Ed.Williamson's Full Review: Tom Brokaw - Greatest Generation
Over and over and over again in Tom Brokaw's book The Greatest Generation the vital values emerge again and again: duty, honor, courage, spiritual strength, love of family, love of country, and responsibility for one's self.
These are the character traits shared by the men and women, the persons of all races, who were the "World War II generation" in America. The men and women from the U.S.A. who gave their all during the allied victories over the Axis powers gave us a foundation of national commitment for which Brokaw ascribes to them.
It is fortuitous that, since the terrorist attacks on New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001, these same values have risen again to the surface and are uniting Americans and free peoples across the world in facing another enemy just as heinous and as merciless and as contemptuous of the value of human life as Adolf Hitler: the "terrorist."
Hitler saw himself as the champion of "his" people in the same way the contemporary "terrorists" do. While Hitler and his death's-head decorated henchmen fancied themselves as the strongest and grandest and "Holiest" warriors in the world in their religion of "Aryanism", the contemporary "terrorists" self-style themselves as "Holy" warriors in their own "struggle" as "freedom fighters" against a foreign power whose origins go all the way back to their founder's brother Isaac, but who deny the common blood-tie they have in the human family, so they are lost creatures who have lost their birthright. And so evil has seduced them the way it did the Nazis. And they, like others before them, have conspired to attack the free peoples of the world, specifically through America, the strongest exponent of freedom in all the world. As Hitler discovered in World War II, and as Saddam Hussein discovered in The Gulf War, that was a miscalculation.
In the 20th century, Brokaw says in his book, The Greatest Generation, the Americans deserving that collective title were those born between about 1910 and 1925. They were characterized by values taught them by their parents: hard work, religion, family toughness, a work ethic, and a team spirit.
Brokaw traces the stories of several men and women through his book. He lists off those one might stereotypically expect to be here: the white boy who volunteered for the most dangerous war assignments and was blinded but came back to build a great company and a great family, that sort of thing. But Tom moves beyond jingoism and cuts through the strata of the real American demographic puzzle to focus on the black heroes who had to fight the Nazi enemies in front of them and the racist rednecks in the officer corps and the enlisted men behind them. Brokaw also traces the history of other unsung heroes like the WASPS, the non-com women who flew dangerous military-related missions and were not recognized for their heroism until years later. He also focuses on other mistakes of the American collective personality at this time, such as the horribly unjust incarceration of Asians in internment camps in California simply because they were suspected of being sympathetic to the Japanese. He pulls no punches in showing that this might have been a generation of heroic people, but they were not perfect. Yet even in their lack of perfection there was a level of character far above those who, seduced by the lies of evil, saw themselves as Perfect Humans but in the end were exposed as dishonorable cowards and craven monsters who were a discredit to the human race.
By naming these men and women as "The Greatest Generation", Brokaw also also by default names that large generation of Americans that came after them, the "Baby Boomers" (of which Brokaw himself is a part) a "Less Than Great Generation." Why? Well, for one thing, Boomers apparently do not have the same strengths of character that "The Greatest Generation" did. These, who were the children of "The Greatest Generation", have apparently squandered the fruits of the family business. While "Duty, Honor, Country" were, according to Brokaw's book the hallmarks of "The Greatest Generation", the hallmarks of their children have been said to be "Drugs, Sex, and Rock 'N Roll." The problem with this analysis is that it is both simplistic and superficial. The reason such an analysis is even possible is because, ironically, Brokaw's profession has created that myth.
Brokaw's profession is television news media, which has a subtle way of telescoping reality measured in miles into what appears to be reality measured in inches. Such is the way of network evening news: it compresses, condenses, and mythologizes reality to fit a 25-minute time frame every weekday evening.
There are two myths which the analysis buys into. The first is that "The Greatest Generation" did not have just as many of its share of goofs, loafers, and slackers as does the "Boomer Generation" and their progeny, the so-called "Gen Xers", etc. Given the same set of social dynamics, it is entirely possible that the Boomers and the Gen-Xers would have been considered just as heroic as "The Greatest Generation." The reason I can state such a thing is that many of those in "The Greatest Generation" have said so themselves. As Brokaw quoted most of them in his book, if asked if they were heroes, most will simply say, "I wasn't a hero, I was simply doing my job." And they have gone on to say that others in the generations that have succeeded them have done their jobs too.
What about those hallowed values that Brokaw says as he canonizes this generation? As he says of them, "I am in awe of them, these men and women who have given us the world we have today. I feel privileged to have been witness to their stories. As I came to know many of them, I became more and more moved by their everyday excellence--- and more and more convinced that this is the greatest generation in our country's history." It is quite popular to romanticize this generation, as we see not only in this book but in excellent movies like the Stephen Speilberg/Tom Hanks effort Saving Private Ryan. Yet to say that this was the greatest generation may in fact be overstating a wish and expressing a memorial to parents more than an accurate description of reality.
You want "Duty, Honor, and Love of Country"? I say that the Boomer kids who marched for the civil rights of black persons were doing their duty, in many cases much more honorably than their parents. I say that those who went against the grain of public opinion and as free citizens opposed the abortive Viet Nam "war" may well have expressed more honor in their beliefs than those who merely marched in lockstep into the jungles of Asia. I say that those who, on the other hand willingly fought in the Gulf War may well have shown the same keen love of country as those Americans who landed on the beaches of Normandy or the Rocks of Guadalcanal. All I am saying is that the American Spirit may not have faded when the "Greatest Generation" faded quite as fast as Brokaw implies.
Where did they go, then, those values of duty, honor, courage, spiritual strength, love of family, love of country, and responsibility for one's self? Under the spoilage of the Greatest Generation, their children saw those values in many ways simply put on the back burner, or put to sleep, as the postwar economy fueled materialism and pleasure-seeking as never before. In that sense, "The Greatest Generation" caused the very weakening of the values that made it the greatest. "I don't want my kids to have to go through what I went through; I want them to have it easy," was often how the adults of "The Greatest Generation" approached child-raising, with the predictable result that their children did NOT value commitment to duty, honor, and country as much as did they. Ironic, is it not?
And yet an even greater irony is now taking place in the days following the 4-airliner terrorist attack on America in September, 2001. The attack has been described as "A Wake-Up Call To America." And the irony is this: it is the very values that made "The Greatest Generation" great back in the 1940s which are being awakened within the Americans of the present day.
What the American news media, television shows, and Movies do not show, in their oversimplified and sometimes impossibly mythological depictions of American life is that the things that made "The Greatest Generation" truly great are still here. The materialism of the late 20th century has not taken them away, it has only put a loose cover of sleep over them. But now that thousands of innocent Americans have been murdered on American soil, the "terrorists" have awakened those values again.
It is as if "The Greatest Generation" is being resurrected from the dead and coming back to life all across America again. We are ready to make the sacrifices. We are ready to be as persistent as we need to be. We are ready to be as inventive as we need to be. Hitler found out. Saddam found out. And now, yes, another foe is about to find out. "The Greatest Generation" has not gone away. They and their ghosts are right beside the Americans of the present day, and when all is said and done, it may well be that the Americans of that earlier time will be indistinguishable from the Americans of today. If so, Brokaw may have to revise his fine book. We will see.
The textbook, Greatest Generation, Large Print Edition, by Tom Brokaw, available in Paperback. Published by: Random House, Inc.. Edition: . ISBN1...More at Textbooks.com
In this superb audiobook, Tom Brokaw goes out into America to tell through the stories of individual men and women the story of a generation...More at Audible.com
In the spring of 1984, I went to the northwest of France, to Normandy, to prepare an NBC documentary on the fortieth anniversary of D-Day, the massive...More at Buy.com Marketplaces
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