I've been reading Winston Churchill's 6 volume series on World War 2. Currently in volume 4, The Hinge of Fate. It got me thinking...

Early 1942 was a dark time. Smoke was still rising from Pearl Harbor and the US fleet was crippled. Japanese overwhelmed the British fortress in Singapore and were taking over key strategic areas across the Pacific. British were losing their recent gains in North Africa as Rommel counterattacked. German U-Boats were destroying military & civilian vessels all over the Atlantic, strangling shipping and starving Britain. Most of continental Europe was under Hitler's control.

This gives me a new respect for the people who not only lived through this, but had the courage to recognize evil and the tenacity to overcome it. I wonder if people today would do the same.

It's not a fair question, because the people of the 1930s did not have this courage or tenacity. They tried to "understand" and appease Hitler, didn't push back or arm in defense lest they risk violent retaliation. Part of me thinks this is a good thing, it shows that people are peaceful by nature and will go to great lengths to avoid violence. I like living in a world like that. But another part of me asks is it worth the lives of 75 million people? If people were better able to differentiate the justified use of defensive violence from the unjustified use of aggressive violence, Hitler would have been stopped before gaining military power and WW-II would have been avoided entirely.

We call them the "greatest generation" because they literally saved the world from evil. Yet their own actions helped to create that same evil and bring it into power. Of course that wasn't their intent, but 75 million lives is a tragically expensive lesson.