In real life, why can’t the bad guys today be more like those of yesterday?

In my latest thriller, White Thaw: The Helheim Conspiracy, I needed an appropriate villain, and so I resurrected a worthy nemesis, descendants of the Nazi party of World War II. I say “resurrected” when, in fact, there are still some of them around. As we all know, the Nazi Party, or alternatively, the National Socialist German Worker’s Party, was Adolf Hitler’s political party that existed between 1920 and 1945.

Where Naziism fell completely off the morally-defensible philosophical wagon was its belief in a superior “Aryan” race. This tenant then evolved into the doctrine that Jews and other minorities considered to be inferior should be eliminated.

Today, we hear of other hate-mongering groups that emphasize “White Supremacy,” the belief that white people are superior to nonwhites. According to Wikipedia, such groups exist in most countries that have a dominant white population. Germany, sensitive to its own history, takes a dim view of such activity and outlaws symbols of the Nazi party, as well any denial of the holocaust.

Which brings me to the point of this blog. I find it interesting that the battles and historical spectacle of Naziism and World War II continue to fascinate us. I was reading in the paper just today about a new George Clooney World War II movie, The Monuments Men, coming out shortly. Why is that?  Of course, World War II was truly a world war and thus historically significant. And to be sure, there were incredible battles on land and sea, some of which, had they turned out differently, could have swayed the eventual outcome. Outsize personalities–none more interesting than Adolf Hitler himself–provided material for writers to explore for decades on end. And then there were the personal stories that made for such gut-wrenching movies like Schindler’s List, Sofie’s Choice, The Boy in the Striped Pajamas, among many others. Some of these stories were made up but, to be sure, could have been found in the millions of tales untold and known only to the God of history.

But, beyond all of that, I think that as human beings, we enjoy (perhaps that’s too strong of a word, enjoy) sagas that involve a clear delineation between good and evil. Adolf Hitler was the personification of evil, at least after the fact. (By that I mean that the German people were taken in by the charismatic Hitler whose immoral and ludicrous attitudes toward those he considered inferior he kept hidden beneath his positive accomplishments.)  We are drawn to a story where good prevails over evil, with the bad guys getting their just reward in the end.

Unfortunately, the enemies making our newspapers today are a different lot. We’ve fought wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now that one is over and the other drawing down, there is little satisfaction in the endings. Drawing an analogy to fiction, writers understand that it’s important that the reader be satisfied at the end of a story. Why is there no satisfaction in Iraq and Afghanistan?  Aside from the fact that, compared to World War II, these modern-day wars seem to have no clear-cut winner, their is no universal agreement about who is right and who is wrong. As much as the West is appalled by the terrorist acts of the the Taliban and al Qaeda, those same groups consider western influences to be equally evil. And to give them credibility, they point to their religion as justification for their actions. It doesn’t help that in making war against the terrorists, insurgents, or whatever you want to call them, we end up killing many civilians, further adding to hatred on their side.

The bad guys of today are radically different from the Nazi types of the past. Fifty years from now, I don’t foresee many books or movies celebrating the glorious outcome of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There is no satisfaction to be had in those wars. For either side!

Categorised in: White Thaw

This post was written by paulmarktag01