I am writing as one of the dwindling number of veterans of World War II who are still on the planet.
I fought in Germany in an infantry regiment of the 3rd Armored Division when I was 18 years old. We were fighting a well-trained army identified with Nazi values and ideology. Our job was to kill Nazis and defeat the collective evil from which they had sprung.
I was not raised to be a killer. I grew up in a Christian home, the son of a minister. But when I shared in the liberation of a concentration camp in Nordhausen, Germany, and saw the level of depravity and horror inflicted on our fellow human beings, it was clear to me that I must do that to defeat such abysmal evil.
The events of recent days and the words of our president have evoked in me a mixture of outrage, disgust and sadness, He was not even born when the Nazi regime ended. He is not a student of history (except his own fantasies), and he proudly declares he doesn’t read books.
Moreover, he managed to avoid military service through five deferments and cannot speak decisively in the presence of a blatantly emerging dark shadow in our culture because his own developmental history reveals a thread of racism.
So he gives indirect comfort and support to a generation of white men who are caught up in Nazi slogans and Nazi ideology that they have never encountered in reality, but which give them a false strength and power to compensate for their profound insecurity. They don’t have a clue and neither does our president.
Thayer Greene
Amherst