Attribution (front or state): State (US Army Signal Corps Pictorial Center)
Author/publication: (dir.) Frank Capra
Publication date: Nov. 13, 1943
Remarks: Congratulations on correctly identifying “Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia” (1943) as a US-government-financed film! It was easy to think otherwise, given that most of the footage was shot by Soviet cameras. And the USSR had plenty of Anglophone residents to read its scripts (give Radio Moscow a listen), including Americans who had emigrated during the Great Depression. The best clue of the film’s American origin comes at the end. Hitler brought the UK and USSR into an unlikely alliance when he invaded Germany’s Soviet ally in June 1941. The US joined six months later, after Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor. US popular opinion swung in the USSR’s favor not only because of the Red Army’s victories, but also because of films like “Why We Fight,” and magazine articles like the one below. (Note its presentation of L. Beria’s totalitarian police force, the KGB.) Granted, Life magazine was a private enterprise, and therefore not beholden to Washington’s propaganda apparatus. But so was “Why We Fight’s” celebrated director Frank Capra. The War had blurred the lines between private and public interest, just as it had the ideological one between the US and USSR.
Supplementary media:
The following appeared in Life magazine on March 29, 1943.
