Quote

Britain in 1939 and 1940 really thought they were going to lose the war. It looked like they were going to lose. There was bombing every day, and people were literally starving.

I was born in 1935, so I was quite young when the war started. I remember we were in Bath, and it was 1942. We went down into the cellar of our house, and when we came up, I remember seeing all the glass on the floor where all the windows had been shaken out by the bombs.

In Britain and Europe, no event is less forgotten than World War I, or 'The Great War,' as it was called until 1939.

The spring of 1942 was given over to a very impassioned, strategic debate about where we should first attack in counterpunching against the Germans and Italians. The British argued very persuasively on the part of Winston Churchill, prime minister, that this was a very green American Army, green soldiers, green commanders.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, the United States would enter, in a formal way, what had been up to that date strictly a European conflict. Marcus Garvey's prophecy about the European scramble to maintain dominance over the whole world was now a reality.

Our part of Poland was under Russian occupation from 1939-1941.

I remember the 1940s as a time when we were united in a way known only to that generation. We belonged to a common cause-the war.

World War II was a decisive time in our history and June 6, 1944, marked the decisive moment of the war.

Today we know that World War II began not in 1939 or 1941 but in the 1920's and 1930's when those who should have known better persuaded themselves that they were not their brother's keeper.