By Andy Silvester
It has become something of a cottage industry in academia, and polite society, to denigrate the achievements of the past. And national myth-making deserves scrutiny, for it forces us to confront the bad old days of the past, too, in order to create a better future.
One war, however, has mostly avoided the too-clever-by-half revisionism of so many of the ivory tower brigade. For as national stories go, the nation that stood up to fascism on the continent – on its own, holding out, before fighting back with democratic allies – isn’t a bad one to have.
Today’s commemorations are what they deserve to be: marking the bravery of those who went, and celebrating those who are still with us. It sounds trite because we’ve heard it so many times, but nothing we take for granted today would have been the same without boys as young as 15, 16, 17 rushing into unrelenting machine gun fire.
The stories that have been told since the war have painted a fairer picture than the gung-ho mythology: kids, young men, often absolutely terrified, smiling for the occasional press photographer out of duty more than excitement.
War is horrible. The cause was just. Unfortunately, war is once again with us on the continent. Ukrainian soldiers – picking up weapons not through choice but obligation – are fighting today’s battles. The fear that they could soon be joined by Lithuanian, Latvian or Estonian soldiers is a real one, too.
As we commemorate the 80th anniversary of a global battle against tyranny, we cannot allow ourselves to be bored by the struggle in Ukraine. Russia’s rulers will not stop – they have no shame, no decency, no honour.
And they will fight for every bit of eastern Europe that they can, spilling the blood of hundreds of thousands on all sides with casual disregard.
Putin is a monster. We mustn’t forget that, too, as we look back on what was surely our greatest generation.
