I'm 'just starting a book titled Taking Sides...Clashing Views on Political Issues by George McKenna and Stanley Feingold. It discusses a lot of what is going on today. I never would have bought this book but a while back my daughter brought me a boxes of books that her employer had given to her that she didn't want anymore. This lady bought books on any subject that interested her and was moving to a smaller place so she downsized her book library and since my daughter doesn't care to read that much and knows I do she brought the boxes to me to look through. I was interested in quite a few of them and after I enjoy reading them I will probably donate them to our local Library.
My current book that I am reading is called" Killers of the Flower Moon" It's a true story about the Osage Murders of the 19 20's and the Birth of the FBI. The Osage Indians were among the wealthiest people on earth at the time.
My way of paying tribute to the American soldiers who fought and often lost their lives in WWII to rid us from evil. My uncle fought on the other side of the frontline all the way toward the Caucasus. I found out that he was killed near Krasnodar off the Kuban bridgehead. As a machine gunner he was attracting enemy fire and a Russian bullet or two homed in on his head. I dealt intensively with the Russian campaign and in particular with the battles of Heeresgruppe Süd (Army Group South). I also read the war diary written by one of his fellow combatants which answered my question of how a soldier like him managed to survive two years on the frontline. I then thought it was about time I took a closer look at what was happening on the western front and how the Allied forces fought their way from Sicily via France to Nazi Germany. The last book I have just finished reading is "The Liberator. One WWII Soldier's 500-Day Odyssey from the Beaches of Sicily to the Gates of Dachau" (concentration camp) by Alex Kershaw. Another very impressive book about the time and events also written in the form of a diary but also including the views of the enemy as well as those of SHAPE. As an infantryman from the Thunderbirds (157th Infantry Regiment, 45th Infantry Division) based at Fort Sill in Oklahoma Felix Sparks miraculously survived the war combating in more than ten major battles. He was the only officer with the rank of Colonel who risked his life often fighting directly in the line of fire. He commanded the unit that arrived at the gates of Dachau, saw freight cars full of bodies, and freed it from the SS. He didn't like the European architecture and said that any other American city beat Paris. After the war he became General.
I am a big fan of Kershaw's books. Most anything pertaining to WWII in Europe interests me. Some of the Pacific stuff as well.
Today I am reading a western novel and after lunch today I started another book, "To Our Children's Children." And it has to do with preserving Family History for generations to come. Something not everyone wants to do but something I had started some years ago and dropped it because of illness. I used to do serious reading but now prefer simple plots, quick conclusions, and a little romance doesn't hurt a good story.
I won't be reading much of anything until winter sets in and I'm forcibly stuck in the house. I'm an outdoor type and have a problem sitting still. I call winter readin' season.
Me, too. I'm an outdoorer in all seasons but I can also sit still - afterwards. I don't read for hours so it doesn't matter what season it is.
It is interesting to read your perspective on the war and it would be equally interesting to know how WWII is taught to today's German school children now that the vast majority of the combatants are gone. About 1965 when I was in the Air Force I was sent to Wiesbaden Air Base for temporary duty and a friend who was of German heritage and spoke fluent German showed me around. Some bars were off limits to Americans at the time and I just got the impression that some Germans were unhappy with our presence and the outcome of the war since it had only been over for about 20 years. Former Nazis were still bitter I'm sure. This was during Fasching and walking past the open door of a bar I saw inside what looked to me like a man in an SS uniform partying.
Ed, I wish you had said more clearly what precisely you find interesting about my perspective? I can only speculate now. Are you implying that not all Germans welcomed the fact that we were liberated by the Allied forces, the US in particular? In my opinion, the vast majority did even at that time. Millions of civilians wanted to flee to the American sector, as soldiers they preferred US POW camps way more to Russian ones. Most people in the American sector got on well with the Americans, women had voluntary (in contrast to what was happening in the Russian sector) relationships with them, people enjoyed their Lucky Strike and chewing gum, the music and lifestyle American soldiers brought along. And don't forget the Berlin airlift which is celebrated each year by the Berliners. Lots of gratitude right until today. That said, there has always been a (tiny) minority up until today who took offence at Germany being an occupied country. You were saying "some Germans" and that is true. Even after the Two Plus Four Agreement that prepared reunification in 1990 and reduced the number of US soldiers on German soil there were and still are those people who don't want to have US atomic weapons on German territory. Yet, again, the vast majority and those benefiting from the presence of US troops in particular have been shocked at Trump's plan to reduce the US military by 12,000. So they are not unhappy about the US presence in Germany. On the contrary. The presence of US troops is one issue, the outcome of the war is another. It took several decades for some Germans to accept that their country had lost the war. President Weizsäcker's famous speech in 1985 marked a turning point in the understanding and remembrance of WWII: "Many were simply grateful that the bombing at night and fear had passed and that they had survived. Others felt first and foremost grief at the complete defeat suffered by their country. Some Germans felt bitterness about their shattered illusions, whilst others were grateful for the gift of a new start[...] Yet with every day something became clearer, and this must be stated on behalf of all of us today: the 8th of May was a day of liberation. It liberated all of us from the inhumanity and tyranny of the National-Socialist regime. Nobody will, because of that liberation, forget the grave suffering that only started for many people on 8 May. But we must not regard the end of the war as the cause of flight, expulsion and deprivation of freedom. The cause goes back to the start of the tyranny that brought about war. We must not separate 8 May 1945 from 30 January 1933. There is truly no reason for us today to participate in victory celebrations. But there is every reason for us to perceive 8 May 1945 as the end of an aberration in German history, an end bearing seeds of hope for a better future." ( I've highlighted the crucial sentence because that's exactly what a lot of diehards did.) This speech had an enormous impact and Nobel laureate Heinrich Böll demanded that that speech ought to go down in the history books, be included in school books and would be the best introduction to dealing with the Third Reich for young people. And, as a matter of fact, school pupils are taught along the lines of the Weizsäcker speech. So you must have bumped into some stick-in-the-muds then and you'd probably meet those people today but they are a minority. As for the SS uniform, this has been forbidden by law in Germany ever since the end of the war in contrast to other countries. Carnival does not make a difference. You say it "looked to you like one". It does take a bit of knowledge to identify a SS uniform free of doubt because there were several variants. Even in wartime tankers were confused with SS men just because they were also wearing a black uniform.
What I found interesting about your perspective is how it contrasts with what I thought I had observed when I was there over 50 years ago. Of course things change over time, and I assure you there was no intent on my part to be negative. I'm glad you mentioned the speech of 1985 because I doubt that many Americans know about it including myself, and it takes the "perspective" of a German who is more familiar with their history than non-Germans to be aware of it. Speaking of the German perspective of the war, I saw a German movie with English sub-titles about German soldiers on the eastern front when they were ordered to fall back after it was realized that it was a lost cause. Some were left behind when transportation was exhausted. Very sad indeed.
When I was a flight nurse stationed in Bordeaux, France, our flight was essentially to Chataroux, and then on to Wiesbaden, and then reversed. Of course we were often called upon to divert to Libya or Saudi Arabia and even Turkey if necessary to fetch service personnel. We would often have to lay over in Wiesbaden several days while the planes underwent maintenance and medical paper work was finalized for patients flying back to France. While in Germany, I never encountered anywhere that was off limits to American service personnel and enjoyed that city. However, in all parts of Germany that I ultimately visited, I felt an underlying tension at times. As though the German Nationals seemed not to know what to expect from us. Nothing was as bad as how we were treated by the Swiss. Those people were just overtly rude and unkind to American military,even though we wore civilian clothes in that country. I thought the French in Paris were bad until I encountered the Swiss. We mistakenly had bombed Schaffhausen in Switzerland during WWII. It was located along the railway border by which Hitler required as a supply route. No, we did not deliberately bomb them but they never forgave us. Those who welcomed us the most were the Italians and Greeks. I had a terrific time in those countries. Of course when I was over there, it was only 10years since the end of the war and many places were still bombed out. What an eye opener that was to me and I still have trouble wrapping my mind around how mankind can do this to each other.
I am about to sit down with a book called Mission 27. It is about the NY Yankees winning their 27th world series game in 2009. Being a big baseball fan, and having spent many a day in the old Yankee Stadium, I am looking forward to reading it.