The depiction of the Great Patriotic War on American television during the Second Red Scare

Abstract

This article analyzes the portrayal of the Eastern Front of World War II on early American television, specifically the documentary anthology series The Twentieth Century. It explores how most early portrayals of World War II on television excised or minimized the Eastern Front in response to the Second Red Scare. Although The Twentieth Century was one of the first to display the Eastern Front in detail, its portrayal paralleled Cold War propaganda of the Soviet Union and its people. This work analyzes three episodes of the series devoted to the Soviet Union’s role in the war and notes how each utilized certain traits of U.S. anti-communist propaganda. Other matters considered are the mediators in the crafting the display of the war and the way the history was presented to satisfy the interests of the sponsor and the network. It concludes that the presentation of the Soviet people responded to Cold War imperatives with episodes produced in times when tensions were high having sharper criticism, whilst periods of eased relations leading to less propagandistic depictions.