“The Good War”: An Oral History of World War II

The Introduction explains Terkel’s thesis and his purpose in compiling the interviews for the book. Despite World War II being “an event that changed the psyche as well as the face of the United States and the world” (3), Terkel finds that memory of the war is rapidly fading. Terkel recognizes that this is not a book of “hard fact and precise statistic” but of memory (3).

Terkel explains that “The Good War” examines how individuals who lived through World War II dealt with propaganda (which existed both in Germany and the United States) and bigotry against the enemy. Also, Terkel discusses how his interviewees illustrate the impacts World War II has had on the United States’s view of its place in the world, on American prosperity, and on the rights of women and African Americans.

Lastly, Terkel strives to illustrate how World War II and America’s place in the war were unique. While many American families and communities certainly experienced terrible losses, the United States “was the only country among the combatants in World War Two that was neither invaded nor bombed,” leaving open the question, “Must a society experience horror in order to understand horror?” (14). Also, the war is considered a “just war,” at least among some of those who experienced it. However, the war also took the American public’s innocence and exposed the horrors modern societies are capable of, like the Holocaust. This complexity that Terkel wishes to illustrate is shown in a quote from a former rifleman: “In a short period of time, I had the most tremendous experiences of all of life: of fear, of jubilance, of misery, of hope, of comradeship, and of endless excitement” (16).