War Comes to America (1945)

Directors:

Frank Capra
Anatole Litvak

Writers:

Julius J. Epstein (writer)
Philip G. Epstein (writer)

Release Date:

14 June 1945 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | War

Plot:

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.

Plot Keywords:

Propaganda | Territory Name In Title | Claim In Title | WWII | Country Name In Title

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Dean Acheson	...	Himself (archive footage)
General Bergeret	...	Himself (archive footage)
A.A. Berle	...	Himself (archive footage)
Arno Breker	...	Himself (archive footage)
Neville Chamberlain	...	Himself (archive footage)
Winston Churchill	...	Himself (archive footage)
Galeazzo Ciano	...	Himself (archive footage) (as Galleazzo Ciano)
Édouard Daladier	...	Himself (archive footage)
Charles Edison	...	Himself (archive footage)
Francisco Franco	...	Himself (archive footage)
Josef Goebbels	...	Himself (archive footage)
Hermann Göring	...	Himself (archive footage)
Rudolf Hess	...	Himself (archive footage)
Heinrich Himmler	...	Himself (archive footage)
Hirohito	...	Himself (archive footage)
Adolf Hitler	...	Himself (archive footage)
Cordell Hull	...	Himself (archive footage)
Charles Huntziger	...	Himself (archive footage)
Walter Huston	...	Narrator (voice)
Hiram Johnson	...	Himself (archive footage)
Wilhelm Keitel	...	Himself (archive footage)
Fritz Kuhn	...	Himself (American Nazi leader, watches as heckler beaten) (archive footage)
Saburo Kurusu	...	Himself (archive footage)
Admiral Le Luc	...	Himself (archive footage)
Charles A. Lindbergh	...	Himself (archive footage)
Viktor Lutze	...	Himself (archive footage)
Andrew J. May	...	Himself (archive footage)
Edward R. Murrow	...	Himself (archive footage)
Benito Mussolini	...	Himself (archive footage)
Léon Noël	...	Himself (archive footage)
Lloyd Nolan	...	Narrator (voice)
Kichisaburo Nomura	...	Himself (archive footage)
Gerald P. Nye	...	Himself (archive footage)
Erich Raeder	...	Himself (archive footage)
Franklin Delano Roosevelt	...	Himself (archive footage)
Haile Selassie	...	Himself (archive footage)
Albert Speer	...	Himself (archive footage)
Henry L. Stimson	...	Himself (archive footage)
Elbert D. Thomas	...	Himself (archive footage)
Hideki Tojo	...	Himself (archive footage)
Paul von Hindenburg	...	Himself (archive footage)
Joachim von Ribbentrop	...	Himself (archive footage)
Wendell Willkie	...	Himself (archive footage)

Also Known As:

Why We Fight, 7 (USA) (series title)

Runtime:

70 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Certification:

Australia:PG

Company:

U.S. Army Pictorial Services

Trivia:

The shot of an all-black church congregation is taken from The Negro Soldier (1944).

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: Twice there appears an animated clip showing about a dozen fully-equipped US troops in gray silhouette marching briskly left to right over a background graphic; however, a close look shows the "soldiers" actually wearing narrow-brimmed office-worker-style civilian hats rather than army helmets.

Movie Connections:

Featured in The Cutting Edge: The Magic of Movie Editing (2004)

Soundtrack:

My Old Kentucky Home, Good-Night

War Comes to America is excellent conclusion to Frank Capra's Why We Fight series

Today is November 10. That's Veteran's Day for this year since the usual 11th fell on a Saturday. It's for this occasion that I chose to watch the last of Frank Capra's Why We Fight series: War Comes to America. Walter Huston serves as the elder statesman narrator giving the history of our country from Plymoth Rock to Pearl Harbor. He tells how people of most nationalities have helped to make our country great and how we suffered and triumphed. Through a combination of news footage and recreations we also see what actions from Germany and Japan led us to battle with them. There's also some wonderful use of songs like Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue, Kern and Hammerstein's The Last Time I Saw Paris (with vocals that sound like Judy Garland), and Berlin's This is the Army. So to anyone who wants to watch what it was like in the mid-20th century, I highly recommend War Comes to America. Oh, and if you happen to meet a veteran, by all means thank him or her!