America's Last Just War

U.S.S. West Virginia burns after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

My DVD shelf at home exhibits a wide variety of topics and genres, from romantic comedy to thrillers, and yet if you were to canvass the content of said DVD shelf with respect to how much money was spent on each genre, the war genre would most definitely top the list.

The genre of World War II movies, to be precise.

No, it's not because I'm a sucker for blood and gore (although war and war movies tend to produce prodigious amounts of both), nor is it because I need a patriotic rush every now and then (which seems to be the reason behind the making of Captain America.) I own war movies of that kind both for the stories of greatness and tragedy that they contain, but also to remind myself who we are and why we fight wars, and which ones to not fight.

But thinking on my buying habits concerning movies focusing on World War II, I think I stumbled on something interesting. It seems that my fascination for this particular war is hardly unique. In fact, it exists and persists almost universally in (male) America today. The evidence for this is everywhere, from Stephen Ambrose's many books on the topic, to the endless number of video games that depict various battles of World War II. I live not 30 miles from one of the most beautiful World War II monuments ever built, the D-Day Memorial in Bedford, VA. It is a relatively new construction of staggering emotional complexity and artistry, dedicated shortly after Saving Private Ryan, a film about the D-Day invasion, hit theaters. Saving Private Ryan was quickly followed by a string of World War II films, notable among them being Band of Brothers and The Pacific, as well as Pearl Harbor.

Why the mystique? What makes World War II so especially memorable? A comparable number of soldiers died in battle in World War I, and yet many Americans hardly know the events of the war that set the stage for World War II. Why is that?

I offer here my humble opinion on the subject: I put forward for consideration the idea that World War II is the war of choice for study and dramatization because it holds little to no controversial value in terms of the justice of the Allied cause. In fact, I will go as far as to say that World War II could very well have been America's last great morally justified war.

Consider it for a second: on America's side there was no preemptive strike of any kind, nor did we actively push for war with either Japan or Germany. Those are two very important factors, especially for the perception of a war in hindsight. It takes the greater part of the onus of explanation and justification off the United States.

To bolster that fact even further, let us first look at the Japanese side of the conflict: we were brutally attacked at Pearl harbor with little warning from Japanese leadership, with whom we were in peace negotiations with at the time. In other words, Japan was saying one thing and planning and doing something quite different, attempting to hold us up in peace talks while the Imperial Navy knocked out any and all of America's ability to wage war at sea. The attack on Pearl Harbor thus became a morally ironclad reason to go to war, perceived as such at the time and ever after as well.

The other side of the equation, Nazi Germany, was a somewhat different affair but the ending was the same. Instead of attacking us, however, Adolf Hitler took the next most self-destructive action and simply formally declared war on the United States. Our case would have been a little harder to make otherwise.

Then of course there remains the indisputable evil of Nazism and the horror of the “Final Solution.” Most sane people cannot harbor any remorse they may have had for Hitler's dashed dreams when they see pictures of Dachau and Auschwitz. The skinny limbs and hollow faces of Jewish corpses evoke too strong of a reaction to be forgotten that easily. It was then and remains to this day an evil worth fighting to destroy. In a similar vein, the horror of Japanese occupation and treatment of prisoners lends a powerful moral argument to the righteousness of America's cause.

The fact is that no one seems to look back at World War II and declaim against the involvement of the United States in the conflict. We more look back for a fresh perspective on the war and how it was fought, not necessarily why it was fought. The reason why we fought is culturally accepted in the United States as good.

I think we are in a healthier place now in our view of the Second World War than we were immediately following it. The films of the late forties and fifties generally depict the war as all guts and glory on the Allied side, death as a noble and bloodless thing, and the American fighting man as close to a demigod in the rightness of his cause. We know a bit better now, as the film Saving Private Ryan suggests with its horrifically real portrayal of the assault on Normandy beach. Heroism was involved, yes. However, we now can accept the soldiers who fought in the war as human beings with courage and cowardice.

All in all, it makes a compelling case for the continued fascination with the last epic global conflict. Never again, it seems, would we live in a world that was so patently divided into good and evil and in which the good fought the evil the old-fashioned way.

Our modern world of the 21^st century being so muddied up in its morals, alliances, and pursuits, maybe having such a war to reflect back on does our nation some good.