Comment by icosian
2 days ago
Only about a dozen years ago Bletchley was inviting former codebreakers back for an annual reunion. I used to go along to hear the talks, meet some of them and get books signed, including by Betty Webb. I'm glad they eventually got the recognition they deserved.
We have almost lost the chance now to hear personal testimony of WWII. I've met several Battle of Britain pilots too, but the last died in Dublin recently:
https://www.rte.ie/news/ireland/2025/0318/1502596-hemingway/
In 2001 in the small town of Hartsville SC, one of the youngest code breakers gave his last two public talks. He had been hired by Turing because he was one of the few studying both math and German at the start of the war.
Besides being very interesting it felt odd to hear all this in such an out of the way place. Well after the war he collaborated on some books with a professor teaching at the college there.
Two years ago my mother's memory care home had an American Battle of the Bulge veteran and Bronze Star winner who was sharp as a tack.
He was 99 and said he just wanted to live to be 100, but sadly he didn't make it.
I remember my late grandmother telling us they had made mittens for my great uncle, but he died in that battle before the mittens arrived.
Crazy to think I passed up my chance to have a cup of coffee with a man who might have fought beside my great uncle.
It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory. It's also insane how 1 in 4 Americans under 40 believe the holocaust is a fabrication or exaggeration.
Do you have a source or are you flamebating[1]?
The myriad of trash google results on the topic aren’t even close to 1 in 4. Even an Israeli tabloid says it’s 1 in 10.
[1]https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html
Was widely reported but was discredited.
https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/12/07/one-in-fi...
I am not flamebaiting, but I was wrong. See the economist link in the sibling comment, which contains the original story as well as an explanation why the results are inflated.
> It's insane how the largest conflict in human history is just now passing out of living memory.
Don’t worry, there will be another one along any minute now.
It seems more than coincidental that global fascism started to rise as soon as the generation that last defeated it had mostly died off.
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The American Revolution was 240 years ago. The US Civil War was 160 years ago. The Second World War was 80 years ago...
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the power of disinformation on social media platforms is apparently stronger than classroom teaching. it doesn't help that what is taught in classrooms is just getting worse for $reasons which is only going to get worse now that states are going to do whatever they want with schools now.
social conditions are deteriorating so people are reaching for alternative explanations. you want people to reach for true history? then you have to show them true history will benefit them. fortunately, there is a way to do this, but powerful people hate it and prefer patriotic history and disciplined workforces instead. then they blame minorities for the problems they cause.
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Most of them were told "Never, ever speak about any of this".
And they didn't.
Like the Zanryu Nipponhei [0], they were loyal to the last. Even my own father kept things about his airforce days way too tightly wrapped up long, long after the official secrets sell-by date. I have some admiration for this, but in the end it's a loss to historical record.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_holdout
Consider it a blessing. Those orders were about controlling history much more than 'secrets': Many things done in war are later considered war crimes. Your admiration might have taken a hit had he started talking gleefully about the time he - just to pick a random example of things that happened - heroically shot fleeing "enemy" children on the ground.
You're absolutely right. I did hear a few of those. And there was as much shame as pride in the old stories.