfather about the war, but my dad did a little and from what I learned it was pretty interesting. Everyone knows someone with a story like that. They are known as the Greatest Generation for what they went through (the Great Depression, World War 2 and the Cold War) and 70 years on we are seeing fewer  and fewer of them. My Grandfather has also passed away.

Even if we didn’t fight in the war we can all have memories of things relating to it. I remember celebrating the 50th Anniversary of World War 2. I was living in Germany. We had recently read “The Diary of Anne Frank” in school and were learning about the war in history class. I know that everyone does that, but it’s a little different when you are an American and your parents are stationed in Germany. I lived on the German economy and took a bus every day to school on an American base so I was around Germans more than most Americans. After hearing about what they (the Germans) did during World War 2 – especially the Holocaust – I was very uneasy to be around any German 60 or older. Even though every German alive during the war now claims they weren’t Nazis and “knew nothing” about what was going on the world knows that is an outright lie. I didn’t like that so many people were around me who most likely did something awful during the war (of course I would later learn that many former Nazis lived out in the open and were even receiving pensions from the German Government for the crimes they committed.)

I also remember sitting in a school assembly where we had to listen to a German woman talk about her experiences during the war. She was in her late teens when the war ended and so wasn’t as innocent as she tried to lead on (again as most Germans 18 and older in 1945 try to claim.) She was crying that she couldn’t get new shoes during the war and had to keep repatching her old ones and how she couldn’t go to school because of the bombs the Allies were dropping and then all of a sudden the bombs stopped and she was “free” and the Allies were now her friends. The students, who usually were quiet and good during the assemblies – or asleep, didn’t like how this woman was playing the victim. She was 18 or 19 during the war and so an adult and here she was complaining about not having new shoes or being able to go to the university. We started yelling and shouting at her as she continued to try and speak. People were calling her names like “Nazi” and “Jew-killer”, etc and we didn’t stop until she left the stage – again crying (probably about her old shoes.) When our teachers asked us why we had done all of that we told them that we didn’t want to listen to another German play the sad victim when they started the war, killed all the innocent people and were the reason we and our families were stationed in Germany. Our teachers understood and told us that it would probably have been better to have someone who was our age or younger during the war to talk to us rather than someone who was an adult and should have known better about what was going on around her and in her name. Twenty years since that time I still have no remorse for how we acted. We were constantly being told (by our parents, teachers and the AFN commercials) that we had to behave especially around Germans as we were “ambassadors from America” and so always had to go to stupid German-American Friendship events made by a bunch of clueless parents that usually involved older Germans. The woman speaking on the stage was part of one of those programs. Even as kids we knew that the Americans had defeated the Germans, won the war and had also recently beat the Soviets and won the Cold War. We thought everyone else should see everything the US did and treat us better  - of course we were young and that may sound arrogant, but that’s how it was.

Another episode I remember is our house on the German economy. It was surrounded by a German cemetery on one side and had a memorial to the Germans who fought during World War 2. Every day we had Quiet Hours – a time when German law said you had to be quiet - it’s a very German law. Well many times during Quiet Hours I would see Germans go into the cemetery and place flowers at the World War 2 monument. I told some of my American friends about what the Germans were doing and we would go into the cemetery after a group had left flowers and either throw them in the trash or stomp on them until they were dead. We didn’t think it was right to honor people who started the war and probably shot at our grandparents. It didn’t matter to me then (and still doesn’t today) whether they were official members of the Nazi Party or German soldiers conscripted into the military. Every person has a choice and if you chose to do the wrong thing – even if it is forced on you – then you are still guilty.

A third episode I remember is the bookstore on base had a display of World War 2 to celebrate the 50 years since the war ended. In May I bought a book full of pictures of V-E Day around the world and that August I bought a book full of pictures of V-J Day around the world.  The saying “a picture tells a thousand words” is true and the ones in these two books show people elated that the war had ended in Europe and then in Asia. I also have a lot of pictures my Grandfather took during the war and they show the war as he saw it (of course he was there to fight and so he only took pictures after the battles.) The picture above is one my Grandfather took of a bombed town in Germany in 1945.

Of course I am older (and hopefully wiser) than I was back then. I still believe that people who either stand-by and watch bad things happen or who are forced to do something bad are just as guilty as those that willingly do the bad deed. I have never blamed all Germans for World War 2 or the Holocaust and that still holds true. I believe that the only people who need to feel shame and remorse are the Germans who were 18 or older in 1945. Everyone else was either too young to have done anything horrendous or weren’t born yet.

It is the 70th Anniversary of the end of World War 2 in Europe and we need to remember the innocent men, women and children who suffered while at the same time remembering the men and women who risked everything (including death) to help liberate Europe. The United States could have remained neutral in the European Theater (since Germany didn’t attack us – only the Japanese did) and while the war in Europe would have eventually ended with the Soviets and the British winning it would have cost a lot more innocent lives and added years to the war. Instead the US entered the European Theater and even made it their first priority. 70 years on Americans no longer receive the respect we deserve around Europe – especially considering we liberated northern Africa and Western Europe and kept the Communists and Soviets from occupying Western Europe during the Cold War (at the cost of abandoning Eastern Europe  to the Iron Curtain.) The majority of men and women who took part during World War 2 will not be around to celebrate the 80th Anniversary and so we need to do everything we can now to show them how grateful we are that they risked everything to not only keep us free, but also people around the world.