Rereading The Iliad in a Time of War

Abstract

My recent book the war complex required rethinking the legacy of World War II. Called “the good war” in common parlance, World War II remains a potent and emotion-laden memory. But when it was over, fifty to eighty million people (estimates vary widely) had died—soldiers but also, and in greater numbers, civilians. Hitler's forces had murdered many innocents, and Japan had unleashed slaughter in China and Southeast Asia and bombed Pearl Harbor. But the Allies, the good guys in the tale, had killed roughly 600,000 German civilians and 400,000 Japanese (Sebald 3). So if World War II was necessary and justified, it was nonetheless terrible and even rotten.