This essay looks at some of the American film noir that focus on traumatized veterans in the post-World War II era, up to the twenty-first century and argues that noir thrillers centering on mentally disturbed veterans of World War II allow for both commemoration and criticism of the global interventionism that American exceptionalism legitimized during the Cold War and the Wars on Terror. Paradigmatic noirs construct traumatized veterans to investigate their symptoms of amnesia and paranoia as responses to historical interventions. While the analysis of Fred Zinnemann’s