Customer Reviews

Battle of China (1943)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The first five volumes in Frank Capra's celebrated "Why We Fight" series focused on Hitler's Nazis overrunning Europe in the first half of World War II. "The Battle of China: The Assault on the Great Wall" shifts the focus to the Chinese defense against Japanese aggression. Like the previous chapter, "The Battle of Russia," an important part of the intent here is to establish a sense of identification between the American people with a foreign ally, although Capra does not have to gloss over the political ideology of the Chinese the same way he did with the Communist Soviets.

This explains why this chapter provides a brief history of China and its people and then details why the Japanese wanted to conquer the country, namely getting the raw materials and slave labor necessary for taking over all of Asia. The War in the Pacific covered, showing the valiant effort by the Chinese to stop the Japanese. Also featured are General Claire Lee Chennault's famous Flying Tigers, the American Volunteer Group who had joined the battle to defend China. This 67-minute black & white 1944 documentary is narrated by writer Anthony Veiller (Walter Houston just does the voice of Abraham Lincoln this time) and Anatole Litvak served as an uncredited co-director. In the next volume, "War Comes to America," the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor brings the United States into the war.

The "Why We Fight" series is the supreme example of propaganda put out by the U.S. government during World War II. Capra, a major in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, was commissioned to make a series of short documentaries that would explain the policy of the U.S. government to the troops that were being hastily assembled, trained, and sent overseas to fight. But the "Why We Fight" series proved so effective it was eventually shown in theaters to the American public. In 2000 the "Why We Fight" series was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry and remains a prime source of archival footage for the period.

This video explain why Japan wanted to conquer China and how China united in their war against Japan. And it shows the horrors of the war. I thought it was a very good video.