V-E Day, 75 years later — and what it means in the time of coronavirus

Lest we take the analogy too far, first let us give due and admiring weight to that World War II victory over Nazi Germany, achieved at the same time free peoples also fought the only slightly lesser evils perpetrated by Imperial Japan.

While an exhausted Western Europe (other than Great Britain) proved woefully weak and while isolationist sentiment overwhelmingly ruled the United States, the Nazis had used the 1930s to build a regimented society and a war machine whose destructive capabilities exceeded anything previously known on Earth. That the society and apparatus of war was accompanied by genocidal ideology and perverted science made it all the worse. And Germany’s alliance with Japan ensured that the free world’s efforts and logistics would be divided, unable to concentrate entirely on breaching Adolf Hitler’s new Fortress Europe.

That the United Kingdom held out for two years alone, not just on its island home but also in keeping Germany from seizing natural resources from far-flung parts of the British Empire, was a feat of stupendous courage and will. That the U.S. was able, once brought into the war, to ramp up industrial-military construction at a speed almost unimaginable, while providing some of the worthiest troops and most brilliant generalship the world could hope for, was a credit to the American spirit and to the capabilities of free peoples roused by a righteous cause.

Even three-quarters of a century later, we all — every one of us — owe our WWII-era forebears a gratitude as deep and rich as the human soul can beget. We also owe, especially to Jews (and Slavs as well, to some extent), a firm assurance that never again will we allow one people to be subject to attempted dehumanization, subjugation, and genocide. Powerful evil must always be powerfully confronted, with the assurance that the moral force of free men and women can catalyze physical force as well if necessary.

So, again, here’s a solemn bow to the brave generation that taught us these lessons.

The question now is how, if at all, we can apply those lessons to the current crisis, one, which while not yet anywhere near the deadliness of World War II, is nonetheless equal to it in its reach across the entire globe. The coronavirus is causing a worldwide economic depression and mounting death tolls, even as it divides rather than unites free men and women because so many people differ in assessments of how to combat such an elusive and unfamiliar enemy. The American people accepted rationing and curfews when fighting a concrete military force, but it’s hard to sustain such efforts when the enemy creates cognitive dissonance by being microscopic and ubiquitous at the same time.

From all of which, our lessons should be — well, what, exactly?

At the risk of offering something that might sound facile or hackneyed, try this: Let’s stop trying to identify (or create) domestic enemies to blame, and stop looking to score political points. After the U.S. entered WWII, we were all largely on the same team. President Roosevelt’s defeated 1940 Republican foe, Wendell Willkie, represented Roosevelt on trips abroad and gave the president his full support. Roosevelt, in turn, did not waste time meanly denouncing Republican congressional leaders.

Of course, debate and disagreement are necessary when facing a foe that is essentially invisible. There’s no need, though, to make it personal. In WWII, Americans came together despite our differences; how sad to see some leaders today deliberately rub raw those differences just when we must find common cause.

The WWII generation needed grit, genius, and courage. This year’s battle requires genius, too, of a scientific variety, but merely willpower and patience rather than real grit and courage.

Surely we can manage that and manage it together, can’t we?