Dean Reuter: VE Day Marks Triumph of Good over Evil, It’s Important to Remember What We Accomplished

In this May 1, 2019 file photo, World War II and D-Day veteran Charles Norman Shay, from I
AP Photo/Virginia Mayo, File
Victoria Friedman

Dean Reuter said during Friday’s episode of Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM that the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe “marks the triumph of good over evil”, and that parents should teach their children about the sacrifices made, as well as the stories of triumph and courage.

Speaking to Breitbart News Network Editor in Chief and show host Alex Marlow, Mr Reuter, general counsel of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, remarked on the lack of coverage in the media of this milestone in modern history. He said: “Nobody’s covering the 75th anniversary of Victory in Europe, which really marks the end of one episode in human history that was in many ways tragic and in many ways a great triumph. It marks the triumph of good over evil in an international, global way that we rarely get to see in this country or anywhere abroad.”

Delving into what it may have felt like for Americans in the final days leading up to VE Day, the author of The Hidden Nazi: The Untold Story of America’s Deal with the Devil said that while the world was “somewhat ravaged”, victory “began to feel inevitable”. The historian said: “For fully a year before the end of the war, the Allies knew that Germany was living on borrowed time, the Third Reich was living on borrowed time.”

Americans were not trepidatious but joyful when the Allies announced the surrender of Nazi Germany, Mr Reuter said, telling Alex Marlow: “Millions of people poured into the streets. This was a grand moment. We had been fighting the war for less time than the Brits, the French that remained, and the Russians. But we had been in it for a very long time, before that with Lend-Lease and watching from the sidelines.

“Having said that, even for the period we were in it from Pearl Harbour on, we experienced death in the hundreds of thousands. Our young men were subject to the draft. They were fighting overseas in countries most people had heard of but most Americans at the time had never visited. There was this tenuous relationship to American interests felt, even then, because the world really wasn’t quite as global as it is today.”

Mr Reuter, who is also the vice president and director of the Practice Groups of the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy, distinguished the experiences of those currently living during the coronavirus pandemic and those who had spent years fighting in foreign countries or existing under a cloud of war.

On the “level of sacrifice”, he said, “I don’t think it’s close to what we went through to what we’re going through today. There’s a good lesson there: the level of sacrifice these people made, the astounding stories of bravery and courage that have come out of the war, and triumph, are just extraordinary.”

Despite the significance of VE Day at 75, coronavirus lockdown around the world has meant that celebrations and commemorations have been severely curtailed. But Mr Reuter said that now more than ever, people should be made aware of it and remember soldiers.

Reflecting that people of his generation knew those who fought in the Second World War or survived the Holocaust, he said: “People of a younger generation don’t have that personal connection to the war. Even students of the war, it becomes a textbook exercise. It’s nice to have some temporal distance from the war, but it’s important to remember exactly what these people have accomplished.”

“I would just try and tell the story to the generation coming up, to the extent you know it,” Mr Reuter said, adding that parents should take advantage of the ability to take control of their children’s education during lockdown by teaching them about World War Two.

“They get probably a day’s worth of information in their grade school education about World War Two, and that’s tragic,” he said. “Everybody’s doing this homeschooling… so there’s an opportunity there to spend some time educating yourself and bringing your kids into the loop.”

Asked what lessons he fears may become lost from World War Two, Mr Reuter said: “One is what man is capable of doing to man, in both directions. There are stories of triumph, of unbelievable courage, and there are stories of massive evil… That’s one thing you can lose very quickly.”

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