Frank Capra's Original "Why We Fight"

A short clip of the same name on which Eugene Jarecki's "Why We Fight" is based

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• why
• we
• fight
• frank
• capra
• eugene
• jarecki

[sirjames45]

My grandfather told me the day after pearl harbor, men lined up for MANY blocks at the recruiters office!!!

The movies came LONG after all these men had signed up.

[RedLipstickGalore]

Yeah and so...what does that have to do the video at all? The propaganda films were made to convince the reluctant, reinsure the ones on "our" side and inspire the masses.

Hence why their called propaganda films.

[Cooperpal]

It is funny when you think what they were thinking...

[starstuff]

I totally agree. This Aryan bullshit sure got an awful lot of people in trouble. Perhaps millions of people, as it should be stated. Jewish, Gypsies, Catholic, Gay, and others that didn't quite fit the 'Nazi German ideal' were incinerated as though they were garbage. The 'funny' part was when our American 'mongrels' ,as you put it, prevented that war from achieving its goal.

[Cooperpal]

Yeah, Capra was a gifted comedic director turned dead serious when the Nazi threat kicked the whole world into fear.

Some of his fellow directors like George Stevens could not bring themselves to direct another comedy after touring the camps in Germany at the end of the war.

Being Aryan or not was a big deal. You could be put in a concentration camp if you just looked Jewish. Scary not funny!

[starstuff]

Too funny.

[Cooperpal]

Yes and I love the fact that Capra distilled the true need for a film to fight off the Aristocracy of Europe at the time that saw America as a mixed race "mongrel" nation of unwashed halfbreeds -- America is an "idea", not a nation of one race as were the Nazis and their "Aryan" ideals.

[Cooperpal]

Actually, much of why Capra was called upon to make the WHY WE FIGHT series was to first, give the Allied Soldier the reason he was fighting. The second reason was that Leni Reifenstahl's Nazi propaganda films were very successful in engendering Anti Semitism and the glory of the Aryan Nazi Man -- Capra knew this and had screened the German propaganda films and made the WHY WE FIGHT series to counteract the Nazi propaganda machine.