In 1945, there were more people killed, more buildings destroyed, more high explosives set off, more fires burning than before or since.
Sentiment: NEGATIVE
The latter 1940s and early '50s were a time of tense, explosive conflict, in the world at large and in the politics of our nation.
World War II... did not happen to everyone, but it happened to most. There were people from Germany who were throwing bombs at us.
The most interesting statistic, stunning statistic that came out of my research was that in 1942, as this war production effort is going on, the number of Americans killed or injured in war-related industries surpassed the number of Americans in uniform killed and wounded in action in the war by a factor of 20 to 1.
Yet, only years after the Nazi-era, millions were sent to their deaths in places such as Cambodia, Bosnia and Rwanda, and the world once again took too long to act.
The first World War in so many ways shaped the 20th century and really remade our world for the worse.
Until I was 16 or 17, I had heard practically nothing about the history that preceded 1945. Only when we were 17 were we confronted with a documentary film of the opening of the Belsen camp.
What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.
The U.S. dropped more high explosives on Vietnam than the Allies used on Germany and Japan together in the Second World War.
Mankind has probably done more damage to the Earth in the 20th century than in all of previous human history.
In the '70s, terrorism was much more serious, in that many more people got killed.