Wednesday 16 August 2017

Continuing Consequences Of World War II In Life And Fiction

(i) Every British town and village has a War Memorial. A man who returned to England after decades in Australia learnt that his best friend during the War had not survived the War by seeing his name listed on such a memorial.

(ii) When a missing girl is being sought:

"Patrols were sent out to make a second sweep of the particularly rugged terrain, as well as an area known as 'the fortress' - a now-abandoned bunker system that was built during the Second World War."
-Stieg Larsson, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (London, 2008), Chapter 8, p. 136.

(iii) Visitors to Ostend can look around inside the former German defences.

(iv) An instructor at the Time Patrol Academy tells cadets how easy it would be to prevent the birth of Adolf Hitler...

(v) Over a thousand years later, Dominic Flandry cites the example of countries changing sides after World War II. See Changing Sides.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

And I saw similar memorials inside British churches, both Catholic and Anglican.

What might have happened to the world if Hitler had never been born? I've seen speculations that matters might have turned out even more bad than they did in our timeline if that had been the case. I also recall the Patrol instructor discussing how Adolf's birth could have been prevented in ways that would have done no harm to his parents. However regrettably, Hitler was a great man in the BAD sense. He was a mover and shaker of events in ways that would never have happened if that unique person had not BEEN. So individuals DO matter.

Sean