An open letter to the American people

In his landmark 1998 book The Greatest Generation, NBC journalist Tom Brokaw examined the lives and experiences of some of the millions of American men and women who fought in World War II.

“At a time in their lives when their days and nights were supposed to be filled with innocent adventure, love, and the lessons of the everyday world,” notes Brokaw, “they fought in the most primitive conditions, against the backdrop of the bloody landscapes of France, Belgium, Italy, Austria and the coral islands of the Pacific Ocean.

They answered the call to save the world from two of the most powerful and ruthless war machines ever formed, tools of conquest in the hands of fascist maniacs.

They faced huge difficulties and a late start, but they did not complain.

They have succeeded on all fronts.

They won the war;

they saved the world."

Brokaw "realized the significance of this generation of Americans for history": "I believe that this is the greatest generation that any society has ever produced."

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I was born in 1961, about 20 years after the United States entered World War II.

By that time, the defeat of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan had become the lot of the history books, as a new, even more formidable enemy appeared: the Soviet Union.

My father was a US Air Force officer whose career until 1977 was like a Cold War tourist map: he served in Vietnam, Korea and Turkey.

I grew up with the mantra “better dead than red” firmly hammered into my head, and I was convinced that the service that my father carried for our country was absolutely necessary for the survival of the free world.

In 1977 my family moved to West Germany.

My father was reassigned to the US 17th Air Force stationed at Sembach Air Force Base.

We chose to live off base, "in the economy" as we called it.

We ended up settling into a splendid house in the commune of Marnheim, owned by a German family that had been renting it out to the US military for decades.

And this house, it must be said, had its own history: in 1945, it served as temporary headquarters for General George S. Patton, when his 3rd Army advanced through the German Rhineland-Palatinate region during World War II.

When we moved to Germany, we were already three decades separated from the war - but much around us still reminded us of it.

In the summer of 1978, I worked at a facility specializing in meat inspection, which employed what we euphemistically called DPs - "displaced persons".

When the Second World War ended, millions of Europeans enslaved by Nazi Germany were freed from their virtual imprisonment, but they no longer had a home to return to.

There were many children among them.

The United States provided many of these irrevocably displaced persons with jobs and housing.

For thousands of people, this became a new way of life, and they worked in the service of the vast American military presence in West Germany.

33 years later, by the time I was introduced to the SP community, 

They also had a deep resentment against the Germans - for the imprisonment in which they found themselves and the destruction of the Europe of their childhood.

The experience of the SP was a revelation for me, an American teenager - living among the Germans, I perceived them simply as a foreign-language mirror image of myself and my family.

But everything was not so simple.

In January 1979, West German television aired the ABC miniseries Holocaust four nights in a row.

After each episode, the Germans held a live discussion with a group of historians who answered questions from the audience (it is estimated that more than half of the German population has watched this series).

Like most other Americans living in Germany, I missed the original US run of this series the year before.

My family decided to watch it and, out of curiosity, started watching these discussions as well.

We were shocked by what we heard: the children of the Germans who lived during the Second World War, called into the air and cursed their parents and their country in hysteria for allowing such a thing to happen.

The prominent scientists and psychologists who were brought together for these discussions were speechless at the level of indignation and anger - they simply had no answer: not only to the question of why such a thing was allowed to happen, but also why they were not told about it in my youth.

Germany seemed to want to erase the criminality of its Nazi past from its present.

Although my family was very concerned that we lived less than an hour from the border between West and East Germany, where hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were stationed on the other side, ready (at least according to our ideas) to launch an attack at any moment that would have ended our idyllic life in a dramatic and horrifying way, we could not avoid the constant reminders of what happened on the European continent only three and a half decades ago.

One of the saddest reminders was also across the border (western this time), where the Luxembourg American Cemetery and Memorial was located in the vicinity of the Luxembourg city of Hamm.

In addition to being the final resting place for the more than 5,000 Americans who died in the Battle of the Bulge, Hamm is also where General Patton was buried after his accidental death in December 1945 (his widow thought he "would have liked to lie next to fallen soldiers" his armies).

My parents tried to make sure that during our stay in Germany we went to Hamm several times.

It was not far to go, the road was picturesque.

The cemetery itself also looked beautiful - a worthy monument to those who made the highest sacrifice.

Each time we also visited the nearby German cemetery Sandweiler (also in Luxembourg), where the remains of more than 10,000 German soldiers are buried.

Both of these cemeteries evoked mournful and sobering sensations.

However, it was only after the arrival of my uncle Mel, a representative of the very “greatest generation” that Tom Brokaw talked about, that we really got into the spirit of what these cemeteries remind us of.

During the Second World War, Mal served in the European theater of operations, he arrived on the beaches of Normandy about a week after the landing of the allied forces.

His unit, namely the Transport Company, which was tasked with freight transport along the famous

route , coped with its tasks in France with relative ease.

Acted as part of Patton's Third Army, took part in the liberation of France.

It reached the border between the Benelux countries (Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg) and Germany without major losses.

Mel asked me to visit with him the places he passed during the war.

Most of them brought back good memories for him, but one place left him speechless.

There, his unit came under fire from German artillery, and in an instant over 200 of his comrades were killed or wounded.

Many of them are buried in Hamm.

Behind the crosses and six-pointed stars, so beautifully arranged on the mowed lawn, suddenly became visible faces, names and people that it was impossible not to think about.

The nook of appeasement has abruptly turned into a horrific reminder of the monstrous cost of war.

To this day, I cannot pass by this or that military cemetery and not imagine the circumstances under which those who were buried there died.

All the hopes, dreams and aspirations that I, like other people, can fulfill as long as I live, turned out to be crossed out for those guys - as a rule, under circumstances unimaginable for an ordinary person.

And responsible for their deaths were the very Germans with whom I coexisted so peacefully on the other side of the border.

Those whose children were angered by their tendency to forget what kind of regime it was that ruined millions and millions of lives, seeking to satisfy the ambitions of one of the most vile ideologies in the history of mankind - Nazism.

As a student I studied the history of Russia.

As part of my graduation thesis, I examined the historical ties between the armed forces of the tsarist and Soviet eras.

I gained an in-depth understanding of the military campaigns and battles between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, and of the horrendous price paid by the Soviet people, whose losses numbered in the tens of millions.

I happened to live and work in the Soviet Union for some time.

I was part of a group of American inspectors sent to the Soviet missile plant in Votkinsk to monitor compliance with the Treaty on the Elimination of Intermediate-Range and Shorter-Range Missiles.

It was during this period that I realized how noticeable the significance of the sacrifices made in the everyday reality of Soviet people.

I remember that in the center of Votkinsk there was a monument to the residents of the city who died during the war years, as well as to those who were awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for their merits in wartime.

Similar monuments stood throughout the Soviet Union, wherever you went.

They were erected where people lived who made the eternal memory of the sacrifices they made an integral part of their lives

"the greatest generation", saving from the atrocities of Nazi Germany not only compatriots, but also a large part of Europe.

This memory survived even after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

His legacy passed to the Russian Federation, and it took upon itself the duty to honor those who dedicated themselves to the service of their country.

Russia sings of their feat on May 9, Victory Day, celebrating the defeat of Nazi Germany.

One of the bright traditions of this holiday was the image of aged veterans of that conflict, who presented their military awards at the parade in front of the grateful people.

And even when, due to time and age, this “greatest generation” of Russian people left society and the people they served, the Russians continued to honor his memory: instead of veterans, their children and grandchildren go on the march, carrying their photographs above them.

This is the custom of the action "Immortal Regiment".

Russians, unlike the Germans, keep the memory of the past.

Which, unfortunately, I cannot say about the Americans.

There will be no "victory in Europe" celebration in the United States this year.

As it was not in previous years.

We have forgotten our "greatest generation" and the sacrifices it made for our future.

America does not have an "Immortal Regiment" in which kin would proudly march through the main streets of cities and towns in the United States, honoring the cause that these young men and women served.

We have forgotten what they fought for.

Once upon a time, the United States and the Soviet Union fought together against the threat posed by Nazi Germany and its ideology.

Now that Russia is fighting the successors of Nazi Germany in the ideological followers of the Ukrainian nationalist Stepan Bandera, it would be logical to expect the United States to be on the side of Moscow.

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Bandera's followers fought on the side of the German Nazis as part of the SS troops, killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians, many of whom were Jews.

It would seem that Washington should do everything necessary to ensure that this hateful idea, for the eradication of which many in Europe gave their lives and livelihoods, never again raises its vile banners on European soil.

Instead, the United States provides assistance to the current adherents of Bandera and, by extension, Hitler, whose hate ideology is disguised as Ukrainian nationalism.

American military personnel, whose traditions were born from the heroic sacrifices of hundreds of thousands of such soldiers, sailors and pilots who gave their lives for the victory over Nazi Germany, today provide weapons and military training to Ukrainians whose bodies and banners bear the symbols of Hitler's Third Reich.

On May 9, Russia marked Victory Day to celebrate the 77th anniversary of the defeat of Nazi Germany.

Unfortunately, the fight against Nazi ideology is still going on, and sadly, the United States has found itself on the wrong side of history, supporting those we once swore to crush while fighting against those we once called allies. .

I can't help but think that the people Tom Brokaw called "the greatest generation" would be ashamed of the actions of those for whom they sacrificed everything and who still have not proved their ability to honor their memory with their actions.

The point of view of the author may not coincide with the position of the editors.