On April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler committed suicide in his Berlin bunker, and just over a week later on May 8, Germany surrendered. This year’s Anzac Day, therefore, marks almost exactly 80 years since of the end of WWII in Europe. This sad anniversary gives our commemoration added significance.

Adolf Hitler in about 1933.

The words we are taught to recite on Anzac Day are “lest we forget” – by which we typically mean: remember the fallen. This year, “lest we forget” must take on a new and more urgent meaning: to remember how WWII began so we can prevent it from repeating.

With every passing year, remembering the horrors and causes of that war becomes ever more difficult. Very few who fought in WWII are still with us. The 18-year-olds who enlisted in 1945 are now turning 98. Even those who were children at that time, with the haziest recollections of what it meant, are entering their twilight years. Soon all direct memory of that war will have disappeared completely.

Can deep understanding of the costs and causes of global war survive beyond the span of a human life? Are we doomed to re-fight those wars every 80 to 100 years? Or can historical understanding guide us to safety? Can we keep the lessons of 1939 to 1945 near the forefront of our minds? We have to hope so. More to the point, we have........

© The Sydney Morning Herald