Content note. Several frames below caricature Japanese people as U.S. wartime film units drew them, and others come from Japanese and Dutch collaborationist productions that attack named enemies. The Nazi film Der ewige Jude is described only through its case study, where its antisemitic narration is quoted as evidence. Everything is shown or described as issued, as evidence of what audiences were told. Showing a film is not endorsing it.
What were the main WW2 propaganda films, and who made them?
WW2 propaganda films were newsreels, orientation films, cartoons and features made or sponsored by governments and parties to shape what audiences believed or did. This page sorts the collection's 18 wartime film frames by country, from the United States and Japan to the Netherlands and Australia, with Britain and Germany covered through case studies.
What does the collection hold, counted by script?
The archive tags 22 objects with the medium "film-still". A script over the entry files in examples/entries/ finds 18 of them in the era "wwii", dated May 1938 to December 1945: 8 from the Empire of Japan, 7 from the United States, 2 from the Netherlands and 1 from Australia. Each is a single frame or title card, not a film. By audience: 7 aimed at the maker's own public, 6 at its own forces, 5 at foreign publics.
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The collection hosts no wartime film frame from Britain or Germany, and none from the Soviet Union, because no frame with a clear rights basis was found. Those countries appear below through case studies, which carry sources and disputes but no pictures. For the wider genre, including Cold War and later films, see propaganda films; for the news form specifically, see propaganda newsreels.
How did the United States use film in the war?
Three U.S. government bodies appear in the frames: the War Department, which made films for soldiers; the Office of War Information (OWI), which addressed the public; and the Army's First Motion Picture Unit, behind the cartoons.
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Know Your Enemy: Japan (about 63 minutes, 1945) was an Army orientation film credited to Frank Capra and Joris Ivens, both uncredited on screen. Its disclosure card says it was compiled from "authentic newsreel, official United Nations, and captured enemy film", with a few reenactments "under War Department Supervision".
The seal and the word "Official" lend the War Department's authority to the film that follows. The entry tags this transfer.
An animated sequence draws the Japanese military leadership as an overpowering menace through scale, darkness and glowing eyes (fear appeal). The entry notes that historians have pointed out the film quotes the so-called Tanaka Memorial, a document of doubtful authenticity.
A card near the end quotes a named Japanese Army Press Section colonel of August 1942 as saying Japan would fight "a hundred years war". The entry records that the original statement has not been traced; it is again tagged fear appeal. The U.S. government's film is public domain as a federal work, and the Internet Archive carries a Public Domain Mark. Nothing loads from archive.org until you press play.
The Army's Why We Fight series was built by Capra's unit mostly from other people's footage. Army researchers found that some opinion changes from The Battle of Britain were larger nine weeks after viewing than after five days, which they called the sleeper effect.
The entry tags the effect the studies measured, not a technique visible on the frame. Sources and later research that found the effect conditional: Why We Fight.
The OWI addressed civilians. Japanese Relocation (about nine minutes, 1943) explained the removal of people of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast. It was narrated by Milton S. Eisenhower, the War Relocation Authority's first director.
The card says it "became necessary to transfer several thousand Japanese residents from the Pacific Coast to points in the American Interior". The entry tags "transfer" and "relocation" as euphemism for removal and confinement. About 120,000 people were removed, most of them U.S. citizens, and a 1983 federal commission later found the policy was not justified by military necessity. Rights: U.S. federal work.
The agency: OWI domestic branch; its posters: OWI posters.
The Army's Private Snafu cartoons were orientation shorts begun in 1943, with scripts mostly by Theodor Geisel and animation by Warner Bros. The Internet Archive collection warns that the shorts "depict some of the ethnic and racial prejudices that were commonplace in American society at their times". Both frames below come from shorts released after Japan's surrender.
No Buddy Atoll (8 October 1945), directed by Chuck Jones, draws a naval officer with a flat face and an ape-like jaw and brow. The entry tags it name-calling by image.
Operation Snafu (22 December 1945), directed by Friz Freleng, draws a soldier with round glasses, a toothbrush moustache and large protruding teeth. It is tagged the same way. Print equivalents: anti-Japanese posters.
What did Japan's films and newsreels say, at home and in the occupied territories?
Japan supplies the largest group: 8 frames, produced between 1938 and 1945. Six are newsreel frames or cards, most from Nippon Eigasha, the single newsreel company formed in 1941 from earlier companies; one is a short film made for the Java military administration; one is a naval animated feature. After the surrender in August 1945, Dutch authorities seized the films made for occupied Java and shipped them to the Netherlands. The Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision released them in 2020, noting that Japanese copyright had expired and warning that they may reflect "erroneous, biased or politically extreme ideas". See also Imperial Japan's propaganda at home and the Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Content note: Frame from a Japanese military propaganda film made in occupied Java; the archive warns the films may reflect erroneous, biased or politically extreme ideas. This object is shown as it was published. Why 
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Issue 31 of Chabar Dai Toa (19 February 1942) opens with a Muslim formula of thanks, then says Asia has been given back to the Asian peoples and calls on viewers to work for "Persatoean Bersama". No terms are given. The entry tags glittering generalities and transfer; the audience is the mainly Muslim public of Java. The Sound and Vision release carries a Public Domain Mark.
A 1943 card announces that Java's inhabitants may "take part in the government of the country". The film goes on to show Prime Minister Hideki Tojo and the opening of the Central Advisory Council, which the catalogue calls "advisory"; the card names no powers (glittering generalities).
A newsreel on the conquest of South-East Asia ends a run of advance cards on the surrender scene at Singapore, dated in the Japanese imperial calendar (card-stacking: a chosen sequence of advances ending on the surrender).
An English-language Daitoa News card lists "American War Losses" as round totals with no source, date or Japanese figure. For comparison, the entry cites U.S. Navy figures for 7 December 1941 that differ from the card; the card does not say what period it covers. It is tagged card-stacking.
In a film of about 1944, a visitor and a gallery attendant discuss the American fleet. The Dutch archive's catalogue calls the scene staged, so the message arrives from ordinary local speakers rather than an officer (plain folks).
A Nippon Eigasha reel carries the New Year address of Wang Jingwei, head of the Japanese-backed Nanjing government, who is subtitled as saying it is time to build "together with our allied Japan" (testimonial). The Xuzhou card of May 1938 below, from a captured print, announces the Emperor's commendation of the army as the news item itself; it is also tagged testimonial.
The last Japanese frame is not a newsreel. Momotarō: Umi no Shinpei, first screened on 12 April 1945, is generally called Japan's first feature-length animated film. The Imperial Japanese Navy Ministry commissioned it and Shochiku produced it under director Mitsuyo Seo.
The monkey and dog of the folk tale wear sailor collars and anchor badges (transfer: the tale's familiarity is attached to the navy).
How did Australia use newsreels?
Kokoda Front Line! (1942) was made by Cinesound Productions, directed by Ken G. Hall, for the Commonwealth Department of Information's Australian News and Information Bureau, from footage shot in Papua and New Guinea by Damien Parer. It shared the 1943 Academy Award for documentary short with Prelude to War, The Battle of Midway and the Soviet Moscow Strikes Back (Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, as given in the Why We Fight case study).
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Before Parer speaks to the audience, a card vouches for him as "an experienced and reliable observer". The entry tags this testimonial: the card sets up a trusted eyewitness before any footage is shown. The rights note: public domain in Australia, term expired before 1996.
What did Dutch film units say under occupation?
Two frames come from the Filmdienst of the NSB, the Dutch National Socialist Movement, which collaborated with the German occupation. The film service was set up in 1941, and its 171 films were confiscated after the war and released as public domain in May 2018.
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The end card reads "With Germany for a free Netherlands". The holding institution's shot log lists images arranged as a case against Britain and the pre-war order. The entry tags glittering generalities and card-stacking.
Mussert spreekt ("Mussert speaks") retells the movement's founding with the Dutch flag raised and the Wilhelmus sung before "the Leader", so the leader is presented through national symbols (transfer).
What about Britain and Germany?
The collection holds no frame from either, so the facts come from case studies.
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Britain. The Ministry of Information's Films Division put one film of about five minutes into every cinema programme each week from summer 1940 and ran 16mm vans for village halls and factories. In October 1940 it released London Can Take It!, a ten-minute Blitz film narrated by the American correspondent Quentin Reynolds, who says "I am a neutral reporter". Warner Bros. distributed it in the United States. The case study notes Reynolds was a real eyewitness speaking under his own name and that nothing was forged, but that the British government origin was not foregrounded. It also records that how many viewers knew is not shown: Britain's Ministry of Information films.
Germany. The Reich propaganda ministry licensed film workers and, from June 1940, a single Deutsche Wochenschau was the only newsreel shown in Germany. Triumph des Willens (1935) was made with the cooperation of the rally it filmed; Der ewige Jude (1940) cut footage shot in occupied Poland against shots of rats and was rated an educational film. A Security Service report of January 1941 said that in several cities often only the politically more active part of the population attended. Detail and sources: the Nazi film case study and the Reich propaganda ministry.
Which techniques recur across the 18 frames?
The same script tallies the technique tags. Twenty tags fall on 18 entries, because two entries carry two tags each: transfer 4, testimonial 3, glittering generalities 3, card-stacking 3, fear appeal 2, name-calling 2, and one each for euphemism, plain folks and the sleeper effect.
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The pattern follows the card and the audience, not the country. Both Japanese and U.S. entries carry authority and virtue words: a seal on an Army title, an imperial commendation on a newsreel card. Both carry a tally or a euphemism where the second column or the plain word is missing. What differs is the context the entries record: the U.S. frames were made for American soldiers and citizens; the Japanese frames for Japanese viewers and for the occupied public of Java; the NSB films were issued under a German occupation. The tags do not measure how many people saw a film, believed it or acted on it. None of the entries records audience size or effect, apart from the sleeper-effect studies.
How to read a wartime film frame
- Read the card first. Title cards name an authority, a virtue or a euphemism before any image plays.
- Ask who the audience was. Soldiers, citizens and an occupied public are different audiences; the entries record which.
- Look for the missing column. A loss tally with no second figure is a selection.
Browse the wartime film frames
The grid below shows the objects counted on this page. Each opens an object page with the holding institution, the original record, the on-screen text and its translation, and the rights basis. For related pages, see propaganda films, propaganda radio, WW2 propaganda posters, propaganda posters and psychological operations.
Sources and further reading
Sources and rights
Frames come from the Internet Archive, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Beelden), the U.S.
Frames come from the Internet Archive, the Netherlands Institute for Sound and Vision (Open Beelden), the U.S. National Archives and Wikimedia Commons. Click-to-load players use the Internet Archive and record each film's rights: Know Your Enemy: Japan, U.S. federal work with a Public Domain Mark; Japanese Relocation, U.S. federal work (OWI film); Chabar Dai Toa no. 31, Public Domain Mark from Sound and Vision; Kokoda Front Line!, public domain in Australia. Transcriptions on object pages are verbatim; translations are marked where not checked by a fluent reader.
