Let Us Never Be Ashamed of Triumph in War
Does the lack of commemoration of World War II anniversaries reflect growing embarrassment about the great Allied victory?
September marks the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of World War II. Throughout the month there are commemorations connected with the momentous events that marked the beginning of a war that eventually saw fifty million souls lose their lives. On September 20, just under the window where I sit writing this piece, a Spitfire flew over central London marking the sixty-ninth year since the brutal Battle of Britain.
As September got under way I expected the BBC to devote a good proportion of its broadcasting day, most particularly on September 3, the day war was declared, to commemorative programs and repeats of original soundtracks from the historic perambulations of Neville Chamberlain.
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. It wheeled out the usual spokespeople for the Anglo-Muslim community, kvetching about the proliferation of stereotypes and unfair depictions of Islam in every area of British culture. To be fair, one must be as tolerant of such programs as one is of those about anti-Semitism, but the juxtaposition of the top news story about the release of Libyan Lockerbie terrorist Abdelbasset Ali al-Megrahi by the Scottish authorities with whining representatives of Islam, complaining about the unfair focus of the media on Islamic baddies, was bizarre.
To the dismay of many Londoners, the late edition of the Russian-owned Evening Standard newspaper sported — no pun intended — a blazing headline about Chelsea Football Club on September 3, 2009, when it ought to have printed a facsimile of the 1939 edition; is this how the young of Britain should be reminded of their history?
During the week beginning September 3, television was devoid of commemorative programs, save one documentary, Outbreak, produced by the History Channel and ITV, in which famous Britons, including one Sir Richard Attenborough, reminisce about their childhood wartime experiences. Why this program was on at 10:30 p.m. is beyond me; it should have been broadcast when youngsters could watch and fully understand the damage wrought by the Luftwaffe on Britain during what Winston Churchill called his island people’s “finest hour.” Another oddity was a special about Muslim Tommies; there is nothing wrong with this but where were the programs about the staggering events of 1939-40, when as everyone breathed Europe fell like dominoes to the most terrible dictator of all time and Britain’s valiant pilots repelled the mighty Luftwaffe?
My instinct was right: there was a stinging editorial by British humorist Ben Miller, who complains in BBC Radio Times magazine that there was minimal coverage this year of the seventieth anniversary of the outbreak of war when in fact he and other young people yearn for knowledge of that period. He observes, “When celebration seems inappropriate, commemoration is all the more important,” and notes that British television has commemorated the thirtieth anniversary of the last episode of American audience favorite Fawlty Towers. He also points out that this year marks fifty years of the legendary soap opera Coronation Street and twenty years of East Enders and of David Suchet as Poirot. But his pleasure over these milestones stops there.
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Carol Gould is the Philadelphia-born author of Don’t Tread on Me: Anti-Americanism Abroad, Spitfire Girls, and A Room at Camp Pickett, a play about her mother’s experiences as a WAC in World War II; she has just completed films about black GIs and GI babies. Carol has been a panelist on BBC's Any Questions?, hosted by Jonathan Dimbleby, and is a commentator on Sky News, Press TV, the BBC World Service, and Five Live.
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24 Comments
1. 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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 5:34 am 2. Joel:For those who do not learn from history, they are doomed to repeat it.
Sep 23, 2009 - 5:35 am 3. Trainwreck:“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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 7:37 am 4. MIchael: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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 7:51 am 5. B Dubya: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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 8:23 am 6. Michael: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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 8:47 am 7. e: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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 10:08 am 8. anonymous: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).
Sep 23, 2009 - 10:17 am 9. Paul from Hamburg:#7 – It’s not complicated: If your life has no meaning, nothing is worth dying for.
Sep 23, 2009 - 10:46 am 10. Toronto Girl: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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 11:53 am 11. Dave Surls:“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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 1:43 pm 12. Michael: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.
Sep 23, 2009 - 2:40 pm 13. Oscar the Grump: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).
Sep 23, 2009 - 5:10 pm 14. Matthew:“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.
Sep 24, 2009 - 12:02 am 15. Dave Surls:“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.
Sep 24, 2009 - 3:46 am 16. misanthropicus:Decay and die, European scum – you deserve it.
Sep 24, 2009 - 7:18 am 17. Michael: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.
Sep 24, 2009 - 8:06 am 18. Lloyd: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.
Sep 24, 2009 - 7:14 pm 19. Dave Surls:“Yes, forgetting is natural.”
Yeah, I reckon that’s part of the reason Carol’s article only recieved 18 responses.
Sep 24, 2009 - 8:35 pm 20. Marie Claude:“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.
Sep 25, 2009 - 3:19 am 21. mags: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
Sep 26, 2009 - 4:32 pm 22. Mary Jackson: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.
Sep 28, 2009 - 3:50 pm 23. Mary Jackson: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.
Sep 28, 2009 - 3:55 pm 24. Avi Rosenberg: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.
Oct 13, 2009 - 6:55 am