Tag Archives: World War II

My Country Right or Wrong?

My father was a fan of Winston Churchill, prime minister of Great Britain during World War II. I have written in a previous blog about the call my parents received on December 7, 1941, from a neighbor informing them of the attack on Pearl Harbor. The attack led to the U.S. entering World II immediately on the side of Britain and other allies.

We may forget how shocking was that attack and the fear that the United States might lose this war with the Nazis and their allies. My mother later recounted my family’s experiences in dealing with wartime life: how she hoarded gasoline, sold only with the use of carefully regulated coupons, as she rode one way up the main shopping highway and back down the other in one trip. No short trips for just one item or shopping in only one place at a time. She saved cans and newspapers for the drives which recycled them for war use.

The British, of course, having been attacked earlier and watching France fall, across the narrow strip of the English Channel, were obviously in even more danger of losing the war.

They did not lose, and surely one reason was the absolute resolve of Winston Churchill that they would not. His refusal to even consider surrender, fought with stirring speeches to the British parliament, was as brave an act as any in history.

However, societies involved in great conflicts almost always find it impossible to return to past ways once the conflict is over, even if they win.

Churchill was never as popular after the war. His strong belief in the continuance of the British Empire was at odds with the new world risen from the ashes of the conflicts in Europe and Asia. Native citizens would, time and again, gain release from their colonialist overlords by war or by the reluctant understanding of the colonizers that the time of empire was over.

Churchill, brave as any wartime leader in history, did not understand that even the British Empire was not ordained to last forever.

Much earlier in his life, Churchill had taken a speaking tour of the United States and met “an aging Mark Twain.” They discussed the Boer War, fought between the British Empire and South Africa. As described in The Economist (December 23, 2023, “From Prisoner to Prime Minister”), the conversation went as follows, Churchill remembering: ‘Of course we argued about the Boer war. After some interchanges I found myself beaten back to the citadel. ‘My country right or wrong.’ ‘Ah,’ said the old gentleman, ‘when the poor country is fighting for its life, I agree. But this was not your case.’”

America is still my country even when it errs, but I am not called to worship it as a god. Some of the greatest patriots are those who, like ones who opposed the U.S. entry into Vietnam, practice great patriotism when they rightly fault the country for its sins.

The Nightingale and All the Light We Cannot See: Different Perspectives But a Common Message

Two recent bestsellers, The Nightingale and All the Light We Cannot See, personify World War II from the viewpoint of a few European characters caught up in its horror.

The Nightingale’s main characters are women, two French sisters. One joins the resistance movement against the Nazis, and the other endures the German occupation with her daughter in her family home.

All the Light We Cannot See is set in the same time period but includes the German as well as the French viewpoint. One character is a blind French girl, upended by the occupation that takes her from Paris to a French village by the ocean and her subtle part in the resistance. A second viewpoint comes from a teenaged German soldier, traumatized by the violence he witnesses and struggling to find a way to overcome the sins he is called to commit.

Both novels highlight the awful suffering of ordinary people: starvation, rape, killing of civilians, and other brutalities. Even more tragic than the conflict itself is the understanding that it need not have happened.

The war was the culmination of centuries of conflict between European nations for mastery over the other. Each conflict produced a loser. National leaders preyed on the desire to overcome humiliation, increasingly demonizing other nations, until Hitler rose on a wave of Nazism fed by anger and economic hardship.

Unfortunately, such dynamics never die. They lurk in the background, like the evil that finally bursts out in Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings. How do we guard against the hatred and excessive anger that produces such horrors?

Remembrance of Pearl Harbor Day (December 7) and World War II: A Tale of Mercy

 

Visiting a relative’s grave site in a Nashville cemetery, my brother pointed out a nearby grave for a neighbor of our family. He told me a story pulled from our family’s history. Our relative, call him Odis, too old to fight, sold insurance during World War II.

As is common, friends and family depended on him for their insurance needs. The neighbor, call him Edward, had insured his house with Odis before he left to serve with U.S. forces, part of an air crew that made regular bombing runs over Europe. His wife lived in the house, hoping for her husband’s return, whenever that might be.

One day Odis noticed that Edward’s policy was due for another payment. “Don’t send out the notice to his wife,” he said. “We’ll wait as long as we can. Her husband’s plane was shot down over Europe, and he’s reported as missing in action.”

I waited for my brother to recite the rest of the story, for surely there was more. Yes, the plane had been hit by enemy fire. The crew bailed out. Edward, the last one, discovered that his parachute was defective. He jumped, resorting to his emergency chute. It deployed, almost knocking him out with its force. He revived to see a German fighter plane with his sights on him. For whatever reason, Edward never knew why, the German pilot did not fire on him but buzzed past. I like to think the pilot chose to show mercy.

Edward landed in a field, where resistance fighters picked him up before the Germans could find him. They got him out through enemy lines, his final rescue being by boat, and he returned to America.

A few weeks after the report that he was missing in action, Edward walked into Odis’ office and paid his insurance bill.

His grave and that of his wife, dates of death sometime in the 1980’s, rest within sight of the graves of Odis and his wife.