I've always been fascinated by stories about World War II. It seems that many other people are too. WWII stories and documentaries are still made, read and watched with interest. Stories like these are usually told, at least in the English-speaking world, from the point of view of the victors so it is easy to know who to root for. Narratives with clear forces of good and evil appeal to something in our psyche.
That's the big picture. But I was reminded of the effect of the war on individual lives recently when I read Square Haunting which detailed the effects on Virginia Woolf's life when her London abode in Bloomsbury was damaged by a bomb. As a family historian, my interest is the stories of individuals. The story of how larger events affect those individuals and can be shown to be life altering.
Growing up I was aware that WWII had profoundly altered my families' lives. Just how much, I was not aware until I started exploring my families' history. That's something I'll be looking into in the coming weeks.
Sources:
Wade, Francesca Square Haunting Tim Duggan Books/Random House, New York 2020
Images:
By Ministry of Information Photo Division Photographer - http://media.iwm.org.uk/iwm/mediaLib//38/media-38885/large.jpg This is photograph D 9314 from the collections of the Imperial War Museums., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24367406
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