In Europe, the war in Ukraine raises the question --- is the past really past?

AURINGEN, Germany — I was visiting family in a village not too far from the city of Wiesbaden, Germany, when I learned that an unexploded World War II bomb had been found just a few kilometers away, near the gas station we passed on the road into town.

It was British-made, weighing about 275 pounds, presumably dropped during the war by the Royal Air Force — just one small remnant of the 2.7 million tons of explosives dropped by the British and the Americans on Europe between 1940 and 1945, half of which fell on Germany.

As many as 1 in 10 of those bombs failed to explode on impact and year after year they still surface, dangerous until they are defused or carefully detonated.

In that way, at least, the war continues to this day.

The discovery of the bomb seemed like a fitting metaphor because war is on everyone's mind these days in Germany and across Europe. And it's not always the immediate war in Ukraine either. Just as often, it's the Second World War and what it means for Ukraine, or World War I and its needless carnage and what that means for Ukraine. Or the march of Napoleon and his army from Paris to Moscow in the early 19th century, and what that means for Ukraine.

It's no wonder Europeans can't stop thinking about the past. Today's war has such clear echoes of those previous conflicts, in which disputes over territory, power, resources, nationality, ethnicity and religion led to so much death and destruction on the continent for so many centuries.

In the United States, we are notoriously ignorant or forgetful of such history. Six in 10 Americans can't even name the countries we fought against in World War II, according to a 2018 survey.

But in Europe, distances are shorter — it's not much more than eight hours by car from eastern Germany to the Ukrainian border — and memories are longer. As battles rage in Mariupol and Kiev and Kharkiv, Europeans could be forgiven for wondering whether the past is actually past at all.

Unsurprisingly, the subject of World War II was broached repeatedly during my visit. Discussions of Putin frequently led back to Hitler and Stalin; talk of Russia's military aggression beyond its borders conjured German Lebensraum.

We talked about Germany's post-1945 pacifist zeitgeist and the government's recent decision to increase military spending in light of events in Ukraine.

In our house, there was a particular focus on the expansion of NATO after the collapse of the Soviet Union. My father — an American expat who has lived in Germany for more than 40 years — believes that it was needlessly provocative to Russia, just as the Treaty of Versailles had been to the Germans before the Second World War. A Putin response was predictable, he says, though not justifiable. Others disagreed, saying NATO's expansion into Eastern Europe was necessary to protect those countries (including small ones like Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania) from Russian bullying and resubjugation.

On the streets in Germany, reminders of the last war were, as always, hard to avoid.

In the university town of Darmstadt, for instance, I saw a young man crouched near the ground polishing, or perhaps installing, a group of Stolpersteine, the small metal "stumbling stones" set into the sidewalks to mark the former homes of victims of Nazi extermination or persecution.

There are now tens of thousands of these small brass plaques throughout the country — designed, of course, to keep alive the memory of the war and the Holocaust, as one step toward never repeating it.

That's more necessary than ever because firsthand memories of World War II are fading away. You have to be close to 90 years old now to have clear recollections; soon, victims and perpetrators alike will be gone, and memories will be indirect, passed down through the generations and even more myth-filled than they already are.

Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.

My father and his wife, who is German, remember the war, though they are now the exception, not the rule.

The Germans I spoke with favored Western support for Ukraine's defense. But I also heard nagging doubts about the role of the United States.

Add to those concerns a bit of national uncertainty in the wake of the departure of Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was a steady hand and a trusted leader, plus the the woes of the European Union in recent years — including Brexit — and a measure of anxiety is understandable.

On the other hand, the bomb near our house was rendered harmless in a controlled detonation, with no injuries. There's that to celebrate at an uneasy time in Europe's history.

(COMMENT, BELOW)

Nicholas Goldberg
Los Angeles Times/(TNS)

Nicholas Goldberg is an associate editor and op-ed columnist for the Los Angeles Times.

Previously:
• 02/22/22 What if the CIA is spying on Americans?
• 02/10/22 Is civility really passe in American politics?
• 01/27/22 Why do murderers have to show 'remorse' to be granted parole?
• 01/25/22 Are you anxious about reentering the post-COVID world? Maybe you have 'cave syndrome'
• 01/11/22 When an anti-vaxxer dies of COVID, is that cause for glib, ironic satisfaction?
• 12/29/21 Can the US strike a balance between isolationism and policing the world?
• 12/16/21 If the Miss America beauty pageant isn't a beauty pageant, then what exactly is it?
• 12/08/21 How did the party of 'Happy Days Are Here Again' become the party of Eeyore?
• 11/11/21 History reveals: Nicholas Kristof for political office? Delusional
• 10/01/21 Think vaccine mandates are controversial? What if police held you down and injected you?
• 09/13/21 If you don't say what they like, protesters show up at your door. Is that OK?
• 08/05/21 Think toxic Cuomo will resign? Think, again!
• 07/14/21 A moral mosquito dilemma in LALA-land
• 06/29/21Is life fair? One-third of Americans think so
• 04/27/21: The Supreme Court debates the all-powerful F-word
• 03/25/21: Do we really need a law mandating gender-neutral toy sections at stores?
• 03/15/21: I've had a cellphone for 25 years. Can I get rid of my landline yet
• 03/15/21: After 365 days of COVID exile, I went back to my office. Here's what I found
• 02/12/21: The preacher and the pornographer: The unlikely, unexaggerated friendship between Jerry Falwell and Larry Flynt
• 02/10/21: Some newspapers are deleting old crime stories to give people fresh starts. Is that wise?
• 12/28/20: Should Bill Cosby's sexual assault conviction be overturned?