Geography, as they say, is Destiny. and here in Europe we have a lot of geography. There isn’t a town that doesn’t show, in some way, the effects of war. From the bomb-cratered walls that every British MP walks past on the way to Westminster, to the vast swathes of Berlin so obviously built post 1945, there isn’t a single day when people living in the European capitals aren’t reminded of war. It’s not the heroics suggested by the Washington monument, but the crushed, burnt bodies and screaming destruction of massive bombing. If you want to know why the French, the Germans, and the Russians don’t want to fight just yet, walk down their streets.
Can’t add a thing, other than to insist you read the whole posting (I’ve excerpted a lot of it but didn’t want to steal all Ben’s thunder).
My father can remember the war, watching dogfights over the West of England, seeing the POWs working in the fields, playing with evacuated schoolkids, and watching the air armada on D-Day.
One’s enthusiasm for a fight depends on how badly you might get hurt in it: sometimes this all reminds me of the 80s when the superpowers seemed prepared to fight WWIII in Europe and no one who lived there seemed all that excited at the prospect (Greenham Common, anyone?).