One of the hallmarks of the Cold War was the constant and terrifying proximity of the end of the world. This apocalypse, basically a button press away, had mutually assured destruction acting as both the deterrence and the cause. We have come inches from disaster far too many times; Wikipedia’s list of nuclear close calls is an incredibly discomfiting read.
Today, this fear has settled in the back of the public consciousness. We all tacitly understand that humanity is balancing on a tightrope, but choose to ignore it since, after all, we haven’t blown ourselves up yet!
During the Cold War, the precariousness of our collective survival was much harder to dismiss. The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis is regarded as the closest we’ve ever come to nuclear war. And in 1964, Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb was released in theaters. The film is a satirical, dark comedy about—you guessed it—nuclear war and the end of the world. Although revolutionary for its time, it contains the usual warnings about nuclear warfare: nukes are dangerous, placing them in the hands of a few powerful people is bad, and humanity should learn to cooperate so that we don’t risk our survival. Today, these sentiments might feel obvious, seemingly relegating the movie’s moral relevance to its historical context (despite the clever phallic imagery used to critique the arms race as little more than a measuring contest).
But I think there’s a much deeper meaning in the movie that cements its relevancy as timeless. At its core, Dr. Strangelove is a theory of selfish dehumanization as the basis for evil.
Whoa. That’s a bold statement.
Let’s begin to justify it.
First, we must take a step back and examine a different philosophical concept: the banality of evil. Coined by Hannah Arendt in 1963, it describes how evil can be found in the most ordinary individuals or places, despite how we conceptualize it as blatant, all-consuming, hatred. Arendt was inspired to this idea by the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, a Nazi bureaucrat responsible for organizing the logistics of the mass deportation of Jews and others persecuted by the Nazis. After the fall of the Third Reich, Eichmann fled to Argentina and lived there for over a decade, until he was eventually captured.
During the trial, Eichmann’s defense was simple: he was just doing his job and fulfilling the responsibilities given to him as a bureaucrat. Arendt was especially struck by his lack of guilt for his actions—for him, absolution of responsibility meant absolution of guilt. This line of logic resembles what is commonly known as the “Nuremberg defense” or the idea that following orders frees individuals of responsibility for their actions. The relevancy of this idea with regards to nuclear war is obvious; if someone got the call to press the giant red button and effectively destroy humanity, should they do it? To be fair, there would be no one left to prosecute them.
While choosing to initiate nuclear war may not stem from the same targeted bigotry as Nazism, launching a nuclear weapon at any group of people is effectively determining that they do not deserve to exist. Indeed, MAD ensures that launching a nuke is the same as determining that the entire human race should not exist. Dr. Strangelove seeks to examine how banal evil manifests in nuclear conflicts.
To quickly summarize the movie, an American Air Force general Jack Ripper makes the unauthorized decision to strike first with nuclear weapons (from his flight of planes) in the hopes that he can force the president to commit fully and wipe out the USSR. However, the Soviets have constructed a Doomsday Machine that will respond in kind to any detected attack without any human input. The machine cannot be stopped once triggered, making it the ultimate means of deterrence. The film focuses on three plot lines: Group Captain Mandrake’s desperate attempts to get the code to call off the planes, the American situation room’s decision-making, and a lone plane whose crew face a variety of obstacles as they attempt to drop the bomb. Considering the fact that Dr. Strangelove is a dark comedy, I think we can all guess how it ends.
But what really starts it all? Why would Ripper risk the destruction of the world? His rationale: the “commies” are corrupting American “bodily fluids” (virility implied), and they must be expunged. This seems so silly as to be insane, but under the surface, his reasoning mirrors eugenicist rhetoric. The division into “sides,” the belief that your side should survive, the belief that your side is better, and thus the belief that the other side should not exist. The desire to survive is perfectly reasonable; but whenever that desire turns into the belief that one’s survival should be prioritized over someone else’s, evil follows.
The Cold War was rife with this dehumanizing thinking—just look at McCarthyism. Beyond Ripper, Kubrick emphasizes how fundamental blind hatred of communism was to the American government—and how much it still pervades our society When General Turgidson, one of the situation room generals, advocates for following Ripper’s example and going all in so that there will be “no more than ten or twenty million killed, tops,” the viewer laughs at his sheer disregard for humanity. Yet how often have we ourselves subscribed to the same utilitarian thinking, ignoring the child laborers that make our clothes because of the convenience of fast fashion? Dehumanization stems from selfishness, and dehumanization is the basis of evil because it absolves guilt. If they are not human, it doesn’t matter that they’re dead.
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We traditionally think of blatant evil as founded on dehumanization, and we condemn such bigotry. But banal evil is equally responsible and insidious, which Kubrick deftly illustrates through his characters. Mandrake is perhaps the most sympathetic character in the film, and yet he is the one ultimately responsible for the world’s end—he is the one that executes Ripper’s command. Without his banal evil, his following of orders, the world would not have ended. Mandrake tries to rectify his actions by discovering the code that can be used to call off the attacks, but by the time he does, it is too little too late—one plane’s transmitter has been destroyed, and they continue on to the end of the world.
That crew, too, represents evil’s banality. They are soldiers, patriotic, Americans, follow orders despite all odds, and thus bring about the world’s end. Their dehumanization of others (again, see: choosing to drop a nuclear weapon and kill millions) is instinctual, and that makes it all the more dangerous.
At the end of the film, the titular character Dr. Strangelove (a scientist employed by the government) is revealed to be a former Nazi. As the generals realize that the world is about to end, Strangelove immediately proposes that some small group of humans flee to mines beyond radiation’s effects to preserve humanity. For the selection process, “a computer could be set and programmed to accept factors from youth, health, sexual fertility, intelligence, and a cross section of necessary skills. Of course it would be absolutely vital that our top government and military men be included.” The eugenicist nature of his plan is implied, and yet it is so alluring because it offers the generals survival.
Strangelove’s Nazism is not just thrown in for shock value; beyond the historical context of Operation Paperclip, during which the US took in top Nazi scientists in order to get ahead of the Soviets. Eichmann fled; Strangelove was welcomed by the supposed country of equality.
Evil can be banal or blatant. The pilot is just following orders, the bureaucrat just does his job, the general is driven insane by his hatred of communism, and the eugenicist is driven by horrific bigotry. Their motivations are different, but they all demonstrate types of evil that will result in the world’s end. Blatant evil can only succeed if it is supported by banal evil. Without the pilots, Ripper’s plan never would have succeeded. Without the Soviet scientists that constructed the Doomsday Machine, the world would never have ended. Without the Eichmanns, the Holocaust would never have happened. When we dehumanize others, even if only implicitly, we become the very manifestation of banal evil, and in doing so empower blatant hatred.
So why does Kubrick hide this deep investigation of humanity under a comedic cover? Why is this movie with deep themes about evil, facism, and complicity, a dark comedy full of phallic imagery?
The answer is simple: humor banalizes.
We often struggle to confront evil head-on, trivialize our own selfishness or inaction. Kubrick’s humor hides what would otherwise be too horrific to comprehend—the movie ends with images of mushroom clouds, set to the song “We’ll Meet Again”.
I cannot speak for others, but I found that Dr. Strangelove was never comfortably funny. You’re always scared to laugh because maybe this is how we really will die. You cannot root for the pilots—their success will doom the world, but you almost do anyway. You laugh at the incompetency of every leader—but are those in charge today really much better? The film’s comedic nature layers everything with a haze of unreality, and in doing so co-opts the viewer’s empathy.
And utterly absent in the film is the general public. While the actions of the men in power are not completely the public’s fault, our absence raises questions about the role we truly play in ensuring their own survival. Where were ordinary people when the world ended? Were we sitting at home, watching a movie, powerless to stop it until it was too late? The general public is the viewer—we are powerless in the face of these selfish men that we have given power. Although Arendt’s banality of evil specifically applies to those whose acts are evil, inaction enables evil. Inaction in the face of evil is the ultimate manifestation of evil’s banality—and that inaction too often stems from the desire to prioritize one’s own life over others. We wrongly absolve ourselves of responsibility for the decisions of our leaders, and thus wrongly absolve ourselves of guilt.
In the end, Dr. Strangelove is more than a film warning about the dangers of nuclear weapons. It is a film about complacency, dehumanization, and banal evil. The film’s comedic tone is intentional: we laugh at the film’s absurdity, but how different are we really when it comes to prioritizing ourselves over others for our own convenience? Kubrick forces us to confront the fact that evil can exist within anyone, even ourselves. It can exist through ordinary actions, assumptions, and beliefs that reflect the sentiment that our own lives matter more than anyone else’s.
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