Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, May 9, 1995 TAG: 9505110046
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
For civilization is what they were defending. The Nazi drive for expanded hegemony unleashed not only Europe's most destructive war, but also a social evil unmatched for its barbarism in all of history. As if the horrors of war and genocide weren't bad enough, the Nazis and their allies surely would have inflicted even more cruelty and devastation on a broader scale had not the allies, principally with the help of U.S. intervention, prevailed.
Estimates of civilian and military deaths confound comprehension: 55 million is a good guess. But such carnage might have proved just a preview to the Dark Age that would have followed a Nazi victory. One historian says of Hitler's plans: "The Germans looked first to a complete demographic reordering of the Eurasian land mass in which tens of millions would be slaughtered, sterilized or deliberately left to die of starvation."
It is reassuring that the world, though still troubled and disordered, has preserved and continued the social progress that fascism threatened and disrupted. This progress was helped along by enlightened magnanimity toward the defeated powers left in ruins by the war, never mind that their currency now outshines the dollar.
Yes, it is sobering to contemplate the impact that an ideology based on hatred and racism could have in just the 12 years that the Thousand-Year Reich lasted. It is also sobering to recognize that the lessons of World War II, paid for by millions of lives, have not been completely absorbed.
The West, for instance, has watched "ethnic cleansing" overtake the former Yugoslavia. Instead of acting early to send Serbs a message of resolve, the West allowed them to act in utter contempt of international law, U.S. power and universal standards of decency. An American diplomat who oversaw the Bosnia situation now describes it as the "greatest collective security failure of the West since the 1930s."
Still, such lapses hardly detract from the greatness of the allied achievement in World War II. The world is a much saner place thanks to that achievement and that sacrifice. It will become an even better place if we can better shield civilization against the variants, all virulent, of fascism.
by CNB