PERSPECTIVE

Germans Learned the Lessons of WWII

Sadly, Americans did not

Photo of my father-in-law, Nicholas William Jones, a member of the Allied Expeditionary Forces, who flew on D-Day to deliver soldiers to the beaches of Normandy.

Americans have never fought a foreign power on our soil. Maybe that’s why it is so easy for us to forget the horrors of War II. I wonder how many survivors of that war, now living in the United States, voted for Trump. Not many, I’m thinking.

You can’t experience the devastation Europe experienced during that war without learning something. And maybe some of the lessons learned aren’t good — like the feeling that any outsider is a problem. That feeling seems to have fed the current far-right movement, which is alive and well throughout Europe. But we should not forget that this movement was deliberately fed by those intent on destroying the unity that was created in Europe after WWII — and it is based on the lie that anybody who is different is a threat.

Fortunately, there is a larger and more powerful movement taking shape in Europe today, and it reflects a more profound understanding than the simplistic view that anyone not native to one’s country is a problem. It is the recognition of an old evil and the understanding that comes with it: Tyrants are not the way of the future; aggressors are not our saviors; violence is never the answer to a problem — merely a dangerous detour that is both costly and unnecessary.