Twenty-one years later, how many Americans still don’t know our enemy?
When the U.S. entered World War II, the director Frank Capra (It’s a Wonderful Life) left Hollywood and, at the age of 44, enlisted in the Army, where General George C. Marshall put him to work making pictures for the war effort. The films, several of which were released under the umbrella title Why We Fight, sought to explain why America was at war with Germany and Japan. They outlined the ideologies of Nazism and Shintoism, examined both enemies’ militarism, fanatical obedience, master-race mentality, and lust for conquest, and noted the reverence with which Hitler was held in Germany and Hirohito in Japan.
