Guerra e pace nel fumetto italiano e tedesco. Propaganda, (ri)educazione e memoria (1939-1965).

Comics have been disparagingly considered for many years to be a crass entertainment product intended for an unlettered public. Conversely, by starting from a totally different viewpoint, that considers comic magazines an important source for understanding a society as well as the images and models that a society in a certain period intends to adopt and give to children and teenagers who are being educated, in this paper the author examines the role played by this form of publication aimed at the younger generations in countries such as Italy and Germany in two phases of the so-called “short Twentieth Century”: during the total war, for which these two countries were responsible, and during the subsequent phase known as the “cold war” that was experienced in Europe as a period of peace, free of the conflicts that instead were going on in other parts of the world. As regards the total war, this paper will document and analyse how and to what extent this type of publication was used as propaganda for the mobilization of minds and for the consent of the participation of boys and young men in the war. Subsequently, as regards the period following the end of the war, the author will illustrate how this same type of publication, affected also by the context of the cold war, was used in the two Germanies and in Italy to re-educate the young who had experienced the drama of the war, in order to teach them values that were different from the previous phase, such as pacifism, or values as patriotism, it cleaned as far as possible, of the violent and racist incrustations of the totalitarian regimes that had fallen with the end of the second world war. Finally, as regards the generations who lacked war memories, we will see on what basis magazines that especially had pedagogical purposes, built up a system of values deemed suitable and fundamental for the education of their target public. We will also see which war memories were passed on by these publications, what image of war they transmitted, which heroic figures emerged, which public Use of History was practiced and how the new and on-going wars were depicted.