The Worth of War (15 page)

Propaganda in the United States

In the United States, with the tacit and sometimes overt encouragement of the Roosevelt administration, which was anxious to break the hold of isolationism on American public opinion, the motion picture industry had begun to produce anti-Nazi films as early as 1940. The most famous of these was
Confessions of a Nazi Spy
, starring Edward G. Robinson. In the film, Nazi Germany is depicted as intent on world domination and presenting a clear and present danger to the United States. Robinson, in the role of an FBI agent, asserts that through espionage and subversion Germany has already embarked on a war against the United States. Toward the conclusion of the film the audience is warned that continued isolationism will leave the United States and its way of life vulnerable to German attack from within and without.

By 1940, Hollywood studios were producing many feature films and film shorts promoting American rearmament and attacking Germany. Warner Brothers offered to make any film short on the need for military preparedness free of charge. At the Roosevelt administration's request, MGM produced a film on foreign and defense policy entitled
Eyes of the Navy
, which dramatically presented the importance of a strong national defense and an activist foreign policy. Other studios followed with films bearing such titles as
I Wanted Wings
,
Dive Bomber
,
Flight Command
,
Navy Blues
,
Buck Private
, and
Tanks a Million
. Even the comedy team of Abbott and Costello promoted preparedness with their humorous depiction of national military service,
Caught in the Draft
. Other important films presenting anti-German themes or warning of the need for preparedness included
A Yank in the RAF
, in which a young American flier shows his countrymen how to fight the Nazis, and Warner Brothers's
Sergeant York
, the story of America's greatest World War I hero, Alvin York, who put aside his pacifism to serve his country. York himself attended the film's New York premiere along with Eleanor Roosevelt and General John Pershing. York declared that if Americans stopped fighting for freedom, “then we owe the memory of George Washington an apology.”
²⁶

President Roosevelt personally thanked the movie industry for its “splendid cooperation with all who are directing the expansion of our defense forces.” The White House showed its gratitude to Hollywood by ordering the Justice Department to settle, on terms favorable to the studios, an antitrust suit it had brought against the major film producers a few years earlier. Roosevelt also intervened to secure a reduced sentence for Joseph Schenk, head of Twentieth-Century Fox, who had been convicted of income tax evasion.

During the war itself, the Hollywood studios focused on such themes as the danger posed by Nazi Germany and its Japanese ally, the threat of foreign spies and saboteurs, the need for national unity, the importance of American leadership in the world, patriotism and sacrifice, and, above all, the indomitable American spirit. Once aroused, said Hollywood, Americans would show their mettle and bring Hitler and his friends to their knees.

A film that presents many of the main themes of World War II propaganda is, of course, Warner Brothers's 1942 feature
Casablanca
, which starred Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman. In this film, Bogart portrays Rick Blaine, an embittered American who owns Rick's Café in Casablanca, then under the rule of the Vichy regime. Gathered at the café are refugees from Nazism from many lands. Though Rick claims to be an apolitical cynic, it turns out that he, like America itself, had fought against the Germans before and only needed to be reminded of his duty. The reminder comes in the form of Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman), Blaine's long-lost love, who arrives at Rick's with her husband, Czech freedom fighter Victor Laszlo (Paul Henreid). Laszlo reawakens Rick's latent heroism and resolve. Rick decides to reenter the fight against Nazism, even though it means giving up Ilsa. He tells her that the stakes outweigh their own love and lives. Rick tells Ilsa he has a “job to do,” a phrase often heard by Americans in the military.
²⁷

Rick even inspires the sleazy, collaborationist French commandant, Captain Renault (Claude Raines), to join him in the battle against the Germans. Thus, the film intimates, Americans need to be reminded of their duty and must put personal concerns aside for the duration of the
war. Inspired by American leadership, moreover, the other nations of the world—even the sometimes craven French—will do their duties as well. With America reawakened, the outcome is no longer in doubt. “I know our side will win,” Laszlo tells Rick as they part.
²⁸

During the war, the Roosevelt administration established a number of agencies designed to mobilize popular sentiment, bolster civilian morale, and encourage military service. The largest of these was the Office of War Information (OWI), whose mission was the enhancement of public understanding of the war, coordination of government information activities, and oversight and liaison with the press, radio, and motion pictures.
²⁹
In other words, the OWI was in charge of coordinating wartime propaganda. The OWI's Bureau of Publications produced pamphlets and essays on topics relevant to the war effort. For example, the OWI produced a 123-page pamphlet entitled “Battle Stations For All,” designed to explain to ordinary Americans how taxation, rationing, and bonds contributed to winning the war.
³⁰
Similarly, the OWI's Domestic Radio Bureau worked with the radio networks to encourage popular entertainers to incorporate war-related themes into their acts. At the OWI's behest, Jack Benny told his audience, “When we buy those bonds, remember we're not doing the government a favor. We're the government! This is my war, and your war! So let's get rolling.”
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Among the most important offices within OWI was the Bureau of Motion Pictures (BMP), which was charged with seeking to ensure that the movie industry would help to promote the nation's war effort. According to published BMP guidelines, the first question filmmakers were to ask themselves before beginning a project was, “Will this picture help win the war?”
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For the most part, though, the Hollywood studios operated more-or-less independently of the government, though they often submitted scripts for review and consulted with various civilian and military agencies on their propriety. One 1942 feature film, however, was actually commissioned by the OWI. This was the documentary film
The World at War
, produced and edited by Samuel Spewack and distributed to
theaters through MGM, Twentieth-Century Fox, Paramount, Warner Brothers, and RKO. The film makes use mainly of newsreel material to trace the origins and history of the war and to explain to Americans the need to fight the Axis. The film revisits the years before the war when the German–American Bund and isolationists such as senators Nye and Wheeler sought, according to the film, to confuse Americans and leave them unprepared to defend their nation.
The World at War
goes on to show German and Japanese atrocities, some of the footage taken directly from Nazi films. After viewing the film,
The New York Times
film critic Bosley Crowther wrote, in 1942, “Spread across the face of America,
The World at War
should stimulate a grim resolve.”
³³

In the United States, propaganda was also an important instrument in the government's effort to finance the war effort. The 1942 Revenue Act, adopted in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, was a turning point in the history of American income taxation. The act raised rates, cut exemptions, and lowered the threshold of income subject to taxation so that some forty million Americans would now be required to pay income taxes.
³⁴
This expansion of America's tax base meant that tens of millions of lower and middle-income Americans with no prior experience in this realm would now be required to file income tax returns, an idea that most found confusing and daunting. And, given the numbers involved, the Internal Revenue Service would be hard-pressed to enforce the law. The IRS lacked the administrative capacity or database to allow it to assess the accuracy and veracity of the tax filings of tens of millions of Americans.

Anticipating that collection could be a major problem, Treasury officials launched a two-pronged campaign to encourage taxpayer compliance. First, the Treasury Department presented tax payment as a patriotic duty and launched an extensive propaganda campaign to convince Americans that paying taxes was a form of sacrifice required to win the war. In this campaign, Jewish film studios and radio networks, as well as Jewish composers and media personalities, played an active role. For example, at Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau's behest, the composer Irving Berlin wrote a song performed by Danny
Kaye and played incessantly on the radio, entitled “I Paid My Income Tax Today,” aimed at lower-income Americans who previously had not been asked to pay federal income taxes:

I said to my Uncle Sam,

“Old Man Taxes here I am,”

And he was glad to see me,

Lower brackets that's my speed,

Mr. Small Fry yes indeed,

But gee—I'm proud as can be.

I paid my income tax today.

I'm only one of millions more.

Whose income never was taxed before.

A tax I'm very glad to pay,

I'm squared up with the USA.

You see those bombers in the sky?

Rockefeller helped to build them, so did I.

I paid my income tax today.
³⁵

Similar forms of propaganda were used to promote bond sales, which actually raised more money than income taxation during the war years. Of the war's $350 billion cost, income taxes accounted for $164 billion and bond sales for about $185 billion. More than eighty-five million Americans were persuaded to buy war bonds in sales promoted by the Treasury Department's War Advertising Council. Many of America's major artists, singers, and actors were mobilized to promote bond sales. But, the name most closely associated with World War II bond sales became Berlin's. At Morgenthau's request, he also wrote the song
Any Bonds Today?
based on his popular tune
Any Yams Today?
which had been sung by Ginger Rogers in the 1938 musical
Carefree
. The Berlin song, for four years, served as the anthem of America's war bond drives and was performed by the era's most famous bands and singers, including the Andrews Sisters, the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Dick Robertson and Kay Kyser.
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The tall man with the high hat and the whiskers on his chin,

Will soon be knocking at your door and you ought to be in,

The tall man with the high hat will be coming down your way,

Get your savings out when you hear him shout, “Any bonds today?”

Any bonds today?

Bonds of freedom,

That's what I'm selling,

Any bonds today?

Scrape up the most you can,

Here comes the freedom man,

Asking you to buy a share of freedom today,

Any stamps today?

We'll be blessed,

If we all invest,

In the USA.

Here comes the freedom man,

Can't make tomorrow's plan,

Not unless you buy a share of freedom today.

First came the Czechs and then came the Poles,

And then the Norwegians with three million souls,

Then came the Dutch, the Belgians, and France,

Then all of the Balkans with hardly a chance.

It's all in the book if only you look,

It's there if you read the text,

They fell ev'ry one at the point of a gun—America mustn't be next.

Any bonds today?

All you give,

Will be spent to live,

In the Yankee way.

Scrape up the most you can,

Here comes the freedom man,

Asking you to buy a share of freedom today.
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World War II bond drives were not just efforts to raise money. They were also undertaken precisely in order to build a sense of national spirit and purpose. Before launching the bond drives of World War II, Morgenthau consulted carefully with political scientist Peter Odegard, an expert in public opinion, who believed that a bond sales
campaign could bring Americans closer together, producing a more united America. Odegard wrote, “Behavior begets belief quite as often as belief begets behavior. Public opinion is as much a product of what the public does as what it thinks. The experience of participation in a joint effort breeds community of purpose, conveys a sense of national direction, creates what is commonly referred to as morale. National unity is not so much the precursor as the product of united action.”
³⁸

Retrospectively, World War II is sometimes seen as “the good war,” a conflict that united Americans in the face of an existential threat. In point of fact, Americans were deeply divided before the Japanese attack and not definitively united after Pearl Harbor. Partisan and ethnic differences could well have become the basis for wartime division, especially as the human and pecuniary costs of the war escalated.
³⁹
One key to American unity during the war was the fact that Americans were the recipients of a steady diet of material emphasizing the need to support the war effort. From the radio, the cartoons and the movies, the nation learned that Americans must buy bonds, pay taxes, serve in the military and fight until “the job” was done.

Propaganda in the USSR

The prewar Soviet regime was among the most repressive and murderous governments on the face of the earth—a fact it sought to hide with a sustained propaganda campaign aimed heavily at foreign audiences. During the war, however, Stalin found that brute force would not impel the Soviet people to fight and work to resist the German invasion and reduced his dependence upon coercion in favor of a greater reliance on persuasion. Soviet propaganda instruments turned from an external to an internal emphasis to persuade the people of the various Soviet nationality groups—the Russians in particular—to work and fight for the motherland.