Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

Monday Movie Post: Good Propaganda From the Good War

In the 1942 propaganda short "Inflation," the devil gets on the phone with Hitler.

July 7, 2014 at 9:56 PM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Marshal Joseph Stalin in Yalta in 1945. — Prime Minister Winston Churchill, President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Marshal Joseph Stalin in Yalta in 1945.

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You have to hand it to World War II: Not only did it produce the best war movies (contemporary and after-the-fact), it also had the best propaganda. I've written about "Point Rationing of Foods" (1943), a Warner Brothers cartoon, and about Frank Capra's wonderful "Why We Fight" (in two parts). My selection for today's Monday Movie Post is a short, "Inflation," from 1942.

The film was intended to convince Americans not to hoard and not to bid up prices on scarce, and soon to be scarcer, consumer goods. It involves a plot by the devil himself (played upscale and only a bit over the top by Edward Arnold) to destroy the U.S. by inducing inflation. His Satanic Majesty is shown on the phone with Hitler, reassuring his friend Adolf that Americans are going to be easy to break with higher prices.