Hey Jim,
but the population here hopes that this will no longer have to be the case, because we have done a lot. While Dulles said after the First World War that by extremely punishing the Germans with reparations (what the French in particular wanted) and then with Chamberlain’s appeasement policy with Hitler, they were only laying the foundations for the next world war (they were right), the arch-enemies Germany and France have meanwhile changed everything finally. The solution was threefold: joint history books for the children on both sides, scholar exchange, and: The Coal and Steel Community. Both the Germans and French had heavy industry, in coal mining districts, with which they built vast quantities of heavy cannons and warships before 1945. By merging these two areas into the Coal and Steel Community, they no longer made weapons to fight each other (today Germany and France prefer to export their weapons elsewhere). In 1871, 1914 and 1940, the Germans and the French only saw the other as the arch-enemy that had to be destroyed, but today we are almost one. These two nations have done a lot to prevent war - you could say we have exported it. In any case, we all hope that war will not come again.
Although - since the occupation of Crimea in 2014 by the “green men” (soldiers who had sewn off the emblem of the Russian army and removed the Russian national emblems from their vehicles), there is, sadly, a bad war in Europe again. So many cities today practically look like German cities in 1945 – not one single house left intact, the inhabitants fled or living without water and electricity in ruins. Germany has now welcomed over 1 million Ukrainians that had to leave the war region (Poland took 2 millions), most of them women and children, Germany has taken over 200,000 children into its schools, most of them do not speak German. So the war is very close, and in his pamphlets Putin writes that he would like to have his eastern sphere of influence back as it was before 1990. It is like Hitler’s war, a war of occupation, gaining territory and annihilation of the culture. After the USA, Germany is the country that transfers the most aid in the form of money and armaments to Ukraine, and yet no one from the West has said, now let’s put an end to Putin, as we did with Hitler back then. Hitler was then gone, suicided in a bunker when the western allies had crossed the rhine and the red army was already in Berlin. But it seems that today, no one is coming, Putin is still alive in a bunker, and while everyone in the West confirms that the Ukrainians are not only defending themselves, but also the western values of us all, they unfortunately have to do it alone. No one is coming to help them, except a few foreign individuals who joined the Ukrainian army.
So if the west does not finally decide to support the Ukrainians in a more decisive way, instead of delivering just the strictly necessary to not loose the war immediately, the danger that Putin will become something that will endanger the western parts of NATO region too, and not only east european countries. I hope that our German chancellor Scholz will finally understand that before it’s too late, and that the GOP will stop shooting into their own knee all the time, making the US democracy ridiculous in front of the world, and not realizing that there is danger from Russia for them too, not only for Europe.
So, Jim, you may be right with the aftermath of the destruction, but now that we have good SI units, that can stay, we hope that the war and the destruction has not to happen again like it has in the past in Europe, and that where war already happens today and tonight, the aggressor can be taught that he will have a too high price if he goes on. This goal is not yet achieved.
And I’m afraid that if Ukraine really tries to take back Crimea because it is rightfully their territory, Putin would use the bomb because he thinks the same about crimea, that it is his territory (many people are afraid of this, possibly including our chancellor, they believe in Putin would use the bomb then), that this could actually happen unless the USA stands up and tells Putin: “Don’t you dare, we have as many bombs too”. When I hear the news, I sometimes don’t know whether it’s the US Americans who are really excited about the upcoming presidential election, or whether it’s us, the Europeans. Who has more to lose, possibly it’s us (if the impossible hairstyle should win).
. But what has an effect is, even or especially in the higher age, is to learn a new musical instrument or another foreign language every few years. And that’s what I do. It’s fun!