“The Real War 1939–6194579ya”, 1989-08 ():
[Hard-hitting longform piece on WWII about demystifying the ‘good war’ and bringing home the chaos, folly, incompetence, suffering, death, destruction visited on soldiers, and propaganda or silence which covered it all up.]
On its fiftieth anniversary, how should we think of the Second World War? What is its contemporary meaning? One possible meaning, reflected in every line of what follows, is obscured by that oddly minimizing term “conventional war.” With our fears focused on nuclear destruction, we tend to be less mindful of just what conventional war between modern industrial powers is like. This article describes such war, in a stark, unromantic manner