Vanity

I've been obsessed with watching WWII documentaries and clips on YouTube. The German army particularly interests me. They had all the training, political indoctrination, cool uniforms, and best equipment. Yet, they were fighting a war on three fronts and were simply swarmed by the greater numbers of their enemies. Their factories were simply outproduced by the factories of their opponents.

First of all, during my Christian upbringing I was told several times that the Nazis lost because they were evil. But I have been fascinated with WWII nearly all my life and have studied it since age 12. The fact is that the Nazis won battles and lost battles. Ultimately, they lost due to poor strategic decisions. I can't say that they lost due to "luck" because both the Allies and Axis had good and bad "luck," as well as unintended surprises during their campaigns. In key campaigns, both sides often failed to think far enough ahead, and in war, it's simply impossible to factor in every conceivable contingency. So, God didn't have to help beat the Nazis at all. Their own mistakes and the vast industrial capacity of their enemies defeated them. It's all about the matériel that you can bring up to the front line for a given battle — that is ultimately the bottom line.

Second, the vanity of the entire war amazes me. All those young German men, in their sharp uniforms, were simply slaughtered on the massive Eastern Front. Their impressive Tiger tanks were simply swarmed by the less expensive and more numerous Soviet T-34 tanks. These men were marching for an evil cause to begin with and were fighting an unwinnable war. I can only imagine the hopelessness that they secretly felt inside.

Such is my life. There is the vainness of seeing the climate behave exactly as climatologists predicted, yet there is little political or public will to do ANYTHING about global warming. There is the vainness of seeing the prophesy-obsessed fundamentalist Christians whoop and hollar about the "last days," as they create their own, self-fulfilling prophesies.

There is the vainness of unrequited love. To love another with passion and ferocity, in a love that's so logical that one is confused when the love is not reciprocated. It is like the knight who loves the damsal, and then gallops off to the next battle to face his death. While the poets call it beautiful, it's not beautiful at all. It is simply vain.

Perhaps all of life is vain, and we simply have a problem admitting it. We fight on, all knowing the inevitable outcome. Despite our nice outfits and neat appearance, despite the smiling, chipper facade we can muster on the surface, we are broken on the inside. Why, because some of us are cursed with too much intelligence and a forever pondering mind, and we've figured out what no one else wants to admit —it's all in vain.