Ralph Willett

In the following essay American Studies professor Ralph Willett explores how World War II was portrayed in popular films throughout the 1940s. For the most part these films applaud the war effort while also showing a minimal amount of the actual violence the war entailed. The Nazis are routinely ridiculed, stereotyped, and demonized in films made during the war, and in films released after the bombing of Pearl Harbor the Japanese are often portrayed as subhuman. In seeming contradiction to the racist way in which the enemy is depicted, U.S. combat units in World War II films are often multiracial, in accordance with the Office of War Information's (OWI) recommendation that Hollywood stress America's national unity.

IT WAS NOT ONLY DURING THE ACTUAL WAR years that the American...