The North Star

I understand why it was made -- you gotta convince gullible farm boys in Iowa to get themselves shot in the head or lose a leg to a grenade or contract syphilis from a Paris h00ker. In reality the Hun were rank amateurs compared to the Soviet Empire when it came to making Ukrainians dead. I guarantee there were no happy villagers breaking up their dance routines to wage guerrilla warfare against the Germans. In the fight between Russia and Germany there were no good guys, but millions of innocent, dead civvies. This movie does serve a purpose, however. It reminds us that the government was right to be concerned about commies in the entertainment industry. Especially now that it has has been conclusively shown that Washington and Hollywood were rife with commie infiltrators. Frankly, I'm surprised everybody involved in this movie wasn't blacklisted. Or worse.

It's true that this movie was produced at a time when we were allied with the Soviet Union against Hitler. But, as Churchill said, when asked about the morality of allying with such a murderous, totalitarian regime, "I would have made a pact with the devil to defeat the Nazis." It was Hollywood's job to laud our allies, and to do so they enlisted Lillian Hellman, longtime Communist dupe and staunch defender of Stalin, right into the 50's. For the score they enlisted Aaron Copland, a great composer whose Communist sympathies were none the less well known. The result is a love letter to the glories of the Worker's Paradise and the joys of life on the collective farm. No mention here of gulags, the KGB, political murders or food shortages. This film is Exhibit A in defense of those who were concerned about Communist propaganda in the film industry.

This movie is tremendously powerful. How did communities cope with hordes of Germans invading their country? The movie is about people, not political systems. Although the movie provides a romanticized depiction of conditions in the Soviet Union in 1941, it is not peddling a particular party line. Rather, the benign conditions depicted in the movie are a theatrical device employed to intensify the dramatic impact when the Germans arrive. The political aspects of the conflict are toned down to a minimum. To have done otherwise, that is to have framed the story in purely political terms, Nazi versus Communist, would have transformed the movie into a polemic. The movie avoids this pitfall. Rather, it concentrated on the people, their interactions, their sense of community and their courage. Indeed, even the Germans are not depicted in purely stereotypical terms. Thus, the characters do not become caricatures. According to reliable historical sources, under Stalin conditions in the Ukraine were awful, for reasons that need not be discussed here, and many Ukrainians actually welcomed the Germans as liberators. But this movie is not about bashing Stalin, or even bashing the Germans, but rather about people who are forced to deal with life and death situations. In this regard, this movie is brilliant.

source: The North Star

One of the many staple of movies made during WWII to both entertain the audience and aid the war effort. Several then-known and soon-to-be-known stars such as Walter Brennan, Dana Andrews, Walter Huston, and Anne Baxter. Aside from the usual war effort type movie, the biggest thing about this movie was that it was one of the rare movies to show the Soviet Union in a positive light. Granted it focused on a small village in the Ukraine without much explicit Soviet visuals but it was none the less. Again it was shot in 1943 when we, and the Soviets, were technically allies and battling the Nazis. Even then the US was never really at ease with the Soviet alliance and shortly after the surrender of Germany it became apparent that the Soviets broke with the rest of the allied post-war plans. However this movie was meant to be more of a heart-warming drama focusing on several families and most specifically their young children who are from 17-to late 20s and a couple even younger who set out on a road trip on the same day Nazi Germany invades the Ukraine. Brennan plays the old man grandfatherly figure who helps the younger people deal with the attack once it commences. This was one of Dana Andrews' earliest war type movies he goes on to play many more such roles. Obviously meant to be a propaganda piece or at least to elicit support for the war it is a good movie if you like war type movies especially since it shows an aspect of the WWII experience that is not commonly scene in movies.

In its time, this probably fulfilled its desired purpose reasonably well, with a fine cast and some effective scenes depicting the suffering caused by Nazi troops. It is probably more interesting now, when it can be viewed with more objectivity, and when it is interesting for a new set of reasons. Its depiction of life in the Soviet Union is a revealing statement about the priorities of its time. The actual movie and story, viewed apart from any and all political issues, work quite well at times, while falling short at others. The first part of the story simply dwells on the daily lives of the residents of a Ukrainian farm town. This part is quite slow, and would be of little interest except for the sharp change of tone that comes with the Nazi attack. As banal as the lives of the villagers may have seemed, they certainly did nothing to deserve the suffering they bore as a result of the invasion. Things pick up dramatically in the second part, and at the same time the characters come more sharply into focus. Naturally, the scenario is more fiction than fact, especially in its idyllic depiction of life under Stalin's rule. More than anything else, this reflects the urgent desire of the US Government (whose hand was supposedly quite active in the production) to promote full-fledged public support for working with the Soviet Union against the Axis. Like the majority of features in any era that address a then-contemporary issue, it looks much different when viewed years afterward. The truth about both Stalin and Hitler is much easier for us now to determine than it was for the movie's original viewers. The cast helps considerably in making it work on a dramatic level. Experienced stars like Walter Huston and Walter Brennan combine with then-young performers like Anne Baxter, Farley Granger, and others to create a generally interesting set of characters. Jane Withers also has a good role, as a hapless but often endearing young woman who is desperate to help. Lillian Hellman brought her considerable reputation to the screenplay, although this kind of material is not really her strength. Lewis Milestone shows his steady hand in the battle sequences. Because the cast, director, and writer all add their weight to the production, this works well enough as a fictional drama as long as you set aside what you thought or think about the USSR. As history, the story is not reliable, but the movie itself is interesting as one of the more earnest attempts of its day to use cinema to influence public opinion.

I saw "The North Star" when I was a child of 6 or 7 and it made a lasting impression on me. I believe older cousins took me to see it while they were baby sitting. I will say without hesitation that it was not intended as a movie for children and that is as true today as it was in 1943. For years I could vividly remember scenes from the movie but did not remember the title. I happened to see it on TV by pure chance late one night during the '70s. I think it was about halfway through the film before I realized what I was watching, but from there on everything was as I remembered it. It might correctly be labeled a propaganda film as it was made during a time when we were engaged in WWII. Germany was our enemy and Russia was our ally. As the saying goes, "war makes strange bed fellows." The Nazi war machine is depicted as evil and Russians are shown as innocent victims. Both are indisputable facts. The purpose of the film may have been to propagandize just how evil we believed the Nazis to be but we see films like that all the time. One example, "Empire of the Sun" (1987), a very fine film by Steven Spielberg. That was also an evil empire. Its not considered propaganda now because the war is long over. Its "art." Some might consider "JFK" as a lot of propaganda. Oliver Stone considers it "art". If one is interested in films of historical periods, such as WWII, this might certainly be a film of interest.

This film was encouraged by the U.S. Government in the early days of WW II following the German invasion of Russia. It is a propaganda masterpiece centered around the former "freedoms" of prewar Soviet Russia life and the changes brought about abruptly by the invasion. Communism was not very popular in the United States even then, so this film was engineered to achieve widespread visibility in the early war years and to engender public approval for our "allies." At that it may be said to have achieved its purpose. Americans did not wish to be identified with any kind of comrade-bashing. Maybe subconsciously Americans desired Soviet victory so as to avoid a three-front War should the Russians have been subdued. Historically, the Russians have been able to avoid loss of Moscow to invaders but doubtless this would not have been the case without all of the materials we sent them. Most do not know that over 6,000 fighter aircraft were sent to the Russians, nor do many Americans remember that the four or more B-29s that were badly damaged in combat over Japan and who later sought refuge in Russia, remember that these were seized by Stalin. They were never returned and in fact, they were copied rivet-for-rivet; screw-for-screw as the TU-4 and later turned into long range atomic bomb delivery aircraft whose purpose was to carry atomic weapons to the former ally, the United States. And this (the Cold War) was the only pay-back ever received for our shipments of billions of dollars of armaments. Still, our economic policies and GNP were the very things that brought about the demise of the Communist system. With these facts in mind, it is entertaining to view this film and to identify the propaganda pronouncements and the truisms it contains.

This is a really good example of a Hollywood propaganda film based on falsehoods about WW II. Set in Ukraine in 1941. The movie was released in the US in 1943. According to this movie, Ukrainians were a cheerful happy people serving the state before the evil Nazis show up to liberate them from Bolshevism. Nazi planes attacked citizens in horse drawn carriages and even children running in the street. One of the funniest scenes to me is Ukrainians burning down their own homes and the Nazis putting out the fires. There is a chain smoking colonel (it was illegal for a German in uniform to smoke in public and smoking was strongly discouraged even in private). Completely draining the blood from Ukrainian children to use in blood transfusions (Germans would not have used blood from non-Germans in transfusions to Germans. It was viewed as a defilement of the blood.) Here is some real history. The director of this movie, Lewis Milestone was a Jew born in Russia as Lev Milstein. The writer, Lillian Hellman was Jewish and black-listed in the 1950's for being a communist. Lillian's 2nd husband, Dashiell Hammett was also black-listed as a communist and imprisoned for contempt of court for refusing to given information to the court concerning the funding of men that wanted to overthrow the US by force and violence. The Ukrainians struggled for independence in 1917 after the Bolsheviks killed the Tsar and seized Russia. Stalin killed 7 million Ukrainians in 1928-29 with a man-made famine called Holodomor. The truth is many Ukrainians welcomed the Nazis and saw them as their liberators. Germans were never at war against Ukrainians or even Russians despite WW II being called in Russia as "the Great Patriotic War." The Great Patriotic War is Soviet propaganda which is still repeated today. The Germans were at war against Bolshevism (which today would be called globalism/Cultural Marxism/International banking). There were also many Russians who refused to fight for Stalin. Refusing to fight would have got you shot or sent to the gulags. Thus, during just the first few months of the German advance towards Moscow 650,000 Russian soldiers were taken prisoner. Says a lot when so many surrender to the Germans rather than die for Stalin. The Waffen SS, on the other hand, would fight to the death. It was in 1942 that the Soviet Union's top propagandist, a Jew named Ilya Ehrenburg started a hate program against Germans. It was Ilya Ehrenburg that first made the claim that 6 million Jews had died in Nazi gas chambers. In a leaflet called "Kill" he wrote: "The Germans are not human beings. From now on, the word 'German' is the most horrible curse. From now on, the word 'German' strikes us to the quick. We have nothing to discuss. We will not get excited. We will kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day ... If you cannot kill a German with a bullet, then kill him with your bayonet. If your part of the front is quiet and there is no fighting, then kill a German in the meantime ... If you have already killed a German, then kill another one - there is nothing more amusing to us than a heap of German corpses. Don't count the days, don't count the kilometers. Count only one thing: the number of Germans you have killed. Kill the Germans! ... - Kill the Germans! Kill!"

This film is an out and out falsification of conditions on Soviet collective farms. It is pro-Communist propaganda designed to present the collective farms as filled with "happy, well-fed peasants", when it fact, the conditions were horrendous. And the peasants were forced by violence, mass murder and mass starvation into the collective farms. The film is so filled with falsifications that the expert of the crimes of the Stalin Period (1927-53), British historian Robert Conquest calls it, "a travesty greater than could have been shown on Soviet screens (in the 1940s)." (Robert Conquest, "The Harvest of Sorrow," page 321, Oxford, 1984) When pro-Communist influence is talked about in Hollywood, this movie is exactly what is meant. Despite the fact the truth about the horrors committed by the Soviet regime was known long before this movie, pro-Communists in Hollywood made this movie as an attempt to influence American audiences to have a favorable view of the Evil Empire. Lenin and Stalin murdered more people than Hitler did before the last had even come to power; Stalin himself was to order more mass-killings-- and genocide against the Ukrainian people, and others--by himself than Hitler did. In fact, it is not going to far, by ANY stretch of the imagination to say that Hitler was an amateur in mass murder who learned many lessons from the master: Stalin. Yet all the while pro-Communists like the writer of this movie, the despicable Lillian Hellman were denouncing Hitler, they were actively aiding Stalin's campaign to deceive the West about his own crimes. It's one thing to ignore or fail to speak up about crimes against humanity. It is entirely something else to actively help cover them up. The makers of this film were AT BEST tools; at worst accomplices of the worst mass-murderer in history. If you've ever wonder what HUAC (House Un-American Activities Committee) was looking for when it investigated Communist influence in Hollywood THIS is exactly it! Those who believe that HUAC (and Sen. Joe McCarthy's hearings) were "witchhunts" are deluding themselves. The proof of Communist influence--in Hollywood--is right here; as well as in the films "Misson to Moscow" and "Song of Russia."