I've been watching WW2 in HD on netflix. Its epic. WW2 could only have happened at that particular time in history. All the conditions were right for it to happen. Its amazing how events line themselves up to cause something so large.
In particular, I'm fascinated with the amount of patriotism America had at the time. The Nation knew that they all needed to do their part to rid the world of evil. It wasn't a war over resources, it was a war between good and evil. The most morally justified war in history.
Take Vietnam; so much controversy arose from our participation in that war. People didnt support our troops and our cause. We lost that war. There were other conditions that made us lose that war as well, but lack of morale is huge during wartime.
In WW2, our troops had the entire country and our allied countries supporting them. Morale was through the roof. The war machine produced faster and more efficiently than ever and we eventually won the war. Incredible.
I've been interested in how resources, groups, events, etc all stack up to make a certain thing occur. WW2 is one of the largest events in history. A global conflict that caused most of the worlds powers to unite with or against each other in a war that lasted from 1939 to 1945.
I think WW2 is an amazing event that was very real. Fuck Call of Duty. It mystifies and makes WW2 and war in general a surreal thing that is very distant from the audience when in fact it is more real than most of our everyday lives.
The reasons we can indulge in consumer luxuries, have same sex marriages, go on vacation, take our children to the zoo, do anything in this country is because we fought for that freedom. People have died to allow us those freedoms. If you know of anybody close to you who has died, I want you to recall that experience now. How did you feel when they died? How old were you? Where were you when you heard? Now think to yourself, in one hour while storming a beach head in the Pacific campaign, the US army lost more than 300 marines. Thats one beach head and one hour. Imagine being on the subway, all those people die..In just one hour. This happened regularly and with more intense losses throughout the Pacific Campaign on just the American side alone.
It blows my mind. Im unable to even understand how it must feel to be living in a Nation while its participating in such a disastrous war.
But I can say that I'm really proud of my country. I know that if something like this were to happen again, we'd give it everything we had to protect what is right in our world.
