The talk examines the production of moral and social consciousness in the post-war period with special attention to the two decades following WWII, an era in which the threshold of shame declined enough to allow the formation of two predominant modes of its expression, both of which share an interest in libidinalizing shame from complementary, if competing, angles. These modes are psychological theory, especially combat psychiatry, as it developed to explain the violence of WWII and to treat those affected by it, and the popular imagery of Nazi atrocity and sadomasochism, which attempted to work out the shame of the American response to the concentration camps. Fascination with fascism in the post-war period makes a spectacle out of interanimating desires and anxieties associated with gender (the rise of feminism, the dominant woman, and the fading of masculinity into mass man), racial identity (nationalism and the formation of a Jewish state in Israel), and consumerism (fashion and the suburban idyll).