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To: Grizzled Bear
How did the American media and Hollywood see Hitler and the NAZIs prior to his attack on Russia?

The media was divided. While Henry Luce, publisher of the magazines Time and Life favored aiding the Allies, Chicago Tribune publisher Robert McCormick remained staunchly isolationist.

The Communist Party and its fronts were solidly anti-Nazi until the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939, then immediately switched to a militant stance in favor of isolationism and against intervention. When Hitler invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, they were once again militantly interventionist.

As an example, the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League was formed in 1937 as a grass-roots effort among those in the movie industry to combat Nazism and fascism. However, being Communist-dominated, the group changed its name to the Hollywood League for Democratic Action in 1939, following the Hitler-Stalin pact.

In the spring of 1941, the Almanac Singers, a left-wing folk-singing group whose members included Pete Seeger, recorded an anti-war album entitled "Songs for John Doe." A few weeks after its release, Hitler attacked the Soviet Union, and the album quickly disappeared from record stores and has since become a collector's item, although it is available on CD. Shortly afterwards, the group was recording pro-war songs such as "Reuben James."

8 posted on 09/13/2008 8:23:39 AM PDT by Fiji Hill
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To: Fiji Hill
USS Reuben James, torpedoed by German U-boat October 31, 1941. This was at least the 5th US ship attacked by U-boats, but though Roosevelt tried to use these incidents to arouse public opinion against Nazi Germany, both the public and Congress remained stubbornly unmoved.

They still wanted no part of "foreign wars."


9 posted on 09/13/2008 10:17:57 AM PDT by BroJoeK (A little historical perspective....)
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