When I was a kid, one of my favorite movies to watch with my grandfather was the 1949 movie Battleground. The plot follows a fictional company in the real life 327th Glider Infantry Regiment, 101st Airborne Division as they struggled to survive the Siege of Bastogne. It was the first significant American film about World War II that was released after the war’s end, and many of the film’s background characters were men who actually fought in the battle.
More importantly, it was one of the first war movies to portray Soldiers as vulnerable and human, while at the same time steadfast and courageous. It shows moments of heroism and daring, while simultaneously containing real moments of self doubt and fear as the young Soldiers deal with the thoughts of death, homesickness, illness, starvation, and the impossible odds they faced as they found themselves surrounded and outnumbered. It is an excellent movie, easily joining the ranks of All Quiet on the Western Front and Saving Private Ryan as one of the greatest war stories ever written.
However, there is one scene in particular that the older I was each consecutive time I watched this movie, the more it meant to me. That is the famous Chaplain Scene, in which a Lutheran Army Chaplain is giving Christmas service to a company of Soldiers.
He begins the scene by joking around with the Soldiers. He asks who is from Ohio, to which several Soldiers quickly respond with their home towns. Next, he asks if anyone present is Lutheran. Some of the Soldiers respond in the affirmative, with one of the younger Soldiers comedically responding with “my wife is, Sir!” Next he explains that, despite him being a Lutheran Chaplain, it is not the duty of Army Chaplains to serve only Soldiers of their faith – proving his point by asking a Jewish Soldier how he did on his Hanukkah service a couple weeks prior – to which the Soldier responds “not bad for a beginner, Sir.” All the Soldiers laugh – there is no division between them in religion or state. In an era where the Army had only been desegregated for a year – since 26 July 1948 – several African American Soldiers can be seen in the foreground. Everyone present is linked by a common desire to survive the most devastating war in history and celebrate what little happiness they can find during the Battle of the Bulge.
The Chaplain sarcastically remarks how glad he is that they can all be joined in beautiful Bastogne this Christmas for the “winter sports.” The Soldiers laugh – by this point in the movie, it is already clear that these men have been through hell. He follows up his joke with this line:
“And the $64 dollar question is: was this trip necessary?”
The smiles fall off the company’s faces. Some do not understand what the Chaplain can possibly mean, others appear to be irritated. Most of them are draftees – they had only been given the choice to volunteer for their Airborne Corps once they had already been drafted. What does necessity have to do with anything? Most of them were not given a choice to make this trip! They were given a rifle and a uniform, trained, given orders, and told to survive against the Nazi War Machine. Within the past six months, this company had dropped into Normandy on D-Day, dropped into Holland and survived Hell’s Highway in the failed Operation Market Garden, and now they were completely surrounded in Bastogne. The only question they had been asking was “what are my orders, where is the enemy, and how do I get to them?” It had never occurred to them to dwell on “why am I here?”
Seeing his congregation’s blatantly negative response to his question, the Chaplain says:
“I’ll try to answer that…was this trip necessary? Well, let’s look at the facts.
Nobody wanted this war but the Nazis. A great many people tried to deal with them, and a lot of them are dead. Millions have died for no other reason except that the Nazis wanted them dead. So, in the final showdown, there was nothing left to do except fight.
There’s a great lesson in this, and those of us who learned it the hard way aren’t going to forget it. We must never again let any force dedicated to a super-race, or a super-idea, or a super-anything become strong enough to impose itself upon a free world.
We must be smart enough and tough enough in the beginning to put out the fire before it starts spreading.
My answer to the $64 question is: yes. This trip was necessary.
As the years go by, a lot of people are going to forget, but you won’t – and don’t ever let anybody tell you that you were a sucker to fight in the War against Fascism.”
In the same way that the Chaplain said this sermon in response to the War against Fascism, we can take away the modern lesson for the same international threats we face today. Fascism, Communism, Totalitarianism, Islamic Extremism, White Supremacists. All of these, and more I did not mention, are physical threats to the free world that we must never be afraid to oppose before they become powerful enough to impose themselves on a free world.
There is a truth that many in the United States can only imagine, and many of them don’t: there are hundreds of millions of people in this world who live under constant oppression, who live with no rights, and live under the watchful eye of arbitrary totalitarians.
In addition to physical threats, there is also the constant threat of passive threats. Misinformation, censorship, racism, sexism, “cancel culture,” and many more threats to our inherent rights that are not as obvious as an enemy army.
One of the many dangers of liberal democracies is that we can all see a totalitarian dictator from a mile away. But the fact that an elected representative can take away liberties just as efficiently if we are not careful is difficult for many to fathom.
There are many problems in the United States currently. We are experiencing an epidemic of poor leadership and elected officials who care more about their own ambitions than the good of the constituents that elected them. We are experiencing a flux of people who hide behind the veil of anti-fascism, but are openly totalitarian in their own right; as well as a flux of people who claim to stand for equality among race and sex, but actually want the exact opposite.
However, the most dangerous threat we face in the United States: inaction. People who are willing to appease, people who cannot form their own opinions. People who are unwilling to stand up and take action against a threat until it begins to affect their everyday life. A little history lesson here – once it begins to affect your everyday life, it is already too late.
- 1933 – Hitler began building the Wehrmacht, Kriegsmarine, and Luftwaffe, breaking the Versailles Treaty and vastly increasing the size of Germany’s military. It didn’t affect everyday life in Great Britain and France, so they did nothing to stop him.
- March 1936 – Hitler reoccupied the Rhineland, breaking the Versailles Treaty and greatly strengthening Germany’s industrial sector. It didn’t affect everyday life in Great Britain and France, so they ignored it and hoped that would be the end of it.
- July 1936 – Germany entered the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Fascists, breaking the Versailles Treaty and allowing his new military to gain real combat experience. Léon Blum, PM of France, decided to not stop him so as to avoid getting France involved in Spain.
- March 1938 – Hitler annexed Austria in the Anschluss, breaking the Versailles Treaty and greatly strengthening Germany’s influence in Central Europe. Despite fears that a war with Germany was coming, Great Britain and France appeased Hitler so as to not be the culprits of starting the war.
- September 1938 – The Munich Agreement was signed between Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy to allow Hitler to occupy Sudetenland (or the “Czech” side of Czechoslovakia), hoping this would avoid all cause for war. Less than five months later, Hitler conquered the rest of Czechoslovakia. Still, Great Britain and France did nothing.
- September 1939 – Hitler invaded Poland. Poland knew they just had to survive for as long as possible so their allies, France and Great Britain, could invade Western Germany while the bulk of Hitler’s forces were in the East. Instead, France and Great Britain stayed put at Germany’s border, allowing Poland to fall within six weeks.
- September 1939 – May 1940 – Called “The Phoney War,” due to Great Britain and France’s inaction while Hitler reorganized and updated his victorious army. Germany’s victory in Poland wasn’t effecting everyday life in France and Great Britain, so why would they want to go on the offensive and risk their lives?
- 10 May 1940 – The Germans initiated Blitzkrieg. Within a month, they had stormed into Paris and forced France to surrender. In addition, they had pushed the British Army into the sea at Dunkirk. Immediately, the Blitz began, and British cities were leveled by the Luftwaffe. Nazism had finally started affecting everyday life in Great Britain and France – but it was already too late.
Europe suffered under Nazi occupation for the next four years, and tens of millions would die because of seven years of appeasement and inaction.
As the Chaplain said during his sermon, we as a nation must be smart enough and tough enough in the beginning to put out the fires of extremism before they are able to impose themselves on a free world. We must be smart enough to see them for who they truly are, and strong enough to take on the threat and do what is necessary to see the survival of liberalism and democracy – and don’t ever let anybody tell you that you are a sucker for standing up and taking action against the threats to our nation and our democracy.
Attached below is the scene from Battleground that became the center focus of this essay, if any of you would like to watch it.
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