Operation AXIOM
Seventy years ago to the day, 1 September 1939, Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union jointly invaded Poland, sparking the Second World War. In the years before, the evil had been apparent, the threat imminent, and yet the free world turned a blind eye to the clear and present danger of totalitarian warmongering. Before all was said and done, there would be fighting across Europe, Asia, and Africa, and the Pacific, Atlantic, and Indian Oceans, as well as innumerable seas; empires rose and fell, murder was industrialized and perfected, and the terrible power of the atom was unleashed. 70,000,000 perished. Nihilism followed, for in a world drowning in blood who discerns right from wrong? Three score and four years after the war's end, the world's psyche has not fully recovered, can never fully recover. Commemorationlink.

Though more usually associated with the Great War, the four years of madness and mass slaughter that made the Second World War not quite inevitable but all but, the line that follows has all too terrible relevance on this seventieth anniversary:

Lest we forget.

But, unlike that First World War, the Second World War was not all for naught; the world that crawled from the rubble had a greater dedication to liberty and justice than at any other time since the rise of civilization. Lest we forget that the world is full of not just woe, but wonder. Endless wonder, to borrow Warehouse 13's phrase.

The Rebel Black Dot Song of the Day
Fountains of Wayne, "It Must Be Summer" from Utopia Parkway (T.L.A.M.)

Commentary: "And it must be summer, 'cause I'm fallin' apart."