Inside nazi Germany and PR war films in America

Abstract

This article analyses Jack Glenn and Louis de Rochemont's Inside Nazi Germany (1938), a screen magazine from The March of Time. The aim of this paper is to analyze Inside Nazi Germany as a public relations war effort of the 20th century. Arising from the informative and propagandistic strategy of late 1930s newsreels, this documentary was made using very appropriate narrative techniques to award it the dimension of objectivity and truthfulness characteristic of public relations messages, without losing sight of its educational and persuasive function. From this standpoint, Inside Nazi Germany constituted one of the clearest precedents of public relations war films in America.