This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
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Just in time for Father’s Day comes the ultimate film for the men in your life: It’s a war movie about the weather. Better, it’s a movie about <a href="https://www.thefp.com/p/the-ancient-male-art-of-monitoring">monitoring the situation</a> and then making a decision about what the situation will become. It’s an unexpectedly thrilling depiction of what it means to make hard choices, trust your instincts, and be decisive when a single call might turn the tide of a war. 
“Pressure,” which is out in theaters now, tells the story of one pivotal decision near the end of World War II: how the Allies chose the exact time to storm the beaches at Normandy on D-Day. Its hero is meteorologist Captain James Stagg (Andrew Scott), who leaves his pregnant wife at home to report to General Dwight D. Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser) and lead a team of weather watchers. The Allies need one key forecast.
Stagg’s American counterpart Irving P. Krick may have helped the filming of “Gone With The Wind” by predicting good weather, but there’s much more at stake now than Hollywood cash and Clark Gable’s hair. It’s 1944, the war has been raging for almost five years, and the Germans have held France for four. The details for this invasion must be precise. Waves that are too high mean boats will capsize. Clouds that are too thick mean pilots won’t know where to fly. Conditions must be good, or at least good enough. Otherwise, thousands of lives will be lost. 
“Pressure” is based on a play, which makes sense when you consider that it’s mostly just people talking in various rooms. But despite a bit of a slow start, it rarely feels boring. From the tense, demanding score to Scott’s minute facial changes, the film finds ways to command your attention. And it knows it might sound a bit dull. 
“Did you know that weathermen are traditionally a little boring?” Eisenhower’s aide, Kay Summersby, quips to Stagg. 
“How dare you say that?” he jokes. “Weathermen, maybe. But how can the weather be boring? It feeds us. The weather can destroy us. Controls our daily life. I don’t think that’s boring.” 
We know the stakes, but what drives the film is not the abstract fear of failure in battle but the internal moral struggles of its protagonists. Racked with guilt over a training exercise gone fatally wrong, Eisenhower wrestles with how to make a decision that could lead to the end of the war — or if, as one British Army officer puts it, they might as well start goose-stepping now. 
“If any blame or fault is attached to the attempt, it is mine, and mine alone,” Eisenhower concludes hours before the attack. 
Stagg proves his character by maintaining his forecast of poor weather even when everyone, including his colleagues, wants to believe in a cloudless sky. But he’s still hesitant to attach any certainty to his forecasts, arguing that with the weather, nothing is certain. It was President Harry Truman who begged for “a one-handed economist” so he could stop hearing “on the one hand” and “on the other hand.” 
Here, what Eisenhower needs is a one-handed weatherman. 
Fraser is an imposing presence as the general, and his secretary (played sympathetically by Kerry Condon) acts as a voice of reason and an emotional center for the two men, telling Eisenhower to leave his guilt in the past and advising Stagg to let the general’s outbursts wash over him. 
Stagg is confident in his understanding of the weather, but not in his ability to make a decision that he himself has to own. After spending two meetings with high-level officials telling them that the weather on the day of the invasion is likely no good, he gets another chance to give Eisenhower a new forecast that could make the invasion possible after all. To make his case, he points to his charts.
“I don’t want to look at your damn charts,” Eisenhower says. “It’s a bunch of gobbledygook!”
Finally, Stagg quits hiding behind his forecasts and makes a decision. “My official position is this: Go. You should go.” 
When the D-Day invasion begins, “Pressure” reminds you that we’re talking about real events by interspersing actual footage from the war. Of course, the invasion, which happened on June 6, 1944, was a success. Years later, President Eisenhower would <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/weather/2014/06/03/d-day-weather-forecast/9914207/">observe</a> that the attack succeeded “because we had better meteorologists than the Germans.” The film is a celebration of that excellence — and of the courage it takes to make a monumental decision when the stakes couldn’t be higher.

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How A Weatherman Helped The Allies Win On D-Day

History

Movies

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World War II

Editor&#8217;s note: this piece was originally published last December. We&#8217;re rerunning it now in the hopes that it inspires you to view this classic Christmas film with new eyes — or for the first time. Merry Christmas!
***
After 70 years, it’s time to start taking “White Christmas” seriously.
Few will deny that the 1954 musical is a classic Christmas movie, but no one would call it a “classic” in the same vein as “It’s A Wonderful Life.” Frank Capra’s meditations on morality lend themselves to serious thoughts; Bing Crosby crooning his way through Irving Berlin ballads and Danny Kaye pratfalling all over the Technicolor sets, not so much.
But beneath all the schmaltz and snowfall, “White Christmas” is a realistic depiction of a country and people struggling to return to normalcy after years of war and conflict. Its willingness to confront that transition — as well as the social and commercial adjustments it requires — make it not only a true classic, but the perfect Christmas movie for the present.
“White Christmas” is the story of Bob Wallace and Phil Davis, World War II veterans turned successful entertainers who find themselves spending Christmas at a struggling Vermont inn owned by their former commanding officer, General Tom Waverly. With ample song and dance, Wallace and Davis manage to save the inn, romance a pair of singing sisters, and put on a spectacular Christmas show that ends with the titular song, just as the first snow of the season begins to fall.
<div id="attachment_704253" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-704253" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/White-Christmas-1024x576.jpg" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/White-Christmas-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/White-Christmas-300x169.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/White-Christmas-768x432.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/White-Christmas-1536x864.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/03/White-Christmas.jpg 1920w" alt="A poster the 1954 musical romantic comedy, 'White Christmas', directed by Michael Curtiz and starring (left to right) Bing Crosby, Rosemary Clooney, Danny Kaye and Vera-Ellen." width="1024" height="576" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-704253" />
Photo by Movie Poster Image Art/Getty Images
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Yes, it’s fluffy. But beneath that fluff is a story of transitions. Career soldier Waverly can’t make peace with peacetime, and tries to trade his pipe and slippers for a new commission. Wallace has done a better job adjusting to postwar life, but only because he’s thrown himself into work, much to the chagrin of Davis, who urges his partner to settle down and start a family.
This is really what “White Christmas” is all about. Think of it this way: the film only has one song about Christmas, but two songs about how hard it is for soldiers to adjust to civilian life.
That fact alone is enough to make us consider that “White Christmas” is about more than seasonal merriment — especially considering the film’s director.
Michael Curtiz is best known for “Casablanca,” an epic tale of love and loyalty at the height of World War II. While the two films don’t seem to have a lot in common, “White Christmas” actually serves as a quasi-sequel to “Casablanca.” So, in order to understand what’s really going on with Wallace and Davis, we have to look back to Rick and Ilsa.
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<div id="attachment_844887" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-844887" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1137157651-740x576.jpg" sizes=" (max-width: 740px) 100vw, 740px" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1137157651-740x576.jpg 740w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1137157651-300x234.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1137157651-768x598.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1137157651-1536x1196.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1137157651-2048x1594.jpg 2048w" alt="" width="740" height="576" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-844887" />
(Photo by LMPC via Getty Images)
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Like “White Christmas,” “Casablanca” is set in the same year it was released. So, contemporary audiences would have seen each film as a commentary on their lives.
With “Casablanca,” that commentary was a call to arms. The film is famously stirring, so much so that the U.S. Office of War Information <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Round-Up-Usual-Suspects-Casablanca/dp/1562827618" target="_blank" rel="noopener">prevented</a> troops stationed in North Africa from seeing it out of fear it would incite violence against Vichy supporters in the area. And the Bureau of Motion Pictures <a href="https://www.digitalhistory.uh.edu/active_learning/explorations/casablanca/bmp_report_casablanca.cfm" target="_blank" rel="noopener">determined</a> that “Casablanca” would help the Allies win the war by effectively showing “that personal desire must be subordinated to the task of defeating fascism.”
“Casablanca” isn’t just another war movie. It’s the ultimate war move, in that it drummed up support for the same war it depicted. Similarly, “White Christmas” is more than just a “feel-good” movie. It’s a peacetime movie, one that eased its audience back into normalcy by offering them a step-by-step guide to that end, and showing how happy their cinematic contemporaries were made by following that guide.
Early on in the film, Wallace begrudgingly admits his debt to Davis for convincing him to get into show business after leaving the army, snapping, “We did great, and I’m grateful!” Later on, the film reaches its emotional climax with Bing Crosby’s famous rendition of “Count Your Blessings (Instead Of Sheep).”
You’d be hard pressed to find a better metaphor for prosperity than an abundance of blessings so large, you can toss them off as you’re nodding off. But nowhere is this point better made than at the end of the film, when Wallace and Davis have reunited the members of the 151st Division to surprise General Waverly on Christmas.
Everyone’s happy. Most brought their families. Those whose careers we hear about are wildly successful. And at least one soldier has gotten so pleasantly plump that he can’t fit into his uniform, which gives the whole squad a good chuckle.
This is the point of “White Christmas.” That it’s okay be okay, to be successful and happy, even — especially! — shortly after a period of national tumult. Captain Wallace’s patriotism is not minimized by the fact that he became a successful entertainer, nor is his professional success minimized by his ultimate decision to settle down. He earned both turns, as did everyone else we meet in the film.
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<div id="attachment_844889" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="size-large wp-image-844889" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1262769670-707x576.jpg" sizes=" (max-width: 707px) 100vw, 707px" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1262769670-707x576.jpg 707w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1262769670-300x245.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1262769670-768x626.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1262769670-1536x1252.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1262769670.jpg 1800w" alt="" width="707" height="576" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-844889" />
(Photo by FilmPublicityArchive/United Archives via Getty Images)
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Once we understand the central message of “White Christmas” — that you can and should embrace the comfort and normalcy that follows strife — we can appreciate what a serious film it is. First and foremost, it’s Curtiz’s answer to “Casablanca,” a balm for the people whose wartime passions he had only recently inflamed.
It’s also an ideal Christmas movie in the truest sense. Though it’s surprisingly light on the holiday’s commercial trappings, “White Christmas” is about the promise of a new start for humanity. The soldiers become singers, the singers become fathers. The wolf shall live with the lamb, and all that.
This was an essential message for postwar America. But it’s equally important today. Now as then, our country stands on a precipice. We’ve been fighting for years — about politics, culture, education, and more. For a time it seemed like we would never again return to normal.
But now, the opportunity to get back to normal is here. Yes, our country may be divided, and there are certainly many important fights worth having. But with a monumental election behind us, we now have an opportunity to turn away from the fray and focus on the things that matter.
“White Christmas” reminds us what those things are, and urges us to pursue and celebrate them.
The summer brought two presidential assassination attempts and as many Democratic presidential candidates. Let’s let the winter bring comfort and joy, promise and rebirth, and so many blessings you just can’t help but sing about them.

Cast of White Christmas

It’s Time To Start Taking ‘White Christmas’ Seriously

Christmas

Christmas movies

musical

Editor’s Note: This article was previously published on December 24, 2022. We’re bringing it back.
 * * *
American service members have often spent their holidays away from loved ones — and in harm&#8217;s way — and the men who found themselves in the besieged Belgian city of Bastogne just before Christmas of 1944 were no exception.
Bastogne, which sits just a few miles from the border of Luxembourg, had been under German control since <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/german-invasion-of-western-europe-may-1940" target="_blank" rel="noopener">May of 1940</a> and had only been liberated by Allied troops a few months earlier in September — and much of the 101st Airborne Division remained in and around the city.
Other divisions were scattered throughout the surrounding area, many composed of replacement troops who had only recently arrived in Europe: among them were elements of the 106th Infantry &#8220;The Golden Lions,&#8221; the 9th Armored &#8220;Phantom&#8221; Division, and the 28th Infantry &#8220;The Bloody Bucket.&#8221; Some were still waiting for supply drops, ammunition, and even winter uniforms.
The surprise attack began on December 16th when German Panzer divisions pushed back towards Bastogne, catching the mostly-green American troops in the frozen Ardennes Forest off guard and breaking through roadblock after roadblock. Some put up a good fight, but many were driven back into Bastogne and forced to regroup.
On December 17th, just outside of a nearby town called <a href="https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-malmedy-massacre" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Malmedy</a>, a Hitler Youth graduate turned Waffen SS (Schutzstaffel) General Joachim Peiper and his men captured over 100 American soldiers, all part of Battery B of the 285th Field Artillery Observation Battalion. After a brief skirmish, the Americans who were unable to escape into the woods surrendered — and after taking their personal possessions from them, Peiper&#8217;s men lined the unarmed Americans up in eight rows in a nearby field and opened fire. The few who survived by pretending to be dead recalled hearing laughter as the SS soldiers fired.
By December 20th, the city of Bastogne itself was under siege, entirely surrounded and vastly outnumbered by the enemy — and word of Peiper and the massacre at Malmedy had gotten to soldiers and civilians alike. Snowy and frigid weather conditions made supply drops all but impossible, and even on the ground, visibility was limited.
Bastogne had also been inundated by &#8220;stragglers&#8221; — soldiers who had been assigned to units that had been overrun as the Germans had moved to encircle the city — and so Team SNAFU (Situation Normal, All Fouled Up) was born. Men from tank battalions, men from artillery groups, cooks, barbers, it no longer mattered: if they could carry a weapon and stand a post, they were temporarily reassigned to SNAFU and used as much-needed replacements to aid the 101st Airborne.
<div id="attachment_848989" style="width: 859px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-848989" class="wp-image-848989 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1140427866-849x576.jpg" alt="Airborne Infantrymen, .30-caliber Machine Gun, Ardennes-Alsace Campaign, Battle of the Bulge, 1945. (Photo by: History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)" width="849" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1140427866-849x576.jpg 849w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1140427866-300x204.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1140427866-768x521.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-1140427866.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 849px) 100vw, 849px" />History Archive/Universal Images Group via Getty Images</div>
<a href="https://www.asomf.org/the-battle-of-the-bulge-asom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Two days into the siege</a>, on December 22nd, a German contingent approached waving a white flag — and delivered an ultimatum to Major Alvin Jones, who commanded the 2nd Battalion, 327th Glider Infantry Regiment.
&#8220;The fortune of war is changing. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U.S.A. troops in and near Bastogne,&#8221; the letter read. Demanding surrender — within two hours — the German commander threatened to destroy the city if the Americans did not comply. He also promised that the Americans would be blamed for any resulting civilian casualties.
&#8220;The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hour’s term,&#8221; the German commander wrote. &#8220;All the serious civilian losses caused by this Artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.&#8221;
&#8220;They want us to surrender,&#8221; Jones told Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe.
McAuliffe, who was acutely aware of the situation, laughed in the face of certain doom: &#8220;Aw nuts!&#8221;
He went to write a return memo, but told his staff, &#8220;I don’t know what to tell them.&#8221;
Lt. Colonel Kinnard commented, &#8220;Well, sir, that first remark of yours would be hard to beat.&#8221;
And so McAuliffe&#8217;s reply read simply: “To the German Commander: Nuts! The American Commander.”
Colonel Joseph H. Harper, commander of 327th Glider Infantry, delivered the note to the Germans — reportedly delighting in the chance to explain to them what it meant: &#8220;If you don’t understand what &#8216;nuts&#8217; means, in plain English, it is the same as, &#8216;Go to Hell.’”
McAuliffe followed that note with an <a href="https://warontherocks.com/2021/12/nuts-mcauliffes-1944-christmas-letter-2/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">equally blustery</a> Christmas Eve letter to his troops, detailing both the German commander&#8217;s demands and his response.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
75 years ago this Christmas Eve, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe wrote this letter to his troops during the Battle of the Bulge. Today we remember the service members who served during the holidays both then and now and wish you a Merry Christmas! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NoVeteranEverDies?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NoVeteranEverDies</a> <a href="https://t.co/VuYyhYqqVj">pic.twitter.com/VuYyhYqqVj</a>
&mdash; National Cemeteries (@VANatCemeteries) <a href="https://twitter.com/VANatCemeteries/status/1209458808587784192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
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&#8220;What’s Merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting — it’s cold, we aren’t home,&#8221; McAuliffe&#8217;s letter read. &#8220;All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West.&#8221;
&#8220;We have identifications from four German Panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division,&#8221; McAuliffe continued. &#8220;These units, spearheading the last desperate German lunge, were headed straight west for key points when the Eagle Division was hurriedly ordered to stem the advance. How effectively this was done will be written in history; not alone in our Division’s glorious history but in World history. The Germans actually did surround us, their radios blared our doom.&#8221;
McAuliffe, after sharing his flippant response to the German demand for surrender, concluded with these words: &#8220;Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: &#8216;Well Done!&#8217; We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.&#8221;
The Germans did deliver the <a href="https://www.asomf.org/the-battle-of-the-bulge-asom/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">promised barrage</a> of artillery and bombs, bringing assault after assault over four days beginning on the 22nd — but on December 26th, a late Christmas gift finally arrived: General George S. Patton and his Third Army severed the German lines completely, breaking the siege of Bastogne.
<div id="attachment_848993" style="width: 721px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-848993" class="wp-image-848993 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-119462242-711x576.jpg" alt="American military commander Lieutenant General George S. Patton (1885 - 1945) (center left) talks with Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe (1898 - 1975), Bastogne, France, December 28, 1944. McAuliff commanded the 101st Airborne Division, which was beseiged in Bastogne during the Battle of the Bulge, until the seige was broken by troops under Patton shortly before this picture was taken. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" width="711" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-119462242-711x576.jpg 711w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-119462242-300x243.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-119462242-768x622.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2024/12/GettyImages-119462242.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 711px) 100vw, 711px" />PhotoQuest/Getty Images</div>

Two Infantrymen, Bastogne, Belgium, Ardennes-Alsace Campaign, Battle of the Bulge, December 1944

No Silent Night: Christmas Eve At The Siege Of Bastogne, 1944

Europe

Nazi Germany

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Editor’s Note: This article was previously published on December 20, 2023. Since &#8220;It&#8217;s A Wonderful Life&#8221; remains a holiday classic, we’re bringing it back.
* * *
Months after his return from combat, actor James &#8220;Jimmy&#8221; Stewart was still adrift — unmoored in the Hollywood he had previously called home, living with fellow veteran Henry Fonda, and waiting for film offers that just weren&#8217;t coming in.
After a couple of months had gone by, director Frank Capra — who had worked with Stewart before in 1936&#8217;s &#8220;You Can&#8217;t Take It With You&#8221; — first pitched &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life.&#8221; A meeting was set, and <a href="https://guideposts.org/positive-living/entertainment/movies-and-tv/guideposts-classics-james-stewart-on-its-a-wonderful-life/">Capra described the story</a> to Stewart and his agent Lew Wasserman.
Stewart, who had been adamant about doing a comedy upon his return to Hollywood, was reportedly taken aback at first. &#8220;You want me to do what?&#8221; he asked, and according to Capra&#8217;s notes walked out of his initial pitch meeting. But Capra believed in the strength of the story — and he was equally adamant that Stewart was not just the right person to play George Bailey, he was the only person who could do it.
Stewart eventually sat down to listen to Capra&#8217;s pitch in full, and he recalled the director&#8217;s awkward description of the story in a <a href="https://guideposts.org/positive-living/entertainment/movies-and-tv/guideposts-classics-james-stewart-on-its-a-wonderful-life/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">1987 interview</a> for Guideposts.
&#8220;&#8216;Now, listen,&#8217; Frank began hesitantly. He seemed a little embarrassed. &#8216;The story starts in heaven, and it’s sort of the Lord telling somebody to go down to earth because there’s a fellow who’s in trouble, and this heavenly being goes to a small town, and … Well, what it boils down to is, this fella who thinks he’s a failure in life jumps off a bridge. The Lord sends down an angel named Clarence, who hasn’t earned his wings yet, and Clarence jumps into the water to save the guy. But the angel can’t swim, so the guy has to save him, and then … This doesn’t tell very well, does it?'&#8221;
The actor said his response was simple: &#8220;Frank, if you want to do a picture about a guy who jumps off a bridge and an angel named Clarence who hasn’t won his wings yet coming down to save him, well, I’m your man!&#8221;
<div id="attachment_478827" style="width: 777px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478827" class="size-large wp-image-478827" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707423-767x576.jpg" alt="LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 20: The movie &quot;It's a Wonderful Life&quot;, produced and directed by Frank Capra. Seen here from left, Henry Travers as Clarence and James Stewart as George Bailey. Premiered December 20, 1946; theatrical wide release January 7, 1947. Screen capture. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)" width="767" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707423-767x576.jpg 767w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707423-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707423-768x577.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707423.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 767px) 100vw, 767px" />&#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life&#8221;, produced and directed by Frank Capra. Seen here from left, Henry Travers as Clarence and James Stewart as George Bailey. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)</div>
For Capra and Stewart both, the film was a do or die project. For Stewart, it was his chance to prove that he still had something to give to fans. And Capra — who had also been away from Hollywood making movies for the War Department — believed so much in the story that he put everything on the line, even forming a new independent studio (Liberty Films) to produce it. But making the film was not without its difficulties. As actress Donna Reed — who played Mary Bailey to Stewart&#8217;s George Bailey — put it, &#8220;This was not a happy set.&#8221;
At one point, an agitated Stewart complained about the superficiality of Hollywood and acting in general, prompting veteran actor Lionel Barrymore — who plays the movie&#8217;s villain Mr. Henry F. Potter — to scold him: &#8220;So, are you saying it&#8217;s more worthwhile to drop bombs on people than to entertain them?&#8221;
<div id="attachment_478823" style="width: 777px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478823" class="size-large wp-image-478823" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707402-767x576.jpg" alt="LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 20: The movie &quot;It's a Wonderful Life&quot;, produced and directed by Frank Capra. Seen here from left, Lionel Barrymore as Henry F. Potter, Frank Hagney (in background) as Potter's Bodyguard and James Stewart as George Bailey. Premiered December 20, 1946; theatrical wide release January 7, 1947. Screen capture. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)" width="767" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707402-767x576.jpg 767w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707402-300x225.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707402-768x577.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707402.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 767px) 100vw, 767px" />&#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life&#8221;, produced and directed by Frank Capra. Seen here from left, Lionel Barrymore as Henry F. Potter, Frank Hagney (in background) as Potter&#8217;s Bodyguard and James Stewart as George Bailey. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)</div>
As Matzen explained in a <a href="https://www.chicagotribune.com/entertainment/movies/ct-jimmy-stewart-book-mov-1202-20161201-column.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">2016 interview</a> with The Chicago Tribune, Stewart appeared to funnel all the bottled up rage, anxiety, anger, fear, and frustration into the role — making his portrayal of a man on the brink truly blur the line between fiction and reality.
&#8220;There&#8217;s a scene in the movie where he questions his sanity and he&#8217;s got this wild look about him. That&#8217;s one scene that really struck me, watching it on the big screen. And the other scene that always made me uncomfortable, but now means so much more to me, is when he&#8217;s in his living room and he&#8217;s throwing things and screaming at his kids — and his wife and children look at him like, &#8216;Who is this man? Who is this monster?'&#8221; Matzen explained. &#8220;And that is so reflective of what millions of families faced, looking at these strangers who came back from the war with this rage. Stewart played it beautifully. He just lets it out.&#8221;
Stewart recalled a similar moment in the <a href="https://guideposts.org/positive-living/entertainment/movies-and-tv/guideposts-classics-james-stewart-on-its-a-wonderful-life/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Guideposts interview</a>, when George Bailey turned to God in desperation — completely unaware that his entire town was also praying for him in the same moment.
&#8220;In agony I raise my eyes and, following the script, plead, &#8216;God … God … dear Father in heaven, I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope. Show me the way, God …'&#8221; Stewart said, adding, &#8220;As I said those words, I felt the loneliness, the hopelessness of people who had nowhere to turn, and my eyes filled with tears. I broke down sobbing. This was not planned at all, but the power of that prayer, the realization that our Father in heaven is there to help the hopeless, had reduced me to tears.&#8221;
Capra, who loved spontaneity in his films, kept the powerful moment in the final cut — he even sacrificed some of the film quality to turn a wide shot into a close-up so that the audience could better see &#8220;George Bailey&#8217;s&#8221; pain.
The film was a resounding flop when it was released in 1947 — bringing in less than half of the expected box office haul — but still managed to impress the Academy. In addition to two technical nominations, Stewart received another Best Actor nod, Capra was nominated for directing, and the film was nominated for Best Picture. All five lost — and Capra&#8217;s newly-formed studio <a href="https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,793760,00.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Liberty Films quickly went under</a>.
<div id="attachment_478828" style="width: 775px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478828" class="size-large wp-image-478828" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707436-765x576.jpg" alt="LOS ANGELES - DECEMBER 20: The movie &quot;It's a Wonderful Life&quot;, produced and directed by Frank Capra. Seen here from left, Donna Reed as Mary Hatch Bailey, James Stewart as George Bailey and Karolyn Grimes as Zuzu. Premiered December 20, 1946; theatrical wide release January 7, 1947. Screen capture. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)" width="765" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707436-765x576.jpg 765w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707436-300x226.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707436-768x578.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1187707436.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 765px) 100vw, 765px" />&#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life&#8221;, produced and directed by Frank Capra. Seen here from left, Donna Reed as Mary Hatch Bailey, James Stewart as George Bailey and Karolyn Grimes as Zuzu. Paramount Pictures. (Photo by CBS via Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;By the end of 1947 the film was quietly put on the shelf,&#8221; Stewart <a href="https://guideposts.org/positive-living/entertainment/movies-and-tv/guideposts-classics-james-stewart-on-its-a-wonderful-life/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">recalled</a>, adding, &#8220;But a curious thing happened. The movie refused to stay on the shelf. Those who loved it loved it a lot, and they told others. They wouldn’t let it die any more than the angel Clarence would let George Bailey die. When it began to be shown on TV, a whole new audience fell in love with it.&#8221;
The fact that the movie appeared on television was actually the result of a probable <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/2TYK2NfhJ6pmDqW8rfT4LCf/its-a-wonderful-life-from-festive-flop-to-christmas-classic" target="_blank" rel="noopener">clerical error</a> that resulted in Republic Pictures — who owned the rights after Liberty Films collapsed — failing to apply for a copyright renewal in 1974. Because it was public domain, television studios quickly added it to their holiday line-ups. A Supreme Court decision nearly two decades later determined that the owner of the short story it was based on — &#8220;The Greatest Gift&#8221; — actually owned the copyright, and to this day, NBC is the only network licensed to show the movie on television.
But those twenty years meant that millions of people saw that film — and many of them came to love it and come back to it every year.
Stewart explained that he believed the thing that had truly resonated with the audience was the thing that had resonated with him all those years ago — revealing that of the 80-or-so films he had made in his career, &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life&#8221; remained his favorite.
&#8220;Today, after some 40 years, I’ve heard the film called an American cultural phenomenon,'&#8221; Stewart told Guideposts. &#8220;Well, maybe so, but it seems to me there is nothing phenomenal about the movie itself. It’s simply about an ordinary man who discovers that living each ordinary day honorably, with faith in God and a selfless concern for others, can make for a truly wonderful life.&#8221;
* * *
RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jimmy-stewart-a-world-at-war-and-why-its-a-wonderful-life-was-almost-less-wonderful-part-i">Jimmy Stewart, A World At War, And Why &#8216;It&#8217;s A Wonderful Life&#8217; Was Almost Less Wonderful: Part I</a>

One of the Final Scenes from Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life

Jimmy Stewart, A World At War, And Why ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ Was Almost Less Wonderful: Part II

Jimmy Stewart, A World At War, And Why 'It's A Wonderful Life' Was Almost Less Wonderful: Part II

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Editor’s Note: This article was previously published on December 24, 2023. We’re bringing it back.
* * *
Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe and his men — many from the 101st Airborne Division, along with some stragglers from Pennsylvania&#8217;s 28th Infantry Division (known as &#8220;The Bloody Bucket&#8221;) and the 9th Armored &#8220;Phantom&#8221; Division — spent Christmas of 1944 in the Belgian city of Bastogne, surrounded by an ever-encroaching enemy and greatly outnumbered.
On December 22, the German commander sent word to McAuliffe, informing him that he and his troops were surrounded and demanding that they surrender. He warned the American general that if he did not surrender, the attack would be swift and merciless — and he promised that the inevitable civilian casualties would be blamed on the Americans.
McAuliffe responded to the German threat with just one word: &#8220;Nuts!&#8221; And, as promised, the German army began to tighten its grip on <a href="https://dailywire.com/news/watch-world-war-ii-veteran-breaks-into-song-during-ceremony-honoring-his-service-in-belgium/">Bastogne</a>. Machine-gun fire and approaching tanks met any American soldier who approached the perimeter, and Junkers Ju 88 bombers flew over the city as visibility allowed. The Germans also blanketed the area with pamphlets promising relief from the hunger and frigid conditions to anyone who surrendered.
And so it was that on Christmas Eve, McAuliffe sent a letter to rally his troops:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
75 years ago this Christmas Eve, Gen. Anthony McAuliffe wrote this letter to his troops during the Battle of the Bulge. Today we remember the service members who served during the holidays both then and now and wish you a Merry Christmas! <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NoVeteranEverDies?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#NoVeteranEverDies</a> <a href="https://t.co/VuYyhYqqVj">pic.twitter.com/VuYyhYqqVj</a>
— National Cemeteries (@VANatCemeteries) <a href="https://twitter.com/VANatCemeteries/status/1209458808587784192?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 24, 2019</a></blockquote>
McAuliffe&#8217;s letter began with the heading &#8220;Merry Christmas&#8221;:
<blockquote>What’s Merry about all this, you ask? We’re fighting — it’s cold, we aren’t home. All true but what has the proud Eagle Division accomplished with its worthy comrades the 10th Armored Division, the 705th Tank Destroyer Battalion and all the rest? Just this: We have stopped cold everything that has been thrown at us from the North, East, South and West. We have identifications from four German Panzer Divisions, two German Infantry Divisions and one German Parachute Division. These units, spearheading the last desperate German lunge, were headed straight west for key points when the Eagle Division was hurriedly ordered to stem the advance. How effectively this was done will be written in history; not alone in our Division’s glorious history but in World history. The Germans actually did surround us, their radios blared our doom. Their Commander demanded our surrender in the following impudent arrogance:
To the U. S. A. Commander of the encircled town of Bastogne.
The fortune of war is changing. This time the U. S. A. forces in and near Bastogne have been encircled by strong German armored units. More German armored units have crossed the river Ourthe near Ortheuville, have taken Marche and reached St. Hubert by passing through Hompres-Sibret-Tillet. Libramont is in German hands.
There is only one possibility to save the encircled U. S. A. Troops from total annihilation: that is the honorable surrender of the encircled town. In order to think it over a term of two hours will be granted beginning with the presentation of this note.
If this proposal should be rejected the German Artillery Corps and six heavy A. A. Battalions are ready to annihilate the U. S. A. Troops in and near Bastogne. The order for firing will be given immediately after this two hour’s term.
All the serious civilian losses caused by this Artillery fire would not correspond with the well known American humanity.
The German Commander
The German Commander received the following reply:
22 December 1944
“To the German Commander:
N U T S !
The American Commander”
Allied Troops are counterattacking in force. We continue to hold Bastogne. By holding Bastogne we assure the success of the Allied Armies. We know that our Division Commander, General Taylor, will say: “Well Done!”
We are giving our country and our loved ones at home a worthy Christmas present and being privileged to take part in this gallant feat of arms are truly making for ourselves a Merry Christmas.</blockquote>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
73 years ago, the US <a href="https://twitter.com/101stAASLTDIV?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@101stAASLTDIV</a> was surrounded at <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Bastogne?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Bastogne</a>, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Belgium?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Belgium</a> over the Christmas time during the December 1944 Battle of the Bulge. Here is Gen. McAuliffe&#8217;s historic Christmas letter <a href="https://t.co/BHR6MsHjMj">https://t.co/BHR6MsHjMj</a> <a href="https://twitter.com/WW2Nation?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@WW2Nation</a> <a href="https://t.co/IEpjyM3fmv">pic.twitter.com/IEpjyM3fmv</a>
— Pascal Heyman (@PascalHeyman) <a href="https://twitter.com/PascalHeyman/status/945012709669703680?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">December 24, 2017</a></blockquote>
That night, the Junkers dropped one-ton bombs on the city of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2019/12/23/christmas-eve-snow-turned-red-with-blood/">Bastogne</a>. They destroyed a makeshift hospital, killing dozens of wounded soldiers, nurses, and medics. But McAuliffe&#8217;s men held the city, earning for the 101st Airborne Division the nickname &#8220;The Battered Bastards of Bastogne.&#8221;
General George S. Patton arrived the day after Christmas, bringing with him the necessary strength to break the siege and relieve McAuliffe&#8217;s men.

Band Of Brothers Movie Still

Read The Letter General Anthony McAuliffe Sent Exhausted, Surrounded Men At The Battle Of The Bulge

Editor’s Note: This article was previously published on December 20, 2023. Since &#8220;It&#8217;s A Wonderful Life&#8221; remains a holiday classic, we’re bringing it back.
* * *
The beloved Christmas classic film &#8220;It&#8217;s a Wonderful Life&#8221; was the movie that brought a beleaguered and combat-weary actor James &#8220;Jimmy&#8221; Stewart back to fans after the war — but it may have also been the movie that brought a desperate man back from the brink.
<a href="https://www.life.com/people/jimmy-stewart-photos-of-a-world-war-ii-hero-homecoming-1945/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">James Maitland Stewart</a> was preparing to go to war for several years before he was drafted in 1941. He earned a civilian pilot&#8217;s license in the hopes that the Army would let him fly — and he even took a trip to Europe in 1939 to get a feel for the landscape, knowing that it was likely he would end up there at some point.
By the time the Empire of Japan launched its surprise attack on the American naval base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, Stewart had already attempted to join the Army. Rejected once in 1940 because he was underweight, the always-slim actor attempted to pack on a few pounds and ultimately turned to a doctor for a note explaining that he was just genetically predisposed to be thin.
Biographer Robert Matzen — who wrote &#8220;<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Mission-Jimmy-Stewart-Fight-Europe/dp/0996274057/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=jimmy+stewart+and+the+fight+for+europe&amp;qid=1621538823&amp;sr=8-1" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Mission: Jimmy Stewart and the Fight for Europe</a>&#8221; — explained, &#8220;Step by step, he set himself up to end up in England in a bomb group. One of those steps was taken years before he was drafted, and that was when he became a star in Hollywood and bought a plane that was an army trainer and proceeded to learn to fly and train, and log hours on that plane so that he could be a pilot when the war came.&#8221;
<div id="attachment_478319" style="width: 461px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478319" class="size-large wp-image-478319" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1337627840-451x576.jpg" alt="Portrait of American actor lieutenant colonel James Stewart (1908 - 1997), 1944. He had just been named chief of staff of a Liberator bomber combat wing, and recently had been awarded both the Oak Leaf Cluster and the Distinguished Flying Cross for his service. (Photo by US Army/PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" width="451" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1337627840-451x576.jpg 451w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1337627840-235x300.jpg 235w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1337627840-768x982.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-1337627840.jpg 801w" sizes=" (max-width: 451px) 100vw, 451px" />Portrait of American actor lieutenant colonel James Stewart (1908 &#8211; 1997), 1944. US Army/PhotoQuest/Getty Images.</div>
Stewart&#8217;s determination — and his pre-war preparations — did not pay off immediately, however. The actor, who was fresh off his Best Actor win in 1940&#8217;s &#8220;The Philadelphia Story,&#8221; was initially drafted to appear in film reels and enlistment propaganda films — but eventually he demanded to see combat alongside his other draftees.
Stewart eventually got what he asked for, rising through the ranks from buck private to major in just four years and earning a spot in the cockpit of a B-24 Liberator heavy bomber known as Dixie Flyer. He flew dozens of missions over Germany, some as command pilot, and earned both a Distinguished Service Medal and a Distinguished Flying Cross.
But toward the end of the <a href="https://www.americanairmuseum.com/archive/person/james-maitland-stewart">8th Air Force&#8217;s Big Week</a> in early 1944 — a six-day mission in late February originally named Operation Argument and designed to decimate the German Luftwaffe in preparation for the D-Day invasion — things <a href="https://www.denofgeek.com/movies/jimmy-stewart-ww2-mission-air-force/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">went sideways</a>. Stewart was on his 10th mission as a leader and serving as co-pilot when his plane was hit. The German flak left a sizable hole in the fuselage of his plane — just inches from his feet. And while he and his pilot were able to recover, when the smoke cleared from the cockpit, they had to watch as another in their squadron took a similar strike, lost a wing, and plummeted toward the ground.
Stewart was not the same after that and was eventually grounded. At the time, his condition was referred to as &#8220;flak-happy,&#8221; &#8220;shell-shock,&#8221; or &#8220;combat fatigue&#8221; — but today&#8217;s doctors might have diagnosed the decorated pilot with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.
&#8220;He wasn&#8217;t afraid of bombs or bullets. He was afraid of making a mistake and causing someone to die. That was his endless stress, and that&#8217;s what ended up grounding him,&#8221; Matzen wrote.
<div id="attachment_478808" style="width: 744px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478808" class="size-large wp-image-478808" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-515219828-734x576.jpg" alt="(Original Caption) 9/1/1945-New York, New York-Just like any serviceman returning from the war, Colonel James Stewart was greeted by his proud parents, who journeyed from Indiana, PA, to see their son after his arrival aboard the Queen Elizabeth. A veteran of a year and a half overseas with the 8th Air Force, Colonel Stewart, in his last command, was senior officer over approximately 9,000 men. Here he is shown with his parents at the St. Regis Hotel." width="734" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-515219828-734x576.jpg 734w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-515219828-300x236.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-515219828-768x603.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-515219828.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 734px) 100vw, 734px" />(Original Caption) 9/1/1945-New York, New York-Just like any serviceman returning from the war, Colonel James Stewart was greeted by his proud parents, who journeyed from Indiana, PA, to see their son after his arrival aboard the Queen Elizabeth. Getty Images.</div>
He returned home to his proud parents in Pennsylvania. On the outside, he was a war hero; on the inside, he was nearly broken.
Surviving on little more than peanut butter and ice cream — he struggled to keep any solid foods down — Stewart&#8217;s already thin frame became painfully so. Still, he decided after a short time at home that what he really needed was to get back to work.
&#8220;I have to go back and face Hollywood. I&#8217;ve been away for five years, other people are taking my roles,&#8221; he said — but when he got there, he quickly realized that the landscape had changed and so had he. Stewart ended up sharing an apartment with fellow actor Henry Fonda, who had also recently returned after serving in the Pacific.
<div id="attachment_478811" style="width: 427px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478811" class="size-large wp-image-478811" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-103354640-417x576.jpg" alt="Lt. Henry Fonda (1905 - 1982) during his military service on board the USS Bearss, summer 1945. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)" width="417" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-103354640-417x576.jpg 417w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-103354640-217x300.jpg 217w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-103354640.jpg 742w" sizes=" (max-width: 417px) 100vw, 417px" />Lt. Henry Fonda (1905 &#8211; 1982) during his military service on board the USS Bearss, summer 1945. (Photo by PhotoQuest/Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;I had been away from the film business, my MGM contract had run out and, frankly, not knowing how to get started again, I was just a little bit scared,&#8221; Stewart described the precarious nature of his situation in a 1987 interview with Guideposts. &#8220;Hank Fonda was in the same boat, and we sort of wandered around together, talking, flying kites and stuff. But nothing much was happening.&#8221;
Stewart got only one offer in those early weeks. His former boss and MGM exec Louis B. Mayer <a href="https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/movies/articles/first-teaser-trailer-jimmy-stewart-170732188.html">proposed a biopic</a> capitalizing on the star&#8217;s military service. &#8220;Let&#8217;s do &#8216;The Jimmy Stewart Story&#8217; — we can show you flying over Frankfurt, we can show you as a military hero,&#8221; Mayer said. Stewart&#8217;s answer was an unequivocal &#8220;No,&#8221; and he flatly refused to discuss the matter further.
Director Frank Capra, an Italian immigrant who had been naturalized after serving in World War I, had also spent <a href="https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/director-frank-capra-goes-to-war/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">time away from Hollywood</a> during the war. As soon as Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Marshall got wind of Capra&#8217;s enlistment, he had him commissioned as a major and assigned to report to him personally.
<div id="attachment_478955" style="width: 782px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-478955" class="size-large wp-image-478955" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-931704116-772x576.jpg" alt="Italian-American film director Frank Capra (1897 - 1991) as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the US Army, during a stay in London, World War II, 19th August 1943. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)" width="772" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-931704116-772x576.jpg 772w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-931704116-300x224.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-931704116-768x573.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2022/12/GettyImages-931704116.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 772px) 100vw, 772px" />Italian-American film director Frank Capra (1897 &#8211; 1991) as a Lieutenant-Colonel in the US Army, during a stay in London, World War II, 19th August 1943. (Photo by Keystone/Hulton Archive/Getty Images)</div>
&#8220;To win this war we must win the battle for men’s minds,&#8221; Marshall told Capra in one of their early meetings. &#8220;I want to nail down with you a plan to make a series of documented, factual-information films – the first in our history – that will explain to our boys in the Army why we are fighting, and the principles for which we are fighting.&#8221;
Capra protested, explaining that he had never made any film that could be considered a &#8220;documentary.&#8221;
Marshall responded with the gruff bluster that he was known for, saying, &#8220;Capra, I have never been chief of staff before. Thousands of young Americans have never had their legs shot off before. Boys are commanding ships today, who a year ago had never seen the ocean before.&#8221;
&#8220;I’m sorry, sir. I’ll make you the best damned documentary films ever made,&#8221; was Capra&#8217;s reply.
But when it was all over, Capra returned to Hollywood in much the same state as Stewart: adrift, and wondering if he still had what it took to deliver what the fans wanted.
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RELATED: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/jimmy-stewart-a-world-at-war-and-why-its-a-wonderful-life-was-almost-less-wonderful-part-ii">Jimmy Stewart, A World At War, And Why &#8216;It&#8217;s A Wonderful Life&#8217; Was Almost Less Wonderful: Part II</a>

It’s A Wonderful Life

Jimmy Stewart, A World At War, And Why ‘It’s A Wonderful Life’ Was Almost Less Wonderful: Part I

Jimmy Stewart, A World At War, And Why 'It's A Wonderful Life' Was Almost Less Wonderful: Part I

It&#8217;s Christmas break, so it seems like an appropriate time <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/bss-251222-member-exclusive?elementPosition=3&amp;row=2&amp;rowHeadline=Latest+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel">to discuss</a> one of my favorite books: “The Screwtape Letters,” by C.S. Lewis.
The book is all at once a deep rumination on religion, a high comedy rooted in the hilarity of both humanity&#8217;s flaws and Satan&#8217;s foibles, a tragedy about the nature of death, and a tale of redemption and everlasting life.
It is a spectacularly good book.
When you read “<a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-Deluxe-C-Lewis/dp/0063487764/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=hmHqX&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738%3Aamzn1.symc.050ea944-f1cf-4610-b462-3b604f2f4082&amp;pf_rd_p=048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738&amp;pf_rd_r=KNCVRDB5MGRR1B4K95QR&amp;pd_rd_wg=iizDa&amp;pd_rd_r=4e52d04f-0a0b-4d38-95e4-749c6da85b95&amp;ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d">The Screwtape Letters</a>,” there are a lot of truly funny moments. Lewis himself said, though, “Of all my books there was only one I did not take pleasure in writing,” calling it ‘dry and gritty going.’ &#8220;At the time, I was thinking of objections to the Christian life and decided to put them in the form ‘That’s what the devil would say.’ But making goods ‘bad’ and bads ‘good’ gets to be fatiguing.”
The book is wildly entertaining because he is obviously writing in the voice of one of Satan&#8217;s minions. In Christian theology, Satan has a will of his own, and he&#8217;s rebelling against God, which makes him a really fascinating character.
Lewis opens the book with a couple of epigraphs, one by Martin Luther: “The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield the texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn,” and one by Sir Thomas More: “The devil, the proud spirit, cannot endure to be mocked.”
The book is written from the perspective of Screwtape as letters to his nephew, Wormwood. Wormwood has been given the on-the-ground task of convincing a young man away from his incipient Christianity and Screwtape’s job to advise Wormwood on the best way to procure the young man&#8217;s soul.
This gives Lewis extraordinary leeway to stick and move with Satan, to make fun, to mock, to play with the entire idea. And what emerges is a great work of literature.
There are a bunch of large-scale arguments that Lewis makes in “The Screwtape Letters.” The first one is that Satan&#8217;s best weapon is the “real world.”
That is correct.
If you talk to secular people, they&#8217;ll always say that the spiritual world and God are unreal. The real world is the material world. But then, when you ask them about what&#8217;s important to them, they&#8217;ll talk about their feelings, which, of course, are inherently unreal in the same way the spiritual world is unreal.
This is a point that Lewis makes: the definition of “real” is capacious and changing on a regular basis among secularists. Lewis believes that man&#8217;s draw to the divine can be rooted in reason, and that reason actually guides you toward something beyond yourself. It guides you toward the transcendent.
That&#8217;s an idea that I heartily agree with. I believe that the notion of free will and free choice in the universe guides you toward the idea that there must be something beyond us, that there&#8217;s a logic to the universe that guides you to the question of questions: Who is the Chief Logician, who made the rules?
<div id="attachment_1018735" style="width: 391px" class="wp-caption aligncenter"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Screwtape-Letters-Deluxe-C-Lewis/dp/0063487764/?_encoding=UTF8&amp;pd_rd_w=hmHqX&amp;content-id=amzn1.sym.048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738%3Aamzn1.symc.050ea944-f1cf-4610-b462-3b604f2f4082&amp;pf_rd_p=048a6e3c-8d40-4302-8312-26c626af6738&amp;pf_rd_r=KNCVRDB5MGRR1B4K95QR&amp;pd_rd_wg=iizDa&amp;pd_rd_r=4e52d04f-0a0b-4d38-95e4-749c6da85b95&amp;ref_=pd_hp_d_btf_ci_mcx_mr_ca_id_hp_d"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1018735" class="size-large wp-image-1018735" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-381x576.jpg" alt="Credit: HarperOne" width="381" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-381x576.jpg 381w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-199x300.jpg 199w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_-768x1160.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/12/71NsTMMQuGL._SL1500_.jpg 993w" sizes=" (max-width: 381px) 100vw, 381px" /></a>Credit: HarperOne</div>
Lewis makes the same point, and then he says that the job of the secular materialist is to get you to focus on the thing-in-itself.
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>Even if a particular train of thought can be twisted so as to end in our favour, you will find that you have been strengthening in your patient the fatal habit of attending to universal issues and withdrawing his attention from the stream of immediate sense experiences. Your business is to fix his attention on the stream. Teach him to call it real life. Don&#8217;t let him ask what he means by real.</blockquote>
Thus, keep the person focused on the immediate and the now. There&#8217;s nothing that&#8217;s done this more than the internet age, where our attention spans have been reduced to the next 15 seconds. Sitting and ruminating on life leads you to higher ideas, and if you can prevent people from doing that sort of stuff, you end up with a very materialistic society.
So what exactly does reality mean? According to Screwtape,
<blockquote>People ought to be taught that in all experiences which can make them happier or better, only the physical facts are real, while the spiritual elements are subjective and in all experiences which can discourage or corrupt them, the spiritual elements are the main reality, and to ignore them is to be an escapist.</blockquote>
The idea is that when you&#8217;re thinking about death, the only thing that is real is the death itself. You&#8217;re not supposed to look at the spiritual element of death. Or, if you do look at something that makes you very happy, you&#8217;re not supposed to look at the spiritual element of what makes you very happy. Instead, focus on the pure materialism of the thing. The goal is to enmesh mankind in the world.
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>How disastrous for us is the continual remembrance of death with which war enforces. One of our best weapons, contented worldliness, is rendered useless in wartime. Not even a human can believe that he is going to live forever.</blockquote>
The material world, then, is the chief ally of Screwtape because people desire not to think of God. God is a distraction. God has obligations. God has duties. 
Screwtape says,
<blockquote>Human beings hate every idea that suggests Him just as men in financial embarrassment hate the very sight of a passbook. (meaning a checkbook.)</blockquote>
The idea is that if you&#8217;re not thinking about duty, and then you&#8217;re forced to think about duty, you don&#8217;t like it very much.
The other thing that Screwtape tries to get you to focus on is the future — at all times. If you can focus on the future at all times, then people will be very neglectful of the present.
So says Screwtape,
<blockquote>It&#8217;s far better to make them live in the Future. &#8230; The Future is, of all things, the thing least like eternity. It is the most completely temporal part of time — for the Past is frozen and no longer flows and the Present is all lit up with eternal rays. Hence the encouragement we have given to all those schemes of thought like Creative Evolution, Scientific Humanism or Communism, which fix men&#8217;s affections on the Future, on the very core of temporality. Hence, nearly all vices are rooted in the future.</blockquote>
The idea is, if you&#8217;re thinking about the future, then you&#8217;re not thinking about the spiritual consequences of the things you do in the here and now. You&#8217;re thinking about the material consequences of the things that you do in the here and now, and that allows you to do bad things in the name of a “better future.”
Screwtape says the best thing you can do is convince people that their utopian thoughts are the things that are mandated by God. So on the one hand, you try to get people sunk in reality, and this drives them away from God.
On the other hand, Screwtape advises Wormwood that people should be led to examine their own emotions constantly; if you can be narcissistic, checking yourself all the time, you&#8217;re going to end up without God.
Lewis teaches that very often in life, we engage at the beginning of a task with great enthusiasm, and then the enthusiasm wears away. This happens all the time with a variety of tasks, and once that happens, that is when you encourage people to look into being morose, look into being depressed, to reject the spiritual aspect of their duty, to stop trying to take joy in the spiritual aspect of what they&#8217;re doing, and instead focus on the fact that it&#8217;s just sheer drudgery.
Screwtape says that the rule of thumb for seducing mankind away from God is to encourage people to be unselfconscious when considering sin — to be unabashed, unashamed, blasé about your sin, but to be self-conscious and awkward when you consider acts of faith.
This is modern society in a nutshell. The more you sin, the prouder you should be. You should engage in festivals celebrating your sin. When it comes to going to church, you should be shy: “I don&#8217;t want to be judgmental; I&#8217;ll make you feel ashamed. But when it comes to my sin, man, I will tell you about my sins all day long because we can all be comfortable; we can be the boys when we&#8217;re talking about our sins.”
Screwtape also points out that one easy way to hell is to get people to disregard the individual human beings in front of them in the name of Mankind, writ large. This, obviously, is the project of the Left, which is willing to completely run over its neighbors in order to pursue a &#8220;better world&#8221; for everybody else.
The book has wonderful pieces of advice, even for people who are not totally religious, about how to act better in your inner world, how to treat other people better, and how to have better relations with your spouse.
It&#8217;s a beautifully written book.
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CS Lewis writing

One Of My Favorite Books: ‘The Screwtape Letters’

One Of My Favorite Books: 'The Screwtape Letters'

Ben Shapiro

Bible

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Judeo-Christian Values

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Tucker Carlson shocked nearly everyone last week when he implied that Dietrich Bonhoeffer, a pastor and one of the most revered heroes of World War II, had to abandon Christianity in order to turn on Adolf Hitler.
Bonhoeffer attempted to assassinate the Nazi leader and was murdered by the Third Reich in 1945. Bonhoeffer’s actions are almost universally regarded as heroic — but not to Carlson, who <a href="https://www.newsmax.com/us/tucker-carlson-dietrich-bonhoeffer-adolf-hitler/2025/11/13/id/1234491/">declared</a> recently that Bonhoeffer had simply &#8220;decided &#8230; Christianity is not enough, we have to kill the guy.”
Carlson held Bonhoeffer up as a warning to conservatives who criticize antisemitism on the Right, saying, &#8220;once you start calling people Nazis, we really have no choice but to start shooting them,&#8221; Carlson said.
So much sloppy thinking, so little time. 
Carlson is right that falsely labeling someone a “Nazi” or a “fascist” today paints a target on that person. It was reckless, for example, for California Governor Gavin Newsom to call White House advisor Stephen Miller <a href="https://stream.org/gavins-gambit-newsom-doubles-down-on-the-fascist-slander/">a fascist</a>, prompting leftists in Miller’s neighborhood to dox him, plastering telephone poles and lampposts with Miller’s home address.
But what does any of this have to do with Dietrich Bonhoeffer? He wasn’t sloppily using “Nazi” as a slur against his political opponents, the literal Nazis. Nobody was falsely claiming that the ordinary enforcement of just laws amounted to genocidal terror. Genocidal terror was written into the laws of a regime which had seized power in a crisis, suspended the constitution, outlawed all opposition, and stripped Jews of citizenship. 
Literal Nazis, who called themselves “Nazis,” were filling concentration camps with non-violent political dissidents, and preparing a war openly designed to conquer, enslave, and exterminate the peoples of neighboring nations. The Nazi blueprint for obtaining “Lebensraum” in Poland and the Soviet Union, <a href="https://wwv.yadvashem.org/odot_pdf/Microsoft%20Word%20-%206247.pdf">Generalplan Ost</a>, envisioned wiping out some 80 million Slavs by either direct murder or slow starvation, to be replaced by German colonists. 
Carlson’s absurd criticism of Bonhoeffer is rooted in a fundamental misrepresentation of Christianity and its teachings. Despite Jesus’ words about turning the other cheek on a personal level, Christianity was never rigidly pacifist.
By the time of St. Augustine, the Church had developed the “Just War” doctrine, narrowly defining occasions when military action by the state was morally good and right. That teaching is widely accepted by most Christian churches, and codified by the Roman Catholic Church in its <a href="https://www.usccb.org/issues-and-action/human-life-and-dignity/war-and-peace/excerpts-from-catechism-of-the-catholic-church-safeguarding-peace-1997">Catechism</a>.
Catholic teaching holds that a Just War is one in which “the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain,” and “all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective.” There also “must be serious prospects of success” and “the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated.”
The language above refers to the actions of the state, not individual citizens. On the surface, it seems only to apply to decisions by nations such as Great Britain and France, whose declarations of war on Germany were obviously just. 
But the Just War analysis doesn’t only apply to states. As I explained in my recent book, “<a href="https://www.calamopress.com/store/no-second-amendment-no-first">No Second Amendment, No First”,</a> during the Reformation and Counter-Reformation religious persecution by intolerant monarchs drove thinkers in both the Jesuit and the Calvinist traditions to ask if those conditions could justify a civil war, a rebellion against a tyrant. Most of them answered “Yes,” and Christian political thinking began for the first time to countenance the overthrow of evil governments by their people. The men who removed King Charles I, and rebelled against French monarchs during the Wars of Religion, cited such arguments. 
So would later rebels, right here in America. Our own Declaration of Independence is actually an eloquent argument that the misgovernment of the 13 colonies by the British parliament and crown amounted to tyranny, and met the Just War requirements, making armed resistance not just permissible but obligatory.
The anti-Nazi resistance to which Dietrich Bonhoeffer belonged was steeped in this same tradition, and saw its efforts to overthrow a wicked tyranny in wartime as perfectly compatible with the broad Christian tradition. Their actions had nothing in common with the violence fostered by irresponsible leftist zealots in our non-tyrannical country in peacetime, which enjoys free elections and a free press.
For the real story of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, treat yourself by streaming the recent, <a href="https://www.amazon.com/gp/video/detail/B0DQRBSF6S/ref=atv_dp_amz_c_TS8274d9_1_1?jic=16%7CCgNhbGwSA2FsbA%3D%3D">powerful biopic</a> about the man, or reading Eric Metaxas’s <a href="https://na01.safelinks.protection.outlook.com/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fclicks.aweber.com%2Fy%2Fct%2F%3Fl%3DFqFpc%26m%3D3XCdD_eFuk3cNaF%26b%3DK55f0DFRsI09TrIYGhU2MQ&amp;data=05%7C02%7C%7Cc0c9bf61e6b1422e8efa08de239ce248%7C84df9e7fe9f640afb435aaaaaaaaaaaa%7C1%7C0%7C638987353876021137%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=aDTERBtB%2BmLzyO29EYFDyIh%2F8siQ%2B153YsTF2xJeGhA%3D&amp;reserved=0">magisterial book</a> on his inspiring life. And remember to always take with a grain of salt anything claimed by a certain former bow-tie-wearing war hawk with a maniacal laugh.
* * *
John Zmirak is author of many books, including the biography of anti-Nazi exile <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Wilhelm-Ropke-Library-Modern-Thinkers/dp/1882926560/ref=sr_1_1?crid=34MC41KJSEC8Z&amp;dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.IFJtRxoqeob52UgE206MCA.1YpaMP-rgHyaWkbhgF5AQT2XVjYRBIJOa9zsKPTGzuQ&amp;dib_tag=se&amp;keywords=Wilhelm+Ropke%3A+Swiss+Localist%2C+Global+Economist&amp;qid=1763142650&amp;s=books&amp;sprefix=wilhelm+ropke+swiss+localist%2C+global+economist%2Cstripbooks%2C79&amp;sr=1-1">Wilhelm Röpke</a>, and the recent <a href="https://www.calamopress.com/store/no-second-amendment-no-first">No Second Amendment, No First</a>.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Critics Of Dietrich Bonhoeffer Are Wrong About Everything

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American Elections Are Now Being Decided Based On Tribal Blood Feuds In Africa

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Alec Penstone, a 100-year-old Royal Navy veteran who swept the seas for mines during the D-Day landings, has issued a blistering indictment of modern Britain, saying flatly that winning the Second World War “wasn’t worth the result.” Appearing on “Good Morning Britain,” Penstone’s voice carried the weight of a century — and the heartbreak of a man who watched his comrades die for a freedom he now believes has been squandered.
<div>
“My message is,” Penstone told the hosts, “I can see in my mind’s eye those rows and rows of white stones — all the hundreds of my friends who gave their lives. For what? The country of today? No, I’m sorry, but the sacrifice wasn’t worth the result of what it is now.”
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This was no casual complaint from a disillusioned pensioner. It was the lament of a man who, at fifteen, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/11/07/winning-second-world-war-not-worth-it-d-day-veteran/#:~:text=A%20100%2Dyear%2Dold%20veteran,Good%20Morning%20Britain%20on%20Friday.">joined the war effort,</a> later serving on the HMS Campania, searching for U-boats and mines under constant threat of torpedo fire. He called himself “one of the lucky ones” simply for surviving. Yet after returning home, marrying his sweetheart Gladys, and watching Britain rebuild, he now looks upon a nation that no longer resembles the country that once stood defiantly against tyranny.
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“What we fought for was our freedom,” he said. “But now it’s a darn sight worse than when I fought for it.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
&#39;What we fought for was our freedom, even now [the country] is worse than it was when I fought for it,&#39; says 100-year-old World War II Veteran Alec Penstone. <a href="https://t.co/M9HSsS5sIW">pic.twitter.com/M9HSsS5sIW</a>
&mdash; Good Morning Britain (@GMB) <a href="https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1986715254869332096?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 7, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
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Penstone’s comments land in a Britain that appears almost determined to erase the very memory of the heroes who saved it. Earlier this year, under the Labour government of Prime Minister Keir Starmer, portraits of Winston Churchill and the Duke of Wellington — the men who defeated Adolf Hitler and Napoleon — were quietly <a href="https://www.gbnews.com/politics/keir-starmer-winston-churchill-portrait-parliament-labour-party-history">removed</a> from Parliament. GB News reported that the purge extended across Westminster, with Churchill’s image even taken down from Portcullis House, where he was once photographed standing at the Cenotaph in 1945.
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The Cenotaph, that sacred monument to the fallen, now stands in stark contrast to a political class eager to distance itself from the nation’s own history. To Penstone’s generation, Churchill embodied courage, conviction, and the defense of liberty. To today’s ruling elite, he is an embarrassment — an inconvenient reminder of British greatness.
</div>
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The moral decay goes deeper still. This year, Starmer dismissed calls to investigate the widespread rapes of young girls by Pakistani grooming gangs, smearing those who demanded justice as “jumping on a far-right bandwagon.” When Elon Musk called out the cover-up to his 210 million followers, Starmer called it “misinformation.” Musk <a href="https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1876245946348208601">shot back</a>: “What an insane thing to say!” accusing Starmer of ignoring “vast numbers of little girls and their parents” for political gain.
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For a man like Alec Penstone, who risked his life so that truth and freedom might endure, such cowardice and corruption cut deep. His sorrow is not nostalgia — it is recognition. The Britain he fought for has traded courage for cowardice, truth for propaganda, and honor for convenience.
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The white stones still stand in silent rows. But the nation they represent, Penstone fears, has forgotten why they are there.
</div>

The Mayor Of Arromanches Leads A Parade of British Veterans With A Royal Guard Of Honour

100-Year-Old D-Day Vet Condemns The Britain He Sees Today: ‘The Sacrifice Wasn’t Worth The Result’

General

World

After Nick Fuentes told Tucker Carlson that he was a “fan” and “admirer” of Joseph Stalin, Carlson told the young antisemite that they’d have to “circle back” on that point. But like Jen Psaki before him, Carlson failed to do so.
So, I reached out to Aaron MacLean, senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and the host of the <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/school-of-war/id1589160645" target="_blank" rel="noopener">School of War podcast</a>. He’s also a Marine who deployed to Afghanistan, a former professor at the U.S. Naval Academy, and, perhaps most importantly, was once my editor at the Washington Free Beacon, where I learned his encyclopedic knowledge of European history first-hand.
Is there anything to admire about Stalin? It’s a question that I think Daily Wire readers know the answer to, but one worth circling back on nonetheless. —Brent Scher
***
When Adolf Hitler shot himself in his Berlin bunker in 1945, he was directly responsible for the deaths of more than ten million men, women, and children.
That includes the millions he had murdered in the network of camps he had constructed across Europe. Toward the end of the war the typical method was to order large, terrified groups to strip naked at gunpoint, inform them they were to be disinfected from lice, and then asphyxiate them with cyanide gas in a sealed room mocked up to look like a shower.
The gassing itself took about 15 minutes. Early in the war many were shot, until questions of troop morale compelled the Nazis to invent techniques that would be less traumatizing for the executioner.
Europe’s Jews hold the unhappy distinction of having been the largest population of Hitler’s victims, with about 6 million killed in a campaign of deliberate destruction. Millions more deaths than these can be directly attributed to Hitler’s orders, without even broaching the question of his responsibility for the overall death toll of World War II in Europe, which he started and prosecuted almost until the end.
It&#8217;s remarkable that even with so steep a butcher’s bill, Hitler does not hold first place among the 20th century&#8217;s murderers. That position is occupied by Chairman Mao Zedong, whose efforts to bring socialism to China killed more than 40 million Chinese, the vast majority of whom starved. Hitler must compete among historians for second place.
His rival is the Soviet Union’s Joseph Stalin.
Like Mao, Stalin led a revolutionary leftwing regime that sought to bring equality and justice to one of the most economically and socially backwards nations on earth. Like Hitler, who was born in Austria, Stalin also came from the outer reaches of the empire he would come to terrorize.
Taking power upon the death of Lenin in 1924, Stalin inherited an incomplete communist revolution. The elimination of private property and Sovietization of major cities was well underway. But the Russian countryside was vast and it had been virtually impossible to impose the rule of enlightened science with any kind of scale or efficiency. In practice, independent farmers and landowners still lived their lives much as they had before the revolution.
Stalin ordered that this capitalist inertia be halted, and “collectivized” (that is, stole) these farms and gave them to “the people” (that is, the Soviet government he dominated). Hundreds of thousands of the farmers were murdered summarily; many more of them and their families died of starvation, disease, and other conditions of deportation from their land. As violent as this consequence was, it was not the worst outcome of collectivization. That was the death by starvation of millions as the food supply, predictably, faltered when those who had grown and sold the food were replaced by entirely new and untested systems of production and distribution.
As food shortages grew, rather than acknowledge his mistake, Stalin blamed those producing the food, and accused selfish locals of hoarding rather than participating in the new communist system in good faith. Brutal punishments and the confiscation of local food supplies abounded.
In Ukraine, this campaign of deliberate retaliation, remembered today as the “Holodomor,” caused the deaths of about 3 million, as Ukrainian-grown grain was taken and transported to feed the people of Moscow and other Russian cities. Whole villages died, but not before eating their pets, boiling shoe leather for soup, and grinding bones to make flour. Many went mad, their bellies distended, their limbs withered and strengthless. Cannibalism was far from unheard of, to include within families, to include mothers and their children. All in accordance with Stalin’s orders, all in the name of science and progress.
(For those who wish to know more about the Holodomor, Vasily Grossman’s <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Everything-Flows-Review-Books-Classics/dp/1590173287" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Everything Flows</a> is a brilliant examination of this episode by an eyewitness.)
Meanwhile, back at the regime’s center, among Soviet elites, Stalin feared dissent and plots to displace him from power — some real, most imagined. Such fears are the fate of any absolute dictator. To allay them, Stalin unleashed waves of purges of various elites in the state, the military, and the professions, culminating in the late 1930s in a period now known as the Great Terror. Over half a million Russians were executed during this period, many of them taken from their families in the middle of the night and shot in the basement of Moscow’s Lubyanka prison.
The overwhelming majority of them were guilty of absolutely nothing. Sometimes spectacular show trials were held for the accused, in which the captives would be compelled to theatrically “confess” their participation in nonexistent and cinematically traitorous plots against the state, lest their families also be murdered. In this period, the “luckier” victims were the many millions arrested and deported to the gulags in the east — concentration and forced labor camps where over a million died over the lifetime of the system.
(The work of Robert Conquest in his “The Great Terror” and the eyewitness accounts of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in “The Gulag Archipelago” and “A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” are outstanding ways to learn more about Stalin’s actions in this period.)
As the Second World War loomed, many expected an apocalyptic clash between the great leftwing revolutionary power, Stalin’s Soviet Union, and the great rightwing revolutionary power, Nazi Germany. The world was then shocked when in August of 1939 Stalin agreed to a non-aggression pact with Hitler, giving the Nazi dictator a free hand to fight a war in the west while also dividing Eastern Europe into Nazi and Soviet spheres of influence. When Hitler invaded Poland in September, Soviet troops marched in as well, dividing the country in two.
Setting aside the unique horror of the Nazi-perpetrated Holocaust which was still to come, Soviet rule was hardly any less brutal than that of the Nazis, with widespread liquidation (that is, murder) of Polish elites who might resist Soviet imperialism — famously, the execution in the woods near Katyn of over 20,000 Polish military officers, police, intellectuals, and other elites. A small number in comparison to other bloodbaths of the day — an immaterial observation to the families of the dead.
Hitler betrayed Stalin and invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, in one of the Soviet dictator’s most notable lapses of judgment: a man who never trusted another living soul in his own country bizarrely trusted Adolf Hitler. The cataclysm that ensued very nearly wiped Russia out as an independent country, not least because the Soviet military’s officer corps had been decimated by waves of purges, leaving mediocrities and yes-men overrepresented among the survivors.
Nevertheless, the blood of the common Russian soldier, the snow of the Russian winter, and the steel of the American industrial machine prevailed in defeating Hitler in the east. The United States saved Soviet Russia due to a common interest in defeating Nazi expansionism, only then to have to deal with Soviet expansionism, as Stalin postwar imposed iron rule on Eastern Europe and sought opportunities for global communism to expand wherever the free world showed weakness, from West Berlin to South Korea. The terror and expansionism only moderated upon his death in 1953 — and the regime he did so much to shape continued to destabilize the world and oppress its own people for another 40 years.
Why anyone, let alone anyone like Nick Fuentes, who claims to be on the Right, would “admire” Joseph Stalin seems at first a mystery — but the solution to the puzzle is in the fact that he seems to admire both Hitler and Stalin. The particulars of the revolutionary ideologies in question matter less than the sheer gleeful desire for destruction for its own sake. The terrain of the 20th century is made up of rivers of blood and mountains of murdered innocents, piled to the heavens. America’s heroic role in that period was to draw a line and defeat the terror of Hitler, and then contain that of Stalin.
Unfortunately the world is again a dangerous place; it is important to remember who the monsters were, and are.
Aaron MacLean is host of the podcast School of War and a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute.
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The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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Honoring Joseph Stalin On His Birthday

Circling Back On Joseph Stalin

antisemitism

Josef Stalin

Russia

Right-wing political commentator Tucker Carlson&#8217;s latest podcast episode featured a Cornell professor who suggested that there&#8217;s a good argument to be made for the United States backing Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during World War II instead of fighting the Nazis with Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union.
David Collum, a chemistry and chemical biology professor at the Ivy League school, told Carlson in an episode published on Wednesday that he read a book about the &#8220;revisionist history of World War II&#8221; and came away believing that &#8220;the story we got about World War II is all wrong, actually.&#8221;
&#8220;I think that&#8217;s right,&#8221; Carlson replied.
&#8220;One can make the argument [that] we should have sided with Hitler and fought Stalin,&#8221; Collum added. &#8220;Patton said that. And maybe there wouldn&#8217;t have been a holocaust, right? But Stalin was awful by any metric, and we weren&#8217;t his ally.&#8221;
In the episode, which can be viewed in full <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=orgvAk7JhBI&amp;t=3943s">here</a>, Carlson offered no pushback to Collum&#8217;s claim that a U.S.-Nazi alliance would have been preferable during World War II, or to the bizarre idea that the U.S. siding with Hitler would have somehow prevented the Nazi regime from murdering six million Jews.
The Nazis <a href="https://www.bbc.co.uk/teach/articles/zkxwgwx">began</a> instituting antisemitic laws in 1935, four years before the beginning of World War II and six years before the United States declared war on Germany. Jewish persecution intensified in 1937 and 1938 when Nazis began throwing people into concentration camps, and nearly 100 Jews were killed during the Kristallnacht pogrom. Hitler began creating concentration camps specifically for Jews in 1940, a year before U.S. troops joined its European allies to fight the Nazis. The largest mass murder of Jews under Hitler took place in 1942, just months after the United States had joined the fight.
As for Collum&#8217;s claim that Patton wanted to side with Hitler, there&#8217;s no historical record to back it up. While U.S. General George S. Patton believed that the Soviet Union would pose a major threat to the United States, he never advocated for siding with Hitler to fight Stalin. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill also said in the years following World War II that the Soviet Union was &#8220;in some ways more formidable than Hitler,&#8221; but he never suggested that it would have been better to fight Stalin alongside the Nazis.
Diana West, the author of the book that Collum credited for his revisionist take on World War II, said on Thursday that her book &#8220;does not argue for anything remotely like aligning with Hitler.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
IMPORTANT: Lest there be any confusion from clip below, my book <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AmericanBetrayal?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AmericanBetrayal</a> does not argue for anything remotely like aligning with Hitler, and has ZERO to do with Darryl Cooper&#8217;s pro-Hitlerism. On the contrary, <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AmericanBetrayal?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#AmericanBetrayal</a> lays out the vast &#8220;occupation&#8221; of our… <a href="https://t.co/8G51ABb5RG">https://t.co/8G51ABb5RG</a>
— @realDianaWest (@realDianaWest) <a href="https://twitter.com/realDianaWest/status/1958332767583739954?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 21, 2025</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The former Fox News host was blasted after clips of Collum&#8217;s comments began circulating on social media.
&#8220;So now we should’ve backed Hitler? Let’s see if these sh*t heads are denounced by any but a handful of us on radio or TV,&#8221; <a href="https://x.com/marklevinshow/status/1958345094001553896">said</a> conservative broadcaster Mark Levin.
Carlson <a href="https://x.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1958552781242991095">responded</a> to Levin, writing, &#8220;Settle down, Mark. Nobody endorsed Hitler.&#8221;
During his interview with Carlson, Collum also claimed that when Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, &#8220;It wasn&#8217;t a war.&#8221;
&#8220;It was a police action,&#8221; Collum said. &#8220;And they weren&#8217;t killing people. They were moving troops across the border.&#8221;
Nearly 60 people were killed and 170 people were wounded on the first day of Russia&#8217;s invasion, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/ukraine-says-57-people-killed-first-day-russian-invasion-2022-02-24/">according</a> to Ukrainian authorities.
The Cornell professor added that it only became a war because &#8220;NATO wanted a war,&#8221; suggesting that the U.S.-European alliance was the aggressor in the conflict.
&#8220;And so, it morphed from being a police action, which I think Putin was trying to throw a fast ball past NATO&#8217;s chin and saying, &#8216;Back off on this whole NATO thing,'&#8221; Collum said.
&#8220;That&#8217;s correct,&#8221; Carlson replied.

Tucker Carlson Nods Along As Guest Suggests WWII History ‘Is All Wrong’: ‘Should’ve Sided With Hitler’

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