AOG, is your argument that the present generation would not save the country? Have you any evidence for that proposition?
Don't forget that it's your generation that had a leadership that fancied appeasement with Hitler, and the Munich agreement was greeted with popular enthusiasm. (Not surprising,you may say, given that the Great War was a recent memory). But when the bombs were raining down, people behaved as you would expect. There is no reason it wouldn't be the same now, nor that conscripts would be any less brave now. (Let's forget shall we, that looters would go in as soon as the raids ended? They were a minority).
Please explain how the 'stiff upper lip' makes a difference. What does it do, that honest display of emotion doesn't (apart from repressing emotion being psychologicaly damaging, and not natural) ?