How WWII Affects Contemporary Thinking
Some musings on the wrong lessons from a major global event.
This post is part of a broader project to organize my thoughts about contemporary politics. Some of this has been sparked by some recent comments and some offline conversations, but a lot of it has been rolling around in my head for quite a while. It is all linked to trying to figure out how best to categorize the Trump administration. It is an ancillary note to a series I started last year:
- Defining and Discussing Fascism, Part I.
- Defining and Discussing Fascism, Part II: Hitler Comparisons.
At the time, I promised a third part on white nationalism. While I had semi-forgotten that promise, that topic is definitely on my mind and far more well-developed (unfortunately) than it was a year ago when I promised that post. I think, too, a better iteration of Part I is needed.
But let me opine for a bit about WWII and how it still influences our thinking, and also to make one historic observation of significance.
All of these, past, present, and future posts of this type are aimed at three audiences. First is myself, because working through this all in writing is helpful to establish, to me, if this line of thinking is valid (which, I will say, writing these posts has deepened my ongoing view that fascism is the correct term to apply, although I remain open to being convinced otherwise). Second, I am trying to address various pushbacks I have received in the comment section here at the site. Third, I have hopes (perhaps in vain) of sparking pro-Trump voters to reassess their understanding of what is happening right in front of us.
First: WWII as the Model War
There are three conflicts that loom the largest in the American mind, in my view. These are the War for Independence, which is essential to our founding myth, the Civil War, which is still shaping our politics, and which contains a lot of American mythology, and World War II, which established us as a superpower and is seen as the epitome of what just war looks like.
I could unpack these observations, and perhaps some will quibble (or even vehemently disagree) with my characterizations. But these conflicts suffuse our political culture and our self-image. You can’t, for example, argue about the Framers and “original intent” without the War for Independence. The way in which we argue over statues and names is the direct continuation of the Civil War (as is, really, racial politics in the US).
And no war defines American Greatness and the justice of war like World War II.
To put my point as succinctly as possible, and recognizing I could more fully develop my point, I think that WWII is seen, especially as it pertained to Nazi Germany, as a contest of Good v. Evil in a way that most wars really aren’t (despite whatever contemporary rhetoric surrounds such conflicts at the time). I mean, the SS had skulls on their caps, and some of their uniforms were all black.
Aesthetics aside, there was the horror of the Final Solution and the massive crimes of the Holocaust.
If there is a storyline for the justification of war, Nazi Germany was it.
Let’s add in a few other elements that speak to the basic mythology.
- The sneak attack on Pearl Harbor meant the US was drawn into the war. See? We had to fight. (We aren’t warmongers, we only fight if we have to!).
- We had to help our friends in Europe. (Friendship and solidarity against evil! And it shows our magnanimity towards Europe, which is later affirmed by the Marshall Plan.)
- After the war, our enemies became democratic allies (proving the efficacy of war as a policy tool).
- Plus, we emerged from WWII as the most powerful country in the world. Not only did we have the bomb, but our economy was intact, while the rest of the industrial world was literally in shambles. (War not only can be worth the cost, but victory can empower.)
I am gliding over it all, but this view of war made it easier for subsequent politicians (and the public) to see war in a positive light and to see things like the Vietnam War as an aberration (you know, morally questionable, politically problematic, and ultimately a defeat). Or Korea. Or Iraq (the second time). Or Afghanistan. Or any number of other conflicts that did not lead to enemies becoming stable democracies and proving that if we only applied force the right way, it could be used to achieve whatever we wanted to achieve.
But, to my point, the Vietnam War isn’t the outlier; WWII is.
This notion was reflected in Trump’s recent statement when he renamed the Department of Defense, the Department of War (at least for stationary, signage, and social media purposes):
“We won the First World War. We won the Second World War. We won everything before that and in between. And then we decided to go woke and we changed the name to Department of Defense,” Trump said. “So we’re going Department of War.”
To my general point, Trump was there tapping into our collective mythology about WWII as the big one we won. He is also tapping into a shared, but incorrect notion, that we played the same role in WWI as we did in WWII. It is a vision of American Greatest that Trump constantly taps into.
As a general observation, I have long thought that the willingness of the American public to go to war, and to see war as a good thing, is at least in part a result of the way we look at WWII.
This is relevant to contemporary politics because of how we perceive the enemy in that war, specifically Nazi Germany and the Hitlerian take on fascism. We pay lip service to Mussolini’s fascism, but as a country, we focus almost exclusively on Hitler and the Nazis.
We also ignore the fact that Franco’s Spain and Salazar’s Portugal had significant fascist elements, but since they remained neutral in WWII (and Portugal joined NATO in 1949), and they were both anti-Communist, well, they don’t loom so large.
I point out Spain and Portugal to suggest here that maybe the best understanding of fascism is not to be solely found in the most extreme case in one of the most brutally evil regimes in human history.
Second: WWII Era Nazism as a Model
So this leads to a more direct issue for me. Because the way in which the Good v. Evil narrative about WWII is so deeply ingrained in us, both in terms of our general national story, but really in our pop culture. Think of all the movies about Nazis we have seen over the years. Not only in the flood of WWII films in the decades after the war itself, but even for years after. The main villains in two of the first three Indiana Jones films are Nazis (old films, yes, but also persistent ones). Saving Private Ryan was from 1998, and Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds was from 2009. The very popular video game, Call of Duty, had a WWII version in 2017. I am sure that if I did more research, it would not be hard to find examples of Nazis-as-bad guys in very recent pop culture.
So, what’s my point? We, collectively, associate the word “fascism” with goose-stepping Nazis all marching for Der Führer. We think that using terms like “concentration camp” can only mean “mass death camp.” “Genocide” has to look like the Final Solution.
One possibility is that these terms are, in fact, time-locked in WWII. Another is that we are letting a specific set of images and notions cloud our understanding.
Given the power of our mythology surrounding WWII, we expect fascism to look like the Nazis. Since there are no goose-stepping soldiers wearing caps with skulls on them, this can’t be fascism, right?
So while, yes, Trump not only said he would govern as a dictator, and has actually done so, we take solace in the fact that, well, he didn’t actually send troops to Chicago! Yes, the FCC chair made a direct threat to broadcast corporations, but they only temporarily suspended Kimmel. Sure, he is nakedly using that power of the Department of Justice to go after political enemies, but the indictment sure looks weak.
I mean, to me, those are more about how good he and his cohorts are at governing fascistically, not a list of how normal things are.
Is Trump having massive rallies like Hitler did? Well, not exactly, although I would point people back to his campaign and how it was conducted. I would also note a 2025 twist on all of this. If old school dictators had to go to the balcony and shout to the crowds, all Trump has to do, at any time of the day or night, is post to Truth Social. There, he has 10.8 million followers and immediately amplified on Twitter and in the traditional press. He doesn’t even have to go to the Oval Office or the White House press room.
And yes, the camps for migrants aren’t Auschwitz, and ICE isn’t the Gestapo. But as the saying goes, history may not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. I fear a lot of people are ignoring the rhyme because they hope it is their imagination, or they think people like me are being hysterical. There is this deep belief, which I confess still occasionally grips me as well, that things will surely go back to normal.
Ice, Ice, Baby was no Under Pressure, but there is no denying that Vanilla Ice stole some of Queen’s music to make that song. Total and exact duplication is not needed for copyright infringement to be found. So, I don’t think Trump has to grow a funny mustache and start wearing a military uniform for us to say that he is governing fascistically.
I plan to come back to specifics on this in another post–no, not lame copyright infringement metaphors, but a list of things that I think sufficiently rhyme with fascist governance.
I will leave this thought: if a lot of anti-Trump readers of this site find it difficult to label the Trump administration as “fascistic”, it is no wonder that the typical Republican voter might recoil at the notion (and be prepared to rationalize away the rhymes).
Historical Observation: Context of WWII-Era Fascism
A side note that this topic brings to the fore of my brain. Whenever we talk about how authoritarianism or even fascism might be burgeoning around us, the propensity to want to point back to the fact that things aren’t like 1930s Germany is a potentially appealing salve.
But do remember the following. Germany was still suffering, both in their economy and in their national psyche, from the effects of WWI. The Great Depression was ongoing. There were multiple anti-regime parties competing for power aside from the Nazis (e.g., the communists and the monarchists).
There were serious crises affecting the German polity that created a permissive environment for Hitler’s power grab. There was also the war to consider when making comparisons about what he was able to get away with over time. For example, the Final Solution took place in the context of a war.
I note these facts as both a comfort and a source of alarm.
I think that some of the more extreme actions of the Nazi regime were possible because of the basic context of German politics in the early 1930s, as later exacerbated by war. As we know from history, a government at war often finds itself able to expand powers in ways that it could not do in a time of peace. As such, there is some comfort to be taken in the present moment that the US is not facing the kinds of permissive crises that helped empower the Nazis.
But the fact that many Americans support the overtly authoritarian moves of this president without a crisis is also quite chilling. The list is long: the mass firings of DOGE, ignoring the Congress’s appropriate powers, rounding up people without due process, giving ICE a budget that exceeds most national military budgets, leveraging the FCC’s regulatory power to attack free speech, strong-arming universities and law firms, and nakedly using the DOJ to go after enemies (to name only a portion of what has been happening).
It does make one concerned about what kinds of powers might be asserted if an actual crisis comes around.
Enough for Now
So, maybe clearing this out of my head was useful, and maybe it wasn’t, but here it is nonetheless.
I will preview subsequent arguments by simply noting that, as we continue to consider the appropriate way to describe this administration’s approach to politics, we recognize at least three points.
First, allowing the worst/best example of something to be the model is not a good way to construct a model.
Second, the overall competence of how something is executed doesn’t change the definition of what is being attempted. This is something I want to come to later, but I have seen people argue that because Trump seems to ultimately be bad at doing a fascism, that maybe he isn’t doing one. I would counter that while he may not be as effective as some historical examples (thank God!) I don’t think competence is needed for a definition to apply.
Third, I would suggest that a lot of people are conflating fascism with a particular version of totalitarianism (something I used to do as well). I am increasingly of the view that this is a mistake. I put this out there simply as something to think about.
More to come…
this is the sort of post that makes something go click in my brain and suddenly things that had been confusing come into better focus. Specifically thinking of WW2 as both an outlier and an outsized influence on how people understand fascism
I have had some of the same thoughts but from a more personal angle. I like to write history into my books, so does my wife. The problem is that Americans know very little history, and misunderstand the parts they’ve actually heard of. For a fictioneer (neologism alert!) the more ignorant the reader the more set up and explanation you have to write in. There are entire American wars with thousands of casualties and major impact on our present that not 5% of Americans have even sketchy knowledge.
Sci Fi and fantasy writers and kidlit authors always struggle with the balance between backstory and main story and between setting and action. It would all be so much easier if American kids were taught history, and their parents would unlearn some of what they think they know.
I had a small, comforting thought. Hitler took power when he was 43, Mussolini 39, Franco 43, Salazar also 43. Trump was 70 when elected to his first term, and now he’s 79.
Just a note on that skull-symbol comment. It’s only natural for soldiers, to some degree or another, to embrace brutality, and this is not at all unique to the Germans of WW2.
I thought maybe Michael would get a little into this, but I think it’s telling how much the image of Nazis as the ultimate supervillains has dominated pop culture for so long, in everything from Star Wars to Harry Potter. And to some extent, it goes in the other direction–the comic-book Superman was originally dreamed up by two Jewish teens in the early 1930s as a sort of American response to the Übermensch myth promoted by the Nazis (which was based on a misreading of Nietzsche, but I digress). In other words, many of the tropes coming from comic books were themselves rooted in the American reaction to WWII.
I also find it ironic, in light of Hannah Arendt’s famous phrase “the banality of evil” (which has come under heavy criticism by historians, a fact most people who invoke the quote ignore), that Eichmann’s look–the balding Evil Bureaucrat with coke-bottle glasses–is something that shows up a lot in pop culture (think of Toht from Raiders). And there’s a reason why Dr. Mengele shows up so much in fiction (veiled or otherwise); he was a literal, flesh-and-blood mad scientist.
In short, the lesson we’ve all absorbed from a young age is that the best way to depict any real-world conflict in the most cartoonish, black-and-white, good vs. evil terms is to compare it to the goose-steppers and the man with the funny mustache.
In many ways, I think there’s more to learn about what’s happening in the US from contemporary examples like Orban’s Hungary or Putin’s Russia than from the Third Reich. But to a lot of people, that’s too boring.
@Kylopod:
That is, at least in part, my point. Most of only have the one example in our head, so unless it looks like that, we don’t understand what we are looking at.
(And good run-down of the pop culture examples)
@Kylopod:
The Nazis were very good at evil. To find their equals you might have to go all the way back to Genghis. The Nazis had excellent uniforms, cool-looking planes like the Stuka, and blitzkrieg not only has a cool name, as one of the first examples of mechanized warfare, it had panache. They were very good at propaganda as well, of course.
This is what the Aryan creeps focus on because they aren’t very smart. They rather overlook the fact that the 1000 Year Reich lasted just 12 years, and ended in utter defeat, with the Red Army raping its way across that truncated Reich. And Germany, was broken apart and occupied. The aftermath was very hard on the German people, they didn’t just immediately get to work building BMWs. Hitler was a catastrophic failure. So was Mussolini.
White Supremacists often deny the Holocaust while simultaneously reveling in the sheer evil of it. Since the Holocaust evil men have been united in their desire to minimize it. I think they like the power rush but are still a little squeamish about bayoneting babies. They try to square the circle between SS Hugo Boss and actual baby-killing.
How they get around the fact that Hitler got his ass absolutely pounded into the dirt, dying by suicide in a squalid bunker full of drugged-up creeps in the middle of his burned down capital, I can’t imagine.
@dazedandconfused: Fair and true.
But you have to admit that the SS unis play a special place in pop culture.
Discussing every point would make for too long a comment, but three points:
1.
My experience engaging with the overwhelming majority of MAGA people online is that they seek first to identify the ideology of the person they are responding to. Once they learn you are a liberal, they have no interest in good faith conversation. They simply concentrate on asserting that (a) you’re wrong, and/or (b) you’re an idiot, and/or (c) you have an advanced case of “TDS”, which is an all-purpose reply to any criticism of the regime.
2. I suggest there are two other outliers in last century’s American wars: Korea and Iraq 1. Outliers because in both instances the US sought successfully to lead a diverse international force under UN auspices, instead of going it alone or with the support of a few client states. And both wars had arguably successful outcomes. A more-or-less democratic, prosperous nation has evolved in South Korea. Saddam’s army was expelled from Kuwait, and his regime crippled.
3. I’m not sure any useful purpose is served by drawing analogies between the MAGA phenomenon and any supposed historical precedent. The danger is that the aptness of the analogy becomes the main argument, instead of the evils of the MAGA regime. IMHO we should concentrate on pointing out its totalitarian nature, which seeks to intrude on every aspect of society as and when it disapproves of what people or organisations are doing. Thus it dictates not only matters of legitimate state business like immigration and trade, but purely private affairs such as the content of TV shows, the conduct of school sports, the names of professional football teams and the logo of a restaurant chain.
@Erik: Thank you for saying so–that’s a high compliment!
@Ken_L:
Iraq 1, yes. But that is a great example of how limited goals are best.
Korea, far less so. For one thing, the war is technically not over, and while, yes, South Korea has become a democracy, it took decades after the war for democracy to emerge. It really isn’t a good example of using military power to take over and democratize as a direct result. Plus, we weren’t fighting South Korea (they were our allies), we were fighting the North.
@Michael Reynolds:
Imagine how a political scientist feels trying to analyze contemporary politics!
@Steven L. Taylor:
No argument here. German soldiers are (or were) about the only humans we feel comfortable making targets in our first person shooter video games.
Just a cringe from all the skulls on our own shoulders.
@Steven L. Taylor: The more I think about it, the more Korea is clearly not an outlier. We failed at our main goals, leaving a communist state in the North. And our allies in the South didn’t democratize until multiple decades after the war.
In terms of a good example of war leading to the stated goals, it goes in the L column.
@Ken_L:
Note, I did not say I hoped to persuade MAGA people. I said “pro-Trump voters.” By which I meant GOP types who don’t want to vote Dem, but may be persuaded that Trump really is dangerous.
@dazedandconfused:
100%!!
@Steven L. Taylor: Fair points, but since the alternative was a communist regime installed over the entire peninsula, I believe it was (in the circumstances of 1950) a just war. Not only that, but the outcome was superior to not going to war, which is more than can be said of several other conflicts the US has engaged in over the last 80 years.
Dr. Taylor, thank you for this post, it is very thought provoking.
It’s interesting that with all the tropes of German efficiency, from what I understand (and of course I could be completely wrong) Nazi Germany was in fact relatively inefficient. The US transitioned its economy more completely to a war footing than the Germans ever did. Thousands of soldiers were used in 1945 for filming a Napoleonic era propaganda film. The Luftwaffe embarked on a strategic bombing program without actually having strategic bombers, only medium ones. Again, as I said, happy to be corrected cos I hate to be misinformed.
It’s probably also always worth remembering that it’s not like Hitler came to power and started shipping people off in trains the next day. It was probably always a mistake to talk in such apocalyptic terms because it allows people to say “you said there would be LGBTQ extermination camps! Well, we’re just limiting their rights and freedoms and ability to live openly, but there’s no extermination camps, you lying lib!” (caveat: Yet)
My argument would still be that fascism was best understood as quasi-revolutionary movement for changing the social order and “national renewal”, without adopting the ideology of the Bolsheviks/Marxists.
It aimed at mobilising, organising and directing society via a disciplined, coherent, hierarchical, and generally pseudo-militarised Party, under the over-riding direction of a single Leader, and with minimal regard for laws or traditions.
In the service the assumed imperative renewal and re-construction, and the conception of ineviatable national/”racial” conflict, force and discipline was emphasised, and the constraint of law and ethics scorned.
That, it seems to me, is the key diffrentiation between Trumpian “MAGA” approaches, and those of fascism/nazism.
I argue, again, that “MAGA” falls somewhere between the autoritarian conservatism of Salazar, or the Greek colonels, or South American juntas, or many central European governments of the 1930’s.
And, on the other hand, the populismo of Peron.
It seems to lack the driving, quasi-messianic, revolutionary and structured, both in ideology and organisation, concept of “national goals” that were key aspects of fascism.
I ceretainly would not argue that MAGA authortarianism and scorn for laws and norms is not perilous.
It is, and extremely so, and perhaps even more insidious than open fascism.
Yet I think it’s a peril of a rather diffferent sort.
For I am a pernickety, pedantic, and argumentative sod. 😉
@dazedandconfused:
Quite true.
The Royal Lancers (or their predecessors) have long had the Death’s Head as a badge, and the regimental motto “Death Or Glory.”
As the Wehrmacht learnt in their encounters, it was not a wholly vain boast.
@Michael Reynolds:
Indeed.
It’s also often a mistake of over-ambitious continental warlords to understimate the capacity of the British for being both stubborn, and utter bastards in a fight.
Rather unassuming Brits of my late acquaintance, who on the whole would have preferred a peaceful life as a teacher, lawyer, or chemist, or pottering about in the garden, ended up planning the systematic pounding to rubble of German cities, leading SOE assasination teams, and spearheading the PLUNDER/VARSITY Rhine crossings that broke the back of the Wehrmacht in the north-west.
Nicely designed black uniforms seldom compensate for incompetence.
@Assad K:
It’s an intersting, and often overlooked, reality, that in economic mobilization, efficient mangement, and effective use of resources, the British wartime economy made the German effort look rather feeble.
Speer began to organise things more effectively from 1943 on, but by that point it was too late.
By that point the UK was in a postion to win the Battle of the Atlantic, despite much hard fighting and loss, and begin a bombing campaign aimed at reducing Germany to rubble.
What it did not have, absent the US and the Soviet Union, was an army capable of landing in Europe and beating Germany on land.
Which problem Hitler’s own idiocy relieved us of.
@Steven L. Taylor:
I’d note that Poland in 1939 was not a unalloyed adverstisement for liberal democaracy.
The UK and France did not declare war on Germany because of political ideology as such, but because it was detemined on conquest and hegemony.
It’s ideology drove that, surely enough, but it was the acts, not the ambitions, that led to war.
Absent those, Hitler could have continued to rule a nasty Nazi regime controlling Germany and mitteleuropa for many a year.
Just as it was Hitler’s folly to both invade the Soviet Union, with the UK unreduced, and, in particualr, to declare war on the US.
Absent that declaration, it’s a reasonable bet that US effort would have focused on the war with Japan, leaving the war in Europe to be decided between the German-Soviet contest on land, and the British bomber offensive on Germany.
Fabulous post! Thoughtful, insightful, and useful
@JohnSF: See, I think you are doing what I used to do: so conflate fascistic politics with Hitler and Nazism as to not see where the two are not the same thing.
I have thoughts that will be forthcoming.
@JohnSF:
Not to sound defensive, but to be honest, I am not sure what your point is vis-à-vis the post.
Also note that what I am trying to do here is not present anything other than the way I perceive WWII to loom large in the American consciousness.
@Michael Bailey: Many thanks!
@Steven L. Taylor:
That was not re the post itself, but about the observations on the sub-optimal politics of Synghman Rhee’s South Korea.
I understand your point about the prominence of WW2 as the “great crusade” in US conceptions.
What I’m trying to point out re Poland is that UK perceptions at the time were rather diffrerent.
We never expected our allies to be morally immaculate (or at least, the UK leadership class did not)
Chuschill’s comments about when Germany invaded the Soviet Union were not just ironic humour:
“If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference of the Devil in the House of Commons.”
There was a serious point there.
Similarly, unlike the US, the British harboured few illusions about the popularity and capability of the Kuomintang.
Generally speaking, in a serious conflict, allies are where you find them, and you can seldom afford to be over-picky or precious about their nature and motives.
“Sufficient unto the day…” and all that.
In the current context, assuming “it can never happen here” is foolish.
And so is minimising what is happening because it does not map one-to-one with a checklist of fascism.
I’m not trying to do that; just pointing out my pov that MAGA differs quite basically from fascism.
Which does not make it in any way less perilous for the US polity.
Napoleon III was not a fascist; he was nonetheless a disaster for French democracy, and for the course of French history.
And the more I think about it, the more Napoleon III seems a closer analogue to Trump than does fascism.
I’m going now to dig out and re-read Theodore Zeldin’s “France 1848-1945”
@Steven L. Taylor:
It’s not Hitler as such, and the context of WW2, that my argument is based on.
It’s about the basic ideological stance, and consequent social organisational approach of Italian and German fascism.
They were attempting “to be revolutionary without being Marxist”, as McLelland put it.
Which left them with only “social corparatism”, and the “natioanla leader” concept, and even more lunatic “racial theory”, to resort to.
And the use of a “Party state” and pseudo-miltary mobilization of society.
MAGA is nowhere near doing such; it’s inchoate, disorganized, and absent a definite ideological structure.
Albeit, it does have an obvious inlination to Trump as leader, and somehow an incarnation of their desired America.
(Which is ludicrous, but there you go.)
It seems far closer to a crossover of conservative and populist authoritarianism than to the “revoultionary social mobilzation” objectives of fascism.
@JohnSF:
Thanks for the clarification. I was genuinely confused.
@JohnSF: I appreciate the interaction and recognize that there is plenty we agree on.
More to come, no doubt!