Some fine examples of the WWII Ministry of Information's work

You will recall that George Orwell spent much of his time during the Second World War, along with several other notable English writers of the time, working on material for the British Ministry of Information, in the Senate Building of London University, in which the MoI had taken up residence for the duration of the war. Like the Ministry of Truth in Nineteen Eighty-Four which was inspired by it, the Ministry of Information was a very large organisation, and the two short films linked below (uploaded by the British Film Institute) may likely not have been worked on directly by Orwell. Yet they stand as fine examples of the kind of propaganda which Orwell would have been involved with every working day. They were clearly carefully written, filmed, edited and designed with a specific message, purpose and target audience in mind.

Christmas Under Fire (1941) has an American narrator, despite being British MoI product, largely because much of its intended audience was the public of the USA, who had yet to be persuaded to enter the war. Here we see Christmas 1940 dawn on a Britain which has been standing alone against the Nazis' progressive occupation of Western Europe, and has been subjected to many months of "The Blitz", the savage bombing of London and other cities by the Luftwaffe (the German Air Force) (coupled with a few decent propaganda tactics of the Nazis' own making, in the form of leaflet-drops and long-distance radio broadcasts). Yet the film projects an air of courage, confidence and pride in the spirit of the British to keep going. Poppy Simpson of the BFI writes:

Despite the Blitz, it's 'business as usual' as England prepares for Christmas in this propaganda film intended for US audiences. It's a Christmas of holly and barbed wire, guns and tinsel, yet the British, we are told, are determined to make it as cheerful as possible.

"England is fighting for her life", asserts the American narrator, but it is admiration rather than pity that the film seeks to evoke. The filmmakers achieve this with emotions bigger than most 10-minute films could contain, as we watch plucky Londoners creating a subterranean Christmas on Underground platforms and the choristers of King's College sing their hearts out. While no doubt intended to encourage US support in the War, 'Christmas Under Fire' ultimately offers a portrait of a nation "unbeaten, unconquered and unafraid".

On the negative side, of course, some could argue that this film and others like it seem to choose to ignore the larger tragedy taking shape on the European continent at the time, in the form of the systematic oppression, imprisonment and (later) mass murder of the Jewish populations of Nazi-occupied countries, but that seems both to be a little unfair and to miss the point. Films like this played to home front (and/or Allied) audiences of people who needed to maintain as much positive thinking and keep morale as high as possible, in order to carry on against an often overwhelmingly powerful enemy. It was necessary, first and foremost, to convince them that they could cope, that they would be all right in the end. If Britain had collapsed and surrendered to the Nazis before American help was at hand (some 12 months at least after this film was released), not only would it of course have been disastrous for Britain's own way of life, but there would have been little to prevent the Nazis from fully carrying out their totalitarian genocidal agenda to its planned conclusion...and there would soon likely not have been a Jew, socialist, Romani, homosexual, free-thinking artist or political liberal left in all of Western Europe.

This film uses a range of "classic" British icons and themes of the time to paint a stirring picture of all that the British believed they were fighting for in 1940, all that they sought to preserve against the fascist forces which had flattened resistance in the lands of their continental allies such as France, Holland, Poland and Czechoslovakia. There were many, many such films made, from short "one-reelers" like this one to full-length feature films such as The Tawny Pipit (1944) and (when Hollywood got on board) Mrs Miniver (1942).

The Crown Film Unit of the Ministry of Information was made up of directors who were masters of the art of blending images, sounds and music, coupled with carefully-sculpted emotive language, to manipulate the emotions of their audience (Christmas Under Fire pushes all the buttons, so to speak, let's just say that). But then, that was their job.

If we view this short film as "good" propaganda, is that mainly because the filmmakers were on our side? Or is there something more intrinsically "right" and "good" about this film? By war's end, Orwell clearly felt uneasy even about the "good" propaganda he had been partly responsible for creating as part of getting the British people through six dreadful years of conflict and persuading them to continue their staunch support of the war effort throughout. It was the conscious manipulation and skewing of reality, even when the good guys did it, that gave Orwell pause to think, and started him thinking of what might happen should such talent for emotionally-manipulative propaganda be put to darker ends in a post-war world. In the early stages of Nineteen Eighty-Four, there are several references to propaganda films shown at the Airstrip One cinemas which may remind you in some ways of films such as those produced by the Ministry of Information during WWII. Even the film blasted at Party members during the Two Minutes' Hate, with its carefully-nuanced combination of enemy soldier atrocities and the image of Goldstein, is clearly modelled on wartime propaganda films such as these.

The much shorter film Five Inch Bather (1942), on a much lighter yet purposeful note, tries valiantly to make a bath in five inches of water look like a jolly pastime, urging the British public to avoid overuse of water when bathing. This was, of course, as much to get people to make savings on the fuel required to heat larger bathfuls of water as on the water itself, but again, the "spin" was important; it was clearly much easier to make the point by focusing on the splish-splash of bathtime than by being dreary about a dwindling pile of wood fuel!