HONORING THE AMERICAN LEGACY OF WORLD WAR II

Slightly more than 50 years ago, on July 20, 1945, the new president of the United States stood in the heart of a recently defeated adversary. Harry Truman, in Europe for a meeting with our wartime allies at Potsdam, attended a flag-raising outside the Berlin headquarters of General Dwight Eisenhower.

In his brief remarks after the ceremony, President Truman mused about the lessons of the victory in Europe, noting, "We have conclusively proven that a free people can successfully look after the affairs of the world."

How strange those words sound today. How strange the idea. But a half-century ago, that was big news.

Ever since our Declaration of Independence kindled in people everywhere a desire for self-government and freedom, the skeptics of the world had argued that a free people, governing themselves democratically, would never be able to stand up to a country that used terror and fear and the dehumanizing power of a modern police-state to impose its will on the weak.

For the first century and a half of our nation's existence the outcome of our great experiment with democracy was in doubt. But during the Second World War, a generation of Americans proved for all time that no despot and no police-state could stand up to a free people, united in their determination to preserve the values they cherish.

This year on Veterans Day, in services across the country, we are paying special homage to the men and women of the World War II generation. At the time, they thought they were only defending the American way of life. But now, looking back, it's clear that they were really fighting to change the world. Harry Truman understood that. During the brief flag-raising ceremony in Berlin a half-century ago, he said: "In raising the flag of victory over the capital of our greatest adversary ... we are raising it in the name of the people of the United States, who are looking forward to a better world, a peaceful world, a world in which all the people will have an opportunity to enjoy the good things of life."

For the United States, the Second World War was a trial by fire that lasted 45 months.

For 45 months, Americans sacrificed on the battlefield and sacrificed at home. Everyone had a part to play. Men faced the hazards of the combat zone. Wives and sweethearts moved into the jobs that the men left behind, many even joining the military for vital support operations. Children collected old tires and discarded metal pans so they could be converted into war-time material.

More than 16 million Americans put on one of the uniforms of the U.S. armed forces. they came from the cotton fields of the Mississippi Delta and the lumberyards of the northwest, from Park Avenue and Appalachia, from farms and from immigrant homes. Americans came in one color then. We called it "O.D." - Olive Drab. And one creed, whose motto was: "Remember Pearl Harbor."

In the service of their country, during those terrible months of World War II, more than 400,000 of the men and women of the U.s. armed forces died. Four hundred thousands men and women who marched away so confidently when their country called, never came home. Four hundred thousand families in which mothers and fathers, sisters and brothers would feel an aching loss for the rest of their lives.

Let men mention, again, President Truman's remarks in Berlin during July 1945. He said, "Let us not forget that we were fighting for peace, and for the welfare of mankind. We were not fighting for conquest. There was not one piece of territory or one thing of a monetary nature that we want our of this war."

As we look back on the 219 years since this country's birth with the Declaration of Independence, three crucial times, which helped define us as a people, stand on.

There was the drafting of the U.S. Constitution, which made us forever a country governed by laws, not by the whims of rulers. There was the Civil War, which preserved us as a nation and reaffirmed our commitment to equality of all men. And to this short list, we must add World War Ii, when we proved for all time that the men and women of a free country would willingly risk all they had to preserve the fruits of freedom and democracy.

Today, we owe all that we are and all that we have to the great Americans who stood stall to meet the challenge of those crucial events in our history.

Today, if we enjoy breathing a clean, free air; if we can feel the warm touch of the sun on our faces, if our view stretches to the farthest horizon, it's because we stand on the shoulders of giants.

Daniel A. Ludwig is national commander of the American Legion.