Let Us Never Be Ashamed of Triumph in War
Miller castigates British television for air-brushing World War II as if it is something about which we should almost be embarrassed. He points out that the last surviving veteran of the First World War, Harry Patch, described war as “the calculated and condoned slaughter of human beings” and “not worth one life,” but at the same time was a staunch supporter of the Royal British Legion Poppy Appeal.
Frankly, I disagree with old Harry. As I said on the BBC’s Woman’s Hour in a special August segment on women and war, some conflicts are necessary. Had I had to give up my life to save the world from Hitler, I would have done so without hesitation. It horrified me that in December 2005 I stood on the balcony of Canary Wharf in London’s Docklands and to my disbelief a group of young British-born Muslims asked me who had bombed the docks. When I told them “the Luftwaffe,” they continued to be baffled. Yes, perhaps it is the educational system that has left a generation bereft of knowledge of its own history, but as Ben Miller says in his editorial, it is vital for Britons of every generation to hunt down each nugget and jewel of programming about the Second World War. He asserts, “The Second World War is one of the few conflicts where we can be fairly sure we were on the right side. And seventy years on, perhaps we could all do with a history lesson.”
Indeed. Just as British television has had absolutely nothing on the five main channels about the Nazi Holocaust on National Holocaust Memorial Day over the past few years, so has British television in September 2009 had a pitifully low number of programs educating the public about the cataclysmic events that culminated in the defeat of fascism. If we ignore history the catastrophes of the past will be repeated. Where was a rerun of the superb series The Winds of War? Where was a screening of Stalag 17, The Gathering Storm, or Sophie’s Choice?
An embittered letter-writer complained to the Evening Standard earlier this summer that Saving Private Ryan is irritatingly U.S.-centric and portrays D-Day as an exclusively American affair, as if Britain and Canada made no contribution whatsoever to the Normandy landings. The film does, after all, depict the events at Omaha Beach, one of two American landing sectors. If the London letter-writers want to see the heroism of their lads commemorated, then the British film industry should set about making a motion picture of the magnitude of Spielberg’s epic.
Perhaps the absence of wartime material on British television relates to a self-consciousness that has crept into Britain and that scares me. Workers are intimidated if they wish to wear a crucifix. Religious faith is regarded as an aberration. Villagers are threatened — as was my accountant’s — if they want to have big British flags on their lawns. A conference I attended on Remembrance Day 2007 was at the receiving end of a tirade from a Muslim woman who said RAF pilots are just as offensive to her as we in the West find young suicide bombers strapped with explosives.
One ray of hope that Britain has not lost the plot is the fact that as I file this article the World War II favorite song “We’ll Meet Again,” sung by Dame Vera Lynn, the “Forces Sweetheart” who is now ninety-two, is number one in the charts. She has made history as the oldest Top of the Pops number one artist. My goddaughter thinks the cover of my World War II novel, Spitfire Girls, depicting the brave women of the Air Transport Auxiliary, is “cool,” so perhaps Britons do cherish the legacy of their wartime valor.
I suggest the BBC, liberal television executives, and the left-leaning media wake up and realize that, like Ben Miller, our youth do want to hear about the war that kept the Nazis from our doorstep more than they want to be lectured about the charms of Sharia and Scheherazade.
Absolutely no need to remind anyone about the stupidity and fecklessness of Neville Chamberlin and the self appointed “Best and Brightest” of the British political establishment in the 1930′s. Too many historical parallels.
For those who do not learn from history, they are doomed to repeat it.
“All the stories have been told
Of kings and days of old,
But there’s no England now.
All the wars that were won and lost
Somehow don’t seem to matter very much anymore.”
-The Kinks
No wonder WWII commemorations are so sparse in England; your history has been rendered meaningless, as the left wing in your country and their BBC media is seeing to it that little by little your culture is tossed in the dustbin of history since it is offensive and oppressive. Britain’s “finest hour” is now as remote and mythical as King Arthur and his knights of the round table.
The only role for English natives is genuflection before their Muslim overlords, and walking the thin line as to what does and does not offend Islam. This is why:
1. Banks cannot give out “piggy banks”
2. crosses are ripped off hospital walls, and hospitals can no longer serve hot cross buns
3. The British national flag is verboten in many locations
4. A 14 year old girl can be arrested and charged with a “level IV racial offense” for asking to be switched from a project group comprising “Asians” who were ignoring her.
5. Schools cannot teach the Holocaust or crusades
Meanwhile, Prince Big Ears says the only thing you have to fear is global warming, so stop having kids and don’t drive your cars.
Too many in America as well as the rest of the west believe that no war is worth while. They have been coddled in a safe cocoon that shields them from the results of not standing tall. Slavery is not gone forever from this world and defeat to some totalitarians in the world today would lead to nothing less than that.
I believe that there is a shamefully large group who don’t want commemoration of WWII. They are well aware of how cowardly they are in comparison to their grandparents. They just don’t want to have everyone, including their own children, have that particular flag flown in their face.
Commemorate?
WWI and WWII are the horror shows of the last 100 years.
Unmeasurable conceit coupled with the feckless antics of our own progressive types brought us the Treaty of Versailles and the German supported Leninist Soviet Union. WWI and its aftermath virually assured the coming of WWII. The doddering progressive FDR, supremely confident that he could “handle” Uncle Joe, was outflanked at every turn by Stalin and we fought an unmarked cold war for nearly 50 years after.
Commemorate? Sorry, not a happy time for me.
Remember? You bet your ass.
Commemorate the men that fought? You bet. Happy times? No, but if we don’t Commemorate then we WILL forget and that would be shameful in the extreme.
As trainwreck said, to many children WWII has no more meaning than King Arthur and they problably know a lot more about Arthur.
For some insight into the madness on why Liberals would like to forget WWII, I would recommend people watch the DS9 Episode 133 Statistical Probabilities.
The station commander’s son Jake and some brilliant mathematicians determine that surrendering to a seemingly unbeatable invading threat would cause less death and suffering than attempting to fight for their own ideals. Jake does his best to convince his father not to fight and goes as far to try to sabotage him.
I think it provides some excellent insight into why Liberals can become so completely backwards even to the morals they think they have.
Islamophobia is an invented phenomenon. A phobia is an unreasonable fear. There is nothing unreasonable about fearing Islam (not radical Islam or Islamism, but ISLAM).
#7 – It’s not complicated: If your life has no meaning, nothing is worth dying for.
Sometimes you have to go to war in order to achieve peace. I don’t know who originally said that, but I heard it from my mother a dozen times growing up. She lived through the Great Depression 3 major wars and firmly believed that democracy was worth fighting for, something that my so many of my generation is quick to dismiss.
“No such thing: to my astonishment, BBC Radio Four spent exactly seven minutes on the milestone and decided to offer on the historic morning of September 3 a program and interactive debate about Islamophobia.”
Hey, WWII was a long time ago. To the kids of today, it’s ancient history. Nothing wrong with that. That’s just the way things work.
There is something wrong with that David. The next generation will have to learn the same leasons all over again, usually with great loss of life. Some things are better learned NOT by personal experience.
I taught for twenty years in the Los Angeles school district. I remember on one occassion talking to my inner city students about how I love America and why. They sat in total amazement as I told them of how the soldiers of this country fought and died by the thousands, in WWII, and as I result I am alive today. Also, not only that, this country took me, a poor refugee child, in and gave me a home. It gave me life and a way to live it.
I think that it is high time we commemorate what our soldiers died for during the war (America also).
“Does the lack of commemoration of World War II anniversaries reflect growing embarrassment about the great Allied victory”
Not in australia, it doesn’t. Heck – our national day of remembrance commemorates a _defeat_ and we’re still proud of it (no, I’m not being sarcastic – I have no problem with it). Vietnam is still a sticking point – but for the most part I think australians see the outcome of the WW’s in a pretty positive light.
glenn -
“Absolutely no need to remind anyone about the stupidity and fecklessness of Neville Chamberlin and the self appointed “Best and Brightest” of the British political establishment in the 1930’s. Too many historical parallels.”
Er, no. Not self-appointed, they were elected. Chamberlain made a mistake, to be sure. But he wasn’t alone. The embarrassing reality of the appeasement policy is that it was the majority position. Most of the anti-nazi sentiment (and anti-japanese, down this way) was coming from the left, and they were out of power. Which emphasizes why churchill was such an important figure. He stuck his neck out and faced off against his own political allies to push for a very unpopular war. He even had to struggle to convince the US to back him.
“There is something wrong with that David.”
I don’t think there is anything particularly wrong with it. No one gives a hoot about the Napoleonic Wars, because they happened a long time ago. Shoot, I bet most people couldn’t tell you ANYTHING about those wars other than the fact that they were named after Napoleon.
WWII is starting to move into that territory, as the years roll by.
Seems pretty natural to me.
Decay and die, European scum – you deserve it.
Yes, forgetting is natural. It is also disastrous. That is a perfect example that can be found in history.
I know history as it is taught in many schools would put one off but history is important. All the “social science” crap could be cut out and real history taught then people might understand.
History teaches how people react and why. People today are no smarter then they were 70 years ago, indeed no smarter than they were 2,000 years ago. We can learn from their mistakes and from their successes.
If one doesn’t know what was done in the past and why then we have no idea what will be done next year or 20 years from now. That is why so many inane policies have been enacted over the years. People relearning what our ancestors discovered over the centuries and eons with the concomitant cost in treasure and misery and lives.
Not every anniversary has to celebrated in depth. Stick to major anniversaries like 25, 50, 75. Not every event in that war needs to be celebrated as heavily as you want, either. ["70 years since the M-4 Sherman tank was invented!"]
And if you watch as much cable TV history as I do, WWII is never off the air. One blog I read refers to a cable history station as “The Hitler Channel” because that’s about the only subject they cover.
Commemorations are for reminding folks lest they forget, not adding yet another rerun of a documentary or another speech opportunity by a politician. We haven’t forgotten WWII, we’re saturated with it.
“Yes, forgetting is natural.”
Yeah, I reckon that’s part of the reason Carol’s article only recieved 18 responses.
“Decay and die, European scum – you deserve it.”
cher Alceste, as I told you, we don’t fest the wars breakings, but the ends of the war, otherwise we should give Hitler a street name too for the great event !
mournings don’t help to reconstruct
it’s because you never were invaded by foreigners that you’re festing the day you enter into a war, but the British and us, have fst 2000 years of the kind of stories, so that would mean that we should fest each day in a year for having entered into a war !
notice that we don’t fest the defeats too !
But one can notice how well intentionnned you are though !
Sorry, the generation that has to tell you thank you is passing away, don’t expect that the new generations will still congratulate your generosity, if they can read that you were/are bashing/anathemising them.
Must of missed a few things.
http://www.mediaweek.co.uk/news/929977/BBC-marks-70th-anniversary-WWII-free-online-archive/
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00mpqql
http://www.inpublishing.co.uk/news/articles/bbc_history_launches_wwii_bookazine.aspx
Here we go again. What utter twaddle. Still, being an American, Carol Gould must come to these things late.
First off, WWW2 is compulsory – get that – compulsory as part of the National Curriculum in schools. So if they learn nothing else, they learn that.
Secondly, why celebrate or commemorate the outbreak of the war? It makes no sense. On the other hand, and more logically, when it was the fiftieth anniversary of VE day – you know, when we won it – TV was wall-to-wall war, so much so that pundits joked that it would all be over by Christmas.
“1. Banks cannot give out “piggy banks”
2. crosses are ripped off hospital walls, and hospitals can no longer serve hot cross buns
3. The British national flag is verboten in many locations
4. A 14 year old girl can be arrested and charged with a “level IV racial offense” for asking to be switched from a project group comprising “Asians” who were ignoring her.
5. Schools cannot teach the Holocaust or crusades”
Every single one of these statements is completely untrue, though widely believed by ignorant Americans.
don’t expect that the new generations will still congratulate your generosity
Generosity? That’s a laugh. The US, when it finally got in on the act, lent us the money, and we paid it back, and plenty more. Moreover, their belated war effort boosted their economy big time. America entered the war for its own interests entirely, purely coincidentally in ours, and not a moment before its own interests – economic as well as military – were served.
Another of Carol Gould’s utterly banal and factually flawed diatribes.
It may have escaped Carol Gould’s attention, but we tend to commemorate peace – or the steps towards peace, such as the D-Day landings – rather than the acts of aggression and the outbreaks of war.
It may also have escaped her notice that here in the UK commemorations are centred around Remembrance Sunday – which although originally started to remember the WWI armistice, now remembers all wars. Remembrance Sunday is always held on the second Sunday of November .. that day when I suppose she is locked away in her little cupboard, too busy fuming about wholly imaginary acts of anti-Americanism, to notice that most of the country turns out at parades and memorials around the country to remember the glorious dead of all wars.
Far from remembering less, we actually remember more than ever – witness the fact that the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month is now marked to the point where the country comes to a complete standstill for two minutes of complete silence.
The fact that Carol Gould would actually want to commemorate hostility, rather than peace and those who died, speaks volumes of vile aggressive nature.
Love this blog, really loved reading..