Soldier-Spy: The National Security State and the 1960s World War II Spy Film

Abstract

This article examines Cold War-era representations of WWII, observing the visible influence that sixties’ espionage media had on retrospective images of WWII. Representations of bunkers in the postwar were influenced by advent of atomic warfare, with images of Normandy’s brutalist pillboxes replaced by fantasies of Nordhausen’s subterranean rocket factories. While wartime propaganda had platformed film reels of vast public armies fuelling the Allied fight against fascism, cinema of the 1960s replaced total war with the image of the singular spy, operating covertly behind enemy lines in Nazi uniforms, and allegedly unmarred by ideology. Examining the visual rhetoric at play in these scenarios, this paper argues that it is not fascism which these films claim must be stopped. Rather, it is the Cold War-era fear of global insecurity, caused by the misuse or mishandling of advanced weaponry by nations which are not America or Britain.