Postwar Culture
American Patriotism
America was flying high off of its final defeat of the USSR and Russian-Led World Communism in the Third World War. After the lull of the Second Interwar period, which unrestrained saw rising tensions over the course of four decades, a final, deadly release had been let out and the world was now in a state of relative peace. All three world wars had one thread holding them together, and that was Russian Expansionism. This insatiable imperialism was checked in the first world war, only for a new regime to recoup its losses in the second. WWIII propaganda often recalled Soviet technical assistance to the Nazis, the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, the Soviet Invasion of Finland, and the “Rape of Eastern Europe” to illustrate this. For more than forty years tensions had simmered. But when the Soviet Empire had brought Russia to the zenith of its power, with its tendrils found worldwide, it had finally been vanquished by an German and American-led coalition. To finally rid the world of the Russian menace, it was to be split into a nearly two dozen squabbling statelets that would never pose a threat to global geopolitics. It has been said that the partition of Russia was based largely off of the Morgenthau Plan, though frankly seeing the state Russia had been in at the time, it can also be said it’s possible that it would’ve taken a while to reunify Russia without Western intervention. In the aftermath of the war, the consensus was obvious though. America was soaring high.
Its people were feeling great about themselves and for good reason. For three world wars, they had been on a winning streak, with minimal damage to their homeland in all but the last. The damage caused in the Soviet Blitz, though devastating after all, would likely be in the billions of dollars, as opposed to the hundreds of billions of dollars in Europe, and would likely take a few years to repair... They were at least luckier then the the former Warsaw Pact or Germany, which would see rebuilding take nearly a decade. After the collapse of the Soviet Empire, America saw itself a hyperpower, and leader of a unipolar world order.
Overall, during the war and after, Anti-Russian sentiment had skyrocketed in the United States. Not all local Red-Hunting committees dissolved themselves after the war, and some were fully convinced there may be a communist infiltration in the U.S., waiting to cause a revolution. They refused to let their guard down. The right wing militia group ANTICO rose up for a short while committing hate crimes against many Eastern European people, including oddly enough….Oleg Kerensky, grandson of the famous Russian White leader. While the movement quickly faded away, its remnants later became the infamous Law and Order Party years later. The actions of the Anti-communist militias had been widely condemned, no more then by prominent actress Mariska Hargitay, whose father, who had been well known anti-communist activist, had come from Hungary. She denounced these far right militias as well as their Russophobia, saying in an interview, “Americans must remember….the first nation invaded by the Bolsheviks was Russia.”
The Wounded Father Organization became an extremely popular charity post-war thanks to the wave of Patriotism and is considered a model for all charity work
The Schwarzkopf Plan
In order to help the world rebuild, the United States had to fund a global Marshall Plan involving all the nations affected by WWIII, with a few strings attached, on the condition that the recipients were free and democratic. This applied to all Allied Nations, as well as most of the former Warsaw Pact. Even China and India, both previously Communist-leaning and inward focused, would agree to help with the rebuilding (in return for certain economic concessions, of course). Great Britain, Chile, and France had also spared money aside from their own building projects to contribute. American companies, and to a lesser extent Western European and Chilean companies, made a profit from construction and exports to Eastern Europe and to Africa. Some of the democratic Soviet successor states saw aid too, like the Republic of Samara, which miraculously saw the rise of a stable multiparty democracy. The Schwartzkopf Plan had funded the rebuilding of infrastructure, with the final price tag at nearly 150 billion dollars. The Plan received bipartisan support despite the high price tag of such a project. Even Bundy and Perot, who enjoyed pillorying the president regularly on sunday talk shows, endorsed this almost utopian project. As a result of the Schwarzkopf Plan, European countries were able to receive help for rebuilding which some, especially the smaller nations in the Warsaw Pact, couldn’t handle alone.
American intents weren’t completely altruistic though, indeed part of the reason behind the rebuilding project was to increase the reliance of former Warsaw Pact nations to NATO countries, and ensure that they stayed loyal. And this to a large effect worked, as support for communism dropped nearly overnight. Slowly but surely, the free and democratic Warsaw Pact nations got accepted into the NATO. Democracy in the Warsaw Pact had done well, unlike Russia, which saw democratic regimes frequently become corrupt, authoritarian, and kleptocratic. The help and support given by the United States in rebuilding boosted public support of the Allies in liberated countries. A disgruntled and revenge-oriented populace is never a good thing, and would have only served to make the Warsaw Pact feel like a conquered people, and more likely to fall into authoritarianism too.
Schwarzkopf speaking to Congress asking for support for this measure.
A Brief Overview of Pop Culture
With American patriotism soaring to new heights never seen before, it only made sense that pop culture would reflect this in the zeitgeist. Hollywood saw a wave of interest in World War Two movies as well as those on the more recent World War. To this day war movies make for some of the highest grossing movies of all time. “Saving Private Ryan”, a story of an American soldier on D-Day, is the highest grossing movie of all time, adjusting for inflation. Close behind is “Polo”, the story of famous war hero, Marco “Polo” Rubio, and “Moscow”, a film about the Battle of Moscow which takes on the perspectives of soldiers from different nations, whose stories intertwine near the end as Moscow falls…
Tom Cruise Won an Oscar for his Portrayal of an Overconfident Fighter Pilot in "Moscow"
Video Games, a new type of entertainment from the 80s, also saw the rise of first-person-shooter games, where usually the player carried out missions to defeat an enemy. In the aftermath of the Third World War, enemies in shooter games aesthetically or ideology took after the Soviet Union. The famous Homefront games deal with a resurgent Tsarist Russia who against all odds has invade American home soil. The objective of the main character, a teenage guerilla fighter, was to cause chaos in occupied territory, which would tie up Soviet troops that would have fought on the frontline. The infamous Garm from the game Garm Storm were a hive-mind, creatures of this species had no individuality, likely a reference to conceptions of the Soviet Union. The Garm were also red and yellow, the colors used by the Soviet Union’s flag. With a wave of media about the Second and Third World War, Americans, despite being more protected than ever, still did not immediately get used to the new normal. There was no longer a big bad for America to set itself against. Many people were scared of a resurgent and reunifying Russia, no matter how unlikely that may have been. Others turned their eyes towards the skies, and began to wonder what life was out there….
Footage from a popular F.P.S.
The Americanization of Eastern Europe
One controversial provision of the Schwarzkopf Plan that has been widely criticized was a clause stating that nations that accepted a certain amount of aid and above had to exempt putting caps on the amount of foreign media let into the country, at least until the copyright of said property had ended. This caused a glut of American media penetrating into Europe, and as some critics claim, had led to the “Americanization of Europe.” At the end of the war, birth rates throughout the Western World increased, meaning that there were soon many kids growing up watching T.V. And soon programming from one country became especially popular...American cartoons. Among the most popular foreign genres in the wake of the Third World War, this provision in the Schwarzkopf Plan had by far benefited animation studios. While some other genres had seen success, such as the James Bond movies, cartoons took off more than any other export. Cartoons could appeal to anyone, translated well cross-culturally, and with the boom in births there would very soon come new viewers. They also provided some level of escape for some who had seen the horrors of war. American cartoons, with either dubbing or subtitling, became popular throughout the former Eastern Pact, as censorship ended and kids channels finally got hold on American animated shows. Different nations saw different companies taking root. Belarus became Warner Bros territory, and cartoons such as Bugs Bunny became rather popular. This was cemented when an elderly Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny, visited Minsk in a tour of the nation. It has long been a popular joke in the nation that Parliament is currently debating as whether to add Bugs Bunny to the flag or not.
Rough Artist’s rendition of what such a hypothetical flag would look like
Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, recently bought back by Disney, became a sleeper hit in Poland, where it and Mickey Mouse dominated TVP1’s Kids’ block. Some channels wanted to get in better graces with the Americans, and aired even lesser known cartoons and their reruns of older shows at times to pad up airtime. This explains in part the popularity of shows like Ducktales, which never took off in the States...If there was one big winner from the exemption clause, it was Disney. To this day, Disney World remains a popular overseas attraction in the Eastern Bloc, with some restaurants on the park selling Mickey Mouse pierogis. Some in Eastern Europe complain about American influence in their countries, claiming that kids watching them will grow up to become immoral, lazy bums. They are often called “Mutfilmik”, after the Ukrainian word for cartoon. Others don’t see a problem with this though, seeing no harm in American cartoons.
The Mutfilmik, A Polish Satiric Cartoon mocking this new trend
Animation studios frequently do scouting for talent in Eastern Europe, and as a result many of the most well known animators tend to be from Eastern Europe. Many released films of their own...Thankfully this influx of animated movies with Eastern European influences had been released after the wave of Anti-Eastern European sentiment in America had dropped off, or else there would have been mass boycotts. Disney’s Baba Yaga had been a smash hit in America, and it had a large amount of Eastern European crew members behind it.
Baba Yaga was filmed in Black and White, an unique animation choice that many believe won it an Oscar
Western Europe on the other hand, did not agree to such a prospect. Some had homegrown animation studios of their own which would suffer from accepting this provision, and (besides possibly Germany) they weren’t as desperate for aid. France reacted especially negatively to it, many calling it “An American attempt at destroying our culture and replacing it with their own”. The French government had rather strict foreign media caps too, their Académie Française, which governed the French language itself, had for years resisted the flow of English words into French, fearing the bastardization of their tongue. French public opinion of the U.S. soured in the wake of this. Though few can dispute, the so-called “Americanizing clause” has had an effect on pop culture throughout Europe.