Newsreels as Domestic Propaganda: Visual Rhetoric at the Dawn of the Cold War

Abstract

Abstract This article examines the military’s use of newsreels to promote the first public tests of the atomic bomb at Bikini Atoll. I draw on records maintained by the Army-Navy task force in charge of the tests and production files maintained by Universal Pictures to establish newsreels covering the tests as coproductions of the U.S. military and a Hollywood studio eager to stay in its good graces. Having established the newsreels as coproductions, I examine the newsreels themselves to show that they served as domestic propaganda, functioning as part of a public information campaign designed to maintain military control of nuclear technology. Ultimately I argue that these newsreels played a central, if heretofore unexplored role in this early effort by the military to influence the course of nuclear policy.