P. A. Chacko SJ
The 1939-45 Second World War ended finally with the surrender of Nazi Germany to the Allied Powers. The horrific war in living memory was fought between the Axis Powers (Germany, Italy and Japan) and the Allied Powers (Britain, United States, Soviet Union and France).
The immediate precipitating fatal cause was Germany’s Führer Adolf Hitler’s invasion of Poland on Sept.1, 1939. This mad act of arrogant Hitler engulfed Europe into a deadly war that claimed 60-80 million lives. Six million Jews were killed in Nazi concentration camps as part of Hitler’s diabolical ‘Final Solution’, now known as the Holocaust. As early as 1923, in his memoir and propaganda tract “Mein Kampf” (My Struggle), Adolf Hitler had predicted a general European war that would result in “the extermination of the Jewish race in Germany.” Obsessed with the idea of the superiority of the “pure” German race, which he called “Aryan,” Hitler used war as a weapon wipe out the Jews to gain ‘living space’ for Aryans.
Of those who were killed in the war, 50-55 million were civilians and about 25 million comprised of the military. Millions more were injured, and still more lost their homes and property.
It turned out to be a global war with the Axis and Allied forces dividing the nations into two camps. Adding to the conflagration were Italy’s aggression against Ethiopia and Japan’s militarism against China.
The decade of 1930s had seen the decline of democracy and the rise of authoritarian regimes alongside the worldwide economic crisis of the Great Depression. Beginning in the United States, this Depression threw the world into doldrums affecting most countries and inviting authoritarian centralism. Hence, power hungry Hitler capitalized on the situation.
After becoming the Reich Chancellor in 1933, Hitler swiftly consolidated power, anointing himself Führer (supreme leader) in 1934. After signing alliances with Italy and Japan against the Soviet Union, Hitler sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 and the following year annexed Czechoslovakia
On September 1, 1939, Hitler invaded Poland from the west. Two days later, France and Britain declared war on Germany, beginning World War II.
By the time Germany formally surrendered on May 8, Soviet forces had occupied much of the country. The disastrous end came to Hitler as he committed suicide in his Berlin bunker on April 30.
Now in 2020, after 75 years of the end of the World War II, we are facing a different but most frightful situation of a world war caused by the tiny microscopic coronavirus unleashed by Covid 19. This pandemic war has invaded every country in the word as a global pandemic.
This virus has declared war on the world not with weapons and bombs. The nations that have been boasting of their might in atomic arsenal have rolled up their mats and gone quarantine. The nations that glorified in their material wealth and exercised universal political clout have been made to crawl on all fours begging the virus to depart. The countries that prioritised on their business acumen have closed shops. The industries and agencies that rolled out the latest electronic devices and digital wonder world have downed their shutters. The scientists and researchers who enabled moon landing and explorations of the planets at the press of a button are at a loss as to how to find a control mechanism against the forward movement of the virus.
Worshipping centres have locked their gates and gone networking on the net. People are forced to device net banking, net shopping, net socialising, net learning and even net dreaming. This is the power of the virus war in today’s world.
This tiny virus that unleashed the global pandemic war may have many a lesson to teach. That accumulation of material wealth, glorification of intellectual prowess, vulgar display of political authoritarianism, outlandish religious fanaticism, glorification of rituals and rubrics over simple human concerns are but rubbish. That we need to build a world community of human entities that can relate in fraternal fellowship and mutual concern. That borders among nations or walls between religions are but man-made entities that create hate, crimes, arrogance, mutual suspicion and, above all, destruction of human qualities!
It is time to reflect on what type of human community we shall develop in post Covid 19 period so that humanity may live in harmony with its members and with the universe as a whole.
Let us build harmony with nature around us, with people near and far. Such universal concern will ensure that there will be not be another human or virus war. No more Hitlers! No more Covids!