ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the war’s indirect effects on the home front for which industrial productivity and military manpower requirements are responsible. The specific content of the seven completed films can be discussed here, but the series justified American participation as unavoidable. Ellul struggles to relieve propaganda of its negative or pejorative connotations, for he feels that propaganda is necessary to modern decision-making, that in practice it can be separated from information, education, or public relations, and that with more education we become even more susceptible to the allure of propaganda. The recall of General Joseph Stillwell made it public knowledge that something was seriously wrong with a film that ignored the existence of the Chinese Communists and pretended that a united China was throwing out the Japanese invader. Military enthusiasm for social science research and media technology relates to the concept of Social Engineering, an outgrowth of behavioural psychology arguing that human behaviour can be manipulated towards socially desirable goals.
