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The Continuing Impact of World War II
Even today, the shadow of World War II remains thinly visible. On one level, the war generated myths that became embedded in popular culture. Images from the war enjoyed an iconographic status: St. Paul's cathedral standing amid the ruins of the Blitz, U.S. servicemen raising the American flag on Iwo Jima, and the portrait of German Jewish girl Anne Frank, perhaps the Holocaust's best-known victim. Memorials to the dead were still being erected more than 60 years after the end of the war. Pillars representing the different American states line the perimeter of the World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. Opened in 2004, the memorial recognizes the nation's sacrifice in the war. |
Meanwhile, the idea of "victim" and "perpetrator" has assumed a fresh poignancy. There has been much discussion, for instance, of "comfort women," the war-time sex slaves of Japanese soldiers. Moreover, the significance and impact of strategic bombing on civilians in Germany and Japan has been debated.
Other categories of victims were found among the forced labor force of the German and Japanese empires, and among the vast population of the Soviet Union concentration camps, which operated at the same time as Auschwitz and Dachau. The sense of right and wrong, which initially colored the popular view of the war, has become blurred.
In the West, the most enduring legacy of the war has been the memory of the Holocaust. No other single element of the war has recently attracted greater attention. In Washington, Berlin, London, and many other cities, museums dedicated to the Holocaust and to Jewish history have been founded within the last two decades. Stolen or confiscated Jewish assets have been tracked down, and a renewed effort of restitution has been set in motion.
The memory of the Holocaust also keeps alive the historical image of Adolf Hitler. Although World War II was comprised of many different wars, which between them had many causes, it is the terrible war unleashed by Hitler against the Jewish people that remains the most grotesque and conspicuous legacy of the 1940s, the most violent and murderous decade of modern times.
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CONTRIBUTING WRITERS:
John S. D,
Eisenhower, Senator Daniel K. Inouye, Rochard Overy Ph.D., David J. A.
Stone, Wim Coleman, Martin F. Graham, James H. Hallas, Mark Johnston
Ph.D., Christy Nadalin M.A., Pat Perrin, Peter Stanley Ph.D.
