Prelude to War
posted at 9:28 am on December 22, 2006 by Bryan
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Allah’s got the bunny Wonderful Life. I’ve got honest to goodness war propaganda. It’s Frank Caprapallooza!
Yesterday, there was a brief debate on when WWII started over at InstaPundit. Americans generally think it started on Dec 7, 1941. Europe generally pegs the date to September 1939.
But the US Department of War pegged the date earlier than that. In Prelude to War, the first film of Frank Capra’s legendary Why We Fight series, the date of World War II’s beginning is about 8 years prior to the onset of war in Europe (click to watch the clip):
The Why We Fight films were initially made for US troops as part of their training but they were later released to the general public to bolster war support (and you probably watched them in high school at some point). Prelude to War won the 1942 Oscar for Documentary Feature.
You can download the entire Why We Fight series for free from the Internet Archive. I recommend it, both for the historical value and to gain a little perspective on how our country approached public information during that war.
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From the synopsis of the movie:
Just by changing a few things around, it sounds just like 2006. scary.
pullingmyhairout on December 22, 2006 at 9:36 AM
But wait, this can’t be right. How could a conflict that didn’t directly involve the US eventually pull us into a world war? Could it be that we don’t exist in a vacuum? That the struggles of others do eventually affect us, sometimes with disastrous consequences?
dalewalt on December 22, 2006 at 9:42 AM
Its A FULL METAL CHRISTMAS over in Iraq….lighten up, Francis….
seejanemom on December 22, 2006 at 9:43 AM
Germany didn’t attack us on December 7th. Roosevelt lied; people died. We’ve been stuck in that quagmire for decades now. When will our troops come home?
The Monster on December 22, 2006 at 9:50 AM
I have the whole series on DVD….a gift from my war-mongering daughter out in CA. Get it. I promise you won’t be disappointed.
Limerick on December 22, 2006 at 9:53 AM
YEAH, we should wait until we are attacked by the enemy.
huh?……oh..
shooter on December 22, 2006 at 10:20 AM
I shudder to think what it will take to wake us up. Whatever calamity that is, will we? One would have thought 9/11/01 would have…
Aunt B on December 22, 2006 at 10:23 AM
407,300 Americans died in World War II. In World War III we’re now at 3000 dead or .74% of the last international conflict. Don’t get me wrong. I feel badly for all of the brave men and women who have died for this noble cause. But I wish that the drive by media would cite that statistic every now and then to lend some perspective to the issue. But, they’re on the side of the enemy.
pistolero on December 22, 2006 at 10:37 AM
They are the enemy. (Rich Lowry be damned!)
EF on December 22, 2006 at 10:54 AM
Was watching part of the video via the linked website. I have never seen it before and me being 47, you’ld think I have seen it, maybe clips at sometime. That stuff is pretty powerful the way they put it across to the public. Also very politicaly correct, almost all groups in the USA (prior leaders and philosophers are quoted), I am sure they would have added Dr. King today as part of the “effect” that was trying to be generated with this.
StuLongIsland on December 22, 2006 at 11:37 AM
Most people I talk to are sound asleep when it comes to the jihadist threat. Although the attack in London might change that.
aengus on December 22, 2006 at 12:02 PM
Ef wrote: “They are the enemy. (Rich Lowry be damned!)”
As long as the media is controlled by liberals, they will always work to sabotage any war we fight.
They must be taken down.
georgej on December 22, 2006 at 12:12 PM
I dated a Chinese gal for a while (from the mainland) who grew-up in Nanching. I can tell you for CERTAIN, that in 1937, BEFORE Neville Chamberlain declared “peace in our time”, and BEFORE the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army marched 300,000+ civilians out of the southern capital of China (in the space of 6 weeks), shot them like they were dogs, and buried them in mass graves. The Chinese have NOT forgotten. Many of them HATE the Japanese to this very day. Those events are remembered by historians as “the rape of Nanching.” It is one of the principal reasons that it is impossible for the Japanese to keep a web-site honoring their war-dead up-and-running. Chinese hackers keep breaking into those sites, deface them, or take them down.
In more recent times, both the United Nations and its principal sponser (the U.S.) have stood by and simply “watched” genocide and mass murder take place in Iraq, the Balkans, Darfur, and many other remote locations around the globe. What we are doing is tantamount to playing a game of dice — and it is a VERY DANGEROUS game indeed. ‘Nuff said.
CyberCipher on December 22, 2006 at 12:42 PM
Hey Bryan, this is HotAir and you’re preachin’ to the choir. These folks know WW2 started when Japan invaded Manchuria. It’s the general population, schooled by leftist teacher’s unions, that think it started at Pearl Harbor. As I stated on another thread, the level of intelligence is much higher here than out there amongst the populace. Most of them think THIS war started on 9/11 but we all know it started 1,300 years ago in Arabia. Half of our great nation knows NOTHING about this current war, let alone WW2. But ask ‘em who Paris Hilton is bangin’ this week and they’re all over it!
Aengus is right, they’re asleep at the wheel and they can’t be woken up. When you try to educate them on it, their glaze over like when your wife talks about shopping for purses!
God help us!
Tony737 on December 23, 2006 at 7:17 AM
sorry, that should say “…their EYES glaze over…”
Tony737 on December 23, 2006 at 7:20 AM
I have felt for a long time that WWI and WW2 were the same conflict, with a 2o year and ten month cease fire.
At the end of WWI, when the French General Staff (I know what you’re thinking) read the Treaty of Versailles, they disagreed with it saying it would be a twenty year peace, they were fairly accurate in their estimate. I read this in either Martin Gilbert’s history on WWI or John Keegan’s history on WWI.
Mooseman on December 23, 2006 at 12:46 PM
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