D-Day, Heroism and Dangerous Illusions

Do we honor the dead, or ourselves?

I was watching a televised broadcast of world leaders speaking in Normandy today; they were commemorating all the fallen heroes who fought to liberate Europe from Adolph Hitler and the Nazis during World War II. I did wonder, however, how many of these speakers, or their followers back home, would have voluntarily put their own lives on the line, or would do so if similar circumstances were to arise today.

An estimated 60 million people perished in that war, according to the latest estimates I’ve read. That’s more than the population of most European countries; it’s more than the population of California, Oregon and Washington State combined, or the entire West Coast of the United States. The tally includes deaths in battle as well as civilian deaths related to the war, including by disease and starvation. It’s a lot of people.

But something nags at me every time I hear pious leaders remind us of the sacrifices others have made so we can be free, especially when we honor soldiers, some of whom may have engaged in atrocities themselves, and who largely were not there by choice anyway, but were conscripted to fight. Western allies gathered in Normandy today to honor fallen soldiers, but we can safely assume that many people would not fight now unless compelled to do so. We need only look at which states in Europe have abandoned the military draft to get a sense of the problem. As of today, only nine European countries have a draft, typically smaller ones or those closest to Russia. We dismantled our draft between 1971 and 1973, largely in response to protests over the Vietnam War, as well as the fact that hundreds of thousands of young men at the time had simply refused to report for induction after receiving their draft notices, which threatened to overwhelm prosecutors. We still have registration for the draft, but no draft per se, and elite universities often bar the Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) and/or military recruiting to this day. Volunteer armies? No one believes in those in times of real duress. We just don’t believe there will be enough volunteers willing to fight and die for freedom and democracy should a wider war break out; we might be as thin as the French Resistance.

There is a further softness to all this rhetoric about brave soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice to preserve freedom (although many certainly do deserve such accolades). Russia speaks of The Great Patriotic War, and their young men certainly suffered the heaviest toll of any of the Allied nations during the war. The estimates of Russian dead during that war, including civilian deaths by disease and starvation, are themselves between 10 and 20 million. But Russia and its leaders were a leading cause of the war, in particular after the Molotov-Ribbentrop protocol dividing Central and Eastern Europe between German and Soviet control was signed in Moscow on August 23, 1939, eight days before Germany invaded Poland. Russia followed from the East about three weeks later, occupying its “share” of Poland.

I have to ask what were the foot soldiers on the ground in Germany and the Soviet Union thinking at the time. Young German men, many of whom were Nazi sympathizers and many who were not, often were drunk with power and success early in the war, but the Wehrmacht began drafting younger teenagers to fight and die as the war prospects turned bleak. Were these younger soldiers willing Nazi aggressors, or had many been brain-washed at a tender age? And, it’s well-known that in some battles, particularly for Stalingrad, special commands at the rear of Soviet Red Army units would execute those who retreated on the spot, hence the soldiers had no choice but to fight and die at the front lines. This is not quite the same as heroism and self-sacrifice. It’s rumored that Russia does this to some of its recruits in Ukraine at the present time, and it’s well-known that hundreds of thousands of young, draft-age men in both Ukraine and Russia have fled their countries to avoid conscription. That’s a choice none of our draft-age young men in America have to face, not yet, but it does challenge any simplistic, even banal, definition of what it means to be brave.

I saw President Biden and other leaders say, in effect, that they are humbled by the nobility and sacrifice of soldiers who died during World War II. I did not hear him or others talk about the failures of leadership by leaders of the time to prevent the war, however. So often, we send young men to die in a fool’s mission. Stopping Nazi aggression certainly was not a fool’s mission, but how did the Western democracies let things get to that desperate stage in history?

I’m deeply suspicious of any laudatory political rhetoric. It’s like universities that give honorary Doctorates to important writers, activists and intellectuals – what they’re really saying is not merely how great the people are that they are honoring, but how great they themselves are in recognizing this other greatness, and how honored and grateful the recipients should be to be honored by this or that great university or institution! It’s really self-aggrandizement by the universities or institutions as much as honoring any individual or any other institution.

Similarly, people such as Biden, or Macron, or whomever, are telling the world how important they are by their appearances in Normandy today. They do hold important positions, but on a personal level there’s no reason to suspect they’re better than anyone else, and certainly not as good as many of the worthy people they are honoring. The halo effect of honoring worthy people should be evident to all.

Yes, we must remember the fallen in Normandy, but let’s admit that many of us are glad that we are not the ones who had to die. Alas, talk is cheap, including writing Substacks, but that shouldn’t detract from any validity these words have.