World War II

You’ve probably heard about the girl who was reading in public something she’d been handed, which contained the title just above. She read it as “World War Eleven.” Every young person is not that ignorant, of course, but the generation after mine does not know much about that war and seems not to want to know. That is so strange, for it is our biggest war to date, if that means anything; we were victorious; it ushered in the most powerful weapon of all wars; it gave us a richer vocabulary with such words as Hitler, Mussolini, Nazi, Fascism, atomic, Vichy, Hirohito, and others. Yet our youth are not learning this history in school. If we don’t know our history, we are destined to repeat it. Many people have said this, but I don’t know who said it first.

Although I have not read the book, I think the generation that served in World War II is the one Tom Brokaw calls “the greatest generation” in his book of the same title. It’s their children who have grown up without this particular knowledge—and their children too—who may have to repeat it. That war will be different, naturally, but could be just as devastating or more so. Then someone has predicted—I think Einstein—that the war after that one will be fought with sticks and stones.

Several years ago I entered a World War II short story in a writing contest of which the contest judge was a public school junior high teacher. Although it won first place, the judge made a note she had a difficult time trying to determine the story’s historical setting. However, on the very first line of the story was a reference to the Allied invasion at Normandy. The second line contained the word Nazi. What’s so difficult about knowing when this occurred?

This is probably as good a place as any to offer one lesson in this area which numerous people have learned wrong, including especially media personnel. “Nazi” is just a shortened version of a long German word that means “National Socialism.” That puts it squarely on the Left, not the Right.

Actually, a good time for a family’s discussing history is during the dinner hour, with the television off. Testing of what the children learned last night could happen at the family breakfast table. Just get up a half hour sooner. If all families did this, it could help save the nation.