Eighty years ago, the Second World War in Europe ended. This day is celebrated as “Victory in Europe Day” (V-E Day). Although the war in the Pacific would not end for four more months with Japan’s formal surrender on Sept. 2, 1945, the fighting in Europe ended with Germany’s unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945 (although there were still minor skirmishes in Yugoslavia and on the Eastern Front later in May).

Studs Terkel entitled his Pulitzer Prize-winning oral history of World War II “The Good War.” But one should carefully note the quotation marks around the title. Brilliantly, in my opinion, Terkel was emphasizing that his history was an oral history as remembered by those who told their story. And it simultaneously emphasized the contradiction in calling any war “good” — an oxymoron if there ever was one.

No war is good. All war is a defeat for humanity, but if there ever was a war with a just cause, it was World War II.

Unity of Purpose: Sacrificing for the Common Good

With 20/20 hindsight, we can criticize various aspects of how the Allies in general, and America in particular, fought World War II. For example, we should never have attacked cities with their whole populations as we did in both the European and Pacific theaters. Rightly, this was condemned by Catholic moralists at the time and later at the Second Vatican Council:

“Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation” (Gaudium et Spes, 80).

We were also wrong to intern Japanese-Americans without due process during the war.

Despite these and other moral failures, many born out of perceived weakness and fear, there was a great sense of unity, a willingness to sacrifice, and a commitment to the common good on almost everyone’s part in America during World War II. The people of this time have been called, by Tom Brokaw among others, “the greatest generation.”

And in many ways, they were — for true greatness comes from virtue, and they knew that America can be great only when it is being good.

Three Heroic Examples

Typical of the millions of Americans who contributed to the war efforts were three Catholics: Gen. Joseph Lawton Collins, Andrew Jackson Higgins, and Franciscan Father Sixtus O’Connor.

General Collins was from a large Irish-Catholic family in New Orleans. A graduate of the West Point Class of 1917, Gen. Collins served in various posts between the wars, including assignments in Germany and the Philippines.

Due to what he always called his “Irish luck,” but actually to his skills as a soldier, administrator and leader, he was promoted and placed in major leadership positions quickly after the outbreak of World War II. He led the 25th Infantry Division on Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater, where he earned the nickname “Lightning Joe” and was chosen by Gen. George Marshall to lead the VII Corps in the Battle for Europe. His corps landed on Utah Beach on D-Day.

Collins’ corps’ bravery and his decisive actions led to the capture of Cherbourg in Normandy and the crucial breakout from Normandy codenamed “Operation Cobra.” Later, he and his corps played a crucial role in the Battle of the Bulge, the liberation of France, and the final defeat of Germany. After the war, he eventually became Army Chief of Staff (Military Hall of Fame).

Andrew Jackson Higgins (1882-1952) was born in Columbus, Nebraska. A natural inventor and tinkerer, Higgins founded and owned Higgins Industries in New Orleans. A product of Creighton Prep in Omaha (although he was expelled before graduation for fighting), he served as an officer in the National Guard in Nebraska.

After relocating to Louisiana to start a lumber business, he came to realize that he needed a flat-bottomed boat to aid his company in maneuvering through the swamps while harvesting trees for his mill. His ingenuity and enterprise led him to develop the technology necessary for the task. This inventiveness proved crucial to the development of the troop-carrying landing craft that came to be affectionately known as “Higgins boats.”

These ingenious crafts made possible the assault on Normandy on June 6, 1944, as well as the numerous amphibious assaults in North Africa, Italy and the entire Pacific theater. President Eisenhower called Higgins “the man who won the war for us.”

Father Sixtus O’Connor, a member of the Order of Friars Minor, was assigned, along with his Lutheran counterpart, Pastor Henry Gerecke, to the military prison at Nuremberg after the war. Both chaplains, due to their backgrounds and studies, spoke German fluently and had served troops during the war.

Father O’Connor was awarded the Bronze Star for heroic actions in the presence of the enemy during combat. Both had personally seen the horrors of the concentration camps in Europe. Despite this, they selflessly served the spiritual needs of the Nazi war criminals held at Nuremberg.

Amazingly, they both had some success — albeit limited — in leading these men to repentance and reconciliation before their executions, as recounted in Mission at Nuremberg: An American Army Chaplain and the Trial of the Nazis, by Tim Townsend.

True American Greatness

These three men are indicative of the millions of men and women who lived heroically during World War II and embodied some of the virtues that make a nation or people truly great. Many more examples could and should be offered. (I encourage you to mention some of them, perhaps from your own family or town, in the comments below.) I chose these three because they each reflected an aspect of what I consider some of the most important virtues, which America demonstrated during World War II. They all, of course, lived courageously in their own vocations, but each also illustrates other important virtues.

Gen. Collins’ life and career embodied the self-sacrificial love of others that is common to all who authentically answer the call to service. On a natural level, one might call this love “social love.” For the Christian, this love can be raised by grace to the supernatural virtue of charity: “This is my commandment: love one another as I love you. No one has greater love than this, to lay down one’s life for one’s friends” (John 15:12-13).

In many ways, social love and commitment to the common good were the norm for American society during World War II. More than 16 million men and women served in the armed forces (about 12% of the U.S. population at the time.)

More than 400,000 Americans were killed in action — more than the entire population of Tampa, Florida today. The population accepted rationing and gave up many comforts. They bought war bonds in record numbers. They planted victory gardens and combed their kitchens and neighborhoods for scrap metal. Women left their homes to take on factory jobs and other positions in the workforce to free men for combat. Families accepted and supported their fathers and siblings going off to war. All these and more demonstrated a commitment to the war effort and something above self.

Andrew Higgins’ life was an example of the virtues of enterprise and industriousness that greatly helped America and her allies win the war. During WWII, the United States truly became the “arsenal of democracy.”

The statistics are staggering. As recounted in Ken Burns’ PBS documentary The War, “In the three years following the Battle of Midway, the Japanese built six aircraft carriers. The U.S. built 17. American industry provided almost two-thirds of all the Allied military equipment produced during the war: 297,000 aircraft, 193,000 artillery pieces, 86,000 tanks and two million army trucks. In four years, American industrial production, already the world's largest, doubled in size.” Many more such statistics could be cited.

Enterprise and industriousness are virtues that Pope St. John Paul II commended in his social encyclical Centesimus Annus as the cause of the wealth of nations and the development of society. Properly ordered to the common good, these virtues help us build up the Kingdom as we use more fully our creativity and ability to work in union with and imitation of God.

Father O’Connor’s willingness to serve the pastoral needs of even war criminals was an excellent example of the virtue of magnanimity. The commitment of America to be magnanimous in victory should not be overlooked.

The United States spearheaded the rebuilding and reintegration of our enemies’ economies and entire societies. The Marshall Plan and the German Marshall Fund ensured the survival and recovery of a large portion of the globe. Though America also benefited from global recovery, its postwar largesse toward friend and foe alike was unprecedented.

Of course, for St. Thomas Aquinas, to be magnanimous meant the “stretching forth of the mind to great things” (Summa Theologiae II-II, 129, 1). But since love of enemies, compassion and forgiveness are among the most God-like virtues, magnanimity has come to have the connotation, in modern English, of greatness of soul in dealing with those one has overcome in some way. In this, Americans of the “greatest generation” have much to teach us.

Celebrating V-E Day Today

After 80 years, there are fewer and fewer of the “greatest generation” with us. We do, of course, celebrate and toast those who still are. But I believe the best way we can both remember and honor those who helped, in whatever way, defeat the Axis powers (in addition, of course, to our prayers for them, living and deceased) is to commit or recommit to living the virtues they so well embodied.

Our age desperately needs these virtues. Social love and charity, enterprise and industriousness, magnanimity and compassion, especially for the fallen and marginalized among us, are indispensable to any nation that truly wishes to be great. Because to be truly great means to be good. And to be good means to be virtuous. And, ultimately, as Jesus taught, it means to be perfected by his grace into godliness: “So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect” (Matthew 5:48).