How did the US. government seek to keep morale high and to control the flow of information during World War II?
1 Answer
Movies and censorship
Explanation:
From the very beginning, Washington enlisted Hollywood to do its bidding in the form of patriotic movies and propaganda. It also from the very start censored nearly everything about the war.
Washington realized very quickly after Pearl Harbor how large the losses were. But they feared the U.S. public could not stand hearing the number of soldiers and sailors killed, 2403, and kept that number secret for a long time.
Washington enlisted director John Huston giving him the rank of captain in the army to make patriotic movies. Huston was only too happy to oblige having already done movies like Sgt. York.
John Ford, who had enlisted in the Navy 3 months prior to Pearl Harbor was given the rank of Lt. Commander and made the first public movies about the bombing of Pearl Harbor.
Even thought American journalists covered every front of the war, everything they wrote was censored by military officers before being allowed to be printed. Mail from soldiers to their family was also censored.
Even though such censorship was unconstitutional, the Saturday Evening Post stated that it would happily approve of such screenings of anything it printed.
