Good war?

Christian Century, June 19, 2002

GOOD WAR? Retired journalist Paul Duke worries about the current fascination with World War II as evidenced in the popularity of movies like Steven Spielberg's Saving Private Ryan and books like Tom Brokaw's The Greatest Generation. Duke thinks the public response has sentimentalized the war, giving it a "Norman Rockwellized" image, as historian Paul Fussell put it.

It was a war in which it was easy to sort out the good and bad guys. But he reminds us that about 60 million people died in the war, averaging out to 27,000 per day. One American regiment in the Normandy invasion on D-Day lost 90 percent of its men upon attack and another division lost 100 percent of its forces in six weeks. The veterans of the war themselves have not been given to sugarcoating it, nor have they nominated themselves for "the greatest generation" status. "The story of any war is one of tragedy and heartache, heroism and treachery," says Duke (Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 2002).