First came the Czechs, and then came the Poles,
and then the Norwegians with 6 million souls.
Then came the Dutch, and Belgium and France,
and all of the Balkans with hardly a chance.
Its all in the book if you'll only look'
Its there if you read the text.
They drove everyone at the point of a gun.
America mustn't be next!"

This WW2 song was the basis of the geography lessons I learned, written
in blood on the skin of the world for most of my youth. I first heard Hitler
on the radio Sunday afternoons as he spoke{screamed} to the German
people in Munich or Berlin in the late 1930s. As a 7th grader I didn¹t
understand or even care much about nazi Germany or as most of the older
Americans really believe this was really any of our concerns anyway. By
the summer of 1941 WW2 was already two years old, The Jap attacks on
China were 4 years old and other than a lot of exciting war news (especially
for a 12 year old) war was still a fantasy. We used to buy war gum. It was
a thin square pkg. of bubble gum packed with a colored cardboard picture
of a battle scene or an atrocity scene. We called them "war gum cards"
and used to flip them to match. {fave up both side you win the other kids
card.} At that time, the milkman still delivered milk by horse and wagon
(this is in the Bronx) the trolleys ran down the main aves, incl. b'way, the
subway was a nickel, the Daily news was .02 cents, honor system, There
was God in the world and discipline in the schools, no drugs and the parks
were safe. Houses were heated by coal and wood, and the big bands were
making musical history across the country. And then ----

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