That’s according to Church of Ireland Archbishop John McDowell, as he addressed the Royal Irish Regiment’s annual service of remembrance in St Anne’s Cathedral, Belfast, on Sunday.
Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland, he said that the failures of diplomats, states and the church all contributed to the outbreak of the Second World War.
But, he said, due to Christ's sacrifice Allied soldiers in that war, including those who landed in Normandy on D-Day exactly 80 years ago, carried with them the knowledge that evil cannot triumph.
“The Cross is a tragedy greater than any war,” he said.
“In the Cross, God went deeper into innocent suffering than has ever happened in war or in peace.
“On the Cross, human folly and evil lost its chief servant, death, which now became the minister for eternal life.
“And, whether consciously articulated or not by those young men who waded from landing crafts onto Sword Beach or who landed in gliders in fields which Rommel had flooded, we know that in the end evil cannot triumph, because it failed to do so on the one occasion when it could – on the Cross of the Son of God.”
Recalling his childhood growing up on an East Belfast housing estate built for ex-servicemen, the archbishop spoke of a specific terrace that housed seriously wounded veterans of the Royal Engineers who had lost limbs.
“They were great men, fully involved in the life of church and community, and certainly weren’t going to let the trauma of severe injuries prevent them from making their mark,” he said. “We owe those men, and the many who didn’t come back.
“Perhaps we owe them also something else – to ask and answer the question, what kind of civilisation carried this war in its womb and gave birth to it in 1939?
"And we ask the question to make sure that we do all that we can to make sure that it never happens again.”