The world has changed so much just within a single lifetime that its just staggering. I find it hard to imagine a time before computers, but my own Mom lived in a time before television…even radio wasn’t that common when she was born, and cars were still curiosities, not every day parts of life.

War and military service has changed incredibly in that time as well. When WWI started, warfare was still perceived by many as a noble pursuit, full of great honour. A country in those days could be at war and the average citizen would hardly know it- war was fought on battlefields, sort of like football games with death and no penalty flags. By the end of WWI that had all changed: warfare was mustard gas and machine guns, dysentry and millions of dead. By the end of WWII, war was all about destroying the enemies manufacturing infrastructure and their “will to fight”.

As for Germany getting off “easy”: there are a lot of historians that believe that Hitler’s and fascism’s rise to power would never have happened if the Treaty of Versalles repayment terms hadn’t bankrupted Germany. The main reason that Hitler came to power was that the economy of Germany in 1929 was decimated: you needed a shopping cart full of money (literally) to buy a loaf of bread. Taxes were totally crippling, and something like 50% of their gross domestic product left the country to pay back their war debt. The people felt they were being destroyed for the sins of their leaders, and got increasingly angry at the rest of the world. And when Hitler’s Nazi party came to power in 1929, they literally turned the economy around on a dime. I imagine that’s a lot of the reason why German citizens turned a blind eye to the excesses later in the war…but personally, I can’t imagine myself living in Germany in 1942 (for example) and not being desperate to get out.

One thing that isn’t talked about very much were the anti-Nazi movements in Germany, and the anti-Nazi politicians that desperately tried to get help from Britain and the rest of the world to over-throw Hitler in the years before WWII really started. Those anti-Nazi’s were literally hung out to dry by the British politicians at the time, who felt they could establish positive economic relations with Hitler. And when they made their last assasination attempt (of something over a dozen such attempts) against Hitler, the Nazi party rounded up something like 5,000 of them and executed them. Many of them were tortured horribly. One of the conspirators against Hitler was, apparently, Erwin Rommel. He was forced to commit suicide or face trial as a traitor, which would have almost certainly meant the trial and torture/execution of his family.

But the average soldier, Canadian, American…even German, isn’t a political science major. In a great many cases, they were conscripts, and I imagine a lot of them desperately wanted to be somewhere else. Somewhere without bullets and bombs being fired at them. They were trained to not over-think, to simply follow orders: if anything was explained to them, it was in the simplest black and white, us and them terms. I imagine some believed what they were told, but a lot probably just wanted to survive to the next day. And despite that, they did an inhumanly difficult job, and in a great many cases did so with great bravery and even (amazingly) honour.

If a war broke out today in, say, eastern Europe…and if it started to involve France and Britain and other “friendly” nations…how would I react if Canada activated the draft? Imagine I wasn’t 40 something and was drafted- could I be brave enough? Would I be the guy pulling my injured buddy out of the line of fire, or the guy running away? And what if I thought the war was ethically wrong? And when it was all over, could I go back to being an “ordinary” person, and be a good, kind human being?

To me, I guess, the part about our veterans that amazes me and makes me respect them goes beyond the “justness” of the cause they fought for. Its the fact that they performed that service for their country, and in some cases did so with great heroism…then came home, and lived as normal people. Thats why the Vietnam war was, in my mind, so tragic: the soldiers who served there were just as heroic (or not heroic- there were undoubtedly lots of shady / cruel actions performed by soldiers in WWII) as soldiers in other wars, yet they were almost universally reviled.

One thing for sure…I appreciate the sacrifice the veteran’s made, and which the folks in military service make today. Like you say, Shane, its thanks to them that I live in a free country and can complain about whatever I want- including the latest war or “military action” or whatever its called this week 😉