On the 65th anniversary of D-Day, is it time to let it go?

[Darth Wong]

I do not wish to devalue or undermine the courage and sacrifice of the brave Allied soldiers who threw themselves into the meat grinder against the Nazis 65 years ago. They should always be remembered with the gratitude that they deserved.

But 65 years on, is it time to let go of a WW2-centric world view yet? So much of our politics seems to be based on mentalities formed based on WW2. The irredeemable evil of the Nazi regime has coloured our interactions with other nations; we keep thinking that each hostile nation which fails to meet a certain ethical standard is the new Nazis.

For that matter, the Americans' entire view of the world seems to be heavily influenced by WW2. Their view of their own place in it, their view of certain other nations such as Britain and France, the need to make amends for the Holocaust by supporting Israel, these things all seem frozen in time, as if it were still 1950.

[The Romulan Republic]

I'm inclined to agree. The world has changed a very great deal. One other example added to the above could be the changes in warfare itself. Somehow, people seem to expect it to be like some romanticized vision of the D-Day invasion whenever America enters a war: ie, a swift, clear, and decisive victory, America greeted as liberators, etc. Whereas the reality is drawn out quagmires against a local insurgency (Iraq, Vietnam, Afghanistan have all been like this to varying degrees). This could actually hamper America's military capabilities; people go in expecting one kind of war, and find they're dealing with a very different kind.

That, and I'd like to finally have an end to hordes of jackasses seemingly equating any effort at diplomacy or peaceful resolution to a conflict with Appeasement.



(To be clear, my above comments about modern warfare were not meant to paint America as the bad guy, or offer an opinion either way on the merits of the more recent wars mentioned. Merely to observe that the kind of wars being fought today are often rather different from the massive "conventional" conflict that was World War 2.)

[MKSheppard]

A D-Day thread!

Did you know that James Doohan went ashore at Juno Beach on D-day as a lieutenant in the Canadian army? He killed two snipers during the fighting, but was hit by a machine gun during the night. He recovered but lost a finger on his right hand. In some of the Star Trek episodes they had to use a hand double because of this.

[CJvR]

Time will take care of that soon enough anyway.

How many vets are there remaining from the "War to end all Wars"?

[Darth Wong]

A D-Day thread!

Did you know that James Doohan went ashore at Juno Beach on D-day as a lieutenant in the Canadian army? He killed two snipers during the fighting, but was hit by a machine gun during the night. He recovered but lost a finger on his right hand. In some of the Star Trek episodes they had to use a hand double because of this.

I actually did read that. I've never tried to look for James Doohan's careful concealment of his wounded hand, though. It was said that this was the reason he often stood with both hands clasped together: to hide the injury.

On the positive side of WW2's cultural legacy, it's worth pointing out that sci-fi authors from the postwar era often had wartime experience and as a result, they tended to have much more "grounded" view of things than sci-fi authors today. Modern sci-fi authors seem to base their writing primarily on other movies and TV shows, rather than any kind of applicable life experience.

[Darth Wong]

Time will take care of that soon enough anyway.

How many vets are there remaining from the "War to end all Wars"?

A 20 year old soldier storming the beach on D-Day would be 85 years old today. There are very few left; I know one personally, but he's the only one in my circle.

[Darksider]

I agree with mike. WW2 and D-day really do color the worldview of some Americans, but As much as we need to let the WW2 mentality go, we also need to better educate ourselves about the reality of that war. Modern America's viewpoint of World War 2 is one of the British appeasing, the French surrendering, the Russians loosing, and RAR TEAM AMERICA coming in to save everyones collective asses. This couldn't be further from the truth. The U.S. involvement with WW2 certainly sped up the defeat of the Axis, but the war would have been won without our aid.

Basically we need to stop making claims that other nations "owe" us for their freedoms when they really don't.


Bit of amusing trivia: I was watching FOX news earlier, and you know what they've been focusing on for the past week with regards to D-Day? Obama's "snub" of the British Queen by not inviting her to the memorial ceremony. Way to not politicize an event guys!

[Surlethe]

We should also probably keep D-Day in perspective when it comes to World War II itself. How many Americans learn about D-Day and assume the US won the war because of it, when it was the Soviets who were doing the real fighting, grinding down the Wehrmacht across Eastern Europe?

[Darth Wong]

We should also probably keep D-Day in perspective when it comes to World War II itself. How many Americans learn about D-Day and assume the US won the war because of it, when it was the Soviets who were doing the real fighting, grinding down the Wehrmacht across Eastern Europe?

Part of the reason for the exaggeration of D-Day is that it's such a resounding visual. I don't think there is any mental picture in warfare which sears itself into your mind like the iconic imagery of those landing craft, with the doors dropping and the brave men charging headlong into a rain of steel death.

Sorry tank drivers, but the big tank battles don't have anywhere near the visceral impact of that D-Day landing.

[Darksider]

D-Day certainly does have some resounding images attached to it, but I think that Americans need to look at some images that aren't from Omaha Beach. People in this country seem to forget that there were brits and Canadians there too, and that they actually landed on more beaches than the U.S. forces.

BTW mike: aren't you afraid your wife's gonna kick your ass for putting that in your sig?

[CJvR]

The U.S. involvement with WW2 certainly sped up the defeat of the Axis, but the war would have been won without our aid.

I have to say I doubt that. The US contribution wasn't just military power it was economic as well. Without the Lend and lease things would be very grim for both London and Moscow.

[Darth Wong]

D-Day certainly does have some resounding images attached to it, but I think that Americans need to look at some images that aren't from Omaha Beach. People in this country seem to forget that there were brits and Canadians there too, and that they actually landed on more beaches than the U.S. forces.

Indeed. Canada punched far above our weight in WW2 and received precious little appreciation for it. Americans barely realize we were involved at all, and the Brits took our contributions for granted. We were basically ignored completely after the war.

BTW mike: aren't you afraid your wife's gonna kick your ass for putting that in your sig?

Assuming you're talking about the "red panties" sig picture, why would she? She knows I've got some slightly risqué pictures of her on my personal website. She has no problem with it as long as they aren't outright pornographic. These pictures aren't any more outrageous than what you'd see in a lingerie catalogue.

[Darmalus]

On the positive side of WW2's cultural legacy, it's worth pointing out that sci-fi authors from the postwar era often had wartime experience and as a result, they tended to have much more "grounded" view of things than sci-fi authors today. Modern sci-fi authors seem to base their writing primarily on other movies and TV shows, rather than any kind of applicable life experience.

Hmmm, could you give examples of what you are talking about? I was racking my brain, but all the older sci-fi I can remember generally involved a one or at most a handful of main characters going on a mission of some sort, I can't think of any big battle stories I have read beyond some WH40k books, and I think that falls under "modern sci-fi authors".

And on ignoring Canada, yeah, from my high school education, you would have a hard time convincing the students that Canada was even inhabited, given how little it is mentioned.

[Darksider]

Indeed. Canada punched far above our weight in WW2 and received precious little appreciation for it. Americans barely realize we were involved at all, and the Brits took our contributions for granted. We were basically ignored completely after the war.

Yeah. Pretty much all of the smaller nations involved in the war got shirked in the glory department, but you guys certainly got some of the worst of it. Canadian forces fought in nearly every major campaign, and after the war was over the U.S. pretty much ignored you, and the Brits just went "you're part of the commonwealth, it's your damnd job."

Assuming you're talking about the "red panties" sig picture, why would she? She knows I've got some slightly risqué pictures of her on my personal website. She has no problem with it as long as they aren't outright pornographic. These pictures aren't any more outrageous than what you'd see in a lingerie catalogue.

Meh. Some people don't like to show themselves off. I can't even stand having my picture taken, let alone posting it on the internet.

(and that's totally not because i'm out of shape)

[Mr Bean]

For that matter, the Americans' entire view of the world seems to be heavily influenced by WW2. Their view of their own place in it, their view of certain other nations such as Britain and France, the need to make amends for the Holocaust by supporting Israel, these things all seem frozen in time, as if it were still 1950.

In our defense we now give a shit about Poland, something we failed to do in 1950. Other than that yes our worldviews are stagnant. Or I should say our Conservative world views are stagnate. And with good reason, they are after all founded on idea that we should keep things the way they were.

A few people deny that despite the loss of life in 1945 we could look back and say, this war... this undertaking was fundamentally a positive and good thing. We stopped a genocidal madman bent on world domination who at the time looked very much as if he might have a decent shot at it. If not the world then at least Europe, and in the 1940's Europe, was to us still the "rest of the world".

Never mind the Cold War, never mind the use of Nuclear weapons against civilian population centers. Look beyond that, look to the simple fact that in 1945 we had a group of fundamentally immeasurable evil men backed up by a dedicated group of men who wanted to tear the world apart.

For a little while we could look back and know that we were Big Damn Heroes and feel good about that. Is it any surprise as look back that we want to keep looking back and embracing that moment for as long as we possibly can? This is a nation where the Founding Fathers are worship on the same level with most Saints, you expect us to give up WWII anytime soon?

[Samuel]

We should also probably keep D-Day in perspective when it comes to World War II itself. How many Americans learn about D-Day and assume the US won the war because of it, when it was the Soviets who were doing the real fighting, grinding down the Wehrmacht across Eastern Europe?

I remember a Russian guy in my writing and speech class:

"There were more casulties from my home city in WW2 than your entire country."

Hmmm, could you give examples of what you are talking about? I was racking my brain, but all the older sci-fi I can remember generally involved a one or at most a handful of main characters going on a mission of some sort, I can't think of any big battle stories I have read beyond some WH40k books, and I think that falls under "modern sci-fi authors".

The origional Star Trek, Heinland, etc.

[Raptor]

The 60th anniversary was supposed to be the last 'proper' service, it just that this one has been blown up larger due to Sarkozy inviting Obama for political points for a 'US-France celebration', the dick. The D-day and World War 2 in general has a bigger appeal due fact the other side were 'real' villians the Nazi's and Japanese to a lesser extent, that later murkier wars and conflicts, and battles were clearer and more defined not anti-terrorism or counter-insurgancies.

As a Brit, I get pissed with the US attitude to us in WW2, so christ knows how Canada feels half the time, getting left out. Canada, Australia and New Zealand, real allies who helped us out from the start.

[Darksider]

Japanese to a lesser extent,

Bull and shit.

Imperial Japan was every bit as nasty as Nazi Germany. Granted, The Holocaust puts the Nazis pretty far ahead in sheer numbers, but there's pretty much nothing that the Nazis did that the Japanese didn't. They were systematically raping and pillaging their way across Asia for two years before Germany invaded Poland.

I don't mean to jump on you, but this is kinda a pet peeve of mine because I used to ride the bus home from High School with this idiot who wouldn't stop droning on about how "honorable" Imperial Japan was.

[Raptor]

I know how bad Imperial Japan was in World War2. Didn't they kill more Chinese civlians than what the Germans did in Russia? I'm just saying in most peoples minds Nazis are the only real evil bastards of the war, and that mostly in the west, Europe especially the crimes done by Japan have kind of slipped under the radar with basically Pearl Harbour and the A-bomb summing up most peoples knowledge of the Pacfic and Far-Eastern battles. Here in the UK you can add on the POW's plight but even their numbers and horrors were overshadowed by the natives of the countries they invaded weren't they like the Malaysians etc.

[Shogoki]

This thread made me remember this old Onion article.

I generally agree that WW2 needs to go as far as politics go, but to be honest I never tire of the games and movies, and i don't see it vanishing from our culture unless something even bigger happens.

[Batman]

For a little while we could look back and know that we were Big Damn Heroes and feel good about that. Is it any surprise as look back that we want to keep looking back and embracing that moment for as long as we possibly can? This is a nation where the Founding Fathers are worshipped on the same level with most Saints, you expect us to give up WWII anytime soon?

Yes? GERMANY eventually got told to stop feeling guilty about it already and we were the VILLAINS of the piece. If you need something to feel heroic about, how about the FIRST time you invaded Iraq, back then, with damn good reason? AND the moral if not material backing of more or less the rest of the western world?

[Patrick Degan]

On the positive side of WW2's cultural legacy, it's worth pointing out that sci-fi authors from the postwar era often had wartime experience and as a result, they tended to have much more "grounded" view of things than sci-fi authors today. Modern sci-fi authors seem to base their writing primarily on other movies and TV shows, rather than any kind of applicable life experience.

Hmmm, could you give examples of what you are talking about? I was racking my brain, but all the older sci-fi I can remember generally involved a one or at most a handful of main characters going on a mission of some sort, I can't think of any big battle stories I have read beyond some WH40k books, and I think that falls under "modern sci-fi authors".

Just take a look at that 60s cultural icon Star Trek. Many of it's writers were not only genre professionals but World War II veterans or at the least people who grew up during the War and the Depression and had a much wider experience of life and it shows in the way the characters are crafted and the way problems are approached and solved —especially in making hard decisions, such as whether or not Kirk is going to have to kill a million colonists on Deneva to prevent a plague of space parasites from extending outward into the galaxy (something you'd never see Picard wrestling with on TNG —too dark and un-PC). The Twilight Zone offers another example, especially as two of Rod Serling's scripts for that series directly reflected his own WWII experience in the Philippines.

These writers tended to go for the most direct and practical approach for their characters to solve a dilemma and the plots were economical in the sense of keeping the convolutions to the absolute minimum. Any of these authors writing a time travel story, for example, would have their characters caught in a real dilemma in which they either find the way to escape back to their own time without interfering with the past or either returning to an altered and far darker present or getting themselves erased from existence altogether. Or trying to change the past only to find their every effort thwarted by destiny and again running the risk of simply erasing themselves in the bargain.

These were people who had hard lives growing up, or at the least much harder lives than what we've got today; experienced far more of the real world than many up-and-coming writers of today, and those experiences shaped all their later sensibilities as writers when they entered the profession. Doubly so for any of them who actually went through combat.

[CaptHawkeye]

I don't mean to jump on you, but this is kinda a pet peeve of mine because I used to ride the bus home from High School with this idiot who wouldn't stop droning on about how "honorable" Imperial Japan was.

Their are still plenty of Japanophile nerdlings to this day who are convinced America's war against Japan was motivated soley by US Expansionism and that by cutting off Japan's economic aid they "attacked first". Even though Japan had basically spent the last 10 years completely obsessing over preparations for a war in the Pacific. 10 years prior to Pearl Harbor Japan had essentially undergone massive internal political shifts. The civilian government was forcibly removed and replaced by the well known military junta that favored grandiose dreams of a "Greater East Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere". The Sphere was going to be anything but co-prosperous of course, and basically called for the Empire to strip mine and exploit the shit out of every territory under its control *not* the Japanese Home Islands.

Many myths about Japanese History, such as "dishonor from capture" and "teh supa sumooraaaizzzz" were invented by the military government and persist to this day.

Does it matter if you point out that Japan had essentially been waging campaigns of mass genocide in China for years before the Western Allies finally had enough of their shit? Nope. "Honorable" Imperial Japan was bullied into the war!

[Chardok]

All of this has a lot to do with our education system that is still very much AMERICA! FUCK YEAH! in High School, my WWII history lesson was something like "Yeah, Hitler did some stuff, then he got evil and invaded Poland, Belgium, France, then the Battle of Britain happened and everything was going bad. Then Pearl Harbor got bombed and we won the war by storming the beach at normandy and also *50 pages of the manhattan project* Then we dropped nukes and won.


Also Vietnam."

I am sad to say that until the brouhaha about ANZAC day - I did not even know what an ANZAC was. It was not until my very late teens or early 20's that I found out that the world war really was a WORLD war. Yeah, I knew the brits were heavily involved, but it stood to reason, since they were, as far as I was concered, 2nd place at the time. the Russian involvement in the war was largely glossed over as it was not even a decade after the fall of the iron curtain when I was learning about it, except I knew they took over half of germany, and they were communist and communist = bad. I knew more about the Boxer rebellion than I did about Stalingrad.

Personally, I think we celebrate normandy, commemorate, really, precisely because of the iconic imagery - but is it really any less iconic than El Alamein? or Scicily(SP?) Or any of the theatres you never hear about. Probably not -and the cost to the families and friends of the fallen was certainly no higher to those killed on Not Omaha Beach. So perhaps it is time for us to move on.

Honestly, I know jack and poo about WWI...all I can tell you is Ferdinand and isabella and some serbian guy started it, then there was airplanes and the Maginot Line and trench warfare and the America won. So...I'm sure the imagery will fade and maybe we will go back to pointing the nuclear gun at each other's heads and never worry about that happening ever again.

[Siege]

Yeah. Pretty much all of the smaller nations involved in the war got shirked in the glory department, but you guys certainly got some of the worst of it. Canadian forces fought in nearly every major campaign, and after the war was over the U.S. pretty much ignored you, and the Brits just went "you're part of the commonwealth, it's your damnd job."

I'm not sure how it's on your side of the Atlantic, but The Netherlands certainly remember Canadians as the ones who did most of the liberating around these parts. In my ancestral hometown we've basically been inviting Canadian vets over every year for at least the past decade or so to commemorate the occasion. Hell I regularly travel through streets named after Canadian generals (thank you Gen. Simonds), whereas you'll find preciously few streets named after American or British generals.

Maybe it's different for Americans, but my country moved on from WW2 years ago. Our annual liberation day celebrations on the 5th of May these days are more about the veterans of peace keeping ops worldwide and about the celebration of freedom in general than about WW2 specifically. Part of that is undoubtedly because no nation really likes to remember getting its ass whooped in five days and remaining conquered for five years until some guys from across an ocean came over to bail us out, but frankly the obsession with WW2 seems mostly a peculiar American thing. I can't believe how many times over the years I've heard "well you'd be speaking German if it weren't for us!" as if that were a valid retort to a particular piece of criticism of the USA--so yes, in the end I would think it healthy if Americans got over their apparent massive superiority complex and got a grip. The world has changed since 1945. Deal with it!