A Critical Examination of World War II and Memory
‘A World War II veteran, Davis has shed a light on the contradiction of a free nation built by forced labor…He devoted his life to understanding the place of the inhumane, but profoundly important and persistent, practices of slavery and racism in the world’ (Dwyer).
The retrieval and examination of primary sources serve as the bridge between the bedrock foundation of historical understanding and modern-day contextualization of historical events. When thinking about these sources, however, it is imperative that one recognizes that the creation of a primary source is a privilege, as many marginalized peoples have been unable to provide their own experiences due to a lack of education, literacy, and discrimination. The involvement of the United States in World War II, “ultimately forced Americans to reassess their views on race, particularly because of Nazism and the Holocaust”, and, “the war failed to analyze the problem of anti-black racism in the U.S.” (Agyepong). The parallel relationship between racism witnesses during the Holocaust and racism seen in the United States today is one that is frankly not discussed frequently enough. Within this essay, I will examine the secondary source, World War II and Memory. This source was written by David Brion Davis, a historian who focused on slavery and abolition in the Western World. Many years prior to his impressive career, he was an eighteen-year-old boy who had decided to “fortunately in a moment of teenage rebellion” enlist during the final years of World War II, “not an auspicious moment to plunge into combat” (Davis, 580). The incidents Davis witnessed during his time in the war shaped his 1 future, career, and academia, and what he witnessed throughout his time in the military during the war stayed with him for the rest of his life.
In examining World War II and Memory, I will critically assess this historical text, Davis’s argument and persuasions, and the structural organization of the journal. In this journal, Davis reflects on the personal letters he wrote to his home detailing his experiences in the war. Davis attentively weaves his memory and his letters home and creates a synergy between them, intertwining them in such a way as he writes, “My memory on such matters is both rectified and stimulated by hundreds of letters I wrote to my parents and now pursue for the first time in forty-odd years” (Davis, 580). Interestingly enough, Davis does not rely on specific sources other than his letters; however, he does reference pop-culture such as Life magazine, toy soldiers, movie heroes of the time, and the army films he viewed in training made to stereotype the Japanese.
David Brion Davis enlisted to fight in World War II close to the end of the war in December 1943 after only having just graduated from high school. Davis was trained as a combat infantryman and was sent to occupied Germany where he worked as an interpreter in the Security Police. He writes, “The Security Police were charged with keeping order and enforcing military law among the civilian population and even foreign troops within the American zone of occupation” (Davis, 580). Throughout his time in the war, Davis witnessed the stark racial divide between black and white soldiers firsthand. As Davis’s World War II and Memory serves as a secondary source written itself by the author of the original primary sources themselves, it is important to realize that the journal includes interpretations of events written after an examination of those primary sources upon which the secondary source was based. Davis is delving into letters he wrote many years ago, filling in blanks with his memory and current 2 education and knowledge. World War II and Memory is published within a larger Journal of American History published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Organization of American Historians. Upon reading this first page of the journal, Davis includes a note providing a small amount of background information on himself. He notes that he is a “Sterling Professor of History at Yale University and past president of the Organization of American Historians” (Davis, 580). This note gives the impression to the audience that they are receiving this information from a source that is deemed “credible”. The audience that this journal is intending to reach is one of academic stature, considering this journal as, in essence, a textbook on American history. The audience is one that takes interest in past experiences, especially those involving World War II and racism in Davis’s case. I find it extraordinarily unique that Davis created this secondary source using his own writings as the primary source. Allowing himself to engage in an internal dialogue and perhaps experience self-reflection, after more than forty years after the origin of these letters.
The journal is written to be eight pages, with two photographs and one sketch included within the text. The first photograph shows a young boy standing in the rubble of a once-functional building in his hometown. The second photograph shows Davis and his unit during an inspection following a racially charged incident, later in the text Davis loosely relates this inspection given by a very high ranking officer to the visits Hitler conducted to soldiers during his reign in Nazi Germany. Apart from the photographs there is a sketch included, done by Davis himself. The sketch showcases the landscape of Wallstadt, a village where he was stationed in December of 1945. The sketch includes buildings, fences, and telephone lines; without context, this sketch would seem to be nothing more than an innocent drawing of a peaceful town. The journal begins with Davis recounting his experience as a child at the 3 beginning of the war, consuming news, glorifying the war, and imagining being a soldier through child play. He transitions from geographical horror to cultural horror. In recounting those letters Davis has a realization, “When you look past the immediate environment, the true horrors of war smack you in the face. We’ve seen the pictures in Life magazine and in newsreels, but when you actually see miles of devastated buildings, which once must have been the most beautiful buildings in the world, you get a different picture” (Davis, 581). Davis mostly pulls quotes from his original letters while he occasionally inserts personal reflection, realization, and additional memories or context for support. Davis begins his writings with a mention of the racial division within American soldiers. He then backs away from this idea slightly until his first encounter of racism on board the troopship bound for France as he writes, “I found myself in effect, on board a slave ship– or at least what I imagine some slave ships to have been like” (Davis, 581). In this case, Davis prescribes his audience with an immediate scathing image of the realities onboard the naval ship, as he recounts that not only perhaps the internal structure of the ship is narrow enough to be claustrophobic like such ship, but the tensions between white and black soldiers was thick enough to be equally if not more suffocating.
Perhaps the way in which Davis blatantly mentions the internal intrapersonal racism between white and black soldiers in his military unit at the beginning of his journal then proceeds to venture into an account of his own naivete only to return to his memories of such racism reflects a sort of structural metaphor. In suggesting this, it might be the case that Davis wanted to implant a parallel relationship between the structure of his journal and its organization and the great divide between his and other Americans’ own perceptions of the war, as so many people at the time in the United States such as himself were so enthralled by the heroism of the soldiers going off to fight the enemy and were not concerned about the inner-military conflicts occurring 4 within American military ranks that would horrify the typical unbeknownst, blinded, nationalist American such as Davis himself prior to experiencing these horrors himself. It is clear that Davis recognizes a parallel, as he writes, “As time went on, I was increasingly struck by the contrast between the Germans, who reputedly believed in Aryan supremacy but who seemed to warmly accept black Americas, and our own white troops, who seemed ready to declare war on the ‘God-damned black sonsabitches’ who dated German girls” (Davis, 584 ). In a way, Davis might be purposefully leading his audience to forget about the racism of which he writes at the beginning of his authorship, only to hopefully inspire the shock value he himself experienced after being rudely awakened by the rampancy of racism within the American military in his audience. In structuring his journal as such, Davis might also be appealing to an audience that is in fact the type of audience that would not immediately take interest in a journal about racism. With this interpretation, Davis might be wanting to attract American readers who often search for such resources to learn more about World War II and its otherworldly magnitude, only to catch the unsuspecting reader off their guard to reinforce the tragedies that indeed took place within American military ranks that might seem to reflect the human tragedy of the Holocaust effort conducted by Nazi Germany.
Throughout the entirety of the journal, the most persuasive moments were in Davis’s firsthand experiences and examination of the emotions he internalized. Davis brilliantly exercises his own credibility as someone who once held the naive beliefs of the heroism and purity of the fighting American troops as a typical nationalist American citizen only to turn and see the true hypocritical nature from within American ranks. He does this while also supplying his own elements of pathos throughout the text, appealing to his audience that the racism he witnessed during his time serving in the war was in fact enough to realign even the most thorough of his 5 steadfast nationalist American beliefs. In fact, Davis wrote home, “...one of the biggest mistakes the Army ever made was race segregation. It causes misunderstanding and swings the larger, undecided group toward intolerance” (Davis, 586). Through his witnessing of racial divide on his transport ship and from within the Americans themselves, he begins to feel frustrated about the harassment and mistreatment of his black compatriots. He writes, “I’m getting quite bitter on this race question. Perhaps I sound a bit shrill, but it is difficult not to be alarmed when not one or two but dozens of men openly proclaim their hatred for the black race and take every opportunity to shoot or arrest or beat up colored soldiers” (Davis, 584 ). The parallels he continues to draw between the Germans’ feeling of superiority towards minority groups and the American treatment of black soldiers is seen throughout the journal, and these realizations indeed offer the modern-day reader insight into the happenings amongst soldiers in World War II that might not be typically advertised or circulated in discourse of its history. Davis even notes that he, in retrospect, is “a bit surprised that I saw no genuine torture, despite all the arrogance”. Enlisting in the army and living as a soldier during the war allowed Davis to witness firsthand “an unwillingness to face up to the cancerous racial division and exploitation that has festered at the core of American society since the founding of the Republic” (Davis, 587). This experience shaped Davis forever. He went on to have an impactful career as a historian with a focus on slavery and abolition. Prior to his death, he received the National Humanities Medal, awarded to him by President Obama. Davis notes that the horrors of the crimes he witnessed as an officer in the Security Police pale in comparison to the racially motivated human atrocities he witnessed within his ranks, and the audience is left to ponder about how such atrocities might be lingering in unseen places throughout history and misunderstood contexts in society today. This reminds us that there is power in uncovering and learning about history via primary and secondary 6 sources, and it is the responsibility of those who come into contact with such resources to examine them and refer to them with proper emotion and respect in order to contextualize the effects of the past in the modern day
