The Second World War and Modern Memory

In a past post, I spoke briefly about how our society remembers the Second World War. Here is a brief section of that post: 

Just consider how we think about the war: the Nazis are seen as the ultimate villains of history- the purest manifestation of hatred, subjugation, and objective evil. Often, people label them as "monsters", and it is believed that these "monsters" were only defeated through dedication, bravery, intelligence, and commitment to a moral cause. The Allies were heroes. "It was their finest hour." Even it's name, "the World War", suggests incredible grandeur- the largest stage and stakes there are: our planet. So, the very way we describe and think about the war has shifted our interpretation of it from history to epic legend- something like Homer's Iliad, half way between history and myth

But why should this be so? There are many wars throughout history which are treated with casual disinterest, despite marking significant developments in political, social, scientific, or military thought. So why is this war so significant in our cultural memory? What was it about that time, our enemies, and what we "know" about it that brings us to treat every inch of battlefield as hallowed ground?


A Moral Contest
There is seldom a moral high-ground in war. In general, all belligerents commit acts of savagery and barbarism, and cause senseless pain. There has never been a "pure" fighting force- no military has ever escaped a campaign with clean hands. That is not the nature of war. 

But the Second World War was about as morally clear-cut of a war as one can find in history. Germany's objective for the war was the domination and subjugation of non-Aryan humanity. The Nazi organization considered the death of their enemies- a classification that included non-combat civilians- not only a necessary evil but a desirable outcome. It is unlikely that anyone reading these words needs proof of the Nazi regime's immorality- but in case it is indeed needed, one need only look to the leaders of the organization: men like Himmler, Goering, Heydrich, Goebbels, and Hitler. These are the minds that the Nazi party attracted- minds that the party elevated to practically-deific levels. Unsurprisingly to any Clasewitzians reading, the physical expression of this Nazi policy at the hands of the Nazi armed forces was often as horrific as their policy- there were more atrocities (particularly in the Western Soviet Union in 1941-1942) wrought at the hands of the German SS than by any other fighting force since the Mongols. Their allies were no more humane: Imperial Japan was responsible for some of the worst treatment of POWs and civilians, and an even more savage and disturbing face of battle. Both Germans and Japanese alike were noted for their barbaric treatment of prisoners of war. No distinct comment is necessary for the millions of lives lost in the name of their beliefs and aspirations. Such extreme treatment engenders itself to viewing the Axis through a clearly delineated moral lens- these were monstrous acts of barbaric cruelty that we as critics wish to label as "evil". Consequently, we stamp the Axis powers with this "evil" label, making it easier for us to dehumanize their governments and people to the point of monstrosity and otherness.

The Allies, on the other hand, were fairly evidently fighting for concepts that our culture finds admirable and moral: life, liberty, justice, safety, and self-determination. Their means were strategic and deliberate. They fought a war which had been thrust upon them. They treated their enemies largely as humans, and treated prisoners of war with (for the most part) respect and dignity. In comparison to the Axis powers, the Allies appear as white knights, shining against the darkness of human monstrosity.

The two explanations above are wild and extreme simplifications of enormously complex moral, social, political, and military issues: the political systems of the Axis powers may have been ones of genocide, conquest, and hatred, but the people of the Axis nations were not all zealous, nor were they necessarily prepared to help their governments pave so red a road; the Allied powers fought for liberty and peace, but their forces committed atrocities of their own, and their political goals caused unnecessary suffering and death. But, at their most fundamental level, these simplified descriptions of the Axis and Allied powers are accurate, and help us understand our own idealization of the war.

And, after nearly a century of retelling, the story of the war has only become more polarized. Naturally, every war demands an outlook of "'us' vs. 'them'". Although this is most tangible at the time of the war, the sentiment is carried down through the generations. Often times, it fades out after some decades of historical analysis, to be replaced with a more objective (and often depressed) interpretation of the conflict. But, for many years now, victory has allowed the citizens of the Allied powers to condone or massage actions that (after careful analysis) may be considered unconscionable : the fire-bombing of Dresden, Tokyo, and Frankfurt certainly come to mind as likely examples, though critics would also argue for the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In one incident, American bombers destroyed a 1000 year old Italian monastery in which they believed Germans to be. Through the same lens of polarity, enemy actions that may be objectively acceptable in a state of war quickly take on monstrous qualities: the attack at Pearl Harbor, for example, was tactically and strategically advantageous decision, and the defense of Iwo Jima was an impressive feat of discipline and expert use of terrain. Yet both of these events are remembered in Allied culture as distinctly barbaric. Put simply, marking another people as "enemies" creates a filter that exaggerates and demonizes all of their actions. As a result, ordinary or innocent actions take on a monstrous quality, and immoral or horrible actions become something else entirely. 


It is easy to see why our civilization continues to extrapolate images of a black and white moral struggle between Allied and Axis forces from the real events that transpired and actions that were taken between 1933-1945; how the truths have been exaggerated into monstrous "evil" fighting legendary "good". The war has changed from "fact" to "myth" partly because the morality of the "fact" was really not that far from the morality of a common "myth", and partly because it is what we want to see.

Scale
But the war is also remembered as extraordinary because it was simply the most massive and cataclysmic event in the history of man. It was, it is fair to say, a true world war, fought with weapons both tangible and intangible: physical, industrial, technological, social, political, and moral. But it was also, by far, the most titanic and complex human endeavor ever undertaken- it involved greater coordination of more people (from more nations) to utilize more resources in order to inflict more death and destruction than we can conceive today. Indeed, such a scale is impossible for us to truly comprehend- even 70 years later, after an exponential rise in the rate of development of our species, we have no comparable project or cultural event to put the war into perspective. We are quite literally unable to understand how immense the war was- its gargantuan shadow merely looms over us as an impossible historical object.

A Turning Point
Finally, it is worth noting that the war was, without a doubt, the final stage in bringing about the world that we live in. The war sparked a cultural, technological, political, military, and social revolution that quite literally created the world we now know. Many of the technologies, economic structures, nations, philosophies, and scientific advancements of the past 70 years found their genesis in the war. The war was a total and enormous revolution- a shift from the historical values and concepts that dominated the previous years. Culturally, intellectually, and even spiritually, it would be fair to mark 1939 as a new year 0- and the war as the event to which we trace our creation.

History to Fantasy
All of this- the genesis of the current world; our inability to comprehend the vastness of the event; and the natural moral polarity of the war, further exaggerated by historical distance and cultural significance- has turned our memory of this monumental event into something that most closely resembles a current day epic fantasy like The Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, or Game of Thrones. In our limited experience, these are the things that seem closest in reality to something as untouchable as the truth of the war. It is small wonder, then, that our culture imbues stories of the war with qualities of fantasy and grandeur, and imagines the years from 1939-1945 as something out of myth.