Somehow Roy Thomas never occurred to me as a World war II-influenced creator.
I was speaking primarily of those creators who
served in WW II, although I did mention those after, on into the Silver Age and beyond, who were influenced by the WW II period.
Which Roy Thomas, as you say, certainly is.
Roy Thomas, probably more than any other creator, expanding on the continuity established by Stan Lee, has made the largest contribution to preserving the Golden Age of comics, on into the modern era.
What Stan Lee did beginning with resurrecting Captain America and the Sub-Mariner, Roy Thomas expanded with his work in AVENGERS, THE INVADERS, the Vision as the re-animated body of the Golden Age Human Torch, and so on at Marvel.
And then Thomas did the same at DC in 1980 when he left Marvel, with the Justice Society in ALL-STAR SQUADRON, INFINITY INC., and YOUNG ALL-STARS, as well as tapping into the Golden Age roots and expanding on the history of many other characters in SECRET ORIGINS, and on the Shazam characters in DC COMICS PRESENTS, and in several other series.
I also found this letter a very insightful commentary on the WW II influence on two of the most influential creators of the Golden Age.
From WORDSMITH # 8 letter column (February 1987) :
It's generally accepted that the tremendous comics boom of the '40s was also a reaction to Nazism, and that the current superhero comics are still riding on the inertia of that 40's explosion.
People needed escapist literature. The costumed heroes fought Nazism in a way soldiers never could.
Many of the early writers and artists in comics were Jews --from Eisner, to Simon and Kirby, to Siegal and Shuster.
I have wondered, like you, what they thought as the rumours came in about the imprisonment and extermination of their relatives in Europe.
Your speculations are perceptive and convincing, showing a wide range of reaction ( It is interesting that the reaction to anti-semitism in France in the 1870's by Impressionist painters is widely documented, but we may never know what pulp-writers and cartoonists in America thought about the Nazis a scant 50 years ago).
In WORDSMITH # 5, [ the character ] Eric Hassel sees the Aryan hero of the pulps as a super-man.
I have to wonder if Jerry Siegal saw the Jew of the late 1930s as his Superman.
Like the Jew of the thirties, Superman comes from a world ( Krypton, like Europe) which is being destroyed.
Though the parents cannot leave (German emigration laws) they did manage to get their baby out while they awaited their deaths.
The baby was adopted in the new world where he anglicized his name ( Kal-El to Clark Kent ).
He was told he would walk among them but he would not be one of them. ( Many Jews feel apart from Christian society. They can pass for Christian, if they so desire, but many take up two identities: that of "assimilationists" when they are in the company of Christians, and their truer cultural identity when in the company of fellow members of ther religion.)
And Kryptonite becomes a reminder of the "old world" to the assimilationist Jew. It is a piece of the old world, reminding them of their origins and sapping their will to survive. [ Perhaps by raising the despairing memory of their great racial genocide. ]
Lois Lane becomes the Shiksa goddess. She looks good, but she's untouchable because many Jews do not marry outside their religion.
The bottle city of Kandor is the shtetle, the old Jewish village [in Europe] where Superman (or the assimilationist Jew) can truly feel at home.
Perry white is the Rabbi.
Luthor is Hitler.
Braniac is Eichman.
Sorry if I got carried away there, but this theory --which I first heard from a friend of mine named Paul Truster-- was too interesting to just let go by, without sharing.
Ron Kasman,
Toronto, Canada
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"This Man, This Wonder Boy..." 
