Tim Blackmore - Gorgeous war : the branding war between the Third Reich and the United States

ITS A HARD THING TO WRITE KNOWING THAT SOME READ ers, so crucial to the process of producing both a book and ones life, will never read the text. I miss my father, who always supported me and my work, as much as he thought it was, basically, crazy. He wouldnt have read this book when I gave him a copy, but he would have put it on his desk, said a pleased Good to me, and then gone back to work. In a very different way Edward (Ned) Hagerman, military historian, cultural scholar, and my lifelong teacher and mentor, also supported me without question. It was Ned who taught me to think, to have courage, who worked to deepen my understanding of the world and my own work. Ned would have read the book and we would have had our usual six-hour-long discussion about it and everything else related to it. After his sudden death a year ago there was a stark silence where there had been a mind full of understanding. Ned took me in like family and helped at every stage of migration from adult undergraduate at night school to university professor. I think of him, miss him, hear his delightful chuckle, and know that the time I spent with him on the earth was some of the best Ill ever have. More thanks than I have, as well, for Richard Swinson and Quentin Rae Grant, who taught me and were patientman were they patient.

My academic cheering team is jammed with people Im lucky to know. Willem (Bill) Vanderburg, director of the Centre for Technology and Social Development at the University of Toronto and Jacques Elluls last protg, opened his heart and home to me and has been a wonderful guide through what he calls the labyrinth of technology. Siobhan McMenemy has been an invaluable thinker, advisor, colleague, reader, and editor for well over a decade. I am enormously lucky and grateful to have her insight, wit, humour, help, and friendship. Joe and Gay Haldeman, showing the typical unstinting generosity with which they approach the world, took me in decades ago and have ever since been scholarly colleagues, wonderful friends, family. Bob (Chickenhawk) Mason and Patience Mason, both authors and war watchers, have helped me through. Sheila Embleton, linguistics professor, colleague, friend, and long-time mentor continues to be resolutely there when I need something. Paul Headrick is, as always, that utterly stable rock in the river of chaos. Gilda Blackmore typed and typed and typed, day and night for weeks, getting documents ready for mewhatever flavour ice cream, Im happily buying pretty much forever. Many thanks to Ted Kaye for his vexillological help and generosity. I am very grateful to Rifat Al-Chadirji for his permission to reproduce his flag designs. Thanks also to Ahmed Al-Mallak, who made communication and understanding between the two of us possible: it was a late and important education that made me reflect on how little it can take to make bridges where there were none before. My sincere thanks to Chris Wheeler, who worked some excellent digital magic on an old piece of film and made the book more gorgeous. Similarly, I am hugely grateful to my teaching buddy Mark Rayner for his desperately needed graphic help. Thanks to my anonymous readers, who worked to improve this bookI appreciate the advice. If there are still problems, theyre on me. A special note of thanks to designer Michel Vrana, who put the smartest, sharpest, most gorgeous cover on this book. My list of graphical embargoes (no swastikas, no Statues of Liberty draped in variegated flags, and so on for hundreds of words) made me feel hopeless about ever seeing a cover that could seize the books gestalt. Michel Vrana has beautifully captured the two deeply contrasting brands and their different notions of modernity without resorting to any clichs. Im delighted and grateful.

The people who made a space for me at WesternCarole Farber, Catherine Ross, and Gloria Leckiehave been the best co-workers one could have, always ready to listen to some tale of grief. David Spencer, another recent loss to us, was another enormously welcoming force in my life. I miss him and am glad I had time to work with him. My sincere thanks, too, to Susan Knabe and Kathie Hess for being there with good counsel. My own students, many now colleagues, have educated me about war and trauma, engaging in work that was surprising, exciting, and made me proud to see: Dr. Elle Ting, Daryl Hunt, Dr. Jeff Preston, Rebecca Elias, Chang (Melody) Song, Rhea Harris (Johnson), Dr. Patti Luedecke, Dr. Kyunghee Kim. My thanks particularly to the inaugural class of MIT 2161 (now 3440), War for War, a remarkable communal experience, and the many astounding groups who have taken MIT 3215, Killer Culture: working with all of you always impresses me with how incisive and wonderful people can be. I have full confidence in Millennials; its people of my generation who have their hands on the levers of power who stop my heart in terror. Everything else comes from, and to, the family: Jesse, Gilda, and Russell.

All images in this volume apart from the five noted below and

Abella, Alex. Soldiers of Reason: The RAND Corporation and the Rise of the American Empire. Orlando: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2008.

About Us. National Geographic. Accessed July 2, 2017. http://www.nationalgeographic.org/about-us/.

Abrahamson, James L. Army, U.S.: 190041. In The Oxford Companion to American Military History, edited by John Whiteclay Chambers, 523. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.

Adam, Peter. Art of the Third Reich. New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1992.

Adams, Henry. Henry Adams: Novels, Mont Saint Michel and Chartres, The Education of Henry Adams. New York: Library of America, 1983.

Alfano, Sean. 2 GIs Face Execution for Iraq Rape-Murder. CBS News, October 18, 2006. http://www.cbsnews.com/news/2-gis-face-execution-for-iraq-rape-murder/.

Allan, Robin. Walt Disney and Europe: European Influences on the Animated Feature Films of Walt Disney. London: John Libbey, 1999.

Allert, Tilman. The Hitler Salute: On the Meaning of a Gesture. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008.

American Sniper. Directed by Clint Eastwood. Warner Home Entertainment, 2014.

American Sniper. Box Office Mojo. Accessed June 14, 2016. http://www.boxofficemojo.com/movies/?id=americansniper.htm.

American Sniper (2014). The Numbers. Accessed July 12, 2017. http://www.the-numbers.com/movie/American-Sniper.

Americas Army Backgrounder. Americas Army. Accessed November 5, 2014. www.americasarmy.com/press.

Amidi, Amid. Cartoon Modern: Style and Design in 1950s Animation. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2006.

Anholt, Simon. Brand America. London: Marshall Cavendish, 2010.

Anholt, Simon, and Sicco van Gelder. Branding for Good? In Beyond Branding: How the New Values of Transparency and Integrity Are Changing the World of Brands, edited by Nicholas Ind, 5668. London: Kogan Page, 2004.

Antliff, Mark. Fascism, Modernism, and Modernity. Art Bulletin 84, no. 1 (2002): 14869.

Appadurai, Arjun. Disjuncture and Difference in the Global Cultural Economy. Theory, Culture and Society 7, no. 23 (1990): 295310.

Appelbaum, Binyamin. What the Hobby Lobby Ruling Means for America. New York Times, July 22, 2014. http://www.nytimes.com/2014/07/27/magazine/what-the-hobby-lobby-ruling-means-for-america.html.

Apuzzo, Matt. In Blackwater Case, Court Rejects a Murder Conviction and Voids 3 Sentences. New York Times, August 4, 2017. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/04/world/middleeast/blackwater-contractors-iraq-sentences.html.

Archambeault, Marie J. World War I Choctaw Code Talkers: 36th Division of the National Guard.