In 1940 the Russians and the British produced thirty-six thousand warplanes while the Germans made only ten thousand.
And in 1942, the British controlled ten million tons of oil as contrasted with Germany’s one million.
These numbers and others like them, demonstrating allied superiority in resources, made some German generals recognize early on that they could not win the war.
These facts about World War Two I have learned from an article written by Richard Evans in the New York Review of Books. Evans is a history professor at Cambridge University and one of my favorite scholars writing about this war.
Throughout most of my life I have been fascinated by this part of history. Not old enough to have been in the military during those years, I was not called to serve in the war.
Even had I been a little older, I would not have been among those fighting. My left arm was damaged at birth so I would never have been accepted by the armed forces.
However all during my teenage years and ever since then, I have followed that war with intense interest. Often I have talked with veterans of combat during those years, even though they have often been reluctant to say much about their part in it.
I think of my friend Hugh who served as a bombardier over Germany. He flew in a B-25, starting in his teen years, and managed to survive despite the hazards of facing enemy fighter planes and antiaircraft fire.
He doesn’t talk much about this part of his life but I continue to appreciate his courage when young.
The battles, fascinating though they were, are not the only aspects of the war that occupy my attention. I also focus on Hitler and the terrible evils that he forced upon the people of his nation and huge numbers of other people as well.
(My father, as an editor invited by the American army in 1946, was allowed to visit the bunker where Hitler committed suicide.)
In fact, when I learned of the Holocaust it gave me a new vision of evil, one that has remained with me ever since. That those with power could inflict such incredible murder upon so many fellow humans continues to haunt me.
The part played by the churches in all of this evil also appalls me. As a Catholic, I find it disheartening that leaders of the church accepted Nazi demands without significant opposition.
However, I have often taken hope from religious heroes like Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Helmut Von Moltke, and the Austrian saint Franz Jagerstetter. They accepted death rather than submit to Nazi evil.
Following the best historians, I now attach World War II to its predecessor, the first World War. In my readings I have learned to regret the way the United States and other allies punished Germany and thus helped bring about the latter conflict.
I am glad to have lived through an era when Germany and France are allies instead of opponents. The photo of French President Charles De Gaulle and German prime minister Konrad Adenauer, coming together outside Rheims Cathedral in 1962, continues to make my heart beat strongly.
It helps to have visited Europe as so many Americans have done to appreciate the rejection of war. All you have to do is see the American grave sites to relish the peace that now prevails and gives hope of abiding.
Thoughts like these circulate in my head during my years of old age. At a time when so much is ailing our nation, it is worth thinking about the struggles that fellow citizens endured for us all.