Matthew Murrey

AHTC Summer Institute 2007

WWII and the Holocaust

Throughout this week I have been thinking a lot about one of the paradoxes of teaching WWII and the Holocaust. On the one hand we educators hope to teach students to think critically about the past so that they can bring their critical thinking skills to bear on current and future situations. However, the Nazi enterprise in its vision and implementation was so extreme and horrific, that there is an unspoken ban on ever comparing any actions of our own government or its allies with any of the actions of Nazi Germany. For example, when Sen. Dick Durbin compared the torture of detainees at Guantanamo to the treatment experienced by prisoners of the Gestapo he was roundly denounced and forced to retract his statement. But if we are to learn the lessons of Germany’s descent into dictatorship, militarism, and mass murder shouldn’t we try to bring issues of WWII into a contemporary setting?

I was unable to find a document source that tackled this head on, but my thinking led me to look for a document that would have strong connections to current issues. My document is one from the Illinois State Archives selection that we were given during this workshop. It is document #48, “Communication from Pfc. Rudolph Cornacchia Concerning Service in Saudi Arabia.” Document #48 is a handwritten letter from Cornacchia, written on October 5, 1945 and addressed to the governor of Illinois. Cornacchia is writing to complain to the governor about the fact that instead of being sent home now that the war is over, he has been deployed to Arabia to do work for Standard Oil Company (SOC). It is a remarkable document for several reasons.

Cornacchia’s letter, which has many spelling and grammar errors, offers a rare “foot soldier’s” glimpse into military and political events in the immediate aftermath of WWII—events that will have profound repercussions for the future. This letter has direct relevance to current debates about oil resources and the role of the US in the Middle East. Cornacchia’s complaint about having his tour extended both in terms of duration and scope has echoes in the current situation of today’s US troops in Iraq having their tours of duty extended. One other fascinating issue raised is Cornacchia’s complaint about receiving low pay compared to private sector workers who are performing the same job—paralleling today’s debates over privatization and contractors.

In this document Cornacchia clearly expected to be returned home at the end of the war. He writes that after V.J. day “my frist thoughts were of home an my family, but the army had different ideal’s….” Cornacchia is clearly skeptical about the military necessity of his work. Noting that he is working for “a privat enterprise, the Standard Oil Company,” he asserts, “the Army is takeing an unfair atvanage of us soilders.” He is also angry that though his pay is “sixty dollar’s a month,” there are “Itilian worker’s which recive from $175 to $300 amonth.” The irony of making far less than “people who just a year ago were our enemy” does not escape him.

There are many questions that the letter brings up. How long was Cornacchia in the service? Was he told he would be discharged at the end of hostilities? What class background did he come from? What does he think of the Standard Oil Company? The reader also wonders what was happening in the Arabian Peninsula at the time, and how was the decision made to use the military to assist a private company? What was going on with British Petroleum at the time? Did the Soviets know what was going on? What did local Arabians think about these machinations?

I thought a lot about Professor Barrett’s presentation as I read this document. Professor Barrett invited us to think about whose interests were helped by the war and how did people of different class backgrounds experience the war. He persuasively argued that in many ways the war had a powerful unifying and leveling effect on US society, and that many of these leveling effects have been rolled back. This letter is illustrative of the unity of purpose experienced by those in the war—as Cornacchia says, “to go out an fight for the country we all know is the greatest”—but also of the fragmenting of purpose once the fighting ended.

I think this would be a great document to use with students. As I pointed out earlier, there are several contemporary connections that students could pursue related to this letter. I can think of several topic areas that students could do further reading and research on: troop morale during and after WWII, treatment of veterans during the war, current veteran issues, current issues with troop tours of duty, oil and US foreign policy, the rise of the Saudi Arabian government, private contractors, WWII and the modern Middle East.