1945 range from 1,150 to 1,350 . 1 For their part , Hollywood executives , producers , directors , and actors enlisted wholeheartedly in the film wars .
Effective propaganda is a mix of persuasion and reassurance . Persuasion usually involves convincing an audience that an outsider or enemy is false , while reassuring the audience that its own views and values are true . In the American productions of wartime films , one can perceive both messages with varying emphases . Persuasion led to calls for sacrifice and commitment , while reassurances conveyed messages that little needed to be changed and the American way of life would continue . A particularly striking example of continuity and security is a film featuring a Mennonite farmer in Lancaster County , Pennsylvania . Farmer at War was released in March 1943 . In the context of other wartime films , both feature films and documentaries , the war is almost invisible in Farmer at War . The main message is that farmers , and by extension American citizens in general , did not need to adjust their lives radically in order to support the American national wartime agenda .
The primary theme of almost all World War II movies and documentaries was inclusiveness . It was everyone ’ s war , and everyone must fight and work to win the war for freedom and democracy . The themes of inclusivity and shared effort were certainly obvious in the title of an Office of War Information ( OWI ) -Twentieth Century Fox coproduction that Henry Fonda narrated in 1942 , It ’ s Everybody ’ s War , and in a similar 1943 film entitled No Exceptions . Explaining the necessity of conscription and 1
David Weinberg , “ Approaches to the Study of Film in the Third Reich : A Critical Appraisal ,” Journal of Contemporary History 19 ( 1984 ): 105 – 126 .
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