This Should Have Been Friday’s Post

Friday was supposed to be a day living in infamy, but I didn’t hear anything about it. I forgot about it. I didn’t have much contact with the outside world Friday but still. I like to consider myself an amateur history buff, and I forgot the anniversary of one of the biggest military blunders ever. I don’t view the attack on Peal Harbor as most Americans do – well most Americans, today, don’t view it at all. I don’t think about the tragedy of the destroyed naval base. I think about awesome miscalculation of the Japanese. Everything in the world today is the way it is because the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. If they had let well enough alone the United States would have remained isolated; Germany would have conquered Europe; and Japan would have done the same in the Far East. There would be no Israel because there would be no Jews. Germany would have finished “evacuating” them and the world would never know what happened. Communism would have had a much shorter run than it did. It never would have made it to Latin America or Southeast Asia. There would have been no Cuban missile crisis, no Viet Nam, no Korea. The Chinese would probably have met the same fate as the Jews in Europe. The United States might still be an almost completely agrarian economy. The only thing that would have kept us from speaking German and/or Japanese is that we’re so far away from the rest of the world and we’re so big. There are military experts that think if the attack on Pearl Harbor had come even six weeks later Germany would have had time to finish off Great Britain and der Rest würde Geschichte sein. It makes me sad that we’re starting to forget the day that will live in infamy – despite Ben Affleck’s best efforts. There are fewer and fewer people who were there. A sixteen year old who joined the Army in 1945 is seventy-eight, most likely about to turn seventy-nine. That’s a little bit older than Clint Eastwood. I hope I have the time and energy to teach LMJ about this stuff.

One of my favorite movies is Conspiracy. It stars Kenneth Branagh and Stanley Tucci. It’s about the Wannsee Conference where the Nazis make the executive decision to streamline the Holocaust. It’s disturbing. Netflix or Blockbuster it today for some cheery holiday viewing if you haven't seen it.