EPISODE 01: The 1930s: The Strongmen
Synposis: The first time Heinrich Hoffman tries to take a photograph of Adolf Hitler he is beaten to a pulp and his camera smashed. And then the Nazis change their minds, and hire Hoffman as Hitler's official photographer. It is the beginning of a propaganda campaign carefully orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels that is built around the image of the "Führer”. A film called Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl shows the whole world how powerful Hitler has become. It is the most sophisticated piece of demagoguery anyone has ever seen in any medium. Throughout the 1930s Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, use propaganda to terrifying effect as they stoke German pride and spread hatred toward the Jews and other minorities.
The Strongmen is the story of Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin and Emperor Hirohito of Japan. Each employed propaganda in their own way to gain absolute control over their citizens. In Italy, the face of fascism is that of Benito Mussolini, a colourful performer, and a brutal thug who counts Hitler as his friend and ally. In Russia, Joseph Stalin's insistence on total devotion would range from the horrific to the tragic-comic. And in Japan, Emperor Hirohito is seen as a demi-God, able to protect his people from all outside threats.
The Spanish Civil War in 1936 is effectively a dress rehearsal for the real war that would soon erupt between the Axis and Allied powers, and Communist and Fascist ideologies. In the Pacific, Japan launches a brutal attack on Nanking, foreshadowing the barbarity that would soon engulf Europe.
MORE READING:
Propaganda & War
The Study of Prapaganda and War
Germany
Nazi Propaganda: 1933-1945
Third Reich in Ruins
Federal Archives: German History
Kristallnacht
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Italy
The Rise of Benito Mussolini
Nanking 1937
The Second Historical Archives of China
EPISODE 02: 1939/1940: Selling War
Synopsis: When Adolf Hitler begins his campaign of conquest in 1939, most Germans actually don't want war. But Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels use every tool of propaganda to change their minds. German pride is invoked to justify the invasion of Poland and France -among other countries. Dark messages of hatred are used to persuade Germans that minorities should be stripped of their rights, deported or sent to “detention” camps. It is the beginning of the Nazi campaign of genocide. Hitler's despotism would have its admirers in France and even in far-away Japan. But in 1940 Hitler and Goebbels would also discover just how far they can push the German people before some begin to ask questions.
MORE READING:
Propaganda & War
The Emanuel Ringelblum Historical Institute
History of the League of German Maidens
Museum on Radio History and Visual Arts, Gliwice Poland
Federal Archives: German History
Us Holocaust Memorial Museum - "Euthanasia program"
Charlie Chaplin archives
General information about the Nazi era
EPISODE 03: 1941: Meet the Enemy
Synopsis: In 1941, Joseph Stalin thought he could count on his alliance with Germany to protect his Russia from the fires of war that are sweeping Europe. And then Adolf Hitler changes his mind and invades, sweeping through Russia with brutal efficiency. How would Communist dictator Joseph Stalin persuade his people to rise up when the Germans appear unbeatable? With a skillful appeal to Russian nationalism, Stalin convinces millions to take up arms. Among them a young woman named Lyudmilla Pavlichenko. Her deadly accuracy as a sniper would make her a useful tool of propaganda, inspiring others to fight and survive.
In Canada another young woman named Veronica Foster does her part for Allied morale: she becomes known as Ronnie the Bren Gun Girl, a sexy poster girl who inspired women to enter the workforce.
1941 brings another shock. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor changes everything about the war. The Allies now have the mighty Americans on their side. For their part, the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese now have a formidable enemy to contend with. But for now the Japanese people continue to believe Emperor Hirohito when he tells them Japan is invincible.
EPISODE 04: 1942- 1943: Truth and Total War
Synopsis: Germany and Japan have mastery of the seas and control of the major theatres of war. But by 1943, the tide is changing and both countries will have to change their messaging accordingly to reflect a new emerging reality.
Truth and Total War tells the story of how “total war” proves a major turning point for all combatants and how the stories propagandists on all sides told tell their populations have to be accordingly adjusted.
For the British and Canadians, an attempt to create some good news for the Allies by raiding the French seaside town of Dieppe, turns into a terrible failure. What is supposed to be a propaganda coup for the Allies turns into a victory for Joseph Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine. They parade captured Canadians on German newsreels. Meanwhile the Canadian high command is obliged to confirm that their losses are greater than they had initially admitted.
In Nazi-occupied France a brutal roundup of Jewish families sends a shiver through French society. Among them 10-year-old Marie-Jelène will become a symbol of the horrors of anti-Semitism. How far will the French go in tolerating Nazi atrocities?
On the Russian front, young German soldiers realize with growing horror that they may never see Germany again: their attack on Stalingrad has failed and for the first time in the war,the Germany Army is forced to surrender. For German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels it's time for a new propaganda campaign: Germany is no longer winning and it is henceforth the duty of every German to fight to the death.
MORE READING:
Dieppe
CBC Digital Archives: Dieppe
Through a Lens:
Dieppe in Photographs and Film
Democracy at War
Veteran Affairs Canada: Dieppe
Selling Disaster: How the Canadian Public was Informed of Dieppe
CBC Digital Archives: The Contentious Legacy of Dieppe
Hollywood
Warners' War: Politics, Pop Culture & Propaganda in Wartime Hollywood
Vélodrome d’hiver de Paris
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad
Propaganda
Nazi Propaganda
EPISODE 05: 1944/1945 Hiding the Horrors
With the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the Allies finally establish a beachhead in France and begin to roll back the Nazi forces. In order not to dampen morale, the Allied High Command hides the true human cost of taking Normandy, both for the allied soldiers and for the unfortunate citizens of Northern France who will suffer enormous casualties as the Germans retreat and the Allies advance. Canada”s master of propaganda, John Grierson, explains why “withholding the truth” is not the same as spreading lies – such as German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has done throughout the war.
As the war grinds on, more and more questions are being posed about what is happening to the Jews of Europe. There are rumours of mass extermination, but so far the Nazis have kept the truth about the ultimate fate of Jewish minorities and others hidden. Finally Germany invite members of the International Committee of the Red Cross to tour a detention camp near Prague called Theresienstadt. Conditions there don't seem so bad to the visiting observers. But Theresienstadt is a total lie and the International Committee of the Red Cross falls for it. Theresienstadt will be remembered as just one of many horrendous lies concocted by the German propaganda machine.
Also in 1945, the Japanese are growing increasingly anxious about the expected showdown with the Americans. The two countries have been at war since December 1941, but so far there has been no invasion of Japan by U.S. forces. The firebombing of Tokyo in 1944 will shock the Japanese, who have been told by their Emperor that they are invincible. Koyo Ishikawa, a Japanese police photographer, will record the terrible events of that night in which 100,000 will die. But he discovers no one wants to see the pictures he has taken. The Emperor doesn't want to acknowledge loss and the Americans don't want the true brutality of the firebombing seen by outsiders. In the end, Ishikawa will choose to bury the pictures he has taken, rather than hand them over to authorities.
MORE READING:
John Grierson and the NFB
John Grierson and the National Film Board: The Politics of Wartime Propaganda. University of Toronto Press, 1984 or his most recent biography for young readers, John Grierson: Trailblazer of Documentary Film, XYZ Publishing, 2005. Author: Gary Evans
In the National Interest: A Chronicle of the National Film Board of Canada
from 1949 to 1989, Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991.(hardcover
and paperback) Second printing, 2002 Author: Gary Evans
Professor Jo Fox at the University of Durham is currently writing a new biography of John Grierson.
The John Grierson Archive
Propaganda: The Battle for Hearts and Minds
D-Day and the Allied Invasion of Normandy
D-Day: The allied invasion of Normandy
The Canadian War Museum
The D-Day Museum
Theresienstadt and the Holocaust
Terezin Memorial
Prisoner of Paradise
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
ICRC in WW II: the Holocaust
The Air Raid on Tokoyo
The Center of the Tokyo Raid and War Damages
United States Strategic Bombing Survey
Summary Report
The Brady family
Hana's Story
EPISODE 06: 1945 Changing the Story
By 1945, propaganda machines that had geared populations for war now have to prepare them for peace. With the end of the war, and the beginning of the Cold War, enemies would become partners and allies would become foes.
The Allies chase the Nazis out of France and close in from all sides on Berlin. The “free French” retake their beloved city of Paris under the leadership of Charles De Gaulle. Nazi collaborators in France are outed and publicly humiliated. Meanwhile American sleuths go searching for “evidence” to convict Germans – former propagandists are hoisted on the very images they created. The Allies will now begin a process of “de-Nazification”, trying to persuade Germans that what they have believed for years under Hitler is all lies.
Meanwhile as much of the West celebrates the “end of war” it is far from over in the Pacific. World War Two will finally end with the dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the admission by Emperor Hirohito that Japan was surrendering for the first time in 2,600 years.
