Hey everyone,
Welcome to another instalment of Harry Potter Theory. Today, we’ll be discussing
what the wizarding world was up to while Muggles fought against each other during World War II.
While there’s lots of evidence to suggest that witches and wizards take part in many
Muggle events without us even noticing, their participation in a large number of
global conflicts and events like World War II remain somewhat of a mystery even to this day.
Unlike wars such as the American Revolution, in which we have documented proof that certain
wizarding communities chose to participate in the conflict, while others decided to abstain,
there’s no real evidence to support whether or not witches and wizards took part in World
War II. Using the American Revolution as an example, the following is an excerpt from
wizardingworld.com showcasing such proof, which explains exactly what happened during
the Magical Congress of the United States of America, otherwise known as MACUSA’s, debate
over magical American and British involvement in the Revolution:
[In what is now known as Washington] President Elizabeth McGilliguddy presided over the
infamous ‘Country or Kind?’ debate of 1777. Thousands of witches and wizards from all
over America descended upon MACUSA to attend this extraordinary meeting, for which the Great
Meeting Chamber had to be magically enlarged. The issue for discussion was: did the magical
community owe their highest allegiance to the country in which they had made their homes,
or to the global underground wizarding community? Were they morally obliged to join American No-Majs
in their fight for liberation from the British Muggles? Or was this, simply put, not their fight?
The arguments for and against intervention were protracted and the fight became vicious.
Pro-interventionists argued that they might be able to save lives; anti-interventionists that
wizards risked their own security by revealing themselves in battle. Messengers were sent to the
Ministry of Magic in London to ask whether they intended to fight. A four-word message returned:
‘Sitting this one out.’ McGilliguddy’s famous response was even shorter: ‘Mind you do.’ While
officially the American witches and wizards did not engage in battle, unofficially there were
many instances of intervention to protect No-Maj neighbours and the wizarding community celebrated
Independence Day along with the rest of American society – although not necessarily alongside them.
In addition to the wizarding world’s debate regarding the American Revolution,
we also have indications of witches and wizards’ involvement in the Great War of 1914 to 1918,
which, of course, went on to become known as World War I.
Much of what we know about this first global war and the wizarding
community’s participation in it comes from the Fantastic Beasts movie franchise. For example,
Muggle—or No-Maj if you’re Stateside—Jacob Kawalski and famed Magizoologist,
Newt Scamander, had the following exchange in 1926, eight years after World War I had ended:
Newt Scamander: You fought in the war? Jacob Kawalski: Of course I fought in
the war, everyone fought in the war—you didn’t fight in the war?
Newt Scamander: I worked mostly with dragons, Ukrainian Ironbellies—Eastern Front.
And Newt wasn’t the only Scamander to participate in the Great War. Theseus
Scamander, Newt’s older brother, was a noted war hero during the events of the
First World War. This is proven when someone mistakes Newt for his older brother upon his
arrival in New York City in 1926, saying to Newt, “Theseus Scamander? The war hero?”
The fact that witches and wizards participated in World War I is also
accepted as canon on wizardingworld.com, in which readers can find the following passage:
“The wizards of America had played their part in the Great War of 1914-1918,
even if the overwhelming majority of their No-Maj compatriots were ignorant of their contribution.
As there were magical factions on both sides, their efforts were not decisive, but they won
many victories in preventing additional loss of life, and in defeating their magical enemies.”
Evidently by contrast, in the United Kingdom, British Minister for Magic, Archer Evermonde,
passed an emergency legislation forbidding witches and wizards to get involved in the Great War due
to his fear that it would reveal the wizarding world to a multitude of Muggle communities,
thus committing mass infractions of the International Statute of Secrecy. Despite
the law, however, it’s said that thousands of witches and wizards in Britain defied
Evermonde’s wishes and helped where possible, which is supported by what
we know of both Newt and Theseus Scamander and their involvements with the Great War.
This, of course, brings us to the Second World War and the question of: when World War II began,
what did the global wizarding communities do? Once again, similar to World War I, much of what
we know about magical society’s involvement in the Second World War comes from Fantastic Beasts.
In fact, we first get a glimpse of World War II through the lens of the wizarding world
in Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald. Set in 1927, it is during this film that Gellert
Grindelwald reveals the atrocities that will be committed by Muggle-kind in just a little over
a decade during World War II. Grindelwald is able to do so by using his abilities as a Seer
to show scenes from some of the most terrible and tragic parts of the war, including the Blitzkrieg,
the Warsaw Uprising, the Holocaust, and the deployment of the Atomic Bomb. Of course,
displaying these Muggle atrocities is Grindelwald’s way of attempting to
recruit more Acolyte followers to his cause of overpowering non-magical humans for “the
greater good”. In the case of Queenie Goldstein and many others, this tactic works wonderfully.
The next Fantastic Beasts film, which takes place in 1937, just two years before the
start of the Second World War, then shows us Grindelwald getting ready for a battle of
his own within the wizarding world. Here, he attempts to rise to power through The
International Confederation of Wizards, a wizarding intergovernmental organisation
similar to the United Nations of Muggles, by rigging the election with a dead qilin,
a mythical creature used to assess and select the organization’s leaders.
These circumstances— which feature Grindelwald’s persuasive oratory abilities, as well as his
efforts to build an army of like-minded people to overpower those he sees as “less than”—seem
to indicate that Grindelwald’s war is one that will greatly parallel the events of World War II.
In Gellert Grindelwald, we have a leader who believes in a supreme race, and who excels
at giving performative speeches as to why his political beliefs warrant a global conflict.
Sounds an awful lot like one Adolf Hitler if you ask me…Not to mention the fact that
we already know that Albus Dumbledore is finally able to confront and defeat
Grindelwald in an infamous duel in 1945, the same year that World War II ends. To me,
this indicates—as a few fans of the franchise have also suggested—that perhaps the next Fantastic
Beasts will reveal an alliance between the dark wizard Gellert Grindelwald and Nazi Germany.
With this in mind, I think it’s highly likely that Muggles and witches and wizards fought
side-by-side during this global conflict. As we’ve gone over earlier in today’s video, the wizarding
world was often advised to remain impartial and not get involved in Muggle wars—however,
this war may have actually also been THEIR WAR. That is, if Grindelwald did in fact lend power to
Hitler and the Axis powers of countries like Nazi Germany and the empire of Japan, then it would
make sense for the witches and wizards who opposed Gellert to fight alongside the Allied countries,
which, of course, included the United Kingdom and the United States.
Furthering this theory is the fact that it’s said that Leonard Spencer-Moon, the Minister
for Magic during this time, enjoyed a “good working relationship with Winston Churchill”.
While that in itself doesn’t explicitly prove that British witches and wizards were overtly
involved in the Second World War, it does rather suggest it, since Churchill was the British Prime
Minister credited with leading Britain to victory in World War II. It has also been confirmed as
canon that Grindelwald’s war and World War II fed off each other throughout their duration,
meaning that the two were related—if not intrinsically intertwined with one another.
In any case, during World War II, I believe that the wizarding world was involved in conflict and
battle. Whether witches and wizards were exclusively fighting Gellert Grindelwald
and his Acolytes, or they were engaged in warfare with Grindelwald and the Axis powers
remains to be seen. What seems rather obvious to me though is that they weren’t simply doing
nothing. If they weren’t helping out their Muggle compatriots, it likely wasn’t because they didn’t
want to get involved—but rather that they were quite occupied fighting a war of their own.
And, with that, we’ve come to the end of another video! What did you think?
Do you agree with my theory? Please share your thoughts in the comments below! And, as always,
if you enjoyed this video, don’t forget to like it and subscribe to the channel!
Until next time…remember
"It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."