PERSPECTIVE ON "THE GREATEST GENERATION"

I’m starting the new year with a lingering question I’ve wanted to ask reporter Tom Brokaw for decades. (Well, OK, two questions starting with why he didn't attend Joe Foss' memorial service, considering what Joe did for him for decades.)

Actually, I did post that question on Brokaw’s Facebook page but never got the courtesy of a response.

The burr beneath the proverbial saddle is Brokaw’s 1998 best seller, The Greatest Generation.  In the past twenty years the phrase has become so ingrained in the national psyche that it’s used reflexively, as in “an involuntary and nearly instantaneous movement in response to a stimulus.”  That’s one of the dictionary definitions, and it fits “TGG” perfectly.

Anytime the World War II generation of Americans is referenced, you can set your calendar by the certainty of a TGG comment.  More often than not, it seems to come from people who are too young to have grown up around “War Two” veterans, which might make the situation even worse. Absent any depth of knowledge of the era, let alone the wider panorama of American history, the knee-jerk reaction is unlikely to be modified.

But to return to the main point:

Does Tom Brokaw REALLY believe The Greatest Generation hype?

It's totally unsupportable.  In fact, Joe often said, "We weren't the greatest--we just did what we had to do.”

More recently, Dutch Van Kirk, who dropped the Hiroshima atomic bomb that hastened the end of World War II, expressed an identical sentiment.

Meanwhile, I can count on one hand the number of  U.S. World War II vets who bought into TGG puffery, with fingers left over.

Some highly competent historians have weighed in, noting that in 1940-42 the world appeared teetering on the verge of Axis victory as Germany, Japan, and even Italy swept from one triumph to another.  But the trend abruptly reversed in ’42 with strategic Allied victories at Midway in the Pacific in June and at El Alamein in North Africa during October-November.  Furthermore, the German debacle at Stalingrad overlapped five months in 1942-43.  By then, the first U.S. offensive of the war, at Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands, approached its climax, forever ending Japanese prospects for the strategic offensive.

However grim things might have appeared at the time, with just a bit of perspective the reality is clear.  The Second World War was not going to be won by anyone except the Allies.  It says more of the military ability of the Axis that basically three nations (and Italy was on both sides!) tied the rest of the world in knots for six years.  Maybe that wasn't as evident early on, but astute Germans recognized the facts.  I knew the former Luftwaffe fighter chief, General Adolf Galland, who said that the war was lost when Hitler attacked Russia, let alone when he declared war on America six months later.

Briefly:

Depending on the timeframe, the Axis was outnumbered between 5 and 6-1 for most of the war. (The British Empire, Russia and China ferpetesake!)  By the time the Latin American piling-on ended in ’45, the disparity was more like 8-1.

Moreover, the Axis was out-produced by something approaching infinity.  Just two examples: the U.S. built 34 million tons of merchant shipping; Japan produced barely 4 million.  America rolled out more than 30,000 multi-engine bombers; Germany not quite 1,200.

The Axis had no way to conquer America--Germany and Japan couldn't even get here, even assuming adequate numbers.  Yet assuming Axis conquests over all of Europe and the Asia-Pacific region, for Germany, Japan and their acolytes (such as Bulgaria and Thailand), occupying such a huge portion of Earth’s surface would have spread the fascists far too thin.  They simply could not have conquered “Fortress Amerika.”

Yet some analysts conclude that the U.S. would have been forced into economic servitude to the Axis, without access to foreign markets.

That dog don’t hunt.  For comparison, remember that the U.S. not only dealt with an existential threat for fifty years, but continued supporting the Soviet Union with vital sales—not least of which was food.  As a former wheat rancher, I can say that although our Pacific Northwest product went to Asian markets, much Midwest grain went to Russia, which managed to bungle the Ukrainian bread basket for decades.

Therefore, while facing the potential for thermonuclear incineration, old Uncle Sam propped up his bitterest enemy at the same time.  (One is reminded of the Marxist mantra: capitalists would sell the hangman the rope he would use on them.)

What we should remember, however, is that the War Two generation of Americans helped return dozens of countries to their rightful owners.  That fact is too often ignored.

So, to conclude: Who was the greatest generation?

It's absurd that anybody still argues the point.

IT WAS THE FOUNDERSwho, as Benjamin Franklin said in the delightful musical 1776, the nascent Republic overcame far greater odds than a kinder Providence would have ordained.  The colonies fought an eight-year war against the greatest empire on Earth, with the leaders facing the gallows if they failed.  Although we owe a tremendous debt to France (repaid at least twice), World War II doesn't even belong on the same page as the Revolution.

After that, TGG was the pioneers who trekked the Oregon Trail.  Long ago I transcribed my maternal great-great grandmother's 1852 journal.  She and thousands of others set out from Missourah walking 2,100 miles in a five-month race to beat winter in time to establish quarters in the Willamette Valley.

As frontier scout Kit Carson allegedly said, "The cowards never started and the weak died on the way."

Those people had HEART.

Before closing, I’d like to put in a word for my grandparents’ generation. Those were the Americans who dealt with The Great Depression as adults, and raised the World War II crop.

Anyone with the right contacts, feel free to copy to Mr. Brokaw.

NOVEMBER 11 A CENTURY LATER

This month’s entry is written by my brother John L. Tillman, Stanford graduate and Rhodes Scholar who contributes to almanacs and encyclopedia, often from memory.  Though nearly twice the length of my usual blogs, the subject warrants it.

                 *                 *                 *                 

The "War to End All Wars" ended in armistice at 11:00 a.m. on November 11, 1918. On this date each year, Allied nations honor the service and sacrifices of all military veterans. France observes Armistice Day, the British Commonwealth Remembrance Day and the United States Veterans Day (Armistice Day before 1954). The celebration now commemorates veterans of all their countries' wars, but citizens should also reflect on the meaning of the Great War of 1914-18 in particular.

How World War I began and ended both merit remembrance. The lessons of its end have been applied both correctly and inappropriately in the century since the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. American General John Pershing wanted to fight on and force Germany to surrender unconditionally. The bloodied, impoverished, war-weary Western Allies preferred a quick end to hostilities, followed by a punitive peace against Germany and Austria-Hungary.

The lessons of the war's start may have even more to teach great powers today. The international “July Crisis” began with the assassination of Austrian Archduke Ferdinand and his wife Sophie in Sarajevo, Bosnia on 28 June 1914. It culminated with the British declaration of war on Germany on 4 August. 

The conflict would never have gone global, and having done so, would have ended sooner, had national leaders made better decisions from before the war to its aftermath. All the major belligerent states blundered badly. That isn't purely hindsight. In each country, members of the public and government urged wiser courses.

The miscalculations were largely based upon wishful thinking. Each nation and alliance concluded that it could take advantage of the July Crisis to achieve all or some of its often overly ambitious war aims. 

When a Slav nationalist, Bosnian Serb Gavrilo Princip, murdered Austro-Hungary’s imperial heir Ferdinand, Vienna with reason suspected that Belgrade was behind the assassination.  Thus, Austria-Hungary felt compelled to attack Serbia in retaliation for the outrage. It also coveted some Serbian territory. 

The global catastrophe thus began at 11:10 a.m. on 28 July when Austria declared war by telegram on Serbia, a month after the Archduke's murder. Austria shelled Belgrade the next day. Vienna calculated that it could beat Serbia before Russia could mass on their common border, or that Russia might not even join the fight.

The still-small war could have remained “some damned thing in the Balkans,” but Mother Russia felt compelled to back her Pan-Slavic protégé’ and fellow Orthodox “Little Brother” Serbia. Many in Russia knew that the Czarist empire wasn't ready for a modern European war, having lost to emergent Japan in 1905. Russia had previously promoted disarmament, since it lacked the funds and industry to buy or build the new weaponry adopted by its adversaries, especially Germany.

Russia, however, calculated that, with Austria-Hungary busy against Serbia, she stood a good chance of taking Slavic Galicia, present-day westernmost Ukraine, from the Dual Monarchy. Russia mobilized faster than expected, so Austria had to divert troops from its initial invasion of Serbia, which was defeated.

Germany decided to mobilize in response to Russia's moves. Relying on the prewar Schlieffen Plan, Berlin hoped to fight on the defensive against Russia, assumed to mobilize slowly, while swiftly defeating France in a sweeping right hook around Paris. Then western divisions would be quickly transferred by train across the Fatherland to block any Russian invasion of Prussia or German Polish territory, then invade the Motherland in order to acquire more territory and set up puppet states as buffers against the huge, but underdeveloped empire.

The Schleiffen Plan relied on France's aggressively invading its former territory of Alsace-Lorraine on the left bank of the Rhine, to recapture the provinces and avenge its humiliating loss to Prussia in 1870-71. With much of its army thus drawn east, the strong German right wing could sweep along the Channel Coast to encircle the capital and much of northern France, cutting off French forces in Alsace-Lorraine. 

The problem was that the maneuver required invading neutral Belgium, risking Britain's entry into the war over the flagrant breach of international law. German planners were willing to take the chance because they thought that Britain would get drawn in to aid France regardless, and that its small but professional army couldn't make much difference in a war of vast conscript armies.

Besides the alliance system and mobilization schedules, Germany's grand strategy might help explain the decision to violate Belgian neutrality. The global aspects of The Great War included German Weltpolitik strategy, envisioning not only a reordered Mitteleuropa under its control or that of its ally Austria, but a Mittelafrika. While Britain sought to unite its African colonies along a Cape-Cairo railway, Germany wanted to connect its East African (Tanganyika) and Southwest African colonies, which would interrupt the north-south route. Germany also hoped to appropriate the Belgian Congo and, ideally former French and Portuguese colonies. Conquering Belgium obviously would further the scheme. If Britain joined the war and was beaten, it could pressure traditional ally Portugal to hand over Angola and Mozambique to the victorious Kaiser. Defeating France not only promised occupation of its African colonies, but possibly of its rich iron ore deposits just west of Alsace-Lorraine. Thus, success in war might bring riches beyond the dreams of German avarice.

In mid-August Russia launched an offensive against East Prussia sooner than Germany expected, though the Kaiser's forces defeated the invasion. But not before Germany transferred troops intended to fight France eastward, where they arrived too late to help. For reasons beyond the scope of this post, the Schlieffen Plan failed. Both sides on the Western Front were soon mired in trench warfare, with mud from autumnal rains adding to the misery. 

The Great War introduced large numbers of submarines, tanks and powered aircraft to military operations. The first known dogfight occurred during the August 1914 Battle of Cer between Austria and Serbia, when an Austrian pilot pulled out a pistol to shoot at a Serbian pilot, who escaped. 

That month a millennium event occurred when airplanes supplanted cavalry’s traditional reconnaissance role.  Germany’s Rumpler Taubes—birdlike flying machines—provided vital information on Russian movements during the strategic Battle of Tannenberg, and simultaneously the Royal Flying Corps’ less primitive BE-2s warned of the developing threat to the British Expeditionary Force. 

Most belligerents failed to appreciate the advantage that modern weapons afforded the defense. Russia had experienced their effect against Japan in 1905, but, had its army learned the lesson of 20^th century firepower, the country couldn't afford quantities of machine guns and quick-firing artillery. German infantry was supported by more machine guns than France and Britain, but still fewer than would become common on both sides. Infantry tactics were scarcely advanced over 19^th century line of battle formations, despite far more lethal weaponry.

So, Russia, Germany, France, Britain and eventually Italy all could have stayed out of the war between Austria and Serbia, sparing the world squalid slaughter, famine, pestilence, revolution and societal collapse that took the lives of tens of millions, maimed millions more and impoverished great nations. But what if the United States had not come to the aid of the Western Allies?

The hideous casualties on the Somme and at Verdun in 1916 bled Britain and France almost to death. The French army mutinied in 1917. After Germany knocked Russia out of the war in 1917 and signed a treaty with the new Communist regime, troops were freed for offensives in the West and in support of Austria against Italy. If Germany, starved by the Royal Navy's blockade, didn't win decisively in 1918, then an armistice would be necessary. 

But Germany had made another error. Its leaders knew that unrestricted submarine warfare risked bringing America into the war. But they accepted the odds to try strangling Britain as its navy laid siege to Germany. President Woodrow Wilson didn't join the war even after a U-boat sank civilian liner Lusitania (secretly carrying ammo from America to Britain) in 1915. However, in 1917 Germany offered to help Mexico reclaim parts of the U.S. Southwest in order to keep America out of the European war. The “Zimmermann telegram” was intercepted and gave reelected (“He kept us out of war!”) Democrat Wilson a casus belli.

Knowing that the Yanks were coming Over There, the Allies held on, stopped Germany's spring offensive, and awaited the arrival of millions of green if eager doughboys, supported by the sailors of a respectable navy.

The human toll was massive, the result of war on an industrial scale.  Military deaths to all causes ran from 8.5 to 11 million; civilian losses might top 8 million including war-related disease and starvation.  The Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920 remains somewhere between 40 to 100 million deaths. 

The rest is sad and terrible history. Germany fell to a conglomerate of French native and colonial forces, the British Commonwealth led by Australian shock troops, remnant Belgians, and hordes of Americans in giant divisions. 

At Versailles in 1919, Germany was punished severely, arguably leading to the rise of the Nazi Party. Austria-Hungary was broken up on the basis of nationalism. Russia descended into the dark night of Bolshevik barbarism.  The Yugoslav state so devoutly wished for by Princip (who died in prison) proved a bad idea and fell apart soon after the demise of the USSR. 

Another, even more terrible European world war followed in 1939, spreading globally. Then the long, costly Cold War, 1947-91, and hot wars within it. Then a new series of Balkan Wars late in the 20^thcentury. Then yet more war in no small part caused by France and Britain's divvying up the Ottoman Empire with little regard to natural geographical, linguistic, ethnic and religious boundaries. Just the opposite of what befell Austria-Hungary's constituent states. 

The world had a shot at being a better place in the 20^th and 21^st centuries had America stood in bed in 1917, and not gone Over There.  But U.S. financiers had enormous stakes in protecting loans to the Allies.  The War to End all Wars probably wouldn't have done so in any case, but our involvement may have guaranteed seemingly endless war since 11/11/18.

OCTOBER MEMORIES

October in Northeastern Oregon was always a special time when I grew up in the 1960s.  There were two special events that month, bearing nothing in common other than the crisp, nippy air of Umatilla County well into the fall season.

The first was deer season, and the Blue Mountains sang their siren song.  Opening weekend was taken seriously, to a degree that urban dwellers probably cannot fathom today.  There were times when Friday was an excused absence from high school for boys intent on filling their tag on Saturday.  (I do not recall any huntresses in our student body though later I enjoyed hunting with a friend and his wife on two continents.)  In fact, our school paper published the names of students who fetched home some venison for the family table.

In that far-off time—chronologically and culturally—nobody knew how many rifles or shotguns were stashed in cars and pickups in the MHS parking lot.

That’s because nobody cared.

That’s also because there was never a problem. Ever.

However, the October starting date did pose some interpersonal conflicts.  I’d have to consult some classmates from ’67, but I vaguely recall that the Girls League neglected to consult the guys, and managed to schedule the annual dance for opening weekend of deer season.  

I also vaguely recall that the next year the girls remembered the previous flail, and moved the event back a month.

Just in time to hit the opening weekend of elk season.

Meanwhile, October also was pheasant season, overlapping deer and preceding elk.  Our ranch, about five miles out of town, was rich in ground cover beloved of Chinese ring-necks (Phasianus colchicus), and Dad had installed a water trap in one of the gulches between wheat fields.  More than once I recall seeing six or more roosters perched on the fence beside the county road late Friday afternoon.  A convocation of feathered friends.  

Think they were there the next morning?  No way.  They knew.  So help me, they knew!

Chinese Ring-necks were introduced to North America in 1881, thanks to Owen Denney, then consul general in Shanghai.  Denney imported other batches over the next few years, releasing them in Washington and Oregon.  The hardy birds took hold and prospered.

Dad had longtime friends from the Willamette Valley who were avid bird hunters.  For years Portland merchant Henry Deines and his sons, with an older nimrod called Pete, gathered at “Fifth and Broadway”—the intersection of the state and country road--around dawn on Saturday.  Occasionally they had a setter to sniff out birds in the stubble.  

Thing about pheasant—given a chance, often they’ll run rather than fly.  That’s why a good dog is such an advantage, holding the bird in place until it’s flushed close enough for a 12 gauge, or maybe a 20.  But even then there’s no guarantee of meat, and more than once I heard the phrase, “Well, at least I got to burn powder.”

Hunting alone was a rite of passage in those days. Like nearly every other young male of my nativity, a life event was tromping the stubble with my single-shot 12-gauge, seeking the wily pheasant.  I don’t recall specifics, but I suspect that Dad dropped me off with instructions to rejoin the road a quarter mile up.  No feathers, no meat, no gunpowder, but a growing sense of self reliance.

Then there was Halloween.

My home town ran 900 to 950 residents with an eight-year grade school and a four-year high school named for a maternal great-grandfather.  Because the local American Legion post sponsored a junior drum and bugle corps, some of us made friends with corps members around the Northwest.  I had a serious crush on a severely cute color guard member from the Seattle Thunderbirds, and early on discovered the power of the press.  Being inordinately shy, I used my status as a regional Drum Corps World correspondent to maintain contact with her a couple of times a year.

But I digress.

The grade school provided Halloween entertainment for kids of all ages.  Activities included costume contests—I no longer recall the who or how of judging—but I have vague recollection of fashioning my own outfit for the parade. Thanks to my mother’s indulgence with her kitchen supplies, circa 1958 I bulked myself out with tin foil, posing as Russia’s Sputnik satellite, complete with bent wire hangers as antennae.  (The good ole USA launched Explorer several months after the Evil Empire’s success.)

When we got to high school age, social opportunities arose.

A few times kids from Western Oregon came to visit and participated in the holiday festivities.  They seemed most interested in the cake walk, wherein perhaps ten contestants circled five or six chairs while the music played.  When the phonograph operator raised the tone arm, the music stopped and everyone scrambled for a seat.  Single elimination with a reducing number of seats until the last two players were left.  The winner got a cake or a tray of cupcakes, and of course good manners dictated observance of The Kindergarten Rule: share with others.

Mostly the visitors were polite youngsters whose parents shared the values of our own.  But occasionally some big-city attitudes showed through.  One fall evening a guest asked, “What do you do for fun around here after dark?”

Without thinking, I said, “Oh, we go down to Main Street to watch the traffic light.”

That seemed preposterous of course, but I stuck to my assertion.  So we walked five blocks down to Main and up two more to the main intersection.  Two of my classmates were seated on a bench, engaged in an animated conversation, but I dared interrupt.  “Hi, guys.  What’re you doin’?”

And so help me, Dennis said, “WE’RE WATCHING THE TRAFFIC LIGHT.”

True story from an October long ago.