Welcome to the Third Degree: Tough, Brief, Weekly Interrogations on matters public and private that force thinking and response. This Sunday we target: Hanging (again)

  • Hung up last week with hanging, public, fearful and fascinating, did we also find ourselves hanging on generational lessons that merit treatment today?
  • D-Day properly celebrated after 80 years, do we grasp the Damoclean threats and threads of victory or defeat hanging over Normandy days and weeks after 6 June?
  • In war, do hanging swords fall on the fair as well as the unjust, the unwilling and the incapable?
  • What caused the swords to so fatefully fall on the Germans while the allies hung tough despite fearful losses?
  • Did the draining of logistics from the western to the eastern front, command confusion, political intrigue and the cracking of enigma hang heavy on German efforts?
  • Did Operation Fortitude north and south (Patton’s phantom 1st Army) hang over German strategic thinking and pin down combat forces in Calais and, indeed, Norway?
  • Did Normandy breakout and Operation Dragoon, allied landings in southern France, leave German defense of Paris hanging in the air (Is Paris Burning) with liberation by end August?
  • Still, did the awful arithmetic of ‘big war’ hang over the heads of the allies? How about at home?
  • By end August ’44, with the allied forces of over 2 million men now in France, did the 125,000 American casualties (20,500 killed, over 90,000 wounded, 10,000 missing) and Brit/Canadian losses at 83,000 (16,000 killed, 58,000 wounded and 9,000 missing) and the 480,000 air sorties losing 4,000 aircraft, and near 17,000 airmen, how did we hang in there?
  • Is a side note grim: 70,000 French civilians were killed in the course of the war? Contemporary relevance?
  • With victory and futures in the balance, is the hanging question always: Where are the leaders who thirst for and succeed in combat? Is the answer, hang with results, replace the rest?
  • In war, or peace for that matter, can we afford to distinguish between the unfortunate and the ineffective?
  • In war and purposeful politics, does an adapted Franklin admonition apply: “If we don’t hang together, will we certainly hang separately?”
  • For America, swords or not, is it always right to hang tough?
  • How are we hanging?

Socrates reminds: “The unexamined life is not worth living. The answers and actions are yours.