An OWI spokesman said he thought one of the best war songs he had heard was “Der Fuhrer's Face” from the Disney cartoon. (HW)
Another group involved was the War Production Board which did things like limiting how much Hollywood could spend on making a film. (HW)
Jack Warner (of Warner Brothers), was strongly anti-Nazi, anti-Hitler, and anti-Semitism. (HW)
Propaganda and Japan
Each country involved in World War II had its own form of propaganda. Posters were, of course, standard. Newspaper articles were ever-present. Also included in propaganda techniques were films, books, radios, comic books, school textbooks, theater plays, etc. (None of this section, by the way, deals with censorship of dissenting opinions in Japan. For that, look at my review on the book Politics and Culture in Wartime Japan, which is (address) here.
Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf:
”The nationalization of the great masses can never take place by way of half measures, by a weak emphasis upon a so-called objective viewpoint, but by a ruthless and fanatical one-sided orientation as to the goal to be aimed at.”
1933: Hijoji Nippon (Japan in Time of Emergency) movie is released. It was basically an address by a nationalists that “extolled Japan's virtues, her mission in Asia, and the West's “corrupting influence” on Japanese society. The film also emphasized the theme of Japan's being surrounded by unfriendly countries, particularly the Soviet Union.
1938: Gonin no Sekkohei (Five Scouts), a film set against the background of the China war. Soldiers on patrol, basically.
1939: a Film Law is passed, setting it up so that no one could work in the film industry without government approval.
1940: The newsreel companies are consolidated into one company, the Japan Film Company.
1940: Mud and Soldiers (Tsuchi to Heitai), which was about the Hangchow landing in the China campaign.
On July 23, 1940, Prime Minister Donoe stated “One Soul for One Hundred Million People,”; in other words, all the Japanese were to be united in one mind, one soul. (There were only around 70 million Japanese at the time, though.)
In elementary schools, students learned songs extolling the virtues of the Japanese military, such as the songs “The Special Attack Force” and “In Praise of the Special Attack Force.” The idea is to indoctrinate children with the ideas that the government wants them to have before they grow old enough to question things. This is done is virtually every country, of course; we only brand it an evil act when a country we are at war with or don't like uses the method, but when we use it it's considered perfectly good educational technique.
According to the book Kamikaze, Cherry Blossoms, and Nationalisms: The Militarization of Aesthetics in Japanese History, “The first animated film ever made in japan was commissioned by the Imperial Navy to widely publicize its success at Pearl Harbor.”
1942: Victory Song of the Orient is produced by the army in the Philippines. American stores, posters and fashions are shown as corrupting influences. Most of the film was about the technical aspects involved in provisioning the army and what the normal, non-fighting, activities were.
1942: The War at Sea from Hawaii to Malaya is produced by the Navy to commemorate the attack on Pearl Harbor.
1942: Divine Soldiers of the Skies showed the training of parachute units and the capture of Palembang.
1944: The Most Beautiful, a film about women living and working at an optical factory. It shows the various personal problems that “threaten the unity and effectiveness of the group.”
Sources
FR: Film & Radio propaganda in World War II, 1983.
HM: The Hollywood Musical Goes to War, 1983
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