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17 Days: The Story of Newspaper History In The Making (1945)How a New York City newspaper delivery drivers strike in 1945 failed to divert readers interest in their favorite newspapers. Shows the newspapers of the day and huge lines of people outside newspaper offices waiting to purchase updated editions. | Big News of 1941 (1941)This newsreel compilation details the most significant news stories of the previous year. | America's Call to Arms (1941)This Castle Film newsreel created at the outset of WWII shows the changes in United States factories and personnel as the war effort ramped up. Most of the footage shown is from the pre-war period. America is shown as the "Arsenal of Democracy" producing men and materials for the war. Basic training and testing of military equipment is shown, along with construction of jeeps, tanks, ships, guns, planes, PT boats and other war material. | Battle of Russia (1944)Documentary revealing the nature and process of the fight between the Soviet Union and Germany in the Second World War. Part 5 of the Why We Fight series. |
Battle of China (1944)The Battle of China (1944) was the sixth film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series. It follows an introduction to Chinese culture and history with the modern history of China and the founding of the Republic of China by Sun Yat-sen, leading on to the Japanese invasion. The invasion of China is explained in terms of the four-step plan for Japanese conquest, mentioned in the Tanaka Memorial. | Battle of Britain (1943)The Battle of Britain was the fourth of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series of seven propaganda films, which made the case for fighting and winning the Second World War. It was released in 1943 and concentrated on the German bombardment of the United Kingdom in anticipation of Operation Sea Lion, the planned Nazi invasion of Great Britain. | Behind Your Radio Dial (1948)Behind the scenes tour of NBC's radio and television broadcasting facilities at Rockefeller Center, New York City. | Coney Island (1940)Newsreel footage of Coney Island, one of the most popular entertainment sites in the early 20th century. |
Conquer by the Clock (1942)Conquer by the Clock was a short dramatic propaganda film produced by the RKO Pathé in 1942 to encourage wartime industrial production. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Feature in 1943. | A Challenge to Democracy (1944)Government-produced film attempting to defend the massive internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps during World War II. | Daffy the Commando (1943)Commando Daffy Duck goes behind enemy lines and causes havoc for a Nazi German officer and his troops. | Big Picture: D Day (1944)This episode of The Big Picture, from the early 1950s, shows the preparation for the Normandy invasion on D Day |
Big Picture: D Day 2 (1944)This later episode of The Big Picture, produced in the early 1960s, details the days before the D Day invasion. | D Day Minus One (1944)Shows paratroops, gliders and troop carriers landing in France behind the German lines a day prior to the main invasion, helping to prepare the way for the invasion of Normandy. | D Day (1944)A United newsreel reporting on the Normandy invasion on D Day, 6 June 1944. | Desert Victory (1942)The Allied campaign to drive Germany and Italy from North Africa is analyzed, with the major portion of the film examining the battles at El Alamein, including a re-enactment. |
Dial Comes to Town (1940)Gramps does not like much. He especially does not fancy the idea of the new dial phones that are soon to replace the old phones in town. Indignant he calls up his friend and we see the way phones worked before the dial telephone replaced them. Gramps' questioning of the new phones falls along the lines of, 'why change something that is not broken?' He learns the answer to this question, and many more, when forced to a town meeting held to explain how to use the new dial phones and what they mean for the community. | Divide and Conquer (1943)Divide and Conquer (1943) is the third film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, dealing with the Nazi conquest of Western Europe in 1940. The film begins immediately after the fall of Poland. Of the two major Western Allies of 1940, the United Kingdom is first to be mentioned. The role of the Royal Navy in blockading Germany is highlighted, in that it means that Germany must overcome British resistance in order to clear the way for its world conquest. | Ducktators (1942)The Ducktators is a Looney Tunes black and white cartoon that was produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions and was released in 1942 by Warner Brothers. Directed by Norman McCabe, the cartoon satirizes various events of World War II. | DZ Normandy (1944)Beginning with the lessons learned in the Battle for Sicily, this film covers the planning for Normandy and the preparation of troop carrier forces against what the Nazis believed to be an impregnable barrier. |
Easy Does It (1940)Measuring the effort involved in women's work around the home. | Enemy Strikes (1945)The Enemy Strikes! is a short propaganda film made in 1945 about the Battle of the Bulge. Its main emphasis is that, despite recent Allied victories, the Axis could still launch a counter-attack and that this was no time to get complacent. | Fashion Horizons (1940)Southwestern U.S. travelogue flies around in modern 1930s airplanes, stopping off at Albuquerque and an Arizona dude ranch, all the time focusing on fashions worn by its cargo of aspiring Paramount starlets. Excellent pre-World War II fashion footage in Kodachrome, plus documentation of affluent tourist destinations. | The March of Time: The French Campaign 1944 (1944)The episode follows the French campaign in 1944 from the beaches in Normandy to the libaration of Paris. |
Hiroshima Nagasaki (1945)This documentary is a compilation of silent black-and-white film footage shot by the Japanese in Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after the atomic bomb blasts in early August 1945. | A Rural Community: Holtville Alabama (1945)This film describes life in a small rural town in Alabama with an emphasis on the progressive programs utilized in the local school to increase opportunity for Holtsville youth. | The House I Live In (1945)Advocacy film commissioned by the civil rights organization to discourage ethnic and racial prejudice at the end of World War II. Frank Sinatra, apparently playing himself, takes a "smoke" break from a recording session. He sees more than 10 boys chasing a Jewish boy and intervenes, first with dialogue; then with a little speech. His main points are that we are "all" Americans and that one American's blood is as good as another, and all our religions are equally to be respected. | It's Everybody's War (1942)This is a government film, narrated by Henry Fonda, that was produced to help mobilize and motivate Americans to participate in the war effort. |
Japanese Relocation (1942)Japanese Relocation is a 1942 short film produced by the U.S. Office of War Information and distributed by the War Activities Committee of the Motion Picture Industry. It is a propaganda film, justifying and explaining Japanese American internment on the West Coast during World War II. | Japan Surrender (1945)This is a newsreel reporting on the surrender of Japan in August 1945. | Japan Surrender 2 (1945)Another newsreel reporting the Japanese surrender. This one includes a brief summary of the war. | Know Your Enemy -- Japan (1945)A comprehensive look at the war in the Pacific during World War II. Shot as a propaganda film by acclaimed Hollywood director Frank Capra |
London Can Take It! (1940)London Can Take It! is a short British propaganda film from 1940, which shows the effects of eighteen hours of the German blitz on London and its people. | Battle of Midway (1942)The Battle of Midway is a 1942 American short documentary film directed by John Ford. It is a montage of color footage of the Battle of Midway with voice overs of various narrators, including Johnny Governali, Donald Crisp, Henry Fonda, and Jane Darwell. | My Japan (1945)My Japan is a 1945 American anti-Japanese propaganda short film produced to spur sale of American war bonds. The film takes the form of a mock travelogue of Japan, presented by an impersonated Japanese narrator. | Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps (1945)Nazi Concentration Camps, also known as Nazi Concentration and Prison Camps is a 1945 American film that documents the liberation of Nazi concentration camps by Allied forces during World War II. It was produced by the United States from footage captured by military photographers serving in the Allied armies as they advanced into Nazi Germany. The film was presented as evidence of Nazi war crimes in the Nuremberg trials in 1945 and the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961. |
Nazis Strike (1943)The Nazis Strike was the second film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series. It introduces Germany as a nation whose aggressive ambitions began in 1863 with Otto von Bismarck and with the Nazis as their latest incarnation. | News Parade Pearl Harbor (1942)Newsreel coverage of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the fire that gutted the SS Normandie while it was being converted to a troopship in 1942. | Our Enemy The Japanese (1943)Our Enemy The Japanese was a 1943 short film produced by the US Navy and Office of War Information to provide background knowledge about the wartime foe. | Prelude to War (1942)Prelude to War was the first film of Frank Capra's Why We Fight propaganda film series, commissioned by the Office of War Information (OWI) and George C. Marshall. It was made to convince American troops of the necessity of combating the Axis Powers during World War II. The film was based on the idea that those in the service would be more willing and able fighters if they knew the background and reason for their participation in the war. It was later released to the general American public as a rallying cry for support of the war. |
Television: An RCA Presentation (1939)Early promotional film introducing TV to the American public, probably coordinated with the rollout of scheduled broadcasting at the 1939 New York World's Fair. Shows scenes of television production at the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) studios at Rockefeller Center, New York City, using equipment manufactured by NBC's corporate parent RCA. | Don't Be A Sucker (1943)Propaganda short film depicting the rise of Nazism in Germany and how political propaganda is similarly used in the United States to recruit Nazi sympathizers from the ranks of American racists. | Telephone and Telegraph (1946)Shows the similarity of jobs in the telephone industry with that of telegraph work. Describes the many opportunities in these vocations and tells of the skills required to qualify. | Tomorrow Television (1945)A U.S. Army production that speculates about the future of television after World War II. |
Tuesday in November (1945)Tuesday in November was a propaganda short about the 1944 United States presidential election produced by the Office of War information for overseas distribution. It is meant to explain how the democratic process in America works. | Valley Town (1940)This is the story of how machines made a "boom" town with factories running at top speed, stores crowded with shoppers, money flowing freely - and of how more machines broke it. It considers the problem of capable men thrown out of good jobs because of high-speed machinery. It gives an idea of what it does to the spirit of a man and of the effect on a family. | Operation Vittles (1948)Operation Vittles is a 1948 American short documentary film about the Berlin Airlift. It was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short. | August 14: VJ Day (1945)This newsreel covers the announcement of Japan's surrender and the subsequent reaction and celebration in the US and across the world. |
War Comes to America (1945)Part VII of the Why We Fight series of wartime documentaries. This entry attempts to describe the factors leading up to America's entry into the Second World War. | Women on the Warpath (1943)Women on the Warpath (produced by Ford Motor Company, 1943) shows the contributions of women at Ford's Willow Run B-24 bomber plant, touted as the "world's largest plant producing a single item." | World at War (1942)The World at War is a 1942 documentary film produced by the Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures. One of the earliest long length films made by the United States government during the war, it attempted to explain the large picture of why the United States was at war, and the various causes and circumstances which brought the war into being. |