American History,

Popular Media, and

Modern Life
Wartime and the Propaganda
Core reading: [Link]
 I. American involvement in World War
II and how it impacted the lives at
the home front
II. Popular media played an important
Key themes role during the wartime and the
promotion of war propaganda
Media source: news reels, propaganda
films and posters
Going back to WWII
• Most historians also argue that the Second World War was caused by the first.
• German anger about Versailles Treaty, Germany forced to pay huge reparations
(initially scheduled to pay some US$33 billion).
• Economic turmoil/hyperinflation resulted, by 1923 US$1.00 = 4,200,000,000,000
marks
• As the world slipped into the Great Depression of the 1930s the German economy
collapsed.
• Political and economic chaos set the stage for the rise of fascists: Mussolini in Italy
(1922-1943); Adolf Hitler (leader of country from 1933/34-45) and the Nazi Socialists
in Germany; Franco in Spain (during Spanish Civil War 1936-39).
• The fascists rearmed, aligned and became increasingly aggressive.
• Other parties in Europe sought to avoid a new war by appeasing them.
 The Road to War 1931-1939
• German Rearmament 1935
• Hitler withdrew from the League.
• Called for a conscription of the army.
• Called for the reoccupation of the remilitarized Rhineland on the French
border.
• The Italian invasion of Ethiopia 1935
• The Annexation of Austria🡪 Anschluss 1938
• Hitler’s aggression in Czechoslovakia 1938-39
• Hitler’s claim on the Sudeten land.
• A conference at Munich proved Hitler’s victory. When Nazi troops arrived in
Prague, neither of the Allied powers was present.
• The Final Step: Poland, September 1939.
• On August 23, Stalin signed a non-aggression pact with Germany before
Hitler invaded Poland.
• Britain and France declared war on Germany.
 Early successes of the Axis in Europe: Germany, Soviet
Union, Italy
• German superiority on land 🡪 blitzkrieg (the lighting war).
• The Luftwaffe (air force) also gained absolute command in the air.
• Germany planned ‘Operation Barbarossa’ to attack the Soviet Union in 1941.
• The large resources of the Soviet Union plus the Russian winter held German troops
in check.
• The Axis on the Defensive
• The US entering into war in 1941 brought new factors in warfare.
• the United States did not enter the war until after the Japanese bombed the American
fleet in Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941.
• Allied air power grew
• The Soviet Union switched side after Operation Barbarosa
• The Allied Coalition = The Big Three 🡪 Churchill, Roosevelt, and Stalin
 US entered the war

• While the Nazis took control of Germany and

planned for war in Europe, Japan aggressively
expanded its control of territory in east Asia by
invading Manchuria in 1931 and China in 1937.
• While the United States had remained neutral
in the war, it responded to Japan’s aggression
in Asia with economic sanctions that caused
severe shortages of natural resources that the
Japanese needed for their war effort.
• In an attempt to prevent American interference
in the Pacific war, Japan bombed Pearl
Harbor, the US naval station in Hawaii, in a
surprise attack on December 7, 1941.
Activity 1: Pearl Habour Newsreel
• Watch the original newsreel about the bombing of Pearl Habour in
December 1941
• [Link]
eel-about-the-bombing-of-pearl-harbor/
1. What kinds of media technology do you see this this newsreel?
2. How do you think this newsreel would impact the American public
opinion about the war?
On December 9, 1941—two days after the attack—US President Franklin D.
Roosevelt addressed the American people on the radio. He said, in part:
The course that Japan has followed for the past ten years in Asia has paralleled the course of Hitler
and Mussolini in Europe and in Africa. Today, it has become far more than a parallel. It is actual
collaboration so well calculated that all the continents of the world, and all the oceans, are now
considered by the Axis strategists as one gigantic battlefield. . . .
In these past few years—and, most violently, in the past three days—we have learned a terrible
lesson.
It is our obligation to our dead—it is our sacred obligation to their children and to our children—that
we must never forget what we have learned.
And what we all have learned is this: There is no such thing as security for any Nation—or any
individual—in a world ruled by the principles of gangsterism. . . .
We are now in the midst of a war, not for conquest, not for vengeance, but for a world in which this
Nation, and all that this Nation represents, will be safe for our children. We expect to eliminate the
danger from Japan, but it would serve us ill if we accomplished that and found that the rest of the
world was dominated by Hitler and Mussolini.
We are going to win the war and we are going to win the peace that follows. . . .
On December 8, Joseph Goebbels described Adolf Hitler as
“exceptionally happy” when he learned the news. Goebbels wrote:

On the basis of the Tripartite Pact we will probably not [be able to avoid] a
declaration of war on the United States. But now this isn’t so bad anymore. We are
now to a certain extent protected on our flanks. The United States will probably no
longer make aircraft, weapons, and transport available to England so carelessly, as
it can be assumed that they will need these for their own war against Japan.
American wartime production
• America’s military preparedness was not that of a nation
expecting to go to war. In 1939, the United States Army
ranked 39th in the world.
• Many Americans — still trying to recover from the
decade-long ordeal of the Great Depression
• President Roosevelt did what he could to coax a
reluctant nation to focus its economic might on military
preparedness. If the American military wasn’t yet equal
to the Germans or the Japanese, American workers
could build ships and planes faster than the enemy
could sink them or shoot them down.
• In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the president set
staggering goals for the nation’s factories: 60,000
aircraft in 1942 and 125,000 in 1943; 120,000 tanks in
the same time period and 55,000 antiaircraft guns.
• By the end of the war, more than half of all industrial
production in the world would take place in the United
States.
Wartime production
statistics
Rosie the Riveter
• Eight million women stepped into the work
force and ethnic groups such as African
Americans and Latinos found job
opportunities as never before.
• Between 1940 and 1945, the female
percentage of the U.S. workforce
increased from 27 percent to nearly 37
percent, and by 1945 nearly one out of
every four married women worked outside
the home.
• “Rosie the Riveter,” star of a government
campaign aimed at recruiting female
workers for the munitions industry,
became perhaps the most iconic image of
working women during the war.
Popular media during
the wartime
• During World War II most Americans followed
the news of the war through three sources:
• radio broadcasts,
• newspapers – there were more than
11,000 in the country then
• Newsreels -- that preceded the movies at
their local theatres.
• These sources played a vital role in connecting
the home front with the war front and kept
Americans informed about the progress of the
fighting overseas as well as its impact on their
communities.
What is a Newsreel?
• Employing some of Hollywood’s This short documentary showed the harrowing
battle between the U.S. Marines and the Japanese
finest filmmakers, the U.S. for control of the Pacific island of Tarawa.
Government’s Office of War
Information kept the public
informed of the war’s progress
through bi-weekly newsreels.
• The narrated short films were
produced by one of five companies
and offered as part of the regular
shows at movie theatres. OWI
carefully monitored what stories
were featured.
Activity 2
• Watch the documentary “With the marines at Tarawa” (1944)
[Link]

What is the main message that this documentary trying to send to its
audience?
 • “When we saw those first pictures of
Tarawa we were overcome, just
overcome,” Katharine Phillips said.
“It was just devastating to us. Those
American boys’ bodies floating in the
surf. We just sat around and cried and
I know that’s why they had kept it from
the American public for so long.”
• Reaction to the film across the
country was strong. In the coming
years more newsreels and
photographs were released showing
Newsreels about the war were often increasingly graphic images of death
shown in movie theaters before the and destruction.
feature film.
Propaganda
• propaganda: the deliberate spread of facts or ideas to aid
one’s cause or hinder another’s.
• In the United States, federal agencies issued a flood of
brightly colored posters. Labor unions and big corporations
printed up their own, aimed at turning defense workers into
“production soldiers.”
Activity 3
Watch the film “It’s everybody war” (1945)
[Link]

What is the main message of the film? Is its message different from
“With the marines at Tarawa” (1944)?
What are the ways that American people could help in this war?
Cartoon characters
got into the act

• Warner Brothers sent Popeye and Bugs

Bunny to fight the Japanese, while Disney
released a short film showing Donald
Duck incapacitating Hitler with a ripe
tomato.
• Watch Donald Duck in "Der Fuehrer's
Face," which went on to win an Oscar for
best short animated movie.
[Link]
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Popeye the Sailor

• The Popeye franchise was fertile

ground for pro-American propaganda
due to the nature of the character.
Invariably, Popeye gets beat up by the
"yeller" enemy - just like the US Navy
fleet at Pearl Harbor - and then eats
his spinach and comes roaring back
• The Japanese are portrayed as
buck-toothed and wearing glasses.
• Watch “Popeye scraps the Japs”
[Link]
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