War propaganda: methods, effects, and historical examples

War Propaganda

Some of the most emotionally incendiary propaganda to utilize the medium of film was conceived and directed towards partisans during the fighting of World War II. A pair of films, Went the Day Well and 49th Parallel, delicately play upon the psyche of their intended audiences to get viewers to emotionally, (and perhaps even physically) take a stance during the fighting of the second Great War. By demonstrating various aspects of homeland vulnerability and enemy infiltration, these movies were created to galvanize audiences into an anti-Nazi stance at the time when Hitler's Third Reich was at its peak of power.

The events that constitute the plot of Went the Day Well are obviously designed to prey on the fears of British residents during World War II. The film actually was released in 1942 while the war was still contested -- and largely undecided -- and depicts Nazi's posing as British soldiers to invade England. Such fears, of course, could have very easily come true during the time the movie was released. The response of the British subjects depicted in the movie, and the message to those in the audience was fairly clear -- the only way to prevent such an occurrence from happening and actually succeeding was to fight back with unmitigated violence. As such, there are plenty of scenes depicting the Nazis as ruthless, one-dimensional violent prone stooges whom the British subjects had no recourse to halt but by countering with their own violent proclivities. Naturally, the carnage wreaked by the Nazi's is depicted in a villainous way, while the many acts of ordinary British citizens that are equally as bloody and as devastating -- including a postmistress attack Nazis with an ax -- are portrayed as heroic.

Moreover, this film is narrated from a point in the future after the war was supposedly concluded. The film's narrator references the fact that the British and the Allies won the war, and offers the remainder of the film's story -- the invasion, the evil actions of the Nazis and the heroic defense of the British -- as justification for how the war was won. The message, then, to British subjects is readily apparent -- go get and destroy those evil Nazi enemies.

The propaganda disseminated within 49th Parallel is targeted towards the Allies as well. However, the propaganda issued in this film appears to be directed towards Americans in particular -- which is partially denoted by the film's title. The 49th Parallel is a reference to the undefended border between Canada and the U.S. The plot of this film, in which Nazi's arrive in Canada following the destruction of her submarine and attempt to trek across it to get home again, takes place when the U.S. was still neutral. Therefore, a number of measures in this film were calculated to get Americans to substitute their position of neutrality for an anti-Nazi stance that could help to preserve the free world -- as denoted by the unarmed border between the U.S. And Canada.