The Second World War is also studied with videogames

75 years ago the conflict ended. Even video games, today, can become historical documentation

Call of Duty: World War II (image: Sledgehammer Games) "Our generation runs a new risk: unlike those that preceded us, there are no almost more direct witnesses of world wars and their monstrosities. We are losing our memory. That of those who, even in the midst of the Cold War, were aware of what it meant to see the nations of the world confront each other ".

Expenses on the occasion of the release of Metro Exodus, yet another chapter in the videogame saga inspired by his work literary, these words of Dmitrij Gluchovskij are more relevant than ever on the anniversary of the end of the Second World War: on 2 September 75 years ago, on the USS Missouri, the Japanese surrender formally sanctioned the end of hostilities. Cities razed to the ground, millions of deaths including civilians, the Holocaust and two atomic bombs would have been the account, as well as the warning, of the blind ferocity of the "short century".

Yet this price, as few pointed out days ago Time, today is surprisingly called into question by revisionists and deniers of various origins.

The reflection of Gluchovskij, an author whose inspiration, as he himself confirms, comes from having grown up in the ruins of empire and of Soviet ideology, is crucial for this, because memory today is stratified by exploiting means other than those available until only twenty years ago. New means capable of evolving with increasing speed. Where before it was direct testimonies, books, films, music and theater to build historical and emotional awareness, even before a public discourse, today there are also, if not above all, video games.