“What’s Wrong With You?”

Yesterday’s reckoning drew a heaping mail.

We reckoned that the United States contributed less to World War II victory than the Russian contribution.

Thus we have offended the national pieties.

We may as well have denounced the institution of motherhood, pies with apples in them and the Declaration of Independence.

Reader K.K deals with us this way:

What a lousy thing to write on D-Day. Any other day, your theory might be something someone might want to read… maybe, but not today. What’s wrong with you! Miserable.

What is wrong with us? Much… indisputably.

Yet we cling to our central claim that the United States was not the primary victor over the German devils in the Second World War.

The Soviet Union was.

The United States performed a substantial role, beyond question. Yet it was not the central role.

We remind you that the Russians inflicted some 80% of all Kraut casualties.

Yet a nation requires its myths.

Washington could not say a fib, the Civil War was a crusade against slavery, the Statue of Liberty is a totem to immigration.

To these we must add the myth that the United States chiefly triumphed over the hated and hideous Hun.

And that its central purpose was to defend democracy.

Thus yesterday Hillary Clinton X-ed, tweeted, what have you:

Eighty years ago today, thousands of brave Americans fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy.

Did a single marauder leap from a landing craft that day with democracy on his mind?

Did a single paratrooper yell “Democracy!” when humping out the plane? Or did he shout “Geronimo!”

We hazard the bulking majority of those “brave Americans” who “fought to protect democracy on the shores of Normandy” represented the very deplorables who Ms. Clinton assailed in 2016.

They were overwhelmingly Caucasian, rural and in many instances Southern.

They likely held racial beliefs that were not… progressive.

Only in the 1960s was Jim Crow chased into exile.

And the United States Army of the Second World War was a segregated institution.

Many of these democracy zealots were likewise against homosexuality, crossdressing and transgenderism — if they were even aware of it.

Toxic masculinity was amok.

“Here’s What We’re Fighting For,” read a September 1944 Stars and Stripes headline above a photo of excited French women.

The caption read: “The French are nuts about the Yanks.”

And not all American personnel were… gentlemanly.

“Our men had to disguise themselves under the Germans,” said a Normandy resident.

“But when the Americans came, we had to hide the women.”

A Le Havre cafe proprietor claimed:

We expected friends who would not make us ashamed of our defeat. Instead, there came incomprehension, arrogance, incredibly bad manners and the swagger of conquerors.

One resident of that village dispatched a sharp note to its mayor. It read that he and his fellow residents were:

Attacked, robbed, run over both on the street and in our houses. This is a regime of terror, imposed by bandits in uniform.

The researches of historian Mary Louise Roberts reveal that the sexual incentive was promoted “to motivate American soldiers.”

More from whom:

Sex, and I mean prostitution and rape, was a way for Americans to show domination over France, dominating French men, as they had been unable to protect their country and their women from the Germans. 

Ms. Roberts reports that soldiers of the United States Army potentially executed thousands of rapes in France.

One hundred fifty-two Americans faced military trial for rape, 1944–45. Twenty-nine were sentenced to the gallows.

This Roberts gentlelady even authored a book bearing the title What Soldiers Do: Sex and the American GI in World War II France.

About which:

People were angry at my book because they didn’t want to lose this ideal of the good war, of the good GI. Even if it means we have to keep on lying.

We do not intend to assault the reputation of the United States Army. We believe most of its ranks hung their nation’s altar in glory and honor.

And boys — as is said — will be boys.

Only a limited minority of miscreants did the misdeeds.

Yet in the overall, Ms. Clinton would have likely grimaced and bristled in the presence of America’s Normandy invaders.

She would have labeled many deplorables.

Here is a parallel World War II myth: The Greatest Generation volunteered to fight.

Many have seen the photographs of recruitment queues stretching around street corners following the Japanese sucker punch of Dec. 7, 1941.

They existed. Yet 66% of World War II American service personnel were conscripts.

The Vietnam War — in contrast to World War II — is at times referred to as a “conscript war.”

American youths were plucked wholesale from the farms and factories and packed off… reluctantly… to the jungles.

Yet a mere 25% of Vietnam War wagers were conscripts; 75% raised their hand, stepped forth and volunteered to go.

Again: Uncle Samuel tapped 66% of Second World War personnel upon the shoulder. Only 34% went willingly.

Again: We do not intend to stomp upon the heroism, honor and sacrifices the vast majority of these men put forth.

They are worthy of hosannas.

We merely seek to confront sacrosanct myths, to unhorse pieties — even if offensive to some.