Same Enemy, Different Time

In 1939, the German Wehrmacht was unstoppable.  It rolled across Poland to its east and France to its west without any significant resistance.  America was watching, of course, but having fought and won a devastating war just two decades prior, had little appetite for defending Europe again.  But the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 changed that attitude decisively.  The United States then declared war on Japan and Germany, and for several years the war was disastrous for the US, as it was wholly unprepared both in training and equipment.

In early 1942, General Douglas MacArthur fled the Philippines in the face of surrounding Japanese forces.  And a year later, Americans were soundly defeated at Kasserine Pass in Tunisia by General Erwin Rommel, the "Desert Fox", and his Afrika Korps.  It was a complete rout; The US II Corps, under General Lloyd Fredendall, withdrew from their position, leaving behind most of their equipment. More than 1,000 American soldiers were killed by Rommel’s offensive, and hundreds were taken prisoner. The United States had finally tasted defeat in battle, and it did not sit well at home.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander, conceived of and organized the greatest amphibious invasion in history.  On this day in 1944, Allied forces swarmed ashore at Normandy, France, and took the war to Germany.  We all know the story:  there were heavy loses and fierce fighting on both sides, but ultimately, coupled with airborne paratroops dropped behind enemy lines, the Allied forces were firmly established on French soil.  

Victory in Europe came 11 months later in May 1945 as Eisenhower, in one of the most controversial decisions of his career, decide to let the Soviets take Berlin, as the Allies held up at the Elbe River.  Even General Omar Bradley thought that racing the Soviets to be the first to take Berlin didn’t seem to make good sense.  To try to throw both Allied and Soviet forces into Berlin simultaneously could create a disaster as troops could easily get mixed up.  Two armies that couldn’t speak the same language, or who couldn’t even communicate with each other would be impossible to coordinate and control.  It would have been a deadly mess. So today history credits the USSR with the taking of Berlin

Ironically, the end of World War II in Europe was the beginning of four decades of a cold war between the West and the communists in Soviet Russia.  In 1945, it was clear to both budding super powers that the grand prize of the war in Europe wasn't just the defeat of National Socialism in Germany, but the acquisition of the far, far more advanced scientific knowledge of German scientists who had developed jet propulsion as well as nuclear science.  Today, seventy-five years later, nuclear power is ubiquitous across the globe. Six nations, the USA, UK, France, China, Russia and Israel have nuclear weapons, and Iran is well on their way to joining that club.

After all that bloodshed, devastation and chaos, the underlying enemy is yet undefeated.  There exists unfazed the same enemy we fought in that shooting war with Germany, and later in a cold war with the USSR.  And now that enemy is here, on our shores, in the United States itself.  That enemy is tyranny, whether it calls itself Communism, Socialism, Marxism, Islam, Liberalism, the Deep State, Progressivism or the Democrat Party.  It's still tyranny writ large, and we got a taste of it in full bloom in the first half of 2020, which I've written about recently.

So today, June 6th, we remember the bravery of that invasion so long ago.  Of the resolute determination of those men facing a seemingly all powerful enemy.  To liberate the oppressed, and prevent it from coming home to the US.  Lacking today is that do-or-die attitude of our grandfathers in the spineless soy-boys, as they sit in "protest" of something or other. 

But I have hope.  I'm optimistic.  What we see in the news isn't the real America; it's the perverted wishful masturbation fantasy of a "news" media which is anything but.  The MSM is simply a propaganda arm of that enemy I described above.  And the real American is watching, paying attention, loath again to go to war as did his grandfathers in 1939.  But when the Molotov cocktails fly, when stores and business and churches burn, when anarchists run unchallenged to loot and riot, when the social media purveyors censor all but the party line, and when tyrannical governments stifle free speech, free movement, and free commerce, the American will rise.

And against all odds, as he did in Europe and the Pacific in 1945, the American will cast the boot off his neck, rise again, and defend and the most basic and fundamental God-given right:  Liberty.  And I think he will prevail.  Again.