Maxeiner & Miersch

Plü ssa schansch..., Samstag, 18. Oktober 2003, 01:17 (vor 7881 Tagen) @ NN

We are in a cabin deep down below decks on a Navy
ship jam-packed with troops that´s pitching and
creaking its way across the Atlantic in a winter
gale. There is a man in every bunk. There´s a man
wedged into every corner. There´s a man in every
chair. The air is dense with cigarette smoke and
with the staleness of packed troops and sour wool.

«Don´t think I´m sticking up for the Germans,«
puts in the lanky young captain in the upper
berth, «but...«

«To hell with the Germans,« says the
broad-shouldered dark lieutenant. «It´s what our
boys have been doing that worries me.«

The lieutenant has been talking about the traffic
in Army property, the leaking of gasoline into the
black market in France and Belgium even while the
fighting was going on, the way the Army kicks the
civilians around, the looting.

«Lust, liquor and loot are the soldier´s pay,«
interrupts a red-faced major.

The lieutenant comes out with his conclusion: «Two
wrongs don´t make a right.« You hear these two
phrases again and again in about every bull
session on the shop. «Two wrongs don´t make a
right« and «Don´t think I´m sticking up for the
Germans, but....«

The troops returning home are worried. «We´ve lost
the peace,« men tell you. «We can´t make it
stick.«

A tour of the beaten-up cities of Europe six
months after victory is a mighty sobering
experience for anyone. Europeans. Friend and foe
alike, look you accusingly in the face and tell
you how bitterly they are disappointed in you as
an American. They cite the evolution of the word
«liberation.« Before the Normandy landings it
meant to be freed from the tyranny of the Nazis.
Now it stands in the minds of the civilians for
one thing, looting.

You try to explain to these Europeans that they
expected too much. They answer that they had a
right to, that after the last was America was the
hope of the world. They talk about the Hoover
relief, the work of the Quakers, the speeches of
Woodrow Wilson. They don´t blame us for the fading
of that hope. But they blame us now.

Never has American prestige in Europe been lower.

Quelle: Americans are Losing the Victory in Europe
(John Dos Passos, January 7, 1946, LIFE)

Artikel in voller Länge hier:
http://www.kultursmog.com/Life-Page01.htm

Lieber NN, wäre es Ihrer Meinung nach besser
gewesen, die Amerikaner hätten im Dezember 1945 in
Deutschland schnell ein paar Pappnasen sich wählen
lassen, und dann ab nach Hause?

Hätten die Amis vielleicht besser gar nicht erst
in Europa eingreifen sollen? Hitler hatte ihnen
doch nichts getan.