AUSTIN, Texas — A number of historians have compared the Russia-Ukraine conflict to the events that led up to World War II.
A World War II veteran and military history expert provided some context.
Karl Schlessinger was inducted into the United States Army Air Corps during World War II.
“I was drafted about six months before my 24th birthday,” Schlessinger said. “Got drafted. It meant that, not knowing how long this war was going to last,” Schlessinger said. “There was a lot of talk about why and how come we got into it [the war]. Of course, naturally, the reason we got into it was because of Pearl Harbor.”
Schlessinger remembers the destructive surprise attack by Japanese forces on the Pearl Harbor U.S. naval base in 1941.
“And then Pearl Harbor comes along and [the] president decides ‘Hey, this ain’t gonna work. We’re going to have to go in there,’” Schlessinger said.
He fears Russia’s recent invasion of Ukraine could lead to a third world war.
“I mean I don’t want to be alive if that, if something like that happens, because...it’ll really be world war,” Schlessinger said.
Jerry Jones is a military and diplomatic history expert. He’s the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at A&M-Central Texas.
“The West was really worried about large bomber forces that both Nazi Germany had and Soviet Russia that could conceivably drop gas shells on European cities, so there was something like the same kind of dynamic in 1939,” Jones shared.
Jones said there are plenty of comparisons that can be made between what’s happening now and what happened then.
“We know from the second world war that large-scale fighting in urban centers is very costly to civilians,” Jones said.
Jones added we can learn from history.
“So we need to keep all of that in mind when we think about what history can teach us, the perspective that it can provide about this current conflict,” Jones said.
In the meantime, like countless others across the globe, Schlessinger pushes forward, remaining hopeful for peace.