Fussell recently spoke with The Atlantic Monthly 's Katie Bacon. D oing Battle describes how fighting in the Second World War changed you from an innocent boy to an angry skeptic, and how that skepticism has shaped the rest of your life. On the fiftieth anniversary of the Second World War, Paul Fussell argues that America doesn't understand what the war was really like. Very much so. We all profited, but at what a cost.
People can forget very readily the pain and misery and death and destruction that the war caused.
Sometimes I'm accused of assuming that the war was not necessary, but that's a mistake. It was absolutely necessary. But all wars are horrible, and flimsy, superficial war talk is always extremely dangerous. He didn't respond to the classical understanding that all human life is destined to failure, and that only tragic irony is capable of offering a grown-up vision. Americans have also tended to cheerful-ize our behavior in the First World War, which people now tend to remember as very amusing.