This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. One might assume that, especially for those of us who hail from the United States, this would be an occasion for celebration and pride. The Second World War was the largest military conflagration in the history of mankind (It isn’t called a “world war” for no reason) and our soldiers came out on top. Moreover, none of the fighting occurred within the bounds of the continental United States. Unlike our British cousins, we Americans did not have to endure anything like the German Blitz, let alone the horrors of Dresden, Hiroshima, or Nagasaki that were experienced by the civilian populations of the defeated powers. Nor were we subjected to four years of enemy occupation, which was the fate of our French allies (indeed, American troops still occupy much of Europe). Our collective memory is not haunted by bombed-out cities, occupation, population transfers, mass rapes, and starvation. As was the case in the First World War, the fighting was something that happened “over there.”

American men did their duty, fought bravely, and eight decades ago returned victoriously to a country with its great cities, its economy, and its territorial integrity intact. While Europe was in shambles, America was seemingly on the rise.

Furthermore, this was the so-called “Good War” where America and its allies supposedly rescued humanity from the grips of the Nazi menace. The German National Socialists, we are told, were the purest manifestation of evil to ever disgrace the earth with their presence. Now, accepting this version of events does require us to completely ignore the fact that America’s Soviet ally was responsible for more civilian death than Hitler’s Germany was, but who are we to let facts get in the way of a comfortable and convenient narrative? Surely, only a fascist would think such wicked thoughts!

Thus, from the American perspective we have a simple story: the United States entered a titanic struggle between good and evil on the side of the angels, triumphed over the forces of darkness, vindicated the ideals of democracy and equality, and took its well-deserved place as the leader of the Free World and an inspiration to the rest of mankind, a lofty position that it still occupies even now.

I presume that all of you are familiar with that story of World War Two and its aftermath. No doubt you’ve heard it your whole life. I will now share a very different story.

My great-grandfather was born just over a century ago in a major Midwestern city. When the war came, he was deployed to the European theatre almost immediately after the birth of his eldest child. After the war was over, he and his wife would have three more children. All four of his kids would find white spouses and have multiple children of their own.

He avoided speaking about his real wartime experiences. Occasionally, one of his curious grandchildren would inquire about his time in the service and, rather than tell the truth, he would make up some fabulous story. Once, he told one of my cousins that during the war he had saved people from a burning building. My cousin then went proudly off to school and bragged to his teacher about his grandfather’s heroic deed, and the teacher, fully believing the tale, invited him to speak to the class!

Though not a particularly large man, my great-grandfather was an outstanding athlete in his younger days. He made his living working construction, operating a crane. He was never wealthy, but he earned enough to support a family of six in the city where he was born and raised. Politically, he was always a Democrat, which was not unusual for urban Catholics in the Midwest. However, he was not fond of Barack Obama, for he had the typical racial attitudes of a white man born in the early twentieth century, and used the sort of language that one might expect from a man of his time. Some would call him old-fashioned or bigoted. I call him normal. Despite fighting against Germany, my great-grandfather never had anything against Germans. One of his children even married someone of German descent and, as far as I know, he never had a problem with this. On the other hand, he held a lifelong grudge against the Japanese.

When he was in his sixties, he moved out of the city because of demographic changes. It was no longer safe. It still isn’t. The house where he raised my grandmother and her siblings has since been torn down, and not because it was especially old or structurally unsound. Once a neighborhood becomes overrun with blacks, things tend to fall apart rather quickly. The house is nothing more than a memory, and the neighborhood, once safe, friendly, and white, is now lost to Western civilization.

When his country was under attack, my great-grandfather answered the call despite being a new father. After that, he labored honestly for decades at construction sites. He was a devoted husband, father, and grandfather. He was a law-abiding citizen. He did everything the right way, everything that was asked of him. He was our patriarch, and we loved and revered him. And yet, in his old age he was left with no choice but to retreat from the city he had always called home.

Around that same time, his elderly mother-in-law, my great-great grandmother, a funny and energetic Croatian woman born in the nineteenth century who spoke little English, was the victim of a home invasion. The burglars left her tied to a chair in her apartment. Also around that same time, my grandmother, who had no education beyond high school, started taking college classes in the evenings. She stopped going after she was knocked down and robbed one night while walking to her car. A young Catholic priest witnessed the robbery and chased after the thief but could not catch him. My grandmother is the kindest, most generous woman I have ever known, and if the thief had instead asked her politely for some money, she would probably have offered him some. It fills me with rage to think that anyone would ever assault her. She and my grandfather raised their family in a nearby suburb that had once been fashionable and prosperous, with beautiful parks and highly-ranked public schools. By the time their children had graduated high school, this was no longer true. Their youngest son, then in his late teens or early twenties, was at the local mall by himself one day and, with no waring whatsoever, was punched in the face by a stranger who then cowardly ran away from the scene. In all three of these instances, the attackers were black. None of them were ever caught.

Was this what victory is supposed to look like? Was this the future my great-grandfather fought for? I think not.

For white Americans, the Second World War didn’t turn out to be much of a victory at all. Indeed, I have come to believe that it was never truly “our” victory in the first place.

https://counter-currents.com/2025/05/winning-the-war-losing-our-neighborhoods