War & Reflection

The discovery of almost 250 letters written to his parents while in the Navy Air Corps led Walter Benjamin to interpret his military service during World War II for the present generation.

The discovery of almost 250 letters written to his parents wile in the Navy Air Corps led Walter Benjamin to interpret his military service during World War II for the present generation. A half-century later, after a career of scholarship and teaching theology and ethics at Hamline University, Professor Benjamin reflects on such topics as pacificism, the enduring allure of war, universal military service, the military as family, President Truman, Hiroshima, and more. As Professor Benjamin writes in his concluding chapter, "In spite of the passing of the Cold War era, the world is more and more a tangle of scourges. Tribal, ethnic, and ideological enmities are exploding across the continents like the naval salvos off the Normandy beaches during D-Day. The notion that peace is natural and war an aberration has led to a failure in peacetime to consider the possibility of another war. " Rarely will the reader encounter such insightful writing on the realities and implications of military service, military conflict, the yearning for peace and the allurements of war. -- Midwest Book Review