Chapter

“Pro-British-American War Preachers”

November 2012

DOI:10.5149/9780807837467_bennett.7

In book: One World, Big Screen (pp.53-88)

Authors:

Senator Gerald P. Nye's radio address on August 1, 1941 served as an opening salvo in a counterattack against what an isolationist called “Pro-British-American War Preachers”. Nye argued that films were no longer instruments of entertainment and instead had become engines of propaganda “to rouse war fever in America”. This chapter focuses on how films became instrumental in causing the shift from isolationism toward internationalism. It explains how policymakers and filmmakers combined forces in a transnational publicity campaign to educate Americans about the world situation. Their goal was to replace isolationism and Anglophobia with an internationalist, pro-British ethic that supported American involvement in World War II.

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