This is War! Network Radio and World War II Propaganda in America

Abstract

War-boosting radio programs during the Second World War had an effective propaganda model in the early 1942 series "This is War!" Proposed by the federal Office of Facts and Figures and sponsored by all four networks, it was the first dramatic and didactic series on America's war effort, and it wove dry statistics on military production and conscription into moving tales of global war and national mobilization. By using conventional discourse about gender, pressing mildly for racial tolerance, and casting the United States as the bulwark o f an international community o f liberal nations, "This is War!" employed rhetoric subsequently used in other wartime radio, film, and print media campaigns.