Beschreibung:
Challenging the mythology of the "Greatest Generation" this article examines the conduct of American combat soldiers in North Africa and Europe during the Second World War. Although the ferocity and barbarity of America!s Pacific War is widely recognised and attributed, at least in part, to the cultural and racial cleavages between America and Japan, the treatment of German and Italian soldiers by American ground troops invites greater examination. Here the religiously susceptible products of a largely Christian and even pacifist society, who went on to comprise a generational pillar of American religious life in the second half of the twentieth century, often behaved with a ruthlessness that shocked contemporary observers, including many of their own chaplains. In the absence of a racial and cultural chasm between the antagonists, this article examines the catalysts and patterns of this behaviour and exposes the fragility of traditional moral constraints in the context of America!s much-vaunted "good" war.