Neutrality, not Brutality, WWII hallmark

Only the (postwar : postmodern) grandchildren and possibly the children of the modern adults of WWII have always seen Hitler and WWII as symbols of the ultimate evil and brutality.

But relatively few of the modern world's adults saw it that way during the six long years of the war : even fewer forcefully proclaimed it that way during the war and did so from beginning to end.

If their initial wartime actions speak much louder than their later verbal recollections, almost all of the modern world's adults choose to stand around as bystanders while schoolyard bully Hitler beat up on little primary pupil Poland.

Very few neutral nations (and the neutral individuals within them) changed their minds about fighting Hitler and his Axis over the course of those six years of the war - unless they themselves were directly attacked by Hitler or his Axis.

Even then, few thought that Hitler was the ultimate symbol of evil.

Rather the adults still saw Hitler as just another invader who must be repelled, albeit an highly effective invader and hence a highly dangerous invader, one who must be stopped dead in his tracks.

The modern elites at the top of both the West and in Russia thought it quite possible that either the West or Russia might sue for a separate peace with Hitler at any point during the war - as France had already done.

That hardly sounds like people who saw Hitler as the symbol of the ultimate evil who must be stopped even if it cost all their lives to do so.

The great majority of the people murdered by Germany were killed by its armed forces rather than by the SS.

(I can repeat that sentence slowly and calmly, once you're sitting down, if its all been too great a shock to you.)

Despite that, almost all of the military and political elite in the West still thought of those German armed forces as basically like their own Allied armed forces and treated them accordingly - right up to the end of the war.

And well beyond : for many, that remains a belief until this very day.

From day one, the Allied governments' propaganda insisted that Hitler's Germany was evil but then didn't act like it was evil and so failed to convince themselves, their publics or the peoples in the neutral majority around the world.

They failed to do wartime things differently enough from the Axis to convince most that its actions were truly beyond the civilized ken.

Instead they said it was perfectly okay to go on denying Jews jobs and housing - but it was not okay to mass murder them - but we won't do much to stop that mass murder - beyond defeating Hitler - because he was also attacking us - the non-Jews.

If was as if all the modern world's adults during WWII were nothing more than modern objective W5 journalists, carefully reporting that he says "he wasn't mass killing the Jews", while she says "Hitler was too".

If WWII had in fact been anything like what W5 reporter Tom Brokaw* imagined it to have been (the ultimate battle between good and evil), I doubt whether we'd still be writing and reading about it 75 years later.

We are still fascinated by it, like white mice bait before a cobra, because WWII was in fact so filled with neutral hypocrisy that it almost crowds out all the brutality.

An endlessly multi-layered onion of a melodrama, far more Noirish than anything Hollywood could ever dream up ...
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* Tom Brokaw was born in early February 1940 and was five and two thirds years old when Japan formally surrendered.

Born just early enough to still bathe deep in the postwar modernist triumphant glow.

I strongly question whether, if he had been born even just three or four years later, he would have ever written his infamous book, "The Greatest Generation".

Boomers most likely to vote in 2016 : trouble for conservatives

The 2016 presidential election will be a massive watershed in terms of generational change among voters - one few pundits yet recognize.

Even the youngest of the once all mighty Greatest Generation will be over 75 and as we all should know, over-75s simply don't turn out to vote like those 55-75 do.

The Greatest Generation and their children (the Transitional "Boomer" Generation) have always differed the most over their varying "memories" of WWII.

No boomer ever has any direct personal memories of WWII as WWII, even if born during the war -- just too young.

But even someone born in 1939 has enough memories of the Home Front side of WWII to feel part of its triumphalist glow.

That is all that most of today's Greatest Generation voters remembers of WWII - the Home Front propaganda victories rather than the darker truth revealed out there on the front lines.

Because by November 2016, almost all still living WWII vets must be very near ninety or older - much older.

And thus hardly a big part of the voting pool.

Boomers and their parents both know (in their hearts) that the government, military, media, business and science lied repeatedly to the voters during WWII.

But only the Greatest Generation heard these lies first hand and bought into them, mostly.

To ever publicly admit that their wartime government lied is to admit that they themselves were lied to and were fools for buying it.

Few of us like to ever publicly admit we were fools.

In their hearts they know its true, but publicly - above all to their kids - the Greatest Generation finds it very hard to admit that all the powerful (and once fully trusted institutions) of WWII systemically lied to them.

This generation is still the one most likely to 'back our troops right or wrong', to trust that the big people in government 'know things we little people don't' etc.

This generation has been the conservatives' best friend.

But now their much more ornery kids are the key voting demographic --- and they don't take kindly to bull and cant ...