The ideological and mythological role of WW2.

[Dimentio]

I wonder whether or not it could be claimed that The Second World War is playing a huge ideological - even metaphysical - role in modern western societies as a form of representation of the struggle between "good" (liberal democracy) and "evil" ("totalitarianism"), where Hitler is playing the role of a secular devil. This is not about the Second World War, but about the image of the Second World War. Is it used as a frame of reference to legitimise, vindicate and excuse the current ruling elite?

[Red Commissar]

In order to keep a war going, this had to be done. Recall how quickly the workers of Germany, France, the UK, and later the United States forgot the injustices dealt to them in favor of nationalism in World War I. WW II was no different. Howard Zinn even recalls how he was swept up with the notions of the war being one of anti-fascism.

The Allies dug up their WW I anti-German propaganda and once again painted the German nation as huns coming to destroy civilization. The Germans themselves were swept up thinking of a struggle between the German Aryan people and the "uncivilized" nations who were going to overrun them, and those which had dealt them wrong.

The Soviet Union also had aptly titled their struggle the "Great Patriotic War" and saw it as a larger struggle between the survival of the communist revolution and the fascists. The people of the Soviet Union forgot, for a bit, the actions of Stalin and in place the fascist beasts coming to attack them, and in a way it ended up vindicating his industrial plans and purges as necessary for "strengthening" the country.

What ever they use ideologically it is necessary, because the longer the war goes on the tendency among soldiers to question for whose benefit they are fighting for increases. Additionally they have to make sure that once the war ends in their favor that they can use the victory to justify their actions in peace-time.

[Invincible Summer]

WWII is pretty much what lots of liberal-democrats point to as how "The West won over evil," or how "If it wasn't for WWII, we wouldn't be free!" although the latter can and has been used in other military contexts.

[Dimentio]

In order to keep a war going, this had to be done. Recall how quickly the workers of Germany, France, the UK, and later the United States forgot the injustices dealt to them in favor of nationalism in World War I. WW II was no different. Howard Zinn even recalls how he was swept up with the notions of the war being one of anti-fascism.

The Allies dug up their WW I anti-German propaganda and once again painted the German nation as huns coming to destroy civilization. The Germans themselves were swept up thinking of a struggle between the German Aryan people and the "uncivilized" nations who were going to overrun them, and those which had dealt them wrong.

The Soviet Union also had aptly titled their struggle the "Great Patriotic War" and saw it as a larger struggle between the survival of the communist revolution and the fascists. The people of the Soviet Union forgot, for a bit, the actions of Stalin and in place the fascist beasts coming to attack them, and in a way it ended up vindicating his industrial plans and purges as necessary for "strengthening" the country.

What ever they use ideologically it is necessary, because the longer the war goes on the tendency among soldiers to question for whose benefit they are fighting for increases. Additionally they have to make sure that once the war ends in their favor that they can use the victory to justify their actions in peace-time.

I wasn't talking about the propaganda during WW2, but about the cultural of WW2 to define western culture today. It also seems to grow in importance for each passing year.

[Kléber]

The ability of the Allied imperialists and the US to present the war as a popular struggle has been a very powerful ideological weapon for them. But this myth would never be so strong were it not for the failures of the workers' movement.

Why was the working class not able to present an alternative to imperialism in WWII like it had in WWI? Well, the Third International had given up revolution years before with the Popular Front, and totally supported the war effort after 1941, even disbanding itself in 1943 to please the Allied imperialists. And the Fourth International was decapitated by assassinations and repressions by Nazi and Soviet intelligence. So, hate to sound like a broken record, but I think that Stalinism, or Browderism more specifically, deserves a good part of the blame for why the WWII myth was able to become so hegemonic in Western popular culture, not to mention why imperialists were able to win the day.

[cmdrdeathguts]

We have to note also that WW2 mythology is intimately tied up with the 'Holocaust industry', which of course has its own imperatives.

[Invader Zim]

There is a really great book by the late Angus Calder that examined the preception people had/have of the impact of the Blitz upon the British people, that looks at least at elements of the questions raised in this thread. It is called, The Myth of the Blitz.

[Red Commissar]

I wasn't talking about the propaganda during WW2, but about the cultural of WW2 to define western culture today. It also seems to grow in importance for each passing year.

Well in that case it's an ever popular argument for pro-war people as a textbook example of a "just war".

[Sheldon]

Not only is WWII framed as a "just war," I had to constantly hear from my professors about how it was also a "good war." It's a very powerful tool and it's what all modern military conflicts are framed against. Even in cases where the traditional means of war are not applicable, the theme of "good vs evil" is a comparable point of reference.

[Alf]

I agree that the second world war is a very powerful founding myth of mainstream democratic ideology. But it plays a very similar role for the left wing of this same ideology - social democrats, Stalinists, Trotskyists, even some anarchists, all those who when push comes to shove argue in support of participation in the war's imperialist battle fronts - whether in the name of anti-fascism, the 'defence of the USSR', or the national Resistance. During the war itself, only a small handful of revolutonaries, left communists, some minority Trotskyist currents like Munis, Stinas in Greece and the RKD in Austria and France, a minority of anarchists - actually remained loyal to the internationalist positions that had been defended by the Bolsheviks, Spartacists and others during the first world war.

[RadioRaheem84]

Well at the same time the Imperialist powers also erased the socialist/leftist resistance to fascism in Europe and Asia. The US also took a seriously hypocritical position following the war by supporting the rightist elements in Greece over the popular Communist front that defeated the Nazis and Italian Fascists.

WW2 was heavily mythologized and Allied attrocities were rubbed out from the history books. We were led to believe that the greatest generation never came back with any prolonged mental problems or horror stories from the battlefront.

I remember talking candidly to a war vet many years ago and how confided in me that most of the 'greatest generation' stuff was rubbish. His platoon was full of racist men that did good things but also did bad things to civilians and pows. He also remembered writing on a wall in eastern europe in english telling the Americans that the Russians were the real enemies.

Adam Curtis of the UK has a brilliant Documentary on this very issue. You should check it out!

[ComradeOm]

Below is a very relevant passage. This issue really has little to do with WWII and everything with how people, and regimes, perceive history. There is absolutely nothing new about this habit of appropriating the 'traditions of dead generations'


The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living. And just as they seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before, precisely in such epochs of revolutionary crisis they anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honored disguise and borrowed language

[Sam Da Communist]

I love the WW2, it is humanity's greatest feats of anti-evil! and even the capitalists got involved!

WW2 was not a western globalisationist triumph, it was a socialist one. China, asia, east europe, soviet union all triumphed against the threat of the workers of the world. The soviet union under stalin killed half the nazis themselves.

WW2 was internationalist, globalisationist captialists and socialist internationalists united and defeated Fascism. It exposed the true nature of the Far-right. Worldwide communist groups blossomed in first world nations, and a plumpened in extremely poor ones.

The true western capitalist, anti-communist and Nationalist similarities to Nazism must be exposed. Churchhill liked hitler, so did roosevelt for his patriotism, conservatism and the crushing of the workers and leftist parties. The americans and all didn't do anything when the eastern front started, they wanted the Nazis to crush socialism.

[RadioRaheem84]

I've head of FDR admiring Mussolini but not Hitler.

[Barry Lyndon]

Look, I don't think we need to get all relativistic here.

The fascist serpent DID need to be crushed. A world with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan triumphant would be a bleak and hopeless nightmare of a world, and it was definitely worth it to make any sacrifice to prevent such an outcome.

The dangerous myth that has been promoted is the way the entire American political spectrum make it seem as if the 'democratic' capitalist state was equally opposed to both fascism and communism. This is false- what is left out of the official narrative about World War II is the way many capitalists from the United States, Britain, and France gave massive economic, military, and diplomatic assistance to the Nazis, the Italian fascists, and Imperial Japan before, during, and in some ways even after World War II(such as former Nazis working on the US nuclear program).

It is not pointed out that while most communists and anarchists saw the threat that fascism posed and fought them from the very start, much of the capitalist class kept feeding the fascist beast as an attack dog against the Reds and only stopped when they realized it might eat them too.

This is the narrative of World War II that needs to be fought, and revolutionaries need to reclaim the history of the victory over fascism as their own.

[Kléber]

A world with Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan triumphant would be a bleak and hopeless nightmare of a world, and it was definitely worth it to make any sacrifice to prevent such an outcome.
With US imperialism triumphant we still got a bleak nightmare of a world. The violence was just directed against oppressed peoples whereas the fascists directed theirs primarily against Europeans.

Demonizing the Nazis is like demonizing Genghis Khan for being successful, even though every feudal government did massacres similar to his. I'm speaking as someone many of whose relatives were killed by the Nazi regime and collaborators in WWII. But the fascists weren't worse than another imperialists. FDR did all the horrible things that Hitler did on a smaller and much less brutal scale (ended a depression with a war, suppressed leftists, rounded up minorities in concentration camps and stole their property). Hitler and Mussolini just committed the unholy sin of doing those things to Europeans, which had been forbidden by Papal decree since the crusades.

For example, some left-wing lawyers managed to get Klaus Barbie acquitted (http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/barbietrial.html) using French laws designed to protect French officers who had violated human rights in the criminal colonial war against the people of Algeria, as a protest against the hypocrisy of Western imperialism.

This is why the revisionist Popular Front-Browderist perspective which subordinated the working class to a "progressive" imperialism has been discredited.

[Barry Lyndon]

This is quite ultra-left idiocy. I am not denying that the capitalist state is an enemy, but to say that it is just as bad as fascism is preposterous. In the bourgeois capitalist 'democracy', there is at least some breathing space for leftists to organize, which under fascism simply does not exist, unless its in the form of direct and probably suicidal armed resistance. I find it rather humorous that you are saying there is no difference while your exchanging ideas on an internet forum called 'Revleft'. Do you think such communication would exist in a fascist state, Kleber, seriously?

I was not just talking about the Nazis either, I was referring to the Japanese fascists, whose victims were primarily non-white(other Asians).
In a very real sense, the Allied victory saved lives. A staunch critic of American foreign policy, William Blum, estimated that all the US imperialist invasions, bombing, and US-backed dictators since the end of World War II have claimed 5-10 million lives, over the course of 60 years. The Nazis and Japanese fascists together slaughtered 20-60 million people in the course of six years, and that is directly, not via some proxy.
I am not minimizing the suffering that US imperialism has caused, but we need to be able to see the shades of grey.

[Kléber]

Do you think such communication would exist in a fascist state, Kleber, seriously?
That is exactly my point. The dominant imperialist powers can afford to export their fascism and maintain the facade of democracy at home. Up-and-coming imperialists without colonies to exploit like Germany and Italy, or say China today, lack(ed) the super-profits to buy off the population and keep it happy enough to be able to tolerate freedom of speech. That doesn't mean we should thank the Allied imperialists and give up political opposition to them. Support for the Allies by Communists during WWII was ruinous for revolutionary movements in India and Southeast Asia.

The Russian Revolution would not have been possible if all socialists had stuck to the national-defencist arguments and supported the "democratic" imperialist side and its liberal allies in the provisional government in WWI.


I was not just talking about the Nazis either, I was referring to the Japanese fascists, whose victims were primarily non-white(other Asians).
The anti-imperialist struggles of the Chinese and Soviet peoples were indeed progressive, victorious in spite of their reactionary governments that had been allied to Germany before being surprise attacked, but was there really anything proletarian or revolutionary about the imperialist bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?


A staunch critic of American foreign policy, William Blum, estimated that all the US imperialist invasions, bombing, and US-backed dictators since the end of World War II have claimed 5-10 million lives, over the course of 60 years. The Nazis and Japanese fascists together slaughtered 20-60 million people in the course of six years, and that is directly, not via some proxy.
The US was just one power on side of the Allies that had previously conquered most of the world. If you add up all the crimes of US, French, and British imperialism they killed many more than German, Japanese and Italian imperialism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

I think also we must consider what victory means for workers vs. what it means for our rulers. The US was happy to favor ex-nazi middlemen over community organized German antifas or the radicals who resisted occupation in France or the revolutionaries in Greece who were actively fought to reinstate a monarchy after they had fought the fascists. Not to mention reinstating French rule in places like Indochina and Algeria.

The end of the war shows the allies real interests - re-diving up the global order to make sure they got the best pieces and more importantly to make sure that there were no rebellions like those that followed WWI and no increase in anti-colonial movements (which there was and the allies closed ranks to try and stop them).

[jmlima]

...and no increase in anti-colonial movements (which there was and the allies closed ranks to try and stop them).

Actually, sorry to say, but that is slightly wrong.

When the sh** hit the fan, the european countries, in their usual fashion, split accordingly to their interests, whith the benevolent guidance of the US. As an example, in the big colonial wars (French and Portuguese), both countries were left alone by their euro counterparts, with the US playing a dangerous role of helping with one hand (supplying the French war in Indochin, to supplying guerrillas to fight Portuguese rule in Angola), and taking with the other (abandoning the French when the hour reached to increase their commitment).

This was whilst in the UN resolutions were approved by the UK and US against selling weaponry to the Portuguese until they abandoned their colonies (which lead to a bizarre closing between Portugal and South Africa) for example.

Back on topic, yes, WW2 provided an ideological framework against which to frame not only future wars, but also future behaviours of states. It was more than an ideological clash, it is indeed represented as a civilizational clash of civilized against barbaric people.

It also represents the first valuable clue as to what our 'demcratic' states resource to , from hiring war criminals to their own pet projects, leaving war prisoners to die, blackmailing war prisoners onto fighting other people's wars, down to a very complex gamble of economical interests, such as the US investments in AG Faber...

[black magick hustla]

the biggest massacre in history. so many young people died for politics. there was nothing good about it and it signaled the effects of counterrevolution.

[cenv]

I wonder whether or not it could be claimed that The Second World War is playing a huge ideological - even metaphysical - role in modern western societies as a form of representation of the struggle between "good" (liberal democracy) and "evil" ("totalitarianism"), where Hitler is playing the role of a secular devil. This is not about the Second World War, but about the image of the Second World War. Is it used as a frame of reference to legitimise, vindicate and excuse the current ruling elite?
Yeah, this is really true. In retrospect, WWII was one of the first major historical events I remember learning about as a kid. It's probably also the way people introduced me to the difference between "totalitarianism" and liberal democracy.

If you think about it, explaining the concept of liberal democracy to someone by directly contrasting it to Nazi Germany is a very effective way of taking impressionable children and prompting them to internalize the equation 'liberal democracy = good'. This works especially well because the assumption 'liberal democracy = good' isn't explicitly stated, and it's impossible for anyone to challenge that assumption in this context because doing so would amount to defending the Holocaust. Moreover, the emotional reactions inspired by Hitler's Germany are so strong that the association of 'liberal democracy' with 'good' is ingrained more deeply and remains in the subconscious.

FWIW, I'm not saying there is some massive conspiracy to brainwash kids by introducing the idea of liberal democracy in the context of WWII. But our culture is so saturated with images of WWII that it's only natural that it's one of the first major historical/political events that's explained to us. Thus, people learn about liberal democracy vis-a-vis Nazism and retain the perspective that entails for their entire lives.

[ComradeOm]

Yeah, this is really true. In retrospect, WWII was one of the first major historical events I remember learning about as a kidWhereas in 1938 it would have been WWI. Similarly in 1913 you would have learnt about Napoleon or 1870. What you describe is nothing new and nor is WWII unique in this regard

[cenv]

Of course. The only thing unique about it is that in today's cultural framework, WWII is the war that serves this role. It's still important (and for me, at least, interesting) to understand specifically how the bourgeoisie appropriates history to structure the way we perceive liberal democracy.

[Proletarian Ultra]

As revolutionary socialists, we need to emphasize that:

1. WWII was not fought to stop the Holocaust, on account of the beneficence of capitalist powers.

2. Hitler was defeated primarily by the Soviet Union, and partisan resistance was almost entirely Communist.

3. Capitalist states resisted moving against Hitler until the very last minute, in order to preserve their colonial empires.

4. Churchill was a reactionary motherfucker, despised even to this day by the British working class.

5. Anti-Jewish hysteria reached the point it did in Germany precisely because socialism and anti-militarism were so prevalent in the Jewish community. Liquidation of Jews began on the Eastern front because so many Jews were involved in anti-Nazi and pro-Soviet resistance. The Holocaust was a direct consequence of capitalism and militarism.

6. The Federal Republic of Germany is a direct successor to the Nazi state.

7. Ditto for present-day France and Vichy. Indeed De Gaulle, despite his history opposing the Vichy regime, brought France even further Vichyward with his 1958 coup and the Petainist constitution it set up.

8. Contrary to depictions in such shitty movies as Saving Private Ryan, White Christmas etc., relations between officers and enlisted men in the American army were extremely tense and hostile. And this hostility was of an explicitly class nature.