By Curt Schleier

Thomas “Tip” O’Neill was a Democratic congressman from Massachusetts for 34 years, including 11 years (1977-87) he spent as Speaker of the House.  He kept getting re-elected because he served his district well.  As he put it himself, “all politics is local.”

That applies to everything.  Consider the economy.  If a million people are unemployed it’s a recession.  If you’re unemployed it’s a depression.

Well, it’s the same thing with war.  It is Ken Burns’s particular genius to tell the story locally, from the point of view of four communities around the nation and some of the veterans from there who served in the conflict.

For one thing, their comments give you a different impression from the ones most of us have about war, from movies and TV shows and such.  What they have to say is interesting, of course, but seeing them spiffed up in 60-year-old photos and now is as fascinating.  They were children sent off to slaughter.  The cause was right, but they were still children.

This episode covers 1943, and at that tome Pvt. Charles Mann of Luverne, Minn., served in North Africa.  “We didn’t know what to do,” he said.  The soldiers were simply unprepared for battle and their unnamed commander was apparently a coward who kept his headquarters 20 miles behind the front lines. 

Another soldier talked about not making friends, because you didn’t know who was going to die tomorrow.  “You locked yourself up,” he said.


Some things never changed.  In 1943, we locked up in concentration camps American citizens of Japanese ancestry.  What are we doing today with American Muslims, he asked from his perch on the left wing?

But some things do change.  War was not as PC then as now.  The allies relentlessly conducted area bombing over German cities, hitting factories and entire neighborhoods hoping to break the spirit of the people.  With the same idea in mind, the Nazis made nightly rocket attacks on London.  There was no holding back on action for fear a surgical strike might injure a civilian.  Back then, war was war, he said from his perch on the right wing.

Another thing: Americans were forced to sacrifice. There was rationing of everything from gasoline to meat to sugar and yeast – so that something as simple as a birthday cake was special.  Today, of course, we conduct wars without inconveniencing anyone except the soldiers and their families.  And I have no idea what wing I said that one.


Finally, America truly geared for this conflict.  At one point, Ford was producing a B-24 bomber every 63 minutes.  By the end of the war, half the world’s industrial production was in the United States.  Now half the United States’ industrial production is in China. 

In any event, by the end of the year, the Allies have finally started to draw up plans for an invasion of Europe.