Why We Fight: The Battle of Russia
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Channel: US National Archives
Views: 243,920
Rating: 4.8604898 out of 5
Keywords: US National Archives, NARA
Id: WrKDBFJoo2w
Channel Id: undefined
Length: 82min 56sec (4976 seconds)
Published: Tue Mar 17 2015
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Frank Capra got some shit for this after the war when the Anti-Communist movement started heating up. He and Walter Huston survived the fallout, but incidentally I find it an interesting tidbit of trivia.
Wanted to check it out briefly, ended up watching all two hours in one sitting. Fascinating stuff.
Having a US propaganda film using footage from Alexander Nevsky while singing the praises of the USSR is just trippy. But it was also very well done and very effective. I got a little misty in the eyes when they were showing the frozen corpses.
In terms of propaganda craftsmanship, it's got to be a 10/10. They formulated a smooth and cohesive narrative of the lead-up to Operation Barbarossa while managing to completely ignore the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact.
My favourite detail is around 38:25, when they call the Patriarch of Moscow an "Archbishop", presumably to appeal to an American audience that would contain a lot of Catholics and few Orthodox Christians. That is some serious attention to detail.
Really nice film. I believe Disney did a lot of the animation for this. All of Frank Capra's films are worth a watch, the "know your ally" series is quite intriguing too.
For more on the Eastern Front -
From "The World at War" -
Episode 5: "Barbarossa (June – December 1941)"
Episode 9: "Stalingrad (June 1942 – February 1943)"
Episode 11: "Red Star: The Soviet Union (1941–1943)"
BBC - 1941, Stalin and the Man of Steel
Russia's War: Blood Upon the Snow (1997)
War of the Century: When Hitler fought Stalin (1999)
Soviet Storm: World War II in the East