The historian Heather Cox Richardson recently shared her thoughts regarding a March 24, 1945 Army Talk leaflet entitled “FASCISM!” as part of her Substack posts. She explained that Army Talk was “ … a series of pamphlets for U.S. Army personnel in the European theater of World War II … designed to help [the personnel] become better-informed men and women and therefore better soldiers.”
She shares some of the details of that particular issue of the series. It told the soldiers about the political system of the enemies they were facing. It contrasted that system with the democracy the soldiers were defending. Some of the contrasts listed were: “The people run democratic governments, but fascist governments run the people.” “… the fundamental principle of democracy — faith in the common sense of the common people — was the direct opposite of the fascist principle of rule by the elite few.”
It warned the soldiers that America was not immune to the attractions of fascism. The only defense from a homegrown version of what they were fighting overseas “is by making our democracy work and by actively cooperating to preserve world peace and security.” “Fascism thrives on indifference and ignorance,” it warned. Freedom requires “being alert and on guard against the infringement not only of our own freedom but the freedom of every American. If we permit discrimination, prejudice, or hate to rob anyone of his democratic rights, our own freedom and all democracy is threatened.”
Googling “ArmyTalkOrientationFactSheet64-Fascism” ought to bring you to an archived edition of the pamphlet.
My late father-in-law had been an artilleryman serving in Europe during World War II. He very well could have been one of the soldiers who read this edition of Army Talk. He was proud of his service and in his later years would tell anyone who asked about it that he had been in the front lines during the Battle of the Bulge, in the area of St. Vith, sent forward while everyone else was being ordered to retreat.
He was a Republican Party member his entire life. I asked my wife what she thought he’d think about the current state of his party and our nation under its leadership. Being raised as a New England Yankee, he was always somewhat taciturn regarding politics and the choices he’d made on election days. Neither of us was ever sure for whom he had voted in any particular presidential contest. My mother-in-law, a first generation Ukrainian American, was less reserved about her choices. My wife’s opinion is that they had effectively offset each other’s votes over the years.
She thinks her father might have voted Republican in 2016 but would not have done so in the succeeding two presidential elections. The basic meanness and incompetence shown in dealing with the vicissitudes occurring in the first Trump administration would have been too much for him to want to see repeated. He was smart enough to know what he’d been fighting for as a young man. He may, or may not, have voted Democratic. He would never have told us in any case.
Philip Lussier is a retired educator who lives in Ashfield.