The Second World War haunted Harry Leslie Smith until he died at 95 in 2018. I know this because I was Harry Leslie Smith's son and caregiver. I spent many evenings listening to the reminiscences of that time and how the Great Depression and that war forged his character and made him a socialist. In his last years, my dad couldn't shake from his memories the terrible images he saw as a young man on the march into Hitler's Germany. My dad was particularly affected by the plight of refugees that he encountered fleeing Hitler's war machine. He believed that our 21st-century society could learn much from his generation, especially in their fight for economic and social justice following the defeat of Nazism. Surviving, the Second World War taught my dad that life was short and that everyone deserves to live in a democracy that gives them the right to healthcare, housing, education, a living wage and freedom of conscience. He was against Nuclear arms proliferation but also understood that NATO was not going away any time soon. I know if he were alive today, my father would be fighting to ensure that our society makes a better country from the ashes of covid, rather than our government's current plan which is to return to the same inequalities that condemned so many of us to half-lived lives before the pandemic. In this podcast, my dad recounts Spring 1945, when Europe lay devastated by a world war. Give it a listen because my dad always had something interesting to say that related to the trials and tribulations we encounter today.
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