(05) Why We Fight: "Prelude to War" (ca. 1943) 5/6

Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the pentagon and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II.
World War II is introduced in black and white terms, with Henry Wallace's quote "This is a fight between a free world and a slave world" pictorialized with the "free world" of the Allies as a brightly-illuminated planet and the "slave world" of the Axis Powers as a planet deep in shadow.
It examines the differences between democratic and fascist states, using footage from Axis propaganda films including Triumph of the Will, but with different narration designed to support the Allied cause.
It is mentioned that after the Nazis smashed opposing political parties and labor unions, they turned their attention to persecution of Christians - in one scene a stained glass window is shattered by a brick to reveal a "Heil Hitler!" poster behind


The Axis aim of total world conquest, as shown in Prelude to War.
The Axis is depicted as seeking total world conquest. An animated map first shows Mussolini's ambition to re-create the Roman Empire, complete with the Mediterranean as "Our (the Italians') Sea", then Japan's ambition - described in the Tanaka Memorial (Its authenticity is still a matter of dispute) - to conquer Manchuria, China, Indochina, Siam, Burma, the East Indies, India, Australia, New Zealand and Russia east of Lake Baikal, before moving east to crush the United States. The Nazis are shown as first claiming Europe, then moving east through Iraq and Iran into India, then south to conquer Africa. Once this is accomplished, the Nazis would cross the Atlantic Ocean from Dakar to Brazil - meeting up with the Japanese who have crossed the South Pacific. Simultaneously, the Nazis would cross the North Atlantic Ocean from Scandinavia into Canada, meeting the Japanese forces (pejoratively referred to as Germany's "buck-toothed pals") crossing from Siberia. The combined Axis armies then overrun the United States.
Isoroku Yamamoto, commander-in-chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy is shown making a speech which is deliberately mistranslated (as in other US World War II propaganda) as "When war comes between Japan and the United States, I shall not be content to merely occupying Guam, the Philippines, Hawaii, and San Francisco. I look forward to dictating the peace to the United States in the White House at Washington." - this is followed by a scene showing the "conquering Jap army" marching down Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington DC, as the narration alludes to Japanese atrocities in Nanking, Hong Kong and Manila.
The film exposes the mendacity of Axis claims that they need living space due to their overpopulation, by showing that they deliberately encouraged a high birth rate in order to increase their military manpower. It also points out that while they claimed to lack raw materials, they were able to build enormous war machines. The Nazi Wehrmacht is mentioned to have "30 Panzer divisions, 70 motorized divisions and 140 infantry divisions".
The film notably takes the position that the war started on September 18, 1931 with Japan's invasion of Manchuria, which is covered towards the end of the film along with Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia. The animation showing a Japanese dagger plunging into Manchuria is re-used in The Battle of Russia, The Battle of China and War Comes To America.
Prelude to War won the 1942 Academy Award for Documentary Feature.

Category:

Education

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• Why
• we
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• World
• War
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• Japan
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• Whermacht
• Hitler
• America
• fascist
• Washington
• D.C.

[DiscoLemonade07]

i love the sarcasm of the narrator

[2bn442RCT]

He seems be mad all the time. LOL

[randy95023]

The Japanese are much easier to like now that they make Honda Civics and "Hello Kitty" back packs. When they were rampaging through Asia using pregnant Chinese women for bayonet practice it was hard to call the Japanese people "friendly and polite". Instead of Charm School they had to have their cities bombed into rubble. Result was the same, but Charm School and a good PR firm would be preferable to Atom Bombs...

[disneyfan85]

@2bn442RCT Can you blame him?

[snakes3425]

They forgot something Henri Puyi was the last Emperor of China's Qing Dynasty, he sided with Japan hoping to restore the Qing Dynasty to power

[Hisotrygeek94]

@randy95023 Yeah, in a way, the Japs deserved it, considering all the cities in China, the Philippines, and Hawaii they torched, and all the people they slaughtered with ruthless sadism and pleasure.

[MrMostevilgenius]

@TheSteffen1223 Yes, they had a few modern weapons but hardly an organized military. In any way, they weren't prepared for an invasion by a modern equipped and trained army, even though Italy's armed forces weren't quite that what Mussolini made them out to be, it's quite impossible to fight tanks, mechanized columns, a (rather well equipped) air force and poison gas (which Italy used in Ethiopia)

[rcplanetim53]

this is awsome.. i have this on dvd.. i think its on the pearl harbor series..it also has the trials of the war on it too..i know im going to spell this all wrong but i think its called the numberg trials! (im sure you know what im talking about).. thanks!

[1223steffen]

League should have helped haille

[TheSteffen1223]

Was ethiopia that weak?

[randy95023]

I might have had more sympathy for the Japanese civilians if their individual soldiers weren't so sadistic. In many ways they were worse than the Nazis. It made no sense the way the low ranking enlisted Japanese soldiers treated Chinese civilians and all allied POW's. Made no sense at all...