The British experience in WW2 was unique...no other country has had similar. The men going overseas to fight was the only “normal” thing about it.
WW2 happened at a particular moment in the development of military technology. The Germans had the ability to devastate our cities with bombs and blockade our ports stopping access to imports of food and goods. But the technology wasn’t good enough to be decisive (it is now, but mutual deterrence applies).
The result of this was that the war was fought here as well as overseas, and every person in the country took part, which is pretty unheard of. Civilians were killed in bombing raids, children were evacuated out of cities, women entered the workforce as never before, often in war related work such as munitions factories. Any spare land or garden was given over to agriculture. The blackout was strictly enforced as was rationing. (The blackout was a kind of lockdown, especially in winter because the was literally no light outside...if there was no moon it was pitch darkness and people either had to grope about risking injury or stay put.) Men who couldn’t fight worked as fire wardens. Road signs were removed in order to confuse any invaders, and a home guard militia set up. People had bomb shelters in their gardens and were issued with gas masks out of fear that mustard gas and similar that was used on the battlefields of WW1 would be dropped by bombs onto the civilian population.
There was the sense of facing overwhelming odds and not giving up. The retreat at Dunkirk was both a disaster and a triumph with hundreds of small boats being taken by ordinary people to help evacuate the troops. So while it’s absolutely true to say the the US won the war in a military sense, the British survived, didn’t surrender and fought back. If we hadn’t it would have been far harder for the Americans to win because we provided the base for the counter-attack against the Nazis.
And in doing all of this there were great acts of heroism and innovation. The Few held the skies and prevented both greater losses from bombing and the prospect of invasion. The RAF suffered horrific losses in the first years of the war. Later, new types of bombs were developed to weaken the Nazi’s industrial heartlands, with extraordinary feats such as the dambusters raid (even if you could argue it wasn’t necessary by that stage of the war). The role of the codebreakers at Bletchley was secret at the time but vital to the end result. The unbelievable courage of the soldiers who went to Normandy, getting out of those boats and running up the beaches under heavy fire. The spies who went behind enemy lines to sabotage the Nazi war effort and support resistance.
Wars often bring out the best in people as well as the worst. For the British in WW2 it was the fact that every person played a part and there was so much courage every day from ordinary people who would never normally have anything to do with war or fighting. The impact went on for a long time after. Rationing wasn’t lifted until 1954, so a whole new generation was co-opted into the war effort after the fact. And the bomb sites. This had a lasting effect on the public consciousness. Even now, when you walk round London, it isn’t hard to spot the marks of the Blitz in the architecture.
We owe a huge debt to the WW2 generation. Their willingness to sacrifice not only their lives but their entire way of life eventually made the subsequent peace possible. And even if they weren’t willing, even if they had no choice, they endured 6 years of war and a further 9 years of rationing and economic hardship. They held on, and for that they deserve our gratitude.
We don’t glorify the war but we do remember and honour their sacrifice.