Tag: World War II

Masters of War

Posted on by Kevin Lively

by Kevin Lively

“What this country needs is a good war.”, my Grandfather declared in 2008 while we were gathered at his table in Buffalo with Fox News playing in the background, the TV lit up red with crashing market charts. “It’s the only thing that will fix the economy” he continued. No one pointed out that as these words were spoken, there were, put together, around 200,000 US troops deployed in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, my grandfather was a good man, hard working, pious, and hardly prone to such statements. Yet, like many Americans who lived through the Great Depression, it was also deeply ingrained in his psyche that the event which led to prosperity during his adulthood, the greatness many are eager to return to, was also the bloodiest human driven catastrophe in history, WWII.

Hamburg, Germany after Allied bombing, left, and Levittown NY, in 1959 right

This is of course a widely accepted truism among US economists and historians, as the state department’s Office of the Historian will tell you. It is also part of the cultural fabric to extol the moral virtues of this particular war, given that it destroyed a regime which essentially defines the modern conception of evil. Of course, as with everything else in history, some of this triumphalist patting ourselves on the back is white-washed. It turns out there was more support in the USA for Nazism before the war than is often remembered, including in the business arrangements of the Bush dynasty’s progenitor. This should not be too surprising given that leading medical journal editors in the USA were urging that the public be persuaded on moral grounds to adopt similar eugenics policies as the Nazis enforced in the 1930s.

In any case, the other accepted truism about this turn of events is that America, as the victorious industrial superpower, realized that its isolationism had only helped lead to the calamity. Therefore, like it or not, it must shoulder the burden of power, stand against the rising communist threat to make the world safe for democracy, and establish the Pax Americana which we have enjoyed since.

As with any good myth, much of this is true. Read more »

Monday, June 8, 2020

For Father’s Day: Chester Felix Garstki, Dad

Posted on by Carol A Westbrook

by Carol A. Westbrook

We think about our fathers during the month of June. Father’s Day is a time to remember these beloved men, especially those who have passed. We reflect on how remarkable their live were, and of so many questions we’d ask them if they were still alive. I’ ask my Dad what he would have done if we were living together at home during the Covid-19 epidemic.

The author, age 6, washing her hands thoroughly

Actually, I don’t need to ask him; I know exactly what he’d do. He’d have followed the guidelines to the letter. He would set the family rules: 1. Masks and gloves when we go out — and no more family drives for hot dogs, Italian beef, or ice cream cones. 2. Wash hands a lot. 3. (That’s me in 1956, doing the right thing!) Play only in our yard, and not with other kids–so no more wiffleball games in the alley, or running under the sprinkler on the front lawn. 4. Meals together, as usual. 5 Pray together as a family every night. For supplies, he’d take advantage of our well-stocked basement “bomb shelter” storage, pantry and deep freezer.

Dad would have obtained supplies for the lockdown using connections at his workplace, the Chicago Board of Education. In true Chicago style, he would call in favors or promise favors of his own, like a good word to a Department head for a city job. Or he could offer professional family portraits, or wedding photos. He also had gossip and information to share. Read more »

Monday, March 28, 2011

What Remains

Posted on by Jenny White

By Jenny White

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My grandmother’s kitchen had a single window that flung open in one great wing of glass. It looked out over the tiled roof of the apartment building in which she lived, down onto the slices of soil allotted to each resident, then into the valley beyond where a church steeple rose from the heart of the district. Over by the river, vineyards clambered up steep hillsides, their flinty soil the source of Franconia’s famously dry wines. Unlike her neighbor who let his allotment run to grass, my grandmother’s garden was neatly divided into beds that alternated flowers and vegetables. A rabbit hutch, much used during the war, now housed tools. A metal drum acted as a well, filled by a tap rising up mysteriously from the soil. When I submerged the tin watering can, it gulped the water, becoming heavier and heavier as it filled. Hauling the full can at last from beneath the surface of the water was both difficult and satisfying. Above the garden fence, you could see the back of the grade school I attended and through the big mullioned windows watch the children on the climbing bars in the gymnasium. The view in spring was partially blocked by a radiantly blooming cherry tree that my grandmother had planted when her youngest daughter was born fifty years earlier — after the war, when joy might have seemed appropriate again. Pigeons gathered on the tiles before my grandmother’s window to eat the crumbs of stale bread she spread for them. They murmured and cooed, their toes skittering on the clay.

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