Remembering

It's that time of year again, to commemorate those who fought for freedom against oppression, those Allied soldiers who went into battle against the Axis pact of Nazi Germany. It's a reluctant memory, one that the soul would prefer to lay away as an unspeakable tragedy not the least bit reflective of true human nature. An unspeakably horrible one-time aberration that will never be re-visited in our time on Earth.

Of course we rouse ourselves to duty, for it is a stern duty to remember, to understand or try to come to terms with what motivates some people to hate so blindly and without any kind of humane amelioration that they become complicit in butchery against civilian targets, determined to 'win' the battle against enemies their very intransigent need to confront and to kill has garnered them.

The war to end all wars, somehow just did not. And civilized societies once again became embroiled in a war no one other than the aggressors wanted to contemplate. What accounts for such evil, such overweening hubris that drowns all thoughts of humane recognition of others as being equally entitled to life and liberty, to freedom and happiness as those who sought so mightily to destroy it for all but themselves?

A country so civilized, so cultured, so given to artistic expression - lovers of poetry and music; admirers of philosophy and language - that it won the admiration and respect of its neighbours, suddenly transformed itself into a ravening beast of rabidly primitive blood-thirstiness. Determined to prevail, to counter and subdue any that would stand in its path to power.

A totalitarian government led by a charismatic lunatic whom his people adored. Yet one which returned its peoples' loyalty by training its eyesight on internal matters to legislate for an enlightened scientifically-approved medical course of healthful living. A healthy people translates to a strong and virile population, one worthy of ascending to the pinnacle of strength and beauty and political power that would become the reign of the Third Reich.

A thousand-year domination of the world. And on that journey toward domination laying waste to the contesting armies of countries that defended themselves, however inadequately, against the assault of a controlled, mechanized, punctiliously-disciplined army of conquest. Another side of which was dispatched to deliver death en masse to a hated demographic of sub-humans.

Among them the sick in mind and body, the despised homosexuals, the gypsies, political adversaries - and above all, the Jews of the world. All requiring complete annihilation to cleanse the world of their deleteriously-affective presence. And to that purpose hordes of defenceless men, women and children herded into ghettos and punctilious records maintained of the numbers, circumstances, outcomes.

Nothing was to be wasted; goods confiscated; estate properties, artwork, silver, the very gold set into dental appliances; skin, hair, clothing, all recycled in a nod to the frugal environment of a wartime economy. Medical science benefited through the sudden availability of living, functioning humanoids whose suffering through trials of torture could be recorded for medical posterity.

Fabled German record-keeping and economy of time and motion went into overdrive as death squads dealt speedily and effectively with the scum of the earth, thanks to the efficiency of Zyklon B and giant ovens spewing the burnt grey molecules of corpses into the atmosphere. Dead; a like number of Jewish lives extinguished as now populates the State of Israel.

It was not for the liberation of what was left of European Jewry that the Allies fought so valiantly, for most fighting men and boys had little knowledge of what was transpiring in the death camps established throughout Germany and Poland, Slovakia and Czech Republic, Belarus and Ukraine, Estonia and Latvia, Netherlands and France, and Austria. The systematic extermination of Jews, the genocide leading to a Judenrein world.

That was merely a side agenda for Nazi Germany. Their grand aspiration of world domination had a far wider sweep and they were determined to succeed, and in so doing would benefit the world greatly by fostering a great state of muscular blond giants, whose women would be biddable hausfraus, cooking, cleaning, raising more muscular blond giants for the Fatherland.

One after another, the houses of Europe fell to the marauding armies of the Third Reich. Great Britain and her Commonwealth partners like Canada stood defiant, alone, to battle the Nazi colossus. Germany, Japan, Italy, Russia; their vassal states of Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Finland, Iraq and Thailand and the national collaborationists in France. Until Japan bombed Pearl Harbour and non-interventionist America helped to turn the tide.

What a colossal loss of lives, civilian and military. What an absolute and bloody waste. What have we learned? Is there never to be peace and universal humanity on this Globe?