Alex

After spending four months studying World War II, it’s hard to remember what you knew before you started, but I’ll start here. I knew Hitler was a man who didn’t like Jewish people and had them imprisoned, tortured, and killed. I knew about the Japanese Kamikaze Flyers, and the Nazi death camps, but that was about it. I knew very little about Pearl Harbor, except that the Japanese bombed it. As you can tell, I knew very little about the war altogether. I thought it was a boring topic and definitely not interesting. Now that I know about the strategy, the science, and sacrifice that went into the war effort, my whole perspective has changed.

Most people think that Hitler was just a bad guy who felt a certain way about certain people and was persuasive enough to make other people think that way, but there’s another way to look at him. He wasn’t a bad leader, he was an excellent leader, he just led down the wrong path. Think how the world’s perspective of Germany would be if Hitler had been a "good" leader. Germany most likely wouldn’t be feared as a power as it is now. Also, think how the world’s view of the United States has changed. It’s no longer an innocent young country that can do no real harm in the world; it’s a dangerous power not to be trifled with. One or two bombs with a simple construction can change the world and destroy innocence.

There’s so much controversy about right and wrong, but it’s all in your opinion and how you were brought up. If you could, would you try to stop a war, or are you one of those people who believes that everything happens for a reason and nothing should be done to prevent what is to come? Either way, you believe what you’re doing is right and the other person is wrong. I, on one hand, would try to stop the war because I have learned the horrific consequences of war and how it affects everyday life for everyone. However, if you don’t know what war does, you might not think that you could do anything to stop it, so you do nothing. If enough people had opposed Hitler, his rise to power, and his ideas, 11,000,000 human beings would not have died. Think about that the next time "you can’t make a difference".

When people hear about war in different countries, they think "Glad it’s not us", but others think "How can I be sure it’s not us later?" The first people are thinking about the present, while the others are concerned about the future. In my opinion it’s better to think about the future than to think too much about the present because the problems of the future could have already started. The way the world is going at the moment, we are the cruelest species around. We don’t think about the future, mostly the present. We spend so much time making everything perfect; we don’t have time to be grateful for life’s little imperfections. We fight with each other and kill each other without a second thought, and I’m sorry for all those out there who think it’s ok, but to me it isn’t. The way humans treat each other is terrible in my opinion, and I think it should stop, or it could lead to war. The shootings in schools in the U. S. are extremely bad things to have our children who will someday be our country go through at a young age because the shooters don’t value life, like Hitler. If war is bad enough to stop, someone should try.