In my previous post, I mentioned one of my classes which is taking an in-depth look into Second World War, both on the domestic and foreign fronts. This class is largely responsible for my rather large stockpile of reading material; six of my reading books are in that class alone and two of them are very formidable historians’ examinations of the War. However, I approached the class with relative enthusiasm; I have, in my youth, always been fascinated by human conflicts, both in recent and far-removed history. I think that I always admired the caliber of intellect wielded by a man who can lead his subordinates into battle and emerge victorious and I have always been fascinated by the weapons and vehicles that humans have engineered to adapt to changing and evolving war.
The class hasn’t really gone into an in depth examination of the major battles that I knew of, however; instead, the beginning of the class has been composed of a look into the behind-the-scenes conflict between President F.D. Roosevelt and the American Isolationists as well as the Japanese attitudes and thinking-patterns that led them into a conflict that even they knew was militarily un-winnable. I have also begun to understand the arguments of the Isolationists of the time. Of course, I realize that had the United States not entered the conflict when it did our potential allies likely would’ve capitulated, either by diplomatic coercion or military force, and then the war would have been exponentially more difficult for the United States, even approaching impossibly winnable.
In the process of this class, we studied Charles Lindbergh, who contributed to the Isolationist cause during the months and years leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. I suppose that, beyond the Spirit of St. Louis flight, I had little other knowledge over the years. Now, I believe that I have found a man who I find fascinating in his own respect. A jack of all trades and possibly even an obsessive-compulsive (from my own examination), he became a leader of aviation advances and research right up until late in his life in addition to learning biology, rocketry, writer, inventor and many other life accomplishments. Though he, of course, wasn’t perfect, I still found his character a fascinating read (Here’s a link to the specific Lindbergh biography we used.)
However, one thing that I did not expect in my academic examination of World War II was the extraordinary, unspeakable crimes of the war, perhaps due to my naive inexperience and romantisized lense of the war. Of course, my reaction to this scale of human tragedy cannot really be described in words, though as a writer I’m obliged to try anyway.
I guess the main tool that brought to the forefront of my mind was reading War Without Mercy by John Dower. The book looks into the strong racist component of the war as whole, but he also casts the limelight heavily on the often-overlooked racist component in the Pacific War; the demonization of the American people in the eyes of the Japanese citizens in addition to the indoctrination provided not just by the military but by the entire society that transformed young men into the cannon fodder for the political and military purposes; the degradation of the Japanese in the eyes of Americans, that they were sneaky and dishonorable by attacking Pearl without an overt declaration of war, betraying the underlying attitude among the United States that in any “mono-a-mono” engagement, we would always win.
Now, let me interject here that I had always known that World War II was costly in every aspect of the word concievable. I suppose that, before then, my mind could not comprehend the enormity of those facts. I was also not aware of the hate — hate beyond words — that seemed to posses the belligerents on all sides, including the United States (though we started the war with the attitude of a “fair war,” we too capitulated to the “victory at all costs” attitude).
Perhaps the most well-known result of WWII was the Holocaust, which was the mass genocide of 6,000,000 Jews in the European theater. Here, I will naturally omit the precise level of atrocity to ensure that my blog stays rated at least PG, but mass murder and human experimentation are barely glossing the surface, let alone going into detail about how these actions were carried out. Of course, I knew these things; I don’t think I had quite grasped the fact that most nations around Germany might as well have condoned it all by failing to even protest (some even actively aided in the “rounding-up” of the Jews) as well as the American media, which did have some ideas of what was happening, failing to report it to the generally Anti-Semitic environment of the United States.
On the same level of this, I place what historians call the Raping of Nanking, China when the Japense conquered the city early in 1937 and commenced with equally unspeakable atrocities to the people there. I can consciously relate only that they don’t call it the Raping of Nanking as an exaggeration (if you want more information, look it up yourself…and follow that up with something to lift your spirits).
The Bataan Death March also comes into mind, as well as the Japanese-American internment in the United States, the Atomic Bombings on Hiroshima and Nagasaki (which I consider atrocious due the nature of the targets being civilian, though I also acknowledge that the war could have been protracted by even more death and destruction had we invaded), etc. The sad thing is, everything I have listed thus far is on the civilian side of the scale; I haven’t even taken into consideration death and destruction on the East-European front, the Battle of Britain, and so much else, but I believe that I have given ample illustrations of the death that previously was unheard of…but the atrocity of WWII doesn’t end with the death.
I guess I’m part of an older school of thought in conflict, the school of thought that says you can have a disagreement with someone and even wage war against them while still respecting them for their humanity. Lindbergh was from the same school of thought, and he too was shocked when on the Pacific battlefront he observed the wanton hatred on all sides of the conflict.
This, I feel, is the gear upon which the Second World War turned: hate, specifically racial hate. I mean, the historical cause of the Holocaust was hate: pure, irrational, animalistic, racial hate (though I also acknowledge that indifference also played a role in the tragedy and perhaps plays an even greater hand in modern tragedies). For another example, the Japanese education system was completely standardized, to the point that every school was teaching the exact things as every other school across the entire country. They also twisted religious deism into believing the Emperor was God (Roman Caesar, anyone?) and that death in the pursuit of furthering the Emperor’s nation was the highest good. The Japanese had their own racial indoctrination, believing themselves to be superior to the other Asians but especially to the “White Demons” that had exploited their corner of the world for hundreds of years.
Of course, the United States was not innocent in this conflict, either; the blood of hate is on our hands also. It wasn’t enough to say that we were fighting for the future peace of the world or for the safety of our children; it was often cast by media and political speakers as the “War between the White and Yellow Man”, the “War that Decides that Fate of the White Man,” and racial hate-talk like that, not to mention the environment of Anti-Semitism that I have already mentioned was prevalent in the United States.
My point? Not just that 72,771,500 (according to Wikipedia, anyway) men, women, and children died in the Second World War, and not even that 41,743,400 of those people were civilians (though that in and of itself is indescribable human suffering) but that these deaths were inflicted not by tanks or the atomic bombs or guns but by hate. Just in reading of all of this and finally understanding that it takes hate to wage such merciless war, hate that I can’t comprehend, I think I came closer to weeping than I have since I last heard in detail the sufferings of Christ. Indeed, I have recently heard a minister who suggested that perhaps, in the Garden of Gethsemane, Evil Itself revealed to Jesus that all of this death would occur and perhaps — not necessarily, but perhaps — Jesus wondered if his life, death, and resurrection was all worth it.
The saddest thing? We haven’t learned. You can see it in the immediate reaction to the World Trade Center attacks; a sudden explosion of suspicion and, in some cases, outright accusations toward people just because of their skin color or religious beliefs, and in our hands today are the weapons to inflict killing on a scale that would make even WWII look like a small battle…yet, as I implied earlier in the post, today’s general indifference in America to the sufferings of the other 4 billion people on Earth are perhaps as deadly as the hate that bred the last war because not only does it cause human suffering but it allows breeding grounds where new movements of hate and conflict-seeking people can consolidate power. Martin Luther once said, “War is the greatest plague that can affect humanity; it destroys religion, it destroys states, it destroys families. Any scourge is preferable to it.“ I fear that I must concur, but not that the weapons of war kill, but that people with demonic, hateful hearts kill people during a war…or at least in modern war, where hatred seems to be a prerequisite to conflict.
I guess the reason I shared all of this was with the hope that maybe someone can read this and be inspired to take their own steps toward averting such catastrophes from ever happening again.
SfC
, and also why I expect this to be something that takes my whole life to craft. However, I do have a strong work ethic; if you aren’t going to do something right or well, then in my mind, it would be better to leave the task to someone else.
