The American myth of the Good War is similar to Britain\u2019s, but also distinct <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
The American myth of the Good War is similar to Britain\u2019s, but also distinct. It might be summarised as follows: an unprovoked attack on the US Fleet at Pearl Harbor unifies the nation and rouses its righteous might. Massive industrial and military mobilisation quickly follows, a process which ends the Great Depression and which also provides new social and economic opportunities for many Americans, especially those previously excluded from full participation in national life due to race or gender.<\/p>\n
The war itself \u2013 which features moments of epic heroism, such as at D-Day \u2013 is fought to vanquish tyranny and deliver freedom to the oppressed. And it all culminates in a clear victory, one which calls forth a new era of national power and prosperity.<\/p>\n
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Read more | Our dangerous devotion to the Second World War<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
This simplified story of the war \u2013 this myth \u2013 received its earliest rehearsal in wartime propaganda and in the many popular war films of the 1940s and 50s. But the fine details of its modern form are of a rather more recent vintage.<\/p>\n
The Good and the Bad<\/h2>\n
When American social historian Studs Terkel published his landmark oral history of the Second World War in 1984 his choice of title was powerfully suggestive of what was just then becoming an emerging consensus in the United States regarding how the conflict should be understood: The Good War<\/em>.<\/p>\n
A similar view of the war was also apparent that same year during the 40th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy. During one high-profile commemorative ceremony, for instance, none other than the American president himself \u2013 Ronald Reagan \u2013 gave a moving speech in which he celebrated the Second World War generation for their selfless heroism.<\/p>\n
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Read more | D-Day: 24 hours that changed the world<\/a><\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Afterwards, Reagan drew praise and platitudes, and some commentators even suggested his performance was a crucial factor in his November election victory. Both Terkel and Reagan had clearly identified something in the zeitgeist, a nostalgic longing for the certainties of the 1940s. Why was this? An answer can be found in the social and cultural impact in the United States of a more recent conflict: the war in Vietnam<\/a>.<\/p>\n
This war \u2013 which involved the United States from the mid-1950s to 1975 \u2013 produced enormous social disruption and political division.<\/p>\n
By the end of the 1960s large-scale protests on college campuses were condemning American strategy and, especially, drawing attention to the military\u2019s treatment of Vietnamese civilians (the massacre perpetrated by American forces at My Lai in 1969 drew widespread international condemnation).<\/p>\n
In time, these protests would play an important role in the eventual American withdrawal from the war. But another, perhaps less well-known, consequence was to give the American experience of the Second World War a new, sharper, clarity. It was as though the two conflicts became each-others\u2019 mirror image.<\/p>\n
Everything that was so \u2018right\u2019 about the Second World War \u2013 its cause, conduct, and aftermath \u2013 was thrown into sharper relief by what had just happened in south-east Asia. Where the Second World War had produced national unity, been fought for noble ideals, and ended in victory, the war in Vietnam had bequeathed division, dishonour, and defeat.<\/p>\n
Spielberg, Hanks, and Masters of the Air<\/em><\/h3>\n
In the aftermath of Vietnam, the Second World War offered many Americans a reassuring cultural and political touchstone; it was a way to mark what had just happened in south-east Asia as an aberration and, in doing so, assert that at its core the United States remained fundamentally \u2018good\u2019.<\/p>\n

The Second World War offered many Americans a reassuring cultural and political touchstone <\/blockquote> <\/div> <\/div> <\/div>\n<\/div>
Such sentiment became further consolidated in the 1990s following the collapse of the Soviet Union. A troubling legacy of the Second World War, the breakdown of the East-West alliance, was now history, and a new round of Good War celebrations duly followed.<\/p>\n
See, for instance, the huge international commemoration in Normandy during June 1994, the 50th anniversary of D-Day. See too the widely read history of the war published in 1998 by influential American journalist, Tom Brokaw. Titled The Greatest Generation<\/em>, Brokaw\u2019s book offers an unabashed celebration of the war generation.<\/p>\n
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