Prelude To War

Documentary

Josef Goebbels	Himself
Isoroku Yamamoto
Julius Streicher
Anthony Veiller
Alfred Rosenberg
Frank B. Kellogg
Hans Frank (III)
Adolf Hitler
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Hirohito
Haile Selassie
Pierre Laval
Yosuke Matsuoka
Franklin Delano Roosevelt
Hermann Göring	Himself
Robert Anderson	Boy donating money for Japanese children
Pietro Badoglio	Himself
Aristide Briand	Himself
Kai-Shek Chiang	Himself
Galeazzo Ciano	Himself
Walter Darré	Himself
Otto Dietrich	Himself
Hans Frank	Himself
Saburo Kurusu
Robert Ley
Erich Ludendorff
Henry L. Stimson

Director	Frank Capra; Josef Goebbels; Anatole Litvak; Saburo Kurusu
Producer	Frank Capra; Anatole Litvak
Writer	Eric Knight; Anthony Veiler; Julius J. Epstein; Philip G. Epstein

While America sleeps, Japan & Germany slowly and methodically build their armies and launch their plans for global conquest.

Prelude To War was the first entry in the U.S. War Department's Why We Fight series, a group of seven moral-boosting documentaries supervised by Lt. Col. Frank Capra. As brilliantly assembles as any of Capra's "populist" Hollywood films, Prelude demonstrates how the diplomatic and political blunders made in the wake of WWI led inexorably to World War II. Especially culpable are those complacent citizens of the USA who were lead to believe that the problems of the rest of the world had no bearing on their lives. While America sleeps, Japan and Germany slowly and methodically build their armies and launch their planes for global conquest. Throughout the film, the lies of fascism and totalitarianism are contrasted with the ideals of Democracy. Unlike most other War Department efforts, the 53 minute Why We Fight was shown to both civilian and military audiences.