Yes, they fought a difficult war but they bowed at the altar of big government giving us the crisis we now have.
I beg your pardon?
They are not "The Greatest Generation", that honor rests with the FFs and Patriots.
The WW2 Generation and their parents (the Democrats or Progressives among them, to be more precise) turned the US into a Socialist nation.
In no particular order, they espoused:
Income tax, Keynesian hyper-overspending, SS, countless other WPA stimulus programs still hemorrhaging money to this day, Medicare, welfare of various flavors, global wars necessitating totalitarianism here, followed by dozens of stupid, interminable, unwinnable wars.
Overall, these two generations harmed the Republic greatly and perhaps terminally.
But they were smart enough to have a fantastic PR machine following them every step of the way, from Richard Rodgers, to Frank Capra, to John Ford, to Steven Spielberg, to Tom Brokaw.