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Marie Bonaparte has written a series of excellent essays on 'myths' that arose during the second World War. The author uses 'myth' rather loosely. The data collected are legends or folklore; however this is a matter of terminology.
The analysis of the Myth of the Corpse in the Car is well represented in the first version. A young man who is driving his car to Paris takes a lady passenger. She predicts there will be no war because Hitler will die in six months, and to prove that she can predict the future, she says that by the time they arrive in Paris there will be a corpse in the car. A young man asks for a lift; when they arrive in Paris he is dead.
The story is explained very ingeniously on the basis of Hubert and Mauss's theory of sacrifice. To sacrifice is to make sacred, and Hubert and Mauss distinguish entry into the condition of sacredness, sacrifice of the victim, and exit from the condition of sacredness. In this instance, being called up is the entry into sacredness, being dismissed is the exit, and the death of Hitler is the sacrifice. Fate is the officiant, although we might also say that the recruit is the officiant, the soothsayer being the displaced version of the recruit's omnipotent wish; but besides the arch-enemy there is frequently another recruit who dies in the car. In the ritual of sacrifice the place where the sacrifice is carried out has a specific significance: in this instance the temenos is the car, and driving in a car represents, symbolically, the sexual act. The sacrificial object