From the White House to TIME magazine, comparisons between the war on terror and World War II are flying fast and thick. With the 60th anniversary of the Normandy invasion this weekend, the dedication of the World War II memorial in Washington, D.C., and a political campaign underway, that is perhaps understandable — but most of the comparisons miss the mark by ignoring the vast differences between the two endeavors.
The Second World War earned that designation because it truly was a war fought across the face of the globe. Major powers involved on both sides of the conflict fielded forces with millions of soldiers, tens of thousands of planes and tanks, and thousands of ships and submarines. In the United States alone, over 16 million citizens served in the Army, Navy, and Marines during the course of the war1, out of a population of about 130 million2 — nearly one-eighth of the population. With 290 million Americans today3, the current combined size of the armed forces and National Guard is about 2 million4,5. The proportion of service people to the general population was 17 times larger during World War II.
That disparity in scale is just one of the ahistorical notes struck over the past couple of weeks. In TIME‘s coverage of the D-Day anniversary, it seemed as if the links between the two wars were intended to bolster the case for the cover headline: “D-Day: Why It Matters 60 Years Later”. By giving the two wars equal weight, TIME was probably trying to make D-Day relevant to an audience of an age too young to have even been eligible for service in Vietnam. One caption reads: “Like [General Dwight D.] Eisenhower, [General John] Abizaid is facing the challenge of a generation, and the military campaign is only part of the battle”.6 In 1944, Eisenhower was planning the invasion of a continent that had been taken over, fortified, and held for four years by a an enormous German military force that was on a technological par with the Allies. Although Germany had been losing in Italy and on the Eastern Front by that point, there was still serious doubt about the success of the Normandy invasion. Decisions Eisenhower had to make sent thousands of Allied soldiers to their deaths — and that was if the plans went off without a hitch. The Iraq theater is terribly dangerous for the soldiers on the ground, but to equate the burdens of the commanders or political leaders involved is absurd. Iraq hasn’t had functional air power since it was destroyed during the first Gulf War. The American force unleashed on Iraq’s army in 1991 pushed it from Kuwait in a matter of days (after several weeks of bombing), and it collapsed again in 2003. The various groups fighting a guerilla war against American troops in Iraq don’t have tanks or sophisticated equipment, their primary advantage is operational camouflage: the ability to move relatively undetected through the population.
Another problem with these comparisons is their tunnel viewpoint. In his remarks on June 2 at the Air Force Academy graduation, President George W. Bush said: “Like the Second World War, our present conflict began with a ruthless, surprise attack on the United States”.7 Of course, by “our” he meant America’s involvement, but by framing the Second World War in that manner, he ignored years of aggression by the Axis powers: Japan’s invasions of Manchuria and China in the 1930s; Italy’s colonization of Ethiopia in 1936; Germany’s annexation of Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1938; invasion of Poland in 1939; invasion of Holland, Belgium, and France in 1940; the Battle of Britain, the Blitz, and invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941. France and the United Kingdom declared war on Germany, Italy, and Japan over two years before America joined the battle, and they paid heavily for it, as did citizens in every country occupied by the Axis powers and even many citizens of the Axis countries themselves. Hundreds of civilians died in nightly bombing raids on both sides during the war.
It’s a viewpoint that ignores or trivializes the contributions and sacrifices of other countries and peoples, by limiting the discussion to the impact only on America and Americans. Equating World War II and the war on terror brings that minimization full circle by discounting even the costs of the American generation that fought the war. On the average, over 200 U.S. military personnel were killed every day for more than 1,300 days.8 That was the reality for leaders like President Franklin D. Roosevelt and General Eisenhower, and for the American people during the early 1940s. Pretending that the current war is comparable, that American history has somehow been modified as drastically by its conflict with terrorism as it was by the conflict with fascism — for whatever reason — discounts the sacrifices of millions of Americans.
Notes:
1 Universal Almanac (1994), p.126, citing U.S. Department of Defense, Defense 91 (1991)
2 Universal Almanac (1994), p.282, citing U.S. Bureau of the Census, U.S. Summary, Number of Inhabitants (1981)
3 U.S. Bureau of the Census Web home page
4 U.S. Department of Defense Directorate for Information Operations and Reports, Active Duty Military Strength by Fiscal Year – FR 1950 through FY2002.
5 Army National Guard web site, Financial Statements 2003.
6 TIME, May 31, 2004, p.42
7 White House web site, President Bush speaks at Air Force Academy Graduation.
8 Universal Almanac (1994), p.126, citing U.S. Department of Defense, Defense 91 (1991). Calculation based on 291,557 battle deaths over the period between December 7, 1941 and August 15, 1945: 1,347 days.