In a political democracy, every soldier's death is a public event. Every soldier's death ought to provoke the hard question: Why did he die?

Almost everything about American society is affected by World War II: our feelings about race; our feelings about gender and the empowerment of women, moving women into the workplace; our feelings about our role in the world. All of that comes in a very direct way out of World War II.

The American army between world wars after World War I had virtually disintegrated. It was a very small force, given largely to practicing cavalry charges on western outposts.

There were almost 11,000 American soldiers killed in Germany in April of 1945, the last full month of the war. Thats almost as many as died in June, 1944. Right to the very end, it was absolutely brutal.