You want a rational explanation? Superman’s a dick.
Want it? Come try to get it!
But you’d better bring plenty of kryptonite!!
Wow…what an asinine, historically illiterate plotline.
Wasn’t there the suggestion that having Superman end the war “just like that” would be kind of insulting to the troops?
Also, if you have him fly down and pop Hitler like a balloon, what’s next? He fries Tokyo with his heat vision? Having a superhuman under the control of ANY government is a bad bad idea. Several comics have addressed this, including The New Frontier, The Ultimates, Watchmen, and a recent favorite of mine, The Golden Age.
Tommy Dorsey didn’t answer Artie Shaw?
That BASTARD!!!
I’ve always sort of wondered if it would be at all possible to incorporate that little two-page Look feature into canonical Golden Age DC history somehow. Granted, the strip is presented in the magazine as relating *“How Superman Would End the War…” * but the comic feature itself never states this, nor does it declare that the goal was in fact accomplished by Superman’s actions. The comic does establish that Superman:
A. breaches the Siegfried Line and disables its cannon, then encourages the French forces to attack the West Wall. Then, “shortly after,” he:
B. personally apprehends Hitler and Stalin, and delivers them to the League of Nations where they are tried and convicted.
Also, at some point between A and B, he punches out a plane.
Historically, the Siegfried Line wasn’t breached until 1945, but then it never really served any significant function other than its propaganda value until after D-Day. Would the course of the war been radically changed by Superman disabling it in February 1940? Practically speaking, it would only have moved up the conflict between France and Germany by a few months, and additionally would have established France as the aggressors if they had indeed elected to attack the German forces.
The capture of Hitler and Stalin is more problematic, but no dates are specified and “shortly after” leaves a fair amount of wiggle room for a timetable. While it is implied that Superman breaches the Siegfried Line while directly en route to Hitler’s retreat, this is not stated explicitly; they could have been entirely different missions. Historically, Superman could not have delivered Hitler and Stalin directly to a meeting of the League of Nations, as there were no wartime assemblies between 1939 and the establishment of the United Nations in 1946; this may suggest that Superman’s intervention at the Siegfried Line did indeed alter history. Another possibility is that a special assembly of the League was scheduled in Geneva after the dictators were apprehended, and having Superman escort them to the assembly was either a ceremonial gesture or a sensible security precaution.
In any case, it seems unlikely that the Axis would have ceased all hostilities merely because these two leaders were captured; more likely, the power vacuum would have been quickly filled, no doubt by more cautious individuals using multiple lead-lined safehouses and doubles for public ceremonies to ensure their own safety. It’s possible that the war might not have been appreciably shortened, despite Superman’s best efforts. Note that in the Look comic, Superman is evidently not yet at the point where he can fly under his own power; he is still using “terrific leaps” to get around.
I can’t imagine that Superman would ever have taken such extreme measures, if Siegel and Shuster’s little “imaginary story” is to be given any weight. After all, this is a guy who is too restrained and gallant to even strike the dictator he’s kidnapping: “I’d like to land a strictly non-Aryan sock on your jaw, but there’s no time for that!”
Anyway, Superman doesn’t act “under the control” of any nation; he fights for Truth, Justice, and the American Way, not the American government. This is an extremely significant distinction that is all too easily overlooked. Tragically, in real life the final outcome of WWII was instead determined by a superhuman force without any sense of conscience or decency, controlled absolutely by the government, that incinerated whole cities full of people in a flash of light. I wish that Superman could have been there for them instead.
Actually, if you want a more modern version of the story, try this.
http://superman.ws/tales2/thesuperman/?page=0
It covers quite a bit…
I’m glad you don’t read antisemitism into it, especially since most of the major comic book creators in the early days were Jewish. A Who’s Who of Jewish comic book writers and artists–Siegel & Shuster, Simon, Lee and Kirby, Will Eisner, Bob Kane, Harvey Kurtzman, Will Elder, Joe Kubert, and that’s just scratching the surface for the first two decades–could make you wonder if us gentiles can even draw.
Probably ‘**Ubermensch’ ** by Kim Newman:
… in which the Nazi hunter Avram Blumenthal visits the superhuman Ubermensch, held prisoner for the past forty-five years in a castle fortified with glowing green radiation, the Ubermensch’s only weakness. The two men discuss the Ubermensch’s career and his position as a symbol of the Nazi regime. They agree that the world no longer needs heroes, and Avram presents Ubermensch with a way to end his imprisonment: a metal slug consisting of the fatally radioactive substance, coated with lead. In a last act of will, Ubermensch pops the slug in his mouth, biting through the lead casing. “He died like a man,” Avram observes. “Which, all considered, was quite an achievement.”