Opinion: WW2 drama Masters of the Air perpetuates America’s myth of the Good War

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The Mall is a landscape of national memory, visited every year by thousands of people. Here stands the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial, the towering obelisk dedicated to George Washington, and the columned temple in which reposes a solemn and seated Abraham Lincoln.

Yet despite this illustrious company, many visitors seem especially drawn to the National World War II Memorial.

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On a hot summer’s day, the cooling waters of the memorial’s central pool certainly offer welcome relief. But there are also other factors at play, foremost of which is that over the last 40 years the Second World War has come to assume a particular position in American culture: it is the ‘Good War’ fought by the ‘Greatest Generation’.

This is America’s ‘myth’ of the Second World War.

America’s myth

That Americans have a myth of the Second World War is by no means unusual. Britain has one too, centred on the heroic evacuation of Dunkirk, the courageous exploits of The Few during the Battle of Britain, and the stoic endurance of Londoners during the Blitz.

Myths like this are not lies or untruths; they are simplified readings of the past that make it relevant and relatable.

The American myth of the Good War is similar to Britain’s, but also distinct

The American myth of the Good War is similar to Britain’s, 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.

The war itself – which features moments of epic heroism, such as at D-Day – 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.

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This simplified story of the war – this myth – 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.

The Good and the Bad

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.

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 – Ronald Reagan – gave a moving speech in which he celebrated the Second World War generation for their selfless heroism.

• Read more | D-Day: 24 hours that changed the world

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.

This war – which involved the United States from the mid-1950s to 1975 – produced enormous social disruption and political division.

By the end of the 1960s large-scale protests on college campuses were condemning American strategy and, especially, drawing attention to the military’s treatment of Vietnamese civilians (the massacre perpetrated by American forces at My Lai in 1969 drew widespread international condemnation).

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’ mirror image.

Everything that was so ‘right’ about the Second World War – its cause, conduct, and aftermath – 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.

Spielberg, Hanks, and Masters of the Air

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 ‘good’.

The Second World War offered many Americans a reassuring cultural and political touchstone

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.

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, Brokaw’s book offers an unabashed celebration of the war generation.

It was, though, another work of 1998 which became the most well-known marker of America’s burgeoning Good War myth: Saving Private Ryan (1998).

Directed by Stephen Spielberg, starring Tom Hanks, and with historical advice from Stephen Ambrose (author of a string of bestselling Second World War histories) Saving Private Ryan told the story of a squad of American soldiers despatched to Normandy to rescue a young paratrooper, the titular Private Ryan.

The film was a huge success, and in its opening vignette – in which we see the now aged Private Ryan return to Normandy to visit the graves of his fallen comrades – it skilfully tapped the Second World War nostalgia of the moment.

Following the success of Saving Private Ryan, and amidst the resurgent patriotic fervour of the post-9/11 era, Spielberg and Hanks returned to the subject of the Second World War on two more occasions, this time on television: Band of Brothers (2001), and The Pacific (2010). Both were well-received, and in their aftermath rumours abounded that a final instalment was planned. Cue the release, this very week, of Apple TV’s eagerly anticipated series, Masters of the Air (2024).

Based on a popular book of the same name by historian Donald L Miller, the series follows the exploits of the Second World War American bomber crews over Nazi Germany.

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With Spielberg and Hanks credited as executive producers, it is every bit the descendent of Saving Private Ryan and its two televisual predecessors. As such, Masters of the Air suggests that America’s myth of the Good War – a key feature of the cultural and political landscape in the United States since the 1980s – remains very much alive and well.

Dr Sam Edwards is a historian of war, memory, and of transatlantic relations