Space Eagle Productions

During World War II, there was a lot of propaganda set forth to get people behind the cause for the war. 

You could replace "Japanese" with "Muslim" and see how the same kind of propaganda has been used today.

Propaganda films like this were made to increase the hate and fear of the American public against the Japanese and get Americans to buy War Bonds:

Such things as calling Americans stupid, telling them how indestructible they were, how they worked harder than Americans, how Americans didn't stand a chance against them, bragging about how they so easily killed the American troops, about how the troops the Americans had engaged were only a tiny percentage of the Japanese troops waiting to kill them, were all worked into the film.  The entire film can be viewed here.

Back then, newsreels such as thesewere shown at the movies.  They would tell people about events of the war, urge them to grow "Victory Gardens," urge them to take tin cans and aluminum to the rationing centers and anything else they thought might get Americans into the spirit of war.  Hollywood released movies with war themes to further the propaganda and get the American people engaged:

They didn't want to get  the people TOO scared, so they would make videos to make their enemy look stupid:

They had movie actors give news from the front:

They would put war themes in movies and even in cartoons to aclimatize the children.  I wish they had left the original sound in this instead of adding the heavy metal soundtrack, but this gives you a good overview:

The propaganda even made it into the music of the time:

Even Coca-Cola got in on shouting for the war:

Here, a magician gets in on the act:

Of course, the pro-Capitalism crowd wouldn't like this magician much today.  He talks about sharing.

They had women cheering for the men like they were cheering for a football team.  Of course, at that time, there was a real threat.

Here is some WWII info for Comic Book Readers:

World War II & Cold War                                                                                                                                                

Now here are some things that they used to inform people about things like rationing, growing a victory garden, and other things to ease the difficult times they were facing.  Look at this example from    Children's World War II.  Note pages 50-56.

You can see that in the rationing section, there are some things that would be useful during a depression.  I suppose you could call this depression we're experiencing a war, actually, since it was a "War on Money."  The 700 billion dollar bail-outs to bankers and the auto industry, now up to trillions which was borrowed from China at the expense of the taxpayer is already starting to have a crushing blow to the value of the American dollar.  Of course, they'll probably use war again to try to get us out of the depression, so I'm sure all these things will come in handy.

Tomorrow:  Part 2 - The Red Scare

Copyright © 2009 Cal Jennings