# Prelude to War (1942), the first Army orientation film Prelude to War is a 1942 US Army orientation film, the first of seven made after Chief of Staff George C Marshall asked Frank Capra for factual films for soldiers. The Academy ceremony of 4 March 1943 lists it among four documentary winners, as the FRAME study records. Case studies Prelude to War (1942), the first Army orientation film Illustration, not an archive object - Home - Case studies - Prelude to War (1942), the first Army orientation film At a glance Prelude to War (1942) was the first of seven US Army orientation films associated with Frank Capra. Dates and the Academy list follow the FRAME study. When1942ActorU.S. War Department, at the request of Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall…Full record at propagandaarchive.org Prelude to War is a 1942 US Army orientation film, the first of seven made after Chief of Staff George C Marshall asked Frank Capra for factual films for soldiers. The Academy ceremony of 4 March 1943 lists it among four documentary winners, as the FRAME study records. This page is about one film, Prelude to War (1942). The Army's name for the whole set of seven is not the heading here. The bare series title is left to the FRAME study this essay is based on. ## What the record says The FRAME case study dates the project to 1942. The actor line names the War Department, at the request of Army Chief of Staff George C. Marshall, and Frank Capra's unit. The detachment number on that study is the 834th Signal Service Photographic Detachment. so unsatisfactory because of the mediocrity of presentation that I directed the preparation of this series of films George C. Marshall, letter of 9 February 1943, as quoted on the FRAME case study from the George C. Marshall Foundation. The letter is about officers' lectures to the men. Capra's later memoir, as the same study cites it, recalls a request for factual films that would tell soldiers the reason for the war and the principles at stake. The memoir is Frank Capra, The Name Above the Title (Macmillan, 1971). This page does not add wording the study does not quote. ## The seven films The FRAME study, citing the National Archives, lists seven titles. Years below are the study's: - 1942, Prelude to War - 1943, The Nazis Strike - 1943, Divide and Conquer - 1943, The Battle of Britain - 1943, The Battle of Russia - 1944, The Battle of China - 1945, War Comes to America The National Archives note quoted there says the films sit in a Signal Corps group called Orientation Films. The study's source line gives Prelude to War as NARA 111-OF-1. ## Dates and the award The study cites the AFI Catalog for two calendar dates. A first screening fell on 30 October 1942. Civilian release followed on 27 May 1943. The distributors named there are Twentieth Century-Fox and the War Activities Committee. On 4 March 1943 the Academy treated four documentaries as joint winners for 1942. Prelude to War was one of them, credited to U.S. Army Special Services. The study names the other three; this page does not need them to identify the film. The same study says the AFI Catalog, using later write-ups, reports a weak theatrical take. That box-office line is the Catalog's report, not a figure counted in the snapshot. ## How the picture was built The National Archives account on the FRAME study says the staff compiled footage from archives, newsreel libraries, Allied governments, and captured Axis film, and that they also shot some original material. The same account says staff from Disney's studio drew animated maps for this film. It says some passages are staged, that the film never labels them as staged, and that one children's song for Hitler is an American imagining. This page stops at that report. The only frame this edition reprints is from the fourth film, The Battle of Britain (1943). Rights on that object are recorded as a U.S. government work in the public domain. Frames from Prelude to War are not in the snapshot, so none is shown. ## What the Army measured The study cites Hovland, Lumsdaine, and Sheffield, Experiments on Mass Communication (Princeton University Press, 1949). Their report, as the study summarizes it, found large gains on facts and smaller changes of opinion, and little measurable change in the wish to serve. The Battle of Britain frame's catalog note mentions a later shift the authors called a sleeper effect. The book is the source. This page does not restate their tables. Posters from the same years are on anti-Nazi propaganda. The information office that issued many of those sheets is the Office of War Information, a different agency from Capra's Army unit. ## Sources - FRAME case study, "Why We Fight: the U.S. Army's orientation films, 1942-1945," for the Marshall letter of 9 February 1943 (George C. Marshall Foundation), Capra's 1971 memoir as quoted there, the seven titles, NARA RIP 70, the AFI Catalog dates, the 4 March 1943 Academy documentary result, NARA 111-OF-1, the note on unmarked recreations and Disney maps, and the Hovland, Lumsdaine, and Sheffield volume (1949). - FRAME object record, The Battle of Britain film frame, 1943, for the still this edition shows. Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/case-studies/why-we-fight-series/