Source: PostPravda.info 12.10.2026.
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/propaganda/narratives-about-world-war-ii/
URL: https://postpravda.info/en/stories/propaganda/narratives-about-world-war-ii/
Interview with Vladimir Putin to Tucker Carlson By Kremlin.ru, Źródło: Wikimedia Commons CC BY 4.0
False narratives about World War II are spreading today not only in Russia. One of the most prominent popularizers of an alternative view of the war has been American political commentator Tucker Carlson. What lies behind this revision of history – insufficient historical knowledge or a particular ideology? Why is revisiting the history of World War II becoming a way to justify concessions to modern-day Russia?
In September 2024, Tucker Carlson interviewed Darryl Cooper, the author of the historical podcast Martyr Made, who had declared Winston Churchill the chief villain of World War II. In October 2026, speaking with British Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, Carlson himself questioned whether Britain had been right to resist Hitler. A common logic can be discerned in these two conversations: war is portrayed as the result of an unwillingness to seek compromise, while the Nazi regime’s historical responsibility recedes into the background.
In September 2024, Tucker Carlson interviewed Darryl Cooper, the author of the historical podcast Martyr Made, who had declared Winston Churchill the chief villain of World War II. In October 2026, speaking with British Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg, Carlson himself questioned whether Britain had been right to resist Hitler. A common logic can be discerned in these two conversations: war is portrayed as the result of an unwillingness to seek compromise, while the Nazi regime’s historical responsibility recedes into the background.
Mass Extermination – Just an Administrative Mistake?
On September 2, 2024, Carlson published his interview with Darryl Cooper. At the beginning of the conversation, he introduced his guest as the most important living popular historian in the United States. Carlson did more than simply give Cooper a platform; he presented him in advance as an authoritative researcher whose conclusions deserved to be trusted.
In Cooper’s view, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill bears primary political responsibility for the war turning into a vast catastrophe. Instead of asking why Nazi Germany launched a war of aggression, Cooper shifts the focus to why Britain refused to accept the results of German expansion. Carlson supported the general thrust of this argument, calling the traditional moral assessment of the Allies’ actions into question.
Darryl Cooper claimed that in 1941, Germany went to war against the Soviet Union without having made adequate preparations to accommodate millions of prisoners of war and civilian detainees. According to him, the Germans “went in with no plan for that” and simply sent people to camps, where millions died. In his account, the mass deaths in occupied territories are explained primarily by the German leadership’s lack of preparation. In this way, Cooper substitutes administrative failures in the implementation of Nazi policy for its ideological motives. This substitution is particularly dangerous when applied to the Holocaust.
During the interview, Tucker Carlson endorsed his guest’s argument: “I think a lot of what we hear about World War II is a lie.” He did add that he was willing to acknowledge that the Nazis were bad and that the United States was the most virtuous player in World War II. In other words, Carlson does not declare Nazi Germany innocent, nor does he claim that all Allied actions were unjustified. His position is more complex: he calls into question the very system of moral judgments that emerged after the victory over Nazism. According to his reasoning, the memory of World War II has become an instrument that allows Western countries to justify subsequent wars, including their support for Ukraine.
The Question of Whether the War Was Worth Fighting
In his discussion with Jacob Rees-Mogg on October 2, 2026, Tucker Carlson himself raised the question of whether Britain should have gone to war with Hitler in the first place. His argument centers on the price of resisting an aggressor. Carlson claimed that Hitler supposedly had no desire to go to war with Britain and that his territorial claims against Poland were driven by the consequences of World War I. In other words, although Carlson does not directly justify the war of aggression aimed at the complete destruction of Poland, he normalizes it by presenting it as an ordinary territorial conflict that allegedly escalated into a global war through Britain’s fault.
Rees-Mogg countered that refusing to resist would not have guaranteed Britain’s security. On the contrary, if Germany had brought continental Europe under its control, Britain’s position might have become even more dangerous. Carlson, however, insisted on a different criterion for evaluating the decision: if a country paid an enormous price, perhaps going to war had been a mistake. Once again, Carlson replaces the question of whether an aggressor should have been resisted with the question of whether that resistance ultimately proved worthwhile.
Rational and Irrational Evil
Essentially, Tucker Carlson advocates an ideology of compromise with evil but fails to account for the fact that evil can take different forms. Evil is present in the everyday life of every society. Corruption, arbitrary rule, violations of the law, abuse of power, and discrimination are all characteristic, to varying degrees, of different societies. Societies therefore develop mechanisms for compromise that help limit harm and resolve conflicts. However, it is important to distinguish between evil that can be rationally explained – when a person violates norms for the sake of profit, power, security, resources, or other self-interested goals – and irrational evil.
A corrupt official embezzles money because they want to enrich themselves. A politician abuses their authority because they seek to retain power. Even when such actions harm society, their motives can be understood in terms of interests and incentives. When an adversary’s motives are comprehensible in a social conflict, it may be possible to identify the limits of their interests and propose a compromise.
The situation is different when destructive actions become an end in themselves or are perceived as a necessary condition for fulfilling an ideological mission. In such cases, material gain may give way to convictions that a particular group of people must be exterminated, that a state has the right to subjugate its neighbors, or that a historical injustice must be eradicated at any cost.
Destructive actions that harm even those who carry them out may indicate a form of evil that cannot be explained solely in terms of material interests. In such cases, evil takes on an irrational character. Of course, ideology can coexist with economic interests, the struggle for power, and the pursuit of security, so it is not always possible to draw a clear line between rational and irrational evil. Nevertheless, the distinction between them becomes apparent when a person must choose between self-interested goals and ideological convictions.
Nazi Germany: When Ideology Matters More Than Self-Interest
In Nazi Germany, evil was enshrined in state ideology: racial theory, antisemitism, the idea of conquering Lebensraum (living space), and the belief that perceived enemies had to be exterminated. Yet the mass extermination of people with valuable professional skills required enormous resources. Nevertheless, the Nazi leadership regarded the implementation of this policy as its historical mission, even though, from the standpoint of self-interested rationality oriented toward material gain, it appeared irrational.
If we imagine Nazi Germany as a state acting primarily in pursuit of rationally explicable gains, we may be tempted to conclude that it could have been negotiated with by offering acceptable terms. But if ideological convictions were the decisive motive, concessions would not only have failed to halt expansion; they might also have reinforced the belief that the adversary was unwilling to resist.
Darryl Cooper explained the mass deaths as a consequence of Germany’s administrative unpreparedness for the consequences of war. In his view, after invading Poland, Hitler supposedly sought to reach an agreement with Britain and France, while Churchill contributed to the continuation of the conflict. In this interpretation, the Nazi leadership appears less as the embodiment of an ideology of extermination than as a government that made catastrophic mistakes and became trapped by its own decisions. From this perspective, World War II emerges as the result of inflexibility, miscalculations, and a failure to reach a diplomatic compromise.
Although Tucker Carlson did not claim to agree fully with everything Cooper said, he nevertheless normalizes this approach: if the evil embodied by Nazism can be explained in terms of rational interests, it becomes possible to suggest that resisting it was unnecessary or excessively costly. And if the war could have been prevented through concessions, resistance to aggression begins to look like the result of a choice by political leaders who preferred confrontation to compromise.
From Hitler to Putin
False narratives about World War II can do more than distort the past; they can also replace the criteria by which we assess the present. They turn resistance to aggression into a questionable gamble and concessions into a sign of prudence. Since 2014, many Western politicians have sought to explain Russia’s actions in terms of rational security concerns, its desire to preserve influence in the post-Soviet space, or its fears about NATO enlargement. Such explanations have been used to justify cooperation with Moscow and the search for compromise. After all, if the Russian leadership is pragmatically defending its interests, it should be possible to find a formula that satisfies some of its demands, preserves peace, and gradually integrates Russia into a system of mutual economic interdependence.
The problem is that the Russian leadership operates on the basis of the belief that Russia has a special historical mission and that Moscow has the right to determine the political future of neighboring peoples. It denies Ukraine’s agency and is prepared to continue the war despite enormous human losses, economic costs, and international isolation. In this respect, Putin’s Russia resembles Hitler’s Germany in its ideologically driven pursuit of domination, which takes precedence over rational considerations of material gain.
European political culture is largely based on the search for compromise. This is one of the greatest achievements of Western civilization, hard-won through many bloody wars. Seeking compromise is an art of diplomacy. Political wisdom lies not in eliminating all disagreements but in the ability to find solutions that resolve conflicts. However, the history of the twentieth century shows that diplomacy does not always prevent war. The 1938 Munich Agreement, which allowed Germany to annex the Sudetenland, merely paved the way for further military expansion. It is therefore essential to understand an adversary’s motives and assess the extent to which they can be explained in rational terms.
Korea and Vietnam: Why There Is No Ready-Made Formula
In wartime, there is no ready-made formula for determining which compromises are acceptable and which are not. In 1950, the United States entered the Korean War under the auspices of the United Nations after North Korea attacked South Korea. At the time, both parts of Korea were ruled by dictatorships. Subsequently, however, South Korea evolved into a democratic state governed by the rule of law, while North Korea retained its totalitarian regime. North Korea’s aggression was driven not only by material interests but also by ideological convictions. Since it proved impossible to reach an agreement with the North Korean regime that would ensure South Korea’s security, the United States was compelled to defend the South by military means. Yet this decision also involved compromises on numerous issues. To what extent could the authoritarian nature of the South Korean regime be tolerated? How could consensus within American society on participation in the war be achieved? Along what lines could a armistice with the North Korean regime be accepted?
The war ended in an armistice, which was itself a compromise. This shows that, under specific circumstances, compromise with those embodying irrational evil is indeed possible. However, this does not mean that an agreement based on cooperation for mutual benefit is possible. A similar situation later arose when the United States sought to protect South Vietnam from aggression by North Vietnam. This time, however, the war ended not in a lasting armistice but in catastrophe. Seeking compromise in such situations requires political wisdom, because there is no simple formula for determining in advance when war is necessary and when compromise is preferable.
Historical Narratives and the War in Ukraine
The false historical narratives about World War II promoted by Tucker Carlson shape the criteria used to make political decisions in the present. After all, if Hitler’s Germany had rational reasons for its military aggression and defeating it came at too high a cost, then, according to this logic, it would have been more expedient to strike a mutually beneficial deal with it. By the same logic, Western states themselves bear responsibility for the confrontation with Russia because they refuse to make concessions to Moscow in the interests of restoring peace. Tucker Carlson does not need to prove that Russian aggression is justified. It is enough for him to continually emphasize the cost of resistance, question the need to stand up to the aggressor, and portray compromise as an inherently more reasonable alternative.
In reality, Tucker Carlson merely exploits prejudices about Russia that have long been characteristic of Western leaders who continued to make concessions to Moscow even after the annexation of Crimea. They believed that rational motives lay behind the Russian leadership’s criminal actions and that an agreement with it was therefore possible. They mistakenly assumed that if a criminal regime were offered sufficient material incentives, it would abandon further military expansion. All that was needed was to propose an attractive deal. Of course, they were not so naive as to fail to recognize the evil embodied in Russian policy. However, they believed that this evil could be rationally explained.
The full-scale war has shown many of them that this evil is irrational. Evidence of this includes acts of terror that serve no military purpose, in which civilians are killed in the streets, on city buses, and in their own apartments. Moreover, this policy is not only detrimental to Russia itself but also destructive to the country. In the West, only those who believe that evil always has a rational explanation rooted in human selfishness and that it is a normal part of life because selfishness is inherent in all people continue to advocate making a deal with Russia. Tucker Carlson operates within precisely this worldview, promoting an ideology of compromise with evil. The same ideology guides the current US president, Donald Trump, who continues to pressure Ukraine, even as Russia terrorizes its civilian population, in the hope of striking a deal with Moscow.
The main danger of this ideology lies not even in its explicit justification of evil. Rather, it lies in a subtler mechanism for normalizing evil by portraying it as rational, explicable, and therefore amenable to compromise. Yet it is only a short step from an ideology that normalizes and rationalizes evil to one that advocates cooperation with irrational evil. Any agreement to cooperate with those who embody irrational evil turns all other participants in such agreements into accomplices to that evil. Consequently, those who seek to cooperate with Russia risk becoming complicit in the terror inflicted on civilians and contributing to the further escalation of Russian military aggression.
So far, neither Tucker Carlson nor Donald Trump has taken this step from normalizing rational evil to cooperating with irrational evil. Time will tell whether they take it in the future.
