Welcome Evan Willis to the faculty at HogwartsProfessor.com!
Crimes of Grindelwald, in its climactic scene, has Grindelwald presenting a prophecy of World War Two. This, I suggest, was one of the largest plot twists the movie provided, in that it leads us to consider Grindelwald’s motivations as good, but his means to achieve them as evil.
Is World War Two Wizarding World Canon?
From the Harry Potter books, films, and other canon materials, one can learn very little of muggle history. We have no guarantee that muggle history unfolded as we know it did, given that we are dealing with an alternate world in which wizards exist and have an effect, however much hidden, upon history. So, what do we know about what happened, within this alternate world? World War One clearly happened, as Theseus and Jacob both fought in it. I can find no evidence of the Russian Revolution in the text, leaving that an unknown.
However, as far as I can find, there is in the entire text only one reference to the existence of World War Two, in a brief comment at the opening of Goblet of Fire, in which Frank Bryce is described as having “come back from the war with a very stiff leg and a great dislike of crowds and loud noises…,” (Ch. 1). This is our only source that World War Two happened in this alternate world in which magic exists, and is a fairly vague reference at that. It could be possible, with minimal damage to existing text (less drastic than certain already existing plot elements), to have World War Two never occur in this alternate muggle history.
The lack of evidence does not prove a thing’s non-existence. However, one could argue that the Wizarding World could not have remained detached from the war, such that they would have seen the devastation caused by the war and known the ideologies from which it arose. Such a knowledge would, perhaps, have rendered far more difficult the rise of Voldemort, possessing a near-Nazi ideology. If however, the Second World War did not occur, the wizarding world would not have been as on guard against such ideologies, helping to explain Voldemort’s rise.
That said, I think all that this shows is that we, as audience, have been left seeing the Second World War as a merely possible, not historically guaranteed, event. We know as much about this version of the 1940s as Newt and Grindelwald themselves do. However, World War Two not having happened would still be something of a plot twist, and so the following analysis is going to be relatively independent of whether or not it did.
Good Ends, Bad Means
What, then, does the new film give us? While we have certainly been previously led to see a parallel between the Grindelwald wizarding war and World War Two (cf. Dumbledore’s Chocolate Frog Card providing the 1945 date, Deathly Hallows symbol paralleling the swastika, etc.), I think that we have just been given the plot twist that the principles fought for on the two sides do not parallel the two sides of the muggle war.
With the war with Voldemort, the Death Eater’s goal was clearly one of wizard supremacy over the muggle population as an end in itself. At least publically, Grindelwald presents the argument that the muggle population is prophesied to begin another world war and that the only way to stop this is to provide muggles magical help, in the form of rulership by the wizarding population. Wizarding supremacy is for the muggles’ benefit, so goes Grindelwald’s argument (borrowed from Dumbledore’s letter to him in Deathly Hallows Ch. 18), in that being in the magical community places one in an enlightened elite who can solve the muggle’s problems.
Thus, wizarding supremacy is portrayed as a means to the “greater good” of progressive and enlightened policies (and thus, incidentally but not in itself, it appeals to those like Rosier who desire wizarding supremacy for its own sake). And Rowling goes out of her way to present about as clear an enlightened and progressive “greater good” as one could ask for: stopping World War Two from ever having happened. (This reminds one of the old moral dilemma that asks “If you could go back in time and kill Hitler as a baby, would you?” Part of the beauty of the contingency of the Second World War in this universe is that you don’t know what is going to be chosen.)
Dumbledore’s group is opposed to the tyrannical wielding of power to achieve those progressive ends. Thus, this film reveals the battle between Grindelwald and Dumbledore to be one over means, not ends. Both favor progressive policy (e.g. allowing muggles and wizards to intermarry), but Grindelwald wishes to accomplish this by the conquest of the muggles, Dumbledore will not use such means. It is precisely on account of the parallelism that we had been led to expect with the sides of World War Two (i.e. Grindelwald as wizard-Hitler) that this new formulation is such a remarkable plot twist.
This distinction is foreshadowed by prior elements of the plot. At the opposite end of the movie, we see Queenie’s willingness to use magical power to attempt to force Jacob to marry her counter to the regressive laws present under MACUSA. This alone, I think, is enough to demonstrate the natural agreement of her views with Grindelwald’s: progressive ends, tyrannical means. Newt here, in disenchanting Jacob, shows his support for enlightened ends, in that he truly desires their marriage, but denies the validity of the means Queenie attempted to use.
Prophecy
Beyond this, there is the treatment of prophecy by both sides. Grindelwald, believing that the prophecy will be fulfilled unless stopped, is trying to use whatever means necessary to keep it from happening. It is entirely possible that he, like Voldemort, will be so eager to stop the prophecy from happening that he causes the prophecy to be fulfilled. Thus, I expect World War Two will happen, but largely because Grindelwald attempted to stop it. Part of the value of us not knowing whether the prophecy will be fulfilled is that we can side with Dumbledore and Newt, not willing to step beyond what is right even to stop a terrible prophecy, with the possibility that by thus refraining one might keep it from being fulfilled. This may be the origin of Dumbledore’s insistence that prophecy’s power is only over those who believe it to be true, who consequently wield power rather than relying upon love (Half-Blood Prince, Ch. 23).
Regarding the war, don’t forget the mention a couple of times of “war memorials” in the towns .
Question (because when I viewed the film I saw it differently):
Did Grindelwald prophesy World War II specifically? Or (and this is how I saw it), did he conjure images of Muggles weapons of mass destruction and tactics of warfare to convince the wizards that, however much they might want to try to live in peace, the Muggles are violent and inevitably will come for the wizarding world?
I know he conjured visions of WWII-era tanks and armies, but that’s just because that’s what his contemporaries would’ve been familiar with and it’s what would have a visceral effect on a movie-going audience. We’re supposed to make the connection that wizard Hitler is plausible because Muggle Hitler was actually real, no?
The way I viewed the film was that Grindelwald was not prophesying WWI but saying “Muggles are barbarians with lots of firepower.”
War memorials for the WW1 are still common, even in the absence of any for WW2.
The images are particular to WWII and the rise of the Nazis generally, notably including concentration camps and the military use of the atom bomb (unique to WWII). The images are of a new self-destructive war by the muggles, not likely to be aimed directly at the wizarding world due to the fact that the wizards are not known by the muggles. Grindelwald’s fear is not attack by muggles, but of mass muggle self-destruction if not stopped. Beyond this, and drawing from memory, Jacob specifically recognizes what is being shown as a new war. The prophecy is particular to WWII.
I’m reading Code Girls [:] The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers of World War II, by Liza Mundy (New York: Hachette, 2018). This is a history, but it regularly takes my memory back to the Harry Potter books and the Fantastic Beast movies! J. K. Rowling’s grasp of WWII is better than I realized. I haven’t been this excited about ideas for Rowling’s wizarding world in a long time.
To select a single point out the whole history, England used German agents turned to the English side, that is, double agents. Severus Snape and Barty Crouch Jr. are effective double agents in the Harry Potter books.