The 20 Most Outrageous War Propaganda Films

Image via Complex Original

In today’s Internet world, you’d think that propaganda films would be as popular as celebrity Twitter accounts. All that’s required for any average rabble-rouser to force his or her opinions onto our apathetic society is a camera and some web know-how, yet folks are too busy stalking TMZ and telling Facebook about their cats’ birthdays. Back when big screens were covered in black and white, though, things were different. Wars were commonplace, and governments all around the world needed to pour their one-sided beliefs onto civilians. And there was no better way to do so than through propaganda films, mostly documentaries and sometimes fictional works created with the sole purpose of beating viewers’ heads in with a specific message. Even if that meant bending truths, all bets were off. Basically, the filmmakers thought everyday people were sheep, Ron Burgundy’s in front of teleprompters (“Go fuck yourself, San Diego”). One celebrated example of propaganda is December 7, 1941, director John Ford’s breakdown of the Pearl Harbor attack. So, as the world celebrates the 69th anniversary of that event this week, we dug into cinema’s foxholes to find the 20 most outrageous war propaganda films...



By Matt Barone

Though D.W. Griffith’s racially charged shitshow wasn’t billed as propaganda, it’s tough to see the polarizing film as anything else. Based on Thomas Dixon’s 1905 novel, The Clansman, The Birth of a Nation is a love letter to the Ku Klux Klan, pinning America’s discord on the freeing of slaves. The film’s “black” characters (actually white actors in blackface) are all portrayed as savage and villainous, while the KKK members are heroic. To think, 95 years later, we have a black president. Don’t expect a big-budget Hollywood remake of this one anytime soon.

Silent film maverick Charlie Chaplin funded this 11-minute short with own pocket change. Written and directed by, as well as starring, Chaplin, The Bond stayed in tune with his usual funnyman shtick, compiling brief sketches about the different kinds of bonds, such as marriage and friendship. His real M.O., however, was to encourage the sales of liberty bonds during World War I, to fund America’s military operations. The short’s final skit features Chaplin giving Uncle Sam cash dug out of his shoes. Not quite as funny as, say, Bill Maher, but similar in its political humor.

Russian filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein’s feature-length masterwork rages against the machine. Segmented into five vignettes, Potemkin dramatized a 1905 mutiny staged by the crew of a Russian battleship against their tyrannical commanding officers. Completely subjective in its point-of-view, the film made no mystery of its message: Russia’s then-tsarist leaders were bad news. This point was drilled into viewers’ heads during Potemkin’s most iconic sequence, a rather jaw-dropping public massacre of innocent citizens on large outdoor steps. Even in black-and-white, this one’s red all over.

Quentin Tarantino’s Inglourious Basterds might be a cartoonish variation of World War II, but it’s still based on various facts. Adolf Hitler and Joseph Goebbels were in fact heavily into film production, commissioning a series of successful pro-Nazi flicks, the most notorious being Triumph of the Will. It centers on the 1934 Nazi Party Congress in Nuremberg, which brought together thousands of Hitler’s supporters in order to promote his radical theories. The film splices portions of his speeches with footage of his many followers, including the kiddies of the Hitler Youth. Watching as its vile messages unfold, you’ll wish that Brad Pitt and Eli Roth could burn your TV to the ground, Basterds-style.

Technically, Confessions of a Nazi Spy wasn’t made as propaganda, instead based on real-life articles written by former FBI agent, and Nazi hunter, Leon G. Turrou. But his story, even in Hollywood form, was a shot of adrenaline for Hitler-hating folks. The film was a box office success, and even won the National Board of Review’s Best Film award, yet it was banned in several countries, including, of course, Germany. We’re not surprised—Hitler never struck us as a good sport.

Translated as “The Eternal Jew,” Der ewige Jude was an anti-Semitic piece of hate cinema. Backed by Hitler’s boy Goebbels, it’s a quasi-documentary full of content manipulation. For instance, Jewish people are shown living in filth despite narration that claims they have the finances sufficient enough for better surroundings, yet the footage was actually filmed in destitute areas full of legitimately poor residents. The film also incorrectly identifies Charlie Chaplin as a Jew, leading one to believe that the Nazis must’ve put fact-checkers on the same tier as your regular non-Aryan Joes.

Legendary filmmaker Frank Capra (Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, It’s a Wonderful Life) spearheaded this seven-film series created to both inspire young Americans to enlist and justify the country’s involvement in World War II to everyday citizens. Documentary style in format, the U.S. government-backed films mixed stock footage with reenactments. Capra saw and hated, but was also artistically impressed by, the aforementioned Triumph of the Will and made the first entry, Prelude to War, as a direct middle-finger-you to Goebbels and his Third Reich film cohorts. Imagine the Coen Brothers pulling a Michael Moore and making No Country for Osama Bin Laden today.

Casablanca, one of cinema’s all-time great works, is perhaps the least obvious of propaganda films. On the surface, it’s a superlative chick flick, a high-stakes romance set against a World War II backdrop. Behind the scenes, though, the film was backed by the Department of War, in hopes of selling viewers on America’s involvement in the war. At the time, the popular consensus amongst Americans was to stay out of the action, yet movies such as Casablanca showed sympathetic characters (like star Humphrey Bogart’s) choosing the fight against fascism over self-motivated wants (i.e., love). Historians also point to the film’s title, named after the Moroccan city in which the story takes place; in English, it translates to “White House.” Still think it’s a chick flick? Katherine Heigl and Jennifer Aniston combined couldn’t be so clever.

When you think of propaganda films, Germany and America are most likely the first countries to come to mind, which is what makes Kokoda Front Line! so interesting. Shot by Australian war-time photographer Damien Parer, the Academy Award-winning documentary showed the Aussies’ role in combating the Japanese stationed in New Guinea during WWII. It took home the Academy’s Best Documentary prize, giving Australia its first Oscar ever. After watching Kokoda Front Line!, you’ll sip on those Wallaby Darned drinks at Outback with pride—we also recommend adding some actual liquor along with the pride. Those things couldn’t get a 10-year-old girl slizzard.

American director John Ford was a regular in the propaganda circuit, and The Battle of Midway was one of his most revered documentaries. Six months after Japan’s devastating assault on Pearl Harbor, the United States Navy dished out a heaping of whoop-ass to the Imperial Japanese Navy, halting Japan’s attack on Midway Island, located between Honolulu and Tokyo. Ford had set up shop on the island to film the soldiers going about their daily routines, but he was able to catch live footage of the battle itself on his handheld 16mm camera after hearing gunfire and other combat sounds. It’s a set up right out of the Blair Witch/Cloverfield playbook, except, you know, it was real, and Ford lived.

Commissioned by the United States Department of Agriculture, Hemp for Victory sung marijuana’s praises for the sake of the war effort. According to the 16-minute short, farmers needed to grow more sticky-icky because industrial fibers, usually received from overseas suppliers, were scarce due to military conflicts. Somewhere, probably in Pittsburgh, stoner-rapper Wiz Khalifa’s producers are sleeping on an awesome source of voiceover samples and interlude fodder.

As its somewhat condescending title implies, The Gentle Sex aimed to persuade women into military service. Taking a fictional route, the film follows seven British ladies from various walks of life who all decide to actively participate in World War II. The most impressive thing about The Gentle Sex is how it avoids any romantic subplots; it’s work first as far as the movie’s heroines are concerned. Though, cheesy dialogue was much less irresistible to the screenwriters: during a climactic battle scene, one lady’s hard-nosed fighting prompts a male soldier to ask, “Women, working through the night?” Her response: “Yes, this is a woman’s war.” There’s one to groan on.

Who doesn’t love good ol’ Bugs Bunny? He’s one of animation’s great characters, always fun for the whole family. Well, we bet you didn’t know that Bugs was also an outspoken racist. Clearly angry at America’s main enemy, Japan, the heads of Warner Bros. dropped everyone’s favorite talking bunny on an anonymous Pacific island in 1944 so he can fire off racial disses (including “slant eyes”) at stereotypically exaggerated Japanese soldiers, beat up a Sumo wrestler, and blow up several Japanese fellas using bombs stashed in ice cream bars. Compared to this gleefully disrespectful toon, South Park is about as offensive as Dora the Explorer.

Full of great performances and exciting action that still holds up today, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo is everything that Michael Bay wanted 2001’s Pearl Harbor to be. Starring the brilliant Spencer Tracy, the 1944 production depicted the first retaliation of United States Air Forces—the bombing of five Japanese cities, including Tokyo—in response to Pearl Harbor. It’s one of those “America, fuck yeah!” flicks that should come equipped with tiny red-white-and-blue flags inside each DVD.

Alfred Hitchcock’s name guarantees creativity, so it’s no surprise that his entry into the propaganda world, the short film Aventure Malgache, took a more suspenseful approach to narrative. Hired by the British Ministry of Information, Hitch delivered a tense character study centered on an actor who admits to being part of the French Resistance during an illegal radio broadcast. In theory, Aventure Malgache was intended to provide a salute to those who defected from Nazi influence, but, thanks to its director, it’s too cinematic to be remembered solely on those terms. You can’t blame the guy: Hitchcock could’ve turned paint drying into a nail-biting exercise in nervous anticipation.

As if a propaganda film directed by Sir Hitch isn’t impressive enough, here comes Death Mills, helmed by the inimitable Billy Wilder (Double Indemnity, Sunset Boulevard). Wilder was hired by the United States Department of War to shoot a wake-up call for German audiences, one that laid all of the Nazi regimes evil ways out on front street. A short-form documentary, Death Mills shows stock footage of concentration camps, scored by classical music—it’s a haunting contrast. To test the importance of suitable tunes in film, watch Wilder’s heart-attack-serious film on mute with your favorite rapper’s album playing in the background. Not even Kid Cud’s dark jams would work.

Here’s one for all the guys out there who wish they could tell their girls to hit the kitchen without getting slapped. Back during World War II, women were expected to handle all of the mundane, yet necessary, work while men fought, a then-birthright driven home in this documentary. Eleanor Roosevelt narrates as gals are shown sewing parachutes, nursing, and manufacturing firearms. We wouldn’t advise showing this to your ball-and-chain in hopes of putting her to work, though; nowadays, a woman has the right to snuff you in the face for such chauvinism.

Before he wrote such adolescent gems as Horton Hears a Who! and The Cat in the Hat, Theodore “Dr. Seuss” Geisel penned this visual warning to all American soldiers heading into Germany. The gist of the picture was that the Krauts were totally untrustworthy, and that mingling with them in any ways was forbidden. Meaning, the sexy, and open-legged, German chicks that got off on boys in U.S. uniforms were strictly off limits. Another name for the film could’ve been How the Grinch Stole R&R.

Directed by propaganda veteran John Ford, Vietnam! Vietnam! took a foolish pro-war stance. When Ford started production, the U.S. government was all for the Vietnam conflict, giving the director access to footage of civilian massacres, scenes of battle and anti-war protests. He even got Charlton Heston to narrate the thing, and ended the film with commentary from celebrities like Ronald Reagan. But the nation’s feelings toward Vietnam changed radically while Ford was in the editing room. As a result, Vietnam! Vietnam! was shelved, though the film has since found its way out of cinematic oblivion. Talk about your all-time backfires.

The product of five years’ worth of production and three directors’ hard work, The Atomic Cafe is regarded as one of the documentary format’s most influential entries. A young Michael Moore, for example, was so impressed by the film that he sought advice from one of its directors, Kevin Rafferty. Unlike most of the films on our list, it’s actually quite funny, in a black comedy sort of way. Archival footage shows the dawn of nuclear warfare and how people coped with the paranoia back in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. It’s tough not to laugh at the old tutorial videos shown in schools (that The Atomic Cafe uses for humor); in case of an atomic strike, children were advised to simply duck. Why? Because, according to the brain surgeons behind those ridiculous videos, one is safer from nuclear hell if he or she is lower to the ground. Stupid is as stupid does.