Frictions: Europe, America and global Transformations - Digital Object Identifier (DOI)
Creator: Matlack, Jon-Wyatt
Title: Operation Barbarossa 2021
Subtitle: Practices (Re)Rendering the Myth of the ‘clean’ Wehrmacht in Contemporary Grand Strategy Computer Gaming
DOI: 10.15457/frictions/0007
Description: ScienceCampus doctoral researcher Jon-Wyatt Matlack explores the significance of computer games in shaping imaginations of the past. Focusing on Hearts of Iron IV, he considers how the format can encourage revision of the Nazi past, going against the grain of efforts towards critical Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or working through the past. The article explores how gamers can take up positions perpetuating the myth of a clean Wehrmacht while perpetuating narratives of a barbarian Eastern Europe where the USSR poses the greatest threat to humanity. He shows how reconstructions of historical narratives in digital spaces deserve more critical interrogation as a medium for the production of counterfactual history, especially given how popular and successful they are as depictions of the past, albeit a counterfactual one that draws on players’ affective urges and distorts historical reality.
Date of publication: 2021-07-28
Subjects: Essay, German-Soviet relations, computer games, counterfactual history, counterfactual narratives, doctoral researchers, public history, wehrmacht
Section: Essays
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