Traumatic Defeat: POWs, MIAs and National Mythmaking

Hardcover, 208 pp Copyright May 2018, by University Press of Kansas Proceeds from this book sale go towards the AUSA Scholarship Fund War breeds myths, especially those made up by the vanquished to explain or soften their loss. Occasionally the myths of the defeated center on prisoners of war (POWs) and those missing in action (MIAs) to justify the lost struggle, mute national guilt, and sometimes even reject the reality of defeat itself. Traumatic Defeat takes a close, comparative look at two cases of this kind of mythmaking — in West Germany in the wake of World War II and in the United States after the Vietnam War. The book examines a specific case of mythmaking that revolves around the ambiguity of missing men and the trauma resulting from their unresolved fates. The "secret camp myth," so called for the covert facilities where the missing supposedly survive, shared certain features in postwar Germany and America. Both nations suffered extreme trauma and struggled to find redempti