Effect of WW2 on popular culture

[enyawd72]

I'm sure this has been examined and discussed somewhere, but I was watching the Godzilla marathon on Elrey and got to thinking...Godzilla would not exist if it weren't for Adolf Hitler. Crazy isn't it?

If Hitler hadn't started WW2, we would never have dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Those bombings directly resulted in the creation of Godzilla as a way of the Japanese addressing the horrors of nuclear war.

The fact that Godzilla became so popular and is now a worldwide cultural phenomenon, not to mention a significant contributor to the Japanese economy is amazing. You could even credit Hitler for the creation and popularity of the 60's spy genre.

Nazi spies during and after WW2 caused major changes within the FBI and the creation of the CIA and British Secret Service as we know them now and fueled cold war hysteria which directly led to James Bond, Man from U.N.C.L.E., I Spy, Mission Impossible, etc.

Hard to believe that these popular characters, which millions of people worldwide enjoy, wouldn't exist were it not for the actions of one extremely evil man. Kinda mind-boggling.

[Mikey]

If it weren't for Hitler we most likely wouldn't have beaten the Russians to the Moon.

It's weird how bad things have to happen to inadvertently make the world better - just ask Christ

[ZMOQ]

If it weren't for Hitler we most likely wouldn't have beaten the Russians to the Moon.

It's weird how bad things have to happen to inadvertently make the world better - just ask Christ

Well, for all the death and suffering that happened during WW2, it made for a lot of social changes that directly affected my family in positive ways. Several of my uncles met their spouses at USO dances. Uncles and Aunties married during the war, as their wedding pictures show my Uncles in uniform. My Dad's brother got a college education out of it... since Dad and his bro were orphaned as young boys, there was no way that they could have been able to afford this on their own- living in a small town in New Mexico. The GI Bill did a lot for them and got them home loans, favored treatment for gov't jobs, and a future, and eventually a military burial.

WW2 also allied China with the US, convincing the gov't to end the Chinese Exclusion Act. That was a big thing, because in the late 1880's through WW2, the US was... rather racist. I saw the Angel Island detention and immigration files of my own family, and it was extremely difficult for them- what they had to go through to enter the US, when immigration was free from, say, Europe. My mother said that "white" society became more accepting of them during the war, because people understood who were their allies.