It's even crazier because when you are not american you realize that Hollywood is also the biggest soft propaganda agency for the USA.
When have you seen a movie about the USSR winning the WW2? Or about the Guantanamo Bay?
When have you seen a movie about the USSR winning the WW2? Or about the Guantanamo Bay?
Sure, here's one from this year:
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4761112/?ref_=kw_li_tt
And here's the list
https://www.imdb.com/search/keyword/?keywords=guantanamo-bay
- Elmer Davis, director of the US Office of War Information
> - Elmer Davis, director of the US Office of War Information
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Office_of_War_In...
https://www.cbc.ca/radio/ideas/how-hollywood-became-the-unof...
> It was an organization designed not only to disseminate information and to clarify issues but also to arouse support for particular symbols and ideas. "The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds," said Davis, "is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."
Koppes, C. and Black, G., 1977. What to Show the World: The Office of War Information and Hollywood, 1942-1945. The Journal of American History, 64(1), p.2, <https://www.jstor.org/stable/1888275>
That paper then points to this ultimate source:
> Elmer Davis to Byron Price, Jan. 27, 1943, Box 3, Records of the Office of War Information, RG 208 (Federal Records Center, Suitland, Md.)
Dead end. I emailed the Archives but the entire facility is closed because of the pandemic. I also tried tracking down the paper's authors but both are retired.
The document likely lives somewhere in this trove: https://catalog.archives.gov/search?q=%22Records%20of%20the%...
Anyway, I'm satisfied it's a real quote (both authors are reputable) though I definitely want the surrounding context now :)
Seriously: very nice work; thank you. Above and beyond!
> "The easiest way to inject a propaganda idea into most people's minds," said Davis, "is to let it go in through the medium of an entertainment picture when they do not realize that they are being propagandized."
Now a nearly irrelevant second place to social media.
Any Russian movies about the US winning the WW2? Naturally each country tells their own narrative. This seems like a silly point to make.
Perhaps another thing is that when the memory of the war was still fresh and people (at least in eg France) generally knew that the USSR had a big impact, McCarthyism was also at its height and there were strong reasons not to show communists in a good light. And then maybe later films mostly copied the trend.
It’s like the chase scene at the end of Argo. That never happened. They just got on the plane and left but if the movie was accurate that would be a horribly boring ending so they made up a better on.
The change in this case was not in order to make the story more suspenseful but to simply inspire patriotism.
The simplest explanation is that, especially historically, Hollywood has targeted domestic audiences first. What message do you think is/was more likely to play well in the US and broadly in the west?
...almost all of them? the USSR was one of the Allies. who won WW2. so every WW2 movie which doesn't engage in some sort of alt-history has the USSR winning.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_Instrument_of_Surrender
I'd love to see something similar from China or North Korea.
Careful now, lest the audience actually learn that it were the Soviets who launched the first man into space.
No single country won WWII.
Saying so is nationalist propaganda which devalues and demeans the sacrifices of every other country.
Tell that to the Finns.
It is easier for me to believe that a movie specifically about the Russians winning WW2 simply would not get financed due to low probability of earning a decent ROI due to American/English audiences not wanting to pay to watch it.
I was also taught in US history AP class in high school that a significant, if not necessary, element of winning WW2 was the Russians tying up the Germans on the eastern front, and it was stressed that the Russians suffered the most casualties by far.
The Soviets along with some remaining Polish forces also won the battle of Berlin (which caused Hitler to commit suicide), having pushed back the German army all the way back from the gates of Moscow to the gates of Berlin. The Third Reich, left with no "leader" and no capital and no significant territory neither in the east nor in the west really had no option other than total capitulation or total defeat. The capitulation happened a week later. The Western Front and the Eastern Front in the end had about the same amount of German causalities and captures.
Anyway, the Soviets did a little more than "just" tying up Germans on the Eastern Front.
Russia didn't win WWII, given that they didn't fight Japan in any meaningful way.
Furthermore, I've read [2] that historiography on the Eastern Front was quite poor, even from the Soviet perspective, until Stalin's death. From [2], page 12: > Soviet military works written before 1958 were highly politicized and focused heavily on the positive role of Stalin in every aspect of war. Correspondingly, operational and tactical detail was lacking.
Though Cold War politics did play a role.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Films_about_the_Battl... [2] PDF WARNING: https://community.apan.org/cfs-file/__key/docpreview-s/00-00...
They are even told "Tovarisch means 'comrade', which is a good thing!" Then all the ship's crew shout "comrade" back to the throngs of happy, well-fed, smiling Soviet citizens in WW2.
Other fun propaganda lines: "I believe in God, President Roosevelt, and the Brooklyn Dodgers!". They even feature radio recordings of Roosevelt set to patriotic music.
Despite being heavy handed and not having the best effects (you can see lines pulling the subs) it's a fun movie for Bogart fans and those interested in propaganda films. On Amazon Prime, tagged with "Cerebral, Joyous, Intense".
The USSR didn't defeat Japan.
The Second World War was against Japan, Germany, and, to some extent, Italy. The USSR only fought Germany.
Right now. There's a current multi-season show about the Axis winning WWII on Amazon Prime. From what I've read, it's pretty successful.
Which just goes to show that many Americans aren't really aware of how the Soviets were crucial to winning that war.
To act like the Soviet Union was Ireland or Switzerland at the start of the war, is disingenuous. Stalin and Hitler made a secret plan to carve out an Eastern European sphere of influence, not unlike the Japanese sphere of influence in East Asia.
The irony of course is that Stalin still got his sphere influence, albeit through the Treaty of Yalta.