History Condemns War Apathy

History is no longer taught in many of our secondary educational systems today.  As such, there are those among us who know nothing of our military and war involvements and have no inclination toward learning anything about them or from them.  There are also those among us who believe that any remembrance of such brutality only aids in fueling a glorification of the horrors and work to ensure our wars be forgotten and left to the past.

It is for those individuals that the following is imparted.

1.     We were attacked at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941.  Four days later on December 11, 1941 Hitler made his formal proclamation declaring war on the United States.  We were forced into this horror.

2.      At one point Nazi Germany controlled 3.3 million square miles of land.  All of it  ruled and controlled by brutal barbarism.

 3.      Hitler’s death camps killed 11,000,000 people.  While the world will, and should, never forget the holocaust of the 6,000,000 Jews slaughtered in those camps, we need to also be mindful that 5,000,000 of Hitler’s victims did not have to be Jewish to find your way into Hitler’s incinerators or in front of his firing squads.

Bravery doesn't suggest the absence of fear and terror
It states your strength of character overcame your terror

4.       The invasion of Europe took place on the beaches at Normandy France on June 6,  944.  It encompassed amphibious landings on five beaches codenamed; Juno,    Gold, Omaha, Utah and Sword.   Before the fighting would end, it would claim approximately 10,000 casualties, more than half (6,603) were Americans.

     5.       On May 9, 1945, less than a year  after the invasion at Normandy, the war in     Europe ended and Hitler’s fascist reign of terror was over.

Furthermore, between 1914 and 1946, one hundred million (100,000,000) people were killed in two world wars.

The incredible bravery and sacrifice by all those responsible for victory NEEDS to be celebrated and memorialized on that most significant of dates, June 6.   

We need to additionally commemorate the Manhattan Project.  That program developed the first nuclear weapons, dubbed “Little Boy” and “Fat Man.”  They were dropped on August 6, 1945 in Hiroshima, Japan and August 9, 1945 in Nagasaki, Japan.  Those events ended the war in the Pacific, saving untold thousands of American and allied lives, and equally as critical, halted the next war brewing for world domination by Russia.

Winston Churchill warned time and again that Joseph Stalin was as serious a threat to world peace as Adolph Hitler.  Even though Hitler and Stalin fostered differing ideologies, both hungered for world dominance through war and terror.  In July of 1945 Stalin began his quest by moving his troops toward China, with designs on conquering Japan.

George Patton and other military leaders encouraged attacking Stalin before he could gain any kind of merciless foothold in his vicious and evil campaign.  Meanwhile President Harry Truman knew that once those bombs were dropped on Japan, Stalin would become very skittish in continuing with any form of aggressive military bloodshed.  

One can only surmise how many more lives could, and would, have been lost, not just in the continuation of World War II, but in the unthinkable event of having to extinguish the horror of Stalin’s barbarism.  Such a number is, thank God, left only to the horror of our imaginations. 

What we have learned is if WE MUST FIGHT, WE MUST WIN.  More importantly, WE MUST NEVER INITIATE WAR for it MUST ALWAYS, ALWAYS be the last resort.  It’s barbarism, cruelty and waste – it’s inhumanity - is man’s greatest disgrace.

Maybe it’s time our educators, in their infinite wisdom, consider teaching history again.  Enlightening future generations as to war’s carnage just might prevent the present-day American apathy toward our war killings and deaths from continuing its march forward.  

We are now involved in seven war theaters worldwide.  We have been fighting in Afghanistan for more than a decade.  The media chooses not to report on these wars with any regularity and the American people are silent rather than outraged over our war waste in both financial resources and American lives.  There can be little doubt that a woeful lack of historical knowledge by current generations has contributed greatly to this awful malaise.  The greed and avarice of “The Forever War Crowd” has the upper-hand which does NOT purport well for America.