Allen L. Woll

In the late 1930s, as the Nazi threat grew, Hollywood abandoned the pacifist stance it had adopted in the 1920s and instead produced several films that advocated, either directly or indirectly, U.S. entry into World War II. A new genre of films (now known simply as World War II films) began to feature promilitary and anti—Nazi themes. At first these films were met with controversy, because many Americans believed that America should stay out of what they viewed as a European conflict. However, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, these isolationist sentiments all but disappeared.

Allen L. Woll explains in this excerpt from his book The Hollywood Musical Goes to War that after Pearl Harbor the U.S. government embraced Hollywood as a valuable...