I guess - 2/3 of my family - in the 40s - they fought in europe.

[Joe for Clark]

Like I said - as officers - many as enlisted. They did their duty.

But some - they fought in the Pacific.

I will never - in my heart - forgive what Japan did to them. Never.

Now this was over 60 years ago now - history - but there is a lesson.

European cultures - they judge circumstance as we do as a culture. But different cultures - they do not really make the same judgements. Right??

Cause the point is - different cultures make different judgements about value of life. That is understandable. Ethnocentric. We understand that.

But we are engaged with a culture in between - neither one nor the other. What do we do with that?

I do believe this - I do -

Joe

[WCGreen]

1. They don't value life as much as we do...

It's simple as that...

You have to look at the middle ages as a time of comparision...

Religion was the main, perhaps only focus...

Life was dreary, hard and very unpleasent...

That is how they are living...

That is also why the Iraqi Sunni's are rejected Al Q and their cruel and medieval approach to life...

The Iraqi's under Saddam had a taste of the western way of life and they are not going to give it up...

[Beerboy]

9. Who is this 'They' that you speak of?

Just askin' w/o agenda one way or the other. As you can see, I'm a newb and don't know anyone, and if I don't know, I'll ask a question.

[WCGreen]

17. The people in Afganistan who embrace the 13th century with all

it's reliance on religion for everything...

They are the one's against the secularism that has propelled parts of the Middle East into the 21st Century...

[illinoisprogressive]

2. My mother's family lived through the nazi occupation of France.

My grandfather was a police captain and was in the resistance. It was a scary time and my mom still hears the droning of planes today every so often. it stays with you.

[Joe for Clark]

3. Things so horrible - they stick.

Joe

[emilyg]

4. We have something in common

My Mom was in the resistance.

[Joe for Clark]

11. God bless you mother.

oh - we all have so much in common.

Joe

[Beerboy]

7. A police captain in France during the Nazi

occupation had to have done some soul-searching every single day, unless already in a Judenfrei district.
I forget the name of the book, but I saw a very hefty tome at the used bookstore examining every facet of France and French society during the Occupation.
By force of arms alone, especially the French Armee del'Air, France could easily have humiliated Hitler's nascent Wehrmacht in 1936 in the Rhein. They just didn't have the will after the mega-horror of Verdun only 25 years before, where commanders on both sides casually threw away the health and lives of 7000 men/week. For a year.
People often point to French socialism as a complete breakdown of the ability to produce manufactured goods, especially of military significance. France had the most technically and equipment-superior armed forces in the spring of 1940, but believed their own defeatist bullshit, and more-or-less accomodated having the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS run their country.
Hopefully you have some correspondence from your grandfather from that time!

[Joe for Clark]

13. France - they never had a chance.

The amazing thing is that any resistance even survived Dunkirk.

My father was a panzer hunter once - but he had a jug and 8 50 cal machine guns backing him. ANd many wings of such fighter behind him.

They did not. And they fought anyway. They were very brave.

Hitler rolled the whole continent in a few weeks - what makes you think France ever had a chance??

Joe

[Joe for Clark]

12. It really does.

My kid was out 4th of July a few years ago.

Firecrackers go off - and you never saw anybody duck so fast.

I was proud - great survival instinct.

It never ever goes away you know-

You should be proud of your family.

Do what they would do.

Joe

[Beerboy]

5. If any are alive, please thank them for me!

I've studied WW 2 for as long as I can remember, and history teaches that the aggressors initially had the upper hand and they did horrible things after they disposed of the military forces opposing them, but the savagery of fascist-Nazism was truly humbled by the overwhelming industrialized mega-savagery they brought upon themselves.
So if you have WW 2 veterans in your family still alive, please thank them for me!

[Joe for Clark]

6. They all died now.

I wrote this book about the war - That the most important legacies ever left us are those things they learned.

I know that is true.

It is all so sad.

Joe

[Beerboy]

8. Nah, it's not sad.

Some guy on the internet you don't even know and will probably never meet got to thank your family for defending mine, and vice/versa, on DU.
That's pretty cool.

[Joe for Clark]

10. I wrote at the end of my book- that the knowledge aquired from

that sacrafice - is more valuable than anything. It is.

That we had a responsibility as a people to learn from it.

I don't think we did.

Joe

[Sanctified]

14. I am not sure I agree, look at how many died in Nazi Concentration Camps

and how many prisoners died at the hands of the Japanese, both of them were terrible. But again history is decided by the winner, we put our own citizens into concentration camps, yes we fed them but would we have if we were facing the food shortage that Japan was facing?

[Joe for Clark]

15. I had family die in some camps then.

I just know - we squezed the hell out of Germany to end that war - and that was right- and most of those pows lived.

A lot of our kids in Japanese camps - they didn't live.

I know a lot of guys that came out of the war in europe- they all came to terms with Germany.

And I also know guys that came out of the Pacific fight that will not come to terms - on their death bed - with those people.

Says a lot to me.

Joe

[Sanctified]

16. Blaming everyone in a Nation for their fathers sin is painting with a broad brush.

I am thinking the Japanese have a little more to be pissed off about since we without hesitation killed women and children with fat man and little boy. We also killed several of our own soldiers who were being held in POW camps in Hiroshima.

[KharmaTrain]

18. My Father Fought In Europe

Being Jewish, he had a damn good reason...his relatives were getting killed. He left medical school in 1942 and enlisted...ending up in France and then into Germany...treating casualties from Normandy and the Battle of the Bulge as well as having seen a liberated concentration camp. He would always talk proudly of his service, but he'd rarely discuss the concentration camp experience...and no one asked.

In the late 60's, my parents went to Europe to try to see if they could track down any trace of either of their families that vanished after 1939...and found nothing. We're still trying to sort through museums and newly disclosed documents to find out. World War II was a very personal war in my family...as it was for many others. Surely there were Italians who hated Musolini and the repression of the Nazis were felt across many groups that made up the bulwark of American forces.

Vietnam and Iraq were wars with and in alien cultures. The Nazis truly wanted to expand their rule, neither Vietnam or Iraq poised such a threat...other than some rhetorical one used by politicians to support their bloodlust. These wars were waged by a country hell-bent on its "moral" superiority...a self-ordained one that has been perpetuated by our popular culture. All news is filtered as "how it affects the U.S." and thoes who are different are viewed as inferior or with suspicion. It's a viewpoint that has led to so much of the misunderstandings that are costing us daily in the stinkhole of Baghdad.