Sam, I gobbled this essay up. The politics and influence of World War Two are endlessly fascinating to me. You do a great job of showing how those politics have influenced the post WW2 period in which we're still living. A good thing, because none of us want to live in a post World War Three world.
In studying any history, but I think especially for the 1939-1945 period, it's crucial to keep in mind the truth that all past events were once in the future. Otherwise we can't understand why people of power made the decisions they did.
Thank you David. Really appreciate it. What really strikes me from kind of hanging out in this period is how improvised everything was - nobody quite understood the scale of what they were dealing with, colossal mistakes were made all the time, and the world was changing at a pace that's almost hard to comprehend.
As this excellent essay reflects, so much happened in a such a compacted period that I am sure one challenge will be what to exclude from your story. But one event that does link this post and the North African campaign was the Casablanca conference, early in 1943, which I believe was the first public declaration by the Allied leadership that our aim was "unconditional surrender," echoing your argument that the Nazi regime was so far beyond any norm for the way wars had ended since time immemorial, with a negotiated peace (which many argue we need to pursue in Ukraine and is resonant for how Israel is viewing its objectives vis a vis Hamas), was not appropriate.
Ike did attend. Put me down for an early purchase.
Thank you so much Larry. Yes, I think 'unconditional surrender' was really a shock at the time it was declared. Nothing like that had ever really been articulated before. And I think it really did send the message that this war was different from anything that had ever occurred.
Fascinating read. I look forward to furthering my understanding of that incredible period in (American) history when your book Is published. As for my two cents re: current day, I cannot comprehend how we (or seemingly many in our country) have become anti-Semitic. A remembrance of the WWII era, or for younger generations, reflecting on our history of that time, should have everyone saying “never again”. Perhaps it’s because the history we learned - that which my parents lived as people of The Greatest Generation - is no longer part of our public education curriculum. Scary.
Here’s a link to the death and casualties of WWII. Not that these are particularly helpful to you in your project but do illustrate some interesting realities of the war not often discussed in the West. Especially the Russian numbers relative to the US and the level of suffering which this clearly entailed and goes along way to dispel the saviour narrative we’re so inclined to perpetuate in the west.
Here’s also a US military staff officer perspective of many of the internal challenges of both sides of the conflict who offers some interesting and challenging insights. He’s also a Substack author and his latest article offers some very different interpretations on who sought peace during the conflict and why it was stopped. If nothing else he does not
offer up the typical saviour analysis most western history offers on the subject. Cheers and look forward to the publication.
Thank you Medium Bad! Yes, those numbers are just so beyond comprehension. I get shocked all over again every time I see the number of deaths in the Soviet Union and China. Had no idea there were that many deaths in Indonesia.
Engaging commentary, as always, Sam. You write so lucidly and insightfully about history.
I don't know if this is useful at all for your novel, but the notion that Nazism represented a unique evil in the 1940s and that it stands apart from other atrocities in world history has always troubled me. I don't think the scale of the Third Reich outstripped the reach of the Vatican in the 1500s and 1600s, did it? Maybe the genocidal use of technology and the seemingly unthinkable coexistence of high culture with savagery makes modern Germany stand apart, but I don't believe that is an objective truth. Spanish conquistadores represented a civilized empire, not to mention the cradle of wealth and power in Rome. The march of the U.S. Cavalry westward, followed by boarding schools, forced sterilization, and a host of other genocidal policies for indigenous people are, to my mind, of a piece with Nazism. Not to mention chattel slavery, of course. At least, to an indigenous person or to a Black person, I think the notion that Nazism represents a unique evil in human history would seem pretty puzzling.
In your search for a clear historical break around 1942, I'm reminded of how similarly American modernists viewed WWI. The radical break from the past that modernity required may have been why Hemingway, Dos Passes, Fitzgerald, and others completely ignored the 1918 influenza in their war novels. It didn't fit their narrative of newness, of the brave new world. Willa Cather is the only major American writer to include the flu in her account of the war, and I believe it was because she was a classicist who saw the present through the prism of ancient history. The Spanish Flu was just another bubonic plague -- it rendered modern medicine just as powerless as past plagues had rendered doctors with fewer scientific tools. In fact, she describes a troop ship sailing out of New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, as an ageless scene, not modern at all.
"That howling swarm of brown arms and hats and faces looked like nothing but a crowd of American boys going to a football game somewhere. But the scene was ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase . . . and on their departure they were making vows to a bronze image in the sea."
I think seeing the lines between fascism and democracy in 1942 in such stark terms requires a great deal of historical forgetting about past evils and about the troubled history of democracy itself. Don't the patterns you trace have some ancient roots? Even echoes in the not-so-ancient histories of Western colonies?
Thank you Josh. All fair points and well taken. What I'm arguing has more to do with perception than objective numbers of casualties. There was a sense with Hitler that he was so completely outside the normal bounds of politics that it shaped a very different political understanding that's still with us. That's almost a separate question from the sheer number of people who were killed. In gross aggregate terrible deaths, I think more people were killed as a direct result of Stalin and Mao's policies than of Hitler's. But there was a rationality, however perverse, in what Stalin and Mao were up to. With Hitler, there was a sense of pursuing destruction for its own sake - of being guided by utter irrationality. The fact that such a thing was possible - and that a whole nation willingly followed him - reshaped at some deep level everybody's understanding of how the world worked.
Sam - I always look forward to your articles in my inbox. This was a timely piece for me. I just finished reading The Requisitions by Samuel Lopez-Barrantes which explores the German invasion of Poland and the establishment of the Ghetto at Lodz.
WWII has always been a fascinating topic for me. I have read hundreds of histories and novels on the topic, primarily from a naval history perspective due to my career as a naval officer, but many about the war in general. An interesting correlation I have discovered is through reading Steinbeck and how his observation of both World Wars, along with many other things, led to his development of his Phalanx philosophy which was basically "group think" and how entire societies of people could be led down a path different from what they would have taken individually.
I think Joshua has a good point as well that there are many historical atrocities that are comparable to the Nazi regime. Perhaps this one seems so much more relevant due to its proximity to ourselves in history.
This reminds me of two texts that you're probably aware of, but which discuss the legacy of 1942 (the year of the Wannsee Conference) and its consequences: Jean Améry's "At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities" and Zygmunt Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust." There are clear and problematic modernist and capitalist facets to the way the Nazis approached the destruction of an entire people, and to your point, the fundamental dangers of that system are still ever-present. I find it telling that so many folks are once more interested in learning about the history of WWII, and that folks like me and you spend inordinate amounts of time writing novels about the subject. We have much to learn from that period, still. The lessons are forever easy to forget. You're fighting to the good fight, good sir--is it the same "good fight" as your grandfather? I wonder. While he fought for "good", in a literal sense, against a Manichean sense of "evil," we find ourselves in a historical moment once more ... our fight, perhaps, is about reminding others just how easy it is for society to slip.
Thank you Samuél and look forward to reading your book! I forgot that we've been messing around in the same period. I kind of didn't want to get pulled into it but then found myself getting utterly absorbed. I keep having the sense that, in some way, that was the last major historical "event" and we are still very much dealing with the psychic wounds of it.
Sam, I gobbled this essay up. The politics and influence of World War Two are endlessly fascinating to me. You do a great job of showing how those politics have influenced the post WW2 period in which we're still living. A good thing, because none of us want to live in a post World War Three world.
In studying any history, but I think especially for the 1939-1945 period, it's crucial to keep in mind the truth that all past events were once in the future. Otherwise we can't understand why people of power made the decisions they did.
Thank you David. Really appreciate it. What really strikes me from kind of hanging out in this period is how improvised everything was - nobody quite understood the scale of what they were dealing with, colossal mistakes were made all the time, and the world was changing at a pace that's almost hard to comprehend.
We should continue to do everything we can to isolate and contain that evil.
As this excellent essay reflects, so much happened in a such a compacted period that I am sure one challenge will be what to exclude from your story. But one event that does link this post and the North African campaign was the Casablanca conference, early in 1943, which I believe was the first public declaration by the Allied leadership that our aim was "unconditional surrender," echoing your argument that the Nazi regime was so far beyond any norm for the way wars had ended since time immemorial, with a negotiated peace (which many argue we need to pursue in Ukraine and is resonant for how Israel is viewing its objectives vis a vis Hamas), was not appropriate.
Ike did attend. Put me down for an early purchase.
Thank you so much Larry. Yes, I think 'unconditional surrender' was really a shock at the time it was declared. Nothing like that had ever really been articulated before. And I think it really did send the message that this war was different from anything that had ever occurred.
Fascinating read. I look forward to furthering my understanding of that incredible period in (American) history when your book Is published. As for my two cents re: current day, I cannot comprehend how we (or seemingly many in our country) have become anti-Semitic. A remembrance of the WWII era, or for younger generations, reflecting on our history of that time, should have everyone saying “never again”. Perhaps it’s because the history we learned - that which my parents lived as people of The Greatest Generation - is no longer part of our public education curriculum. Scary.
Thank you Mama!
https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-worldwide-deaths-world-war
Here’s a link to the death and casualties of WWII. Not that these are particularly helpful to you in your project but do illustrate some interesting realities of the war not often discussed in the West. Especially the Russian numbers relative to the US and the level of suffering which this clearly entailed and goes along way to dispel the saviour narrative we’re so inclined to perpetuate in the west.
https://nationalinterest.org/profile/david-t-pyne
Here’s also a US military staff officer perspective of many of the internal challenges of both sides of the conflict who offers some interesting and challenging insights. He’s also a Substack author and his latest article offers some very different interpretations on who sought peace during the conflict and why it was stopped. If nothing else he does not
offer up the typical saviour analysis most western history offers on the subject. Cheers and look forward to the publication.
Thank you Medium Bad! Yes, those numbers are just so beyond comprehension. I get shocked all over again every time I see the number of deaths in the Soviet Union and China. Had no idea there were that many deaths in Indonesia.
Engaging commentary, as always, Sam. You write so lucidly and insightfully about history.
I don't know if this is useful at all for your novel, but the notion that Nazism represented a unique evil in the 1940s and that it stands apart from other atrocities in world history has always troubled me. I don't think the scale of the Third Reich outstripped the reach of the Vatican in the 1500s and 1600s, did it? Maybe the genocidal use of technology and the seemingly unthinkable coexistence of high culture with savagery makes modern Germany stand apart, but I don't believe that is an objective truth. Spanish conquistadores represented a civilized empire, not to mention the cradle of wealth and power in Rome. The march of the U.S. Cavalry westward, followed by boarding schools, forced sterilization, and a host of other genocidal policies for indigenous people are, to my mind, of a piece with Nazism. Not to mention chattel slavery, of course. At least, to an indigenous person or to a Black person, I think the notion that Nazism represents a unique evil in human history would seem pretty puzzling.
In your search for a clear historical break around 1942, I'm reminded of how similarly American modernists viewed WWI. The radical break from the past that modernity required may have been why Hemingway, Dos Passes, Fitzgerald, and others completely ignored the 1918 influenza in their war novels. It didn't fit their narrative of newness, of the brave new world. Willa Cather is the only major American writer to include the flu in her account of the war, and I believe it was because she was a classicist who saw the present through the prism of ancient history. The Spanish Flu was just another bubonic plague -- it rendered modern medicine just as powerless as past plagues had rendered doctors with fewer scientific tools. In fact, she describes a troop ship sailing out of New York Harbor, past the Statue of Liberty, as an ageless scene, not modern at all.
"That howling swarm of brown arms and hats and faces looked like nothing but a crowd of American boys going to a football game somewhere. But the scene was ageless; youths were sailing away to die for an idea, a sentiment, for the mere sound of a phrase . . . and on their departure they were making vows to a bronze image in the sea."
I think seeing the lines between fascism and democracy in 1942 in such stark terms requires a great deal of historical forgetting about past evils and about the troubled history of democracy itself. Don't the patterns you trace have some ancient roots? Even echoes in the not-so-ancient histories of Western colonies?
Thank you Josh. All fair points and well taken. What I'm arguing has more to do with perception than objective numbers of casualties. There was a sense with Hitler that he was so completely outside the normal bounds of politics that it shaped a very different political understanding that's still with us. That's almost a separate question from the sheer number of people who were killed. In gross aggregate terrible deaths, I think more people were killed as a direct result of Stalin and Mao's policies than of Hitler's. But there was a rationality, however perverse, in what Stalin and Mao were up to. With Hitler, there was a sense of pursuing destruction for its own sake - of being guided by utter irrationality. The fact that such a thing was possible - and that a whole nation willingly followed him - reshaped at some deep level everybody's understanding of how the world worked.
Cheers,
Sam
Yes, I didn't think about Stalin or Mao. You always make me think differently, Sam!
Sam - I always look forward to your articles in my inbox. This was a timely piece for me. I just finished reading The Requisitions by Samuel Lopez-Barrantes which explores the German invasion of Poland and the establishment of the Ghetto at Lodz.
WWII has always been a fascinating topic for me. I have read hundreds of histories and novels on the topic, primarily from a naval history perspective due to my career as a naval officer, but many about the war in general. An interesting correlation I have discovered is through reading Steinbeck and how his observation of both World Wars, along with many other things, led to his development of his Phalanx philosophy which was basically "group think" and how entire societies of people could be led down a path different from what they would have taken individually.
I think Joshua has a good point as well that there are many historical atrocities that are comparable to the Nazi regime. Perhaps this one seems so much more relevant due to its proximity to ourselves in history.
Lots to think on here.
Thank you Matthew and nice to know more about your background. Look forward to reading Samuél's book! I should check out Steinbeck's war writing!
This reminds me of two texts that you're probably aware of, but which discuss the legacy of 1942 (the year of the Wannsee Conference) and its consequences: Jean Améry's "At the Mind's Limits: Contemplations by a Survivor on Auschwitz and its Realities" and Zygmunt Bauman's "Modernity and the Holocaust." There are clear and problematic modernist and capitalist facets to the way the Nazis approached the destruction of an entire people, and to your point, the fundamental dangers of that system are still ever-present. I find it telling that so many folks are once more interested in learning about the history of WWII, and that folks like me and you spend inordinate amounts of time writing novels about the subject. We have much to learn from that period, still. The lessons are forever easy to forget. You're fighting to the good fight, good sir--is it the same "good fight" as your grandfather? I wonder. While he fought for "good", in a literal sense, against a Manichean sense of "evil," we find ourselves in a historical moment once more ... our fight, perhaps, is about reminding others just how easy it is for society to slip.
Thank you Samuél and look forward to reading your book! I forgot that we've been messing around in the same period. I kind of didn't want to get pulled into it but then found myself getting utterly absorbed. I keep having the sense that, in some way, that was the last major historical "event" and we are still very much dealing with the psychic wounds of it.