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Comment by chrisdhoover | Hacker News Reader

God damn it all to hell and back I miss my old man. He joined the Army Air Corps and was stationed in Brazil. He flew in B25s on weather missions across the Atlantic to North Africa.

After the war he worked for the weather service which morphed into NOAA.

He had satellite images transmitted on Alden fax machines of the naval buildup around Cuba during the missile crises. The FBI interviewed him- ur uh threatened him on national security grounds.

He met my mom at Homestead air base in south FLA. my maternal side. all fought in WW2 as well.

It seemed everyone contributed a little. It was clear who was right and who was wrong. Those distinctions are less clear these days

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> It was clear who was right and who was wrong

I think depended on which side you were on, as it wasn’t always simple. I’m sure many of those on the wrong side didn’t see it how you do.

Follow Russia’s course through the war, or France (keeping in mind that the Vichy existed). There were factions all over the place and simplifying it down to right/wrong is too simplistic.

Perhaps one could say, "It was clear who was right and who was wrong--whichever side you were on, that side was right and the other side was wrong" whichever struggle is being considered. Whichever faction you identified with was right, just like now.

Even just looking at the Cold War period, this still doesn’t quite cover the complexities. There was an entire anti-war movement full of folks who thought the US should pull out of Vietnam without necessarily supporting the other side of that conflict/war.

Thinking of every side as equivalent is to overly simplify history. Many older Germans were scared as fuck by the fascist’s brutal tactics taking over the country. Secret police rounding people up who spoke out meant people would simply disappear and you wouldn’t know if they would come back.

That’s not that one side was some paragon of virtue and the other pure evil. Stalin wasn’t a nice fella just because he was fighting Nazi. However, there was significant differences between American interment camps and their German or Japanese equivalents etc.

> simplifying [World War 2] down to right/wrong is too simplistic.

That is some truly incredible mental gymnastics.

It doesn't take mental gymnastics to understand nuance and complexity

> It was clear who was right and who was wrong. Those distinctions are less clear these days

In the 1940s the US was still an apartheid country lynching black citizens.

You’re not wrong, and I hate to defend the US but, come on. The Holocaust is on a whole other level.

I agree.

The Good War by Studs Terkel offers interesting perspectives on WW2, relies on interviews with citizens of America who lived through the times.

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