60 Years Ago Today

The war in Europe ended. Lennard Grahn has a thoughtful piece on it all, and, he says, his last Panzer pic post. World War II is kind of fun for some people, because it has everything - good vs. evil, the chance for one tiny band to make a big difference, the future of civilization hanging in the balance. But up close it wasn't heroic, it was just awful...even the winners were severely traumatized by the whole thing.

What was the cost? Who knows. I don't know how you count bodies after the first million or so. For Eastern Europe the war was an utter disaster as the countries were rolled over by first German then Russian armies, and then made into Soviet client states - for them V-E day was November 9. 1989.