The Good War Narrative
World War II a global conflict spanning from 1939 to 1945, concluded with the defeat of the Axis powers and the emergence of a new geopolitical landscape, fundamentally shaping the historical narrative for the subsequent Cold War era.
The memory of the war, often referred to as the "Good War," was not a spontaneous recollection but a deliberate construction, designed to serve specific political objectives and foster an optimistic view of the victorious Allies.
The Construction of the "Good War" Narrative
Following the chaos and darkness of the war, the Allies embarked upon a project to forge a coherent memory of the conflict, framing it as a "Good War" that had been lived with for five decades.
This grand public memory was meticulously pieced together from the fragments of five years of warfare, resulting in a simple, powerful story. In this process, any memories or experiences that contradicted the optimistic historical picture were quietly suppressed and forgotten.
The overarching narrative omitted any sense of evil among the victors, asserting that they had deserved to win and were inherently wonderful people without fault. This selective historical account assumed that anyone opposed to communism must inherently be virtuous, leading to astonishment when those opposing communism proved to be as wicked as their adversaries, an observation exemplified by figures such as Lieutenant Calley.
Such post-war assumptions significantly influenced national behaviours.
The Nuremberg Trials: A Seminar in Fabricated History
The trials of surviving Nazi leaders, held in Nuremberg, Germany, served as a pivotal instrument in constructing this official memory. Described by an American prosecutor as the "greatest history seminar ever in the world," the trials were intended to be more than a legal process; they were a history lesson, an attempt by the Allies to explain the purpose of the war.
The prosecution's aim was to demonstrate that the Nazis had conspired to wage war and commit crimes against humanity. To achieve this, they reconstructed the events of the preceding 15 years, utilising documents, photographs, emerging evidence from concentration camps, and, most dramatically, Nazi film.
A central piece of evidence was "The Nazi Plan," a six-hour film edited by Hollywood professionals from millions of feet of captured Nazi footage, notably Leni Riefenstahl's "Triumph of the Will".
This film presented a new story, asserting that a hidden conspiracy by Hitler to wage war lay behind the pomp and splendour of the 1930s. However, this compilation was inherently biased, representing an Allied interpretation of German film.
Critics of the Nuremberg trials, even at the time in America, argued that they lacked actual principles of justice recognisable by English or American legal tradition. It has been suggested that some witnesses were threatened and forced to participate, indicating an element of gangsterism to coerce compliance.
The trials have become relatively mainstream as the basis of "Boomer truth," (see The Boomer Truth Regime) yet legal scholarship increasingly questions their legitimacy as a foundation for subsequent trials of a similar nature, given the impossibility of combining distinct legal systems from three or four victorious powers to achieve true justice.
Suppression of Ideology and Individual Truths
A key aspect of the Nuremberg narrative was the portrayal of those who committed atrocities as alien and utterly other, as monsters, rather than examining the social and political forces that had led ordinary people to such savagery.
The ideology of the "Thousand Year Reich" was not indicted, and further explanation of Nazi policies was prohibited by judicial ruling after Hermann Göring's cross-examination. This decision served to lock away and hide dangerous ideas, preventing a deeper understanding of Nazism's origins.
Hermann Göring, as a dominant figure among the defendants, asserted that his actions, though criminal in a democratic state, were necessary to fulfil a higher principle: that of the nation, or the "Body National".
This form of Nationalism, where the entire nation was considered a single entity whose security and life had to be assured, was believed to have brought order and prosperity to Germany.
The Nazis sought to evoke Germany's distant past, particularly the Teutonic Knights, and to manufacture a mythical image of this history to control its people. Giant rallies were crafted to make individuals lose themselves in the "nation's soul," fostering a sense of euphoria and transcending individuality, akin to the Hive Switch described in social psychology.
This mechanism, perhaps what others referred to as brainwashing, created a euphoric state where individuals felt part of something larger. After the war, this idea of the "Body National" was disregarded as a phantom.
The Burden of Veterans' Memories
While the official narrative presented a clear path from bad to good, or defeat to success, it had little resonance with the individual experiences of soldiers.
Combat, characterised by accidental and chaotic fragments, was not coherent from the perspective of a foot soldier. Many veterans harboured secret memories that directly conflicted with the official "Good War" version, offering a much more complex and frightening picture of their actions.
These memories were often depressing and pessimistic about human nature, revealing how human beings could be brought to enjoy murder and the destruction of others. The US Army even kept a film record of attempts to help these veterans hidden for over 40 years, deeming it detrimental to civilian morale. The contrast between these individual truths and the public narrative suggests a profound disjuncture, as soldiers returning home found civilian society propagating a maddening nonsense of propaganda.
Denazification and its Cold War Reversal
Following the Nuremberg trials, the Allies initiated a vast exorcism, destroying all traces not only of the Nazi past but also of Germany's military history. This included the widespread banning and eradication of thousands of books, with original print sets reportedly melted down. Propaganda during the occupation overtly aimed to instil disdain for German history, portraying it as inherently negative. This "anger campaign," reportedly initiated by Winston Churchill, aimed to cultivate hatred for Germans to justify actions such as the bombing of cities.
However, by the late 1950s, American denazification efforts were quietly abandoned as West Germany rapidly transformed into one of Europe's most prosperous nations and became a crucial ally in the burgeoning Cold War against the Soviet threat.
The need for competent bureaucrats and businessmen to build a strong state superseded the drive for thorough denazification. This scaling back was due to the pragmatic challenge of recruiting individuals for leadership positions if all former Nazi Party members were excluded, alongside the desire to strengthen the Western Alliance and NATO.
Winston Churchill, from around 1946, actively championed Germany's integration into the West and the concept of European Unity, further influencing this shift. While the Soviets in East Germany were repressive, they did not engage in the same massive psychological warfare or "complete reprogramming of the German mind" seen in the West.
This difference is seen as contributing to the greater sense of national history and conservatism observed in East Germany today.
The pragmatic approach adopted in the 1950s and 1960s allowed for compromise and a smarter long game, contrasting with the later binary black and white approach to history.
This era saw the suppression of the past as being in everyone's interest, creating an appearance that there had never been any Nazi and that no one had done anything wrong. Yet, in narrower circles, resentment persisted regarding the perceived injustice of the war, with many Germans recalling the period of the "Nova," when Germany was radiating across the globe, with fondness.
The 1968 Student Movement and the Rediscovery of the Past
By the mid-1960s, a growing number of the younger generation in Germany, for whom the past remained a complete mystery, began to question their parents and teachers about this strange historical period.
The 1968 student revolution, often inspired by French Marxist thought, intensified this search for truth about Germany's hidden past. This led to terrible confrontations within families, as students discovered that their parents and teachers had not only been involved with the Nazi Party but also had participated in crimes.
The students were convinced that beneath the facade of liberal democracy, a hidden continuity with the Third Reich persisted, with the same individuals administering Hitler's regime.
A group known as the Red Army Faction (RAF), led by Andreas Baader and Gudrun Ensslin, emerged from this movement, determined to resist fascism where their parents had supposedly failed.
The RAF engaged in bombings and shootouts, aiming to provoke the state into revealing its "true identity" as a fascist entity. However, some leaders, like Horst Mahler (a former RAF member who later transitioned to neo-Nazism), came to realise that their own revolutionary strategy was breeding fascistic tendencies within their reactions, and that they themselves were becoming "fascistic".
Mahler observed that "fascism is an component in all of us," a truth he believed had been deliberately hidden at the end of the war.
The Re-emergence of Suppressed Histories
The collapse of Communist domination in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s marked another turning point, causing suppressed fragments of the past to re-emerge.
A forgotten Nazi bunker, for instance, was unearthed in the no-man's-land between the two Berlins during preparations for a Pink Floyd concert in 1990, revealing a "frozen moment of Apocalypse". This period saw not only the re-emergence of Nazi remnants but also a hidden history of Europe awakening, rekindling old rivalries and tensions that had been suppressed for 50 years. With these forgotten pieces came a resurgence of the barbarism and evil that the "Good War" had ostensibly banished forever.
The narrative constructed after World War II, founded on shaky foundations, has proven unstable. The constant reliving of the war as the ultimate reference point, defining everything else, indicates that the regime built upon this myth can never truly escape its shadow.