Prescriptions for Peace: The Pathological Enmification of Germany and Japan, 1942-45

The “medical model” of enemy image creation, of diagnosis and cure, viewed the German and Japanese nations as suffering from a variety of afflictions either related to their psychological, psychiatric, cultural, or biological makeup. Through the systematic invocation of the image of the enemy as disease this model provided a diagnosis, prognosis and prescription for Germany and Japan. This paper demonstrates that, despite the subsequent dismissal of the significance of many of these wartime studies, the images of the enemy that they created, and the cure that they recommended, did have an impact in prescribing the peace.