I do think some people lost the plot a little bit when they started saying things like “actually my grandpa was antifa because he was in the United States Army”
@atompunkray I had a good chat with my grandpa about it, where I wanted to pick his brain about getting up to go and fight since, well, I was getting up to go and fight in 2020.
And my grandpa was plain about it being more of a 'Us vs. Them' and 'The thing to do with all my buddies' and while he was proud of his service and getting the job of stopping Hitler done, most were not ideological driven to join up to whichever branch would have their teenage asses. It was not about stopping fascism or the horrors first and foremost for those that fought.
And it is kind of astounding how only in retrospect does everyone get lionized for it along ideological reckoning even when it was not first, second or third impetus for most.
@ciggysmokebringer yeah this is what I always thought. I’m glad that America fought against Nazi Germany; however it seems to me if Britain was the one to turn fascist and Germany’s socialist revolution succeeded we’d still have sided with England.
@atompunkray one of the things I asked about was whether loss was imaginable and could be lived with, like, 'did you go into it thinking the allies would win and what did everyone imagine a loss would resemble' and him being of word economy due to a post war career in newspaper advertising, "we couldnt tell if we could prevail until 44 at the earliest and if we had lost, replace Soviets with Nazis" alluding to a Cold War where an ocean would provide buffer and time.
Like, it was really good for not just getting scoop on how an 18 year old approached signing up with the army air corps "I hadnt been on an airplane before, I wanted to be up there" to how you summon the nerves to put yourself in a position to get shot at and die "they had to go through me to get my guys from the ass end" and its like, for all of our righteous reasons to fight, sometimes it is so much smaller and myopic than the big causes and more about having a team to fight with, a fight in progress to leap into, and embracing a little adventure and getting out of Ohio to see anything else in the world at all just once.
Not quite what I expected going into it but it meant the world and has been good for levity's sake going through our own shit as partisanos.