Contemporary America is deeply engaged in `memorial mania', a national obsession with issues of memory and history and an urgent, excessive desire to secure those issues with various forms of public commemoration. War memorials are especially flourishing, seen locally in small towns and larger cities, and nationally in the dedication of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC in 2004; indeed, memorials to World War II's `greatest generation' are especially popular. This article considers how and why contemporary American publics are emotionally persuaded by these new fronts of war memory, and by dominant tropes of militarism, imperialism and masculine authority. Central to this discussion are the ways in which public feelings of gratitude mobilize contemporary American war memory. What does it mean to say `thank you' to the greatest generation today? Why is such gratitude being so urgently expressed today, some 60 years after World War II ended?
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