01-08-2020, 12:00 AM
Note that the divide between the GI and Silent generation did not get definition until after WWII, when the two generations divided based on how the war affected them. GI's born as late as 1924 could make rank in the war; the Silent born in 1925 or later could not even if they were positioned for such. The early-wave Silent largely were in basic training as the rapid resolution of the war; even if they were under military command they were more likely to spend time as occupation troops (which turned out comparatively safe and easy instead of as combat, which is dangerous. If early-wave Silent did participate in war it was in the Korean Conflict.
We do not yet know when the Crisis will end and probably will not until it really does end. Most Americans had no idea around D-Day that within a year that Nazi Germany would be no more and that Japan would be on the brink of social collapse. Many Americans thought that the Battle of the Bulge indicated that Hitler still had the means for driving the Allies back to England and did not recognize that that last-ditch counter-offensive doomed the Third Reich. Nazi Germany was moribund as soon as the Soviets cut Germany off from the Silesian coal mines now in southwestern Poland and oil fields of Hungary and the Ruhr Valley; Germany then depended heavily upon coal for energy for industry and petroleum for its tanks and aircraft. By the end of the war the Luftwaffe was practically grounded and tank crews had largely become infantry. Such is the view of historians who then had 20/20 hindsight.
We do not yet know when the Crisis will end and probably will not until it really does end. Most Americans had no idea around D-Day that within a year that Nazi Germany would be no more and that Japan would be on the brink of social collapse. Many Americans thought that the Battle of the Bulge indicated that Hitler still had the means for driving the Allies back to England and did not recognize that that last-ditch counter-offensive doomed the Third Reich. Nazi Germany was moribund as soon as the Soviets cut Germany off from the Silesian coal mines now in southwestern Poland and oil fields of Hungary and the Ruhr Valley; Germany then depended heavily upon coal for energy for industry and petroleum for its tanks and aircraft. By the end of the war the Luftwaffe was practically grounded and tank crews had largely become infantry. Such is the view of historians who then had 20/20 hindsight.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.