A Big Picture of the Cold War

Even as narrator M.Sgt. Stuart Queen declared, “The guns are quiet again in Korea,” to open the final Big Picture episode depicting active combat on the Korean peninsula in 1953, the series producers had already developed and aired a new film to explain the importance of facing down the ever-present global communist threat.¹ “Soldier in Berlin” (TV-232), released that same year, reminded the American public of the Western military presence in that city located one hundred miles deep within East Germany and its significance as a symbol of democratic freedom. As Queen noted, the American soldier was there to defend “the prestige and interests of democracy. While in the East sector of the city the Russians and their puppet government plot and propagandize against us.”² This episode was one of many that described the tense geopolitical confrontation between the East and West that evolved in the post–World War II period that would become the Cold War. In that conflict, The Big Picture would find utility as a claxon to raise the alarm alerting Americans to communist hegemonic designs and to neutralize propaganda from the East through its own well-crafted messages about the West. It is not possible to understate the impact of the series—the “Cold War of the 1950s became America’s first ‘television war.’”³

Including key hotspots such as Korea and Vietnam, the Cold War evolved into a series of proxy wars mixed with the cut and thrust of diplomatic negotiating and moments of suspenseful brinksmanship between the opposing global superpowers. This all unfolded beneath the clouds of potential worldwide nuclear devastation that hung heavy and low for the first score of years after World War II. Although that danger would eventually lift, the tense conditions between the East and West remained through the time of the Eisenhower administration. It was then that the president assumed the strategic reasoning of his predecessor Harry S Truman, which had been shaped in large by a succession of National Security Council (NSC) documents generated between December 1947 and April 1950. These laid out the designs for appraising the threat to national security and developing a means to confront the communist East.⁴ Through these assessments the administration eventually determined that American leadership and dominance in the postwar world depended on two things: the skillful application of psychological warfare and a commitment to the theory of containment. Toward the first, the president understood that it was a battle for the hearts and minds of people at home and in other nations and that among all the “soft power” weapons at hand, including diplomacy, economic assistance, cultural exchange programs, and trade, telling the story of the West’s superiority was paramount.⁵ Eisenhower set it as a goal for the United States to prove its “peaceful intentions, and to persuade others of the ideological and cultural superiority of the American way of life.”⁶

Toward the second objective, the president, as well as most political and military elites, adhered to the doctrine espoused by the American diplomat and historian George F. Kennan. In a lengthy, strongly worded telegram dispatched from his post in Moscow in February 1946, Kennan encouraged an approach to check Soviet hegemonic ambitions through a global containment strategy.⁷ This would incorporate the stationing of American military power at strategic points around the world joined with the establishment of a supporting network of cooperative alliances of like-minded nations to counter communist expansion. Inspired by both the need and the possibility of success, the American leadership wove together the concepts of propaganda and containment into a grand strategy to combat communism in the first decades of the Cold War. In this, The Big Picture was instrumental in telling the American public and service members the dangers they faced from the insidious communists as well as describing the actions the American government was taking to forestall those threats.

Selling the Ideology

The original thirteen episodes of The Big Picture, together with a number of others that the APC produced over the ensuing years, painted a clear picture of the confrontation between America with its coalition of allies and the communists on the Korean peninsula. The narrative was clear as the introduction of the early episodes described the need to “stop Communist aggression wherever it may strike.” As episode followed episode, the message remained unchanged: it was a battle against tyranny and oppression born of the East’s corrupt ideologies. Even deeper into the Big Picture catalog, episodes born of the Korean conflict returned to that message. The 1954 story “Armed Forces Assistance to Korea” (TV-271) spoke of the army’s efforts to “rehabilitate certain areas of civilian life” as a “living monument of friendship between peoples” and to continue to safeguard their hard-won freedoms.⁸ In that same context, “Korea and You” (TV-519), produced in 1961, eight years after the armistice, described the American soldier’s continuing role in Korea as part of the “bulwark against Communist aggression.”⁹ In each of these cases, APC producers scripted the Big Picture episodes to communicate a strong anticommunist narrative and deliver a message espousing the superiority of Western freedoms. This remained consistent with the administration’s grand scheme, but within that design darker dangers began appearing.

As the energies of the war in Korea began to subside, disturbing reports of American POWs’ behavior emerged. A burst of articles by various media outlets, including the military’s own Stars and Stripes, described American soldiers’ susceptibility to the pressures of enemy interrogation. One contemporary military psychiatrist claimed that the behavior of “many of our soldiers in [North Korean] prisons fell far short of the historical American standards of honor, character, loyalty, courage and personal integrity.”¹⁰ More disconcerting were some media reports that alleged that unlike in previous wars, American GIs had become soft and quickly collaborated, sometimes refusing to escape, and died at an alarming rate from “a morale malady called ‘give-up-itis.’”¹¹ According to one army report, the responsibility rested squarely on the American home, because “parental training failed to provide them [the soldiers] with moral values and Yankee resourcefulness.”¹²

Afraid that service personnel no longer understood the foundational principles of American freedoms or why they were fighting, the Eisenhower administration quickly took action. The president charged Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Charles Wilson to develop a code of conduct for service personnel, which when complete consisted of six articles. They would serve as a declaration of American ideals to recommit the serviceman to “the principles which made [our] country free” and would encourage them to “trust in [our] God and in the United States of America.”¹³ Each of the service branches adopted the new credo, which the president signed in August 1955, and The Big Picture reflected that effort to reinculcate the army personnel with the fundamental patriotic values and to make the American public aware of the situation.¹⁴

Among the first episodes to deal with the issue was “Escape from a Prisoner of War Camp” (TV-320). Released in 1955, it reviewed the tenets of the new code of conduct and offered re-creations of actual escape attempts made by American soldiers who were once prisoners. It did importantly note that occasionally “our men do get captured through no fault of their own,” perhaps as a salve to former American POWs from the Korean conflict.¹⁵ Another episode was “Defense against Enemy Propaganda” (TV-360). Broadcast in 1957, it served as a response to the early concerns regarding the effectiveness of communist propaganda. Initially created as a troop information film for use exclusively by the army, its purpose was “to alert the American soldier against a hidden enemy, an enemy that can destroy morale, rob the soldier of the will to fight, and even trick him into surrendering.”¹⁶ Realizing its utility, however, the APC soon released the episode for wider dissemination. As narrator MSG Queen soberly declared, “We think you the American public will also find it pertinent and enlightening.”¹⁷ Throughout the film, examples of communist propaganda appeared as proof of the East’s duplicity and at times desperate measures to undermine the morale of American service members. Riding this wave of concern, the APC continued to produce episodes that showcased a retooling of the soldier’s defense against enemy propaganda.

In 1958, the episode “Code of the Fighting Man” (TV-428) appeared as a direct endorsement of the six-article code of conduct published by the SECDEF just a few years earlier. Its purpose was to inform and train both the soldier and the public by explaining that the code “outlines the soldier’s moral obligation to his country.”¹⁸ Created as one of the few docudramas produced for The Big Picture, it used a fictionalized situation of an army unit surrounded and cut off from retreat by an enemy. A sequence of scenarios showed the capture of small groups of soldiers, whom the enemy then subjected to harsh interrogation. But ultimately the soldiers were successful in deflecting the enemy’s determined attempts, and they did not break under the pressure. As the narrator reminded the viewer, this was due to the “kind of training which the army is giving its soldiers to prepare them for every eventuality on the battlefield.”¹⁹ Hard on the heels of this episode the APC produced the next, which continued with the concept of shaping the individual soldier’s core values. Following the unwritten mandate of the administration and the Department of Defense, the episode “Character Guidance” (TV-429) focused on the US Army’s monthly character guidance training program that centered on open-ended scenarios that posed ethical and moral questions to soldiers. As the script emphasized, “The character of the American soldier is representative of the character of his country, and the strength of character of any country may well be its most precious possession.”²⁰ The meaning of these collected episodes was as a palliative to remedy any perceived lack of moral fiber or resoluteness of purpose within the soldier. As such, they were ingredients in the administration’s strategy to win the ideological war with the East by bolstering the psychological resiliency of Americans so that they could better withstand the onslaught of enemy Cold War propaganda. But this was only part of that equation.

This collection of episodes, particularly “Escape from a Prisoner of War Camp” and “Code of the Fighting Man,” were informational in tone. Although both were docudramas, each began with a serious, descriptive introduction by the narrator and a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps (JAG) to add a certain gravitas to the message. The camera captured scenes in standard gray halftones, and the music was slow and matched the forlorn aspect of the soldiers, especially when showing lines of American POWS being marched to a prison camp. The enemy in the former episode was a hybrid European figure who spoke a composite gibberish of German and Eastern European dialects. In the latter episode, the environment was Asian, with the enemy interrogators dressed as North Koreans. The films left little to the imagination regarding who the enemy was in either case. Scenes of dirty GIs with dirty, bruised faces, sweating under intense interrogation, appeared in each film, a clear message that the experience of the American POW was not going to be an easy one. But the camera also showed that those who escaped did receive a hero’s welcome back to their own units with smiles and glad-handing all around. As “Code of the Fighting Man” came to a close, with its lesson of abiding faith in American ideals complete, the American flag appeared on-screen, snapping smartly in the breeze. This type of production existed as a foil against propaganda from the East. Each side was competing with the other through specific messaging shaped to deflect the other’s efforts to influence thinking. Films such as “Code of the Fighting Man” were examples of the psychological warfare efforts that flowed from the APC and that producers did not consider in any way hypocritical. They were necessary and useful weapons for the Cold War.²¹

The other factor in the ideological formula was reeducating the American military and public in the nation’s foundational ideals. The 1961 Big Picture episode “Challenge of Ideas” (TV-512) served that purpose. Although the opening narration offered a Cold War reminder that “the entire globe . . . is today the site of a momentous conflict as each side attempts to prove to the world the superiority of its position,” it was the parade of notables who appeared on screen that provided the substance of the message.²² The first was Edward R. Murrow, the noted journalist, who somberly addressed the viewer: “I would like to review with you the great conflict of our time, one which demands and must get the attention and the involvement of each one of us.”²³ Following his overview of the Cold War was John Wayne’s lengthy description of a wide array of freedoms that Americans enjoyed. The story line coupled this with an additional litany of those rights of the individual that were available in the West, specifically to NATO member nations. These were rights such as the “freedom of speech, of conscience and religion, or opinion and belief,” and the “right of every man to work and receive his just reward.”²⁴ The episode made it clear that these inalienable rights were those that the East coveted and was determined to rob from Americans and anyone living in the West. As a vehicle of directed propaganda, “Challenge of Ideas” more than satisfied its role as an ideological touchstone for the military and the public.

Explaining Containment

Just as the skillful application of psychological forces was important to America’s Cold War strategy, so was a solid commitment to the concept of physical containment of the communist threat. In this regard, the catalog of Big Picture episodes provided a wide selection of titles. Many of the earliest episodes that addressed this piece of the grand strategy focused on the American and allied presence in Europe. Shortly after the production of “Soldier in Berlin,” The Big Picture aired “Soldier in Europe” (TV-238). As a follow-on episode it stressed that ongoing world tensions generated a need for “American servicemen to serve on another continent during peacetime” to fulfill a “complex role in the defense of the Western World.”²⁵ It traced the trajectory of the American military presence in Europe from occupying force, helping to revitalize a devastated postwar landscape, to shielding those nations living under the shadow of communist threat. Other episodes shared a similar narrative, emphasizing the American commitment to that continent. The videos “Division in Europe” (TV-326), “8th Infantry Division” (TV-787), “The 3rd Armored Division—Spearhead” (TV- 795), and the double episode “USAREUR Story, Parts I and II” (TV-541 and TV 542) also contributed to the explanation of the requirement for forward-based units on that soil as part of the containment barrier.²⁶ This was not a difficult sell to an American public whose suspicions of Soviet intentions were already at a heightened state during the 1950s, driven by propaganda that inspired fears of communist infiltration of American society, an emergent Communist China, a Castro-led Cuba, a nuclear-ready Soviet Union, and the ever-present Red Menace.²⁷

Other than Korea, another country that received a great amount of attention during this period from APC producers was West Germany. It was the keystone to containment in Europe. Besides the obvious reason that it shared a geographical boundary with communist Eastern bloc nations and held a central place in early Cold War negotiations, it was home to the largest concentration of American troops and family members stationed overseas. Between 1950 and 1960, the number of service members in Germany grew from 97,820 to 232,256, and the number of dependents expanded from 58,000 to 170,000.²⁸ The Big Picture listing reveals that the nation was the subject of at least ten separate episodes from the mid-1950s until the early 1960s. These told the story not only of America’s serious military commitment there through episodes such as “USMAAG Germany” (TV-424) and the double episode “U.S. Army in Berlin: Timetable for Crisis (Part One)” (TV-530) and “U.S. Army in Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie (Part Two)” (TV-536), but also of the growing personal bonds between the occupier and the local populace.²⁹ By featuring this human face, the United States made great gains in the psychological battle against the East. Those personal connections, which were always unique to the Big Picture film series, provided a grassroots perspective to the stories that was reminiscent of Ernie Pyle’s style employed during the Korean War episodes.

Among the stories that featured such a special personal touch in West Germany were “German Youth Activities” (TV- 243), “Operation Friendly Hand” (TV-336), and “People to People” (TV-430). The first episode addressed the desperate situation in postwar Germany that left thousands of young Germans without adult supervision or structure to their lives. Into this vacuum came the American GI, always ready to play the role of caregiver and big brother to the needy. The film records how soldiers organized and participated in youth sports programs, clubs, theatrics, and other activities to engage adolescent Germans. High postwar participation figures attest to the success of the GYA initiatives. Wrapped within this organizational spirit of Gemütlichkeit, however, were opportunities for the Americans to also tutor their young charges on the benefits of democracy.³⁰ As the film noted, it began with GIs’ “spontaneous gestures” of friendliness and through the GYA grew into a “reorganizing and democratizing of the youth of Germany.”³¹ The episode itself afforded a double-edged endorsement of the overarching American postwar strategy: first, by depicting the overseas stationing of military power to block Soviet expansion, and second, by offering a view into the exercise of psychological manipulation to spread beneficial information about Western ideologies. Camera angles, staged scenes, and accompanying music helped shape the story. In “German Youth Activities,” opening sequences showed uniformed Hitler Youth marching in tight formations to dark musical overtones and the deep pounding of kettledrums. Gradually, as the script described the postwar efforts of the American servicemen to reshape the lives of the destitute youth of Germany, the music lightened, with sweet symphonic strings. Bright images appeared to show soldiers handing out candy and feeding long lines of hungry but smiling scarecrow-thin children. As the narrator noted, this was all done through “friendship and understanding.”³² The imagery of soldiers coaxing German children out of the shadows of the rubble of their homes, and dark pasts, into the bright daylight of their future alongside the Americans adequately substituted for any scripting that was absent.

The other episodes, “Operation Friendly Hand” and “People to People,” followed similar formats, with some differences. The producers of “Operation Friendly Hand” scripted the story to tug at heartstrings and encourage an emotional tie with the German people. It featured an American sergeant and his family sponsoring a poor German girl for a month’s vacation with a typical military family stationed in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Although it was framed as an intercultural exchange, a perceptive viewer could see that the German girl was more the beneficiary of American largesse and consumer wealth as she benefited from plenty to eat, gifts of new clothing and bubble gum, a bubble bath, Saturday afternoon movies, and a new hairdo and cosmetics. While the obvious message to audiences was the strengthening of the bonds of friendship through kindness, the subtext highlighted American economic superiority and beneficence.⁷ A press release accompanying the film noted: “Time after time, American GIs would make it their business to make friends with German youngsters--some of them family men themselves, even going so far as inviting German kids into their homes, inviting them to spend time learning about Americans from Americans.”⁷ Here, producers and crews applied the same artistic techniques that they did for all stories regarding Germany. They had to be light and engaging. Moving from scenes of wartime bombing and smoking devastation, the young girl in this episode arrives in the care of a smiling, happy American family. The cameras show them all relaxed and enjoying the bounty of American life. The brooding background music carries the viewer away from the carnage of war and melts into lighthearted strains that follow German and American children together in play. It was a time when the United States was working diligently to rebuild a West Germany that could serve as a partner against the communist East. The APC was bringing all its professional talent to bear to cultivate the necessary bond between the nations to make this possible and to cultivate feelings of Gemütlichkeit. In doing this the series also brought into stark contrast the living conditions that existed on the opposite sides of the border: revitalization, a thriving economy, and optimism in the West, and repression of liberties and a struggling existence in the East. This theme ran through these productions.

Produced in 1956, “Operation Friendly Hand” was, however, a bit of a subterfuge. Although the story line reflected an actual event, producers recrafted the narrative to take better advantage of the situation. They decided to change the rank of the soldier from a captain, who was the actual participant, to that of a sergeant, possibly believing that would provide greater grass-roots appeal “through further humanization of the documentary.”³⁵ Also, in conjunction with the release of the film, the Department of Defense brought the young German girl, Gudrun Paskarbis, who starred in the original episode, to the United States to live with the captain and his family for one year at Fort Huachuca, Arizona. Along the way the government feted her, and civil and military elites in New York and Washington, DC, received her. Any benefit accrued was purely for public relations purposes. As was noted in a memo originally proposing the plan to the deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, “The Department of the Army considers that much favorable publicity will be generated, in Germany and the U.S.A., if the child can be brought to this country.”³⁶ To fend off any possible media criticisms or questions of credibility, the Office of Information and Education prepared a statement that readily admitted that the Big Picture producers were departing from the “usual documentary format,” concerning the rank adjustment of the soldier, just for this one episode, believing again that the “human aspects of the story will appeal to the Public in such a way that nothing but favorable comment is expected.”³⁷ This was hardly a typical scenario for The Big Picture, but the episode showed that the DOD and the Department of the Army considered the television series an important propaganda tool to gain public approval and to continue to polish America’s global image. The episode “People to People” followed suit and also told the story of American military personnel working closely and harmoniously with the local host-nation populace no matter where stationing brought them. The episode brought to light the Eisenhower administration–sponsored People-to-People program, which called on every American to be an ambassador. Although its effectiveness as an ideological tool was never widely evaluated, the president “took pains to stress that People-to-People was not propaganda.”³⁸

Several others films that the APC produced through to 1970 also focused specifically on Germany. Among the titles were “Germany Today” (TV-455), “The West Berlin Struggle” (TV-628), and “The Border Watchers” (TV-789). Each served its purpose as a record of America’s commitment to “hold back the tide of Communism in Germany and the free world” and to show the “face of West Germany today re-carved in the image of freedom.”³⁹ Central to the second film was a discussion of the West’s efforts to save Berlin during the desperate days of the airlift and the city’s “place as a symbol of the West’s freedom.”⁴⁰ The last film, “The Border Watchers” stressed the necessity of military vigilance along the “frontier of freedom” between West Germany and the countries of the Eastern bloc.⁴¹ Like the other contemporary Big Picture productions, it appears that the Department of the Army, through the APC, produced these episodes to underscore America’s unity with Germany as a bulwark against communism, to sell American ideals to the world, and to serve as a vehicle to further imprint those ideals on service members, their families, and the public. The evidence for this exists in the cinematic record and not in the existence of recorded documentation such as office memos or guidance from the OCINFO.

Other Big Picture episodes helped complete an understanding of the stationing of the American military around the globe as part of the Cold War containment strategy. These included a story about the “Soldier in Austria” (TV-269), stationed there “to prevent that partitioned country from being drawn into the Red orbit.”⁴² Other episodes followed suit, such as “Soldier in Panama” (TV-283), “Defense of Japan” (TV-285), “Soldier in France” (TV-328), and “Assignment Iran” (TV-655).⁴³ Perhaps the most declaratory among this group however, was “Ready around the World” (TV-717). Produced in 1968, it pronounced the US Army as an ever-vigilant guardian in the “complex international world of the 1960s.”⁴⁴ It was, as the script noted, the soldiers’ service “at freedom’s outermost perimeter” that mattered.⁴⁵ Accompanying this narrative was video footage of the army conducting patrols along the East German border, training with artillery, rockets, and radar, and participating in joint exercises with NATO allies. This episode served as much as a public relations piece for the American viewer as it was a cautionary warning to the communist East, lest it had any aggressive designs while events in Southeast Asia were diverting American attention and resources.

Special Alliances

Throughout the Cold War, key alliances with allied nations became essential pieces of the strategic containment barrier. These generally served either to augment American military forces on the ground with those of a host nation or to fill a void when American military power was geographically absent. Consequently, The Big Picture was instrumental in informing and educating the American military and public about these critical special relationships, especially the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO).

The premier strategic alliance of the two, featured in Big Picture episodes, was NATO.⁷ The Big Picture first addressed the organization in “NATO: Partners in Peace” (TV-267). The film explained to viewers the creation of the association that focused on mutual defense against post-1945 Soviet aggression in Europe. For the United States, it was a key strategic move, which was a “new and revolutionary development in American History.”⁷ A second episode, “NATO Maneuvers” (TV-291), which also aired in 1954, summarized the combined air, sea, and land military exercises that took place that year between the fourteen member nations. As the narrator boasted, “Since the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization the Communists have gained not one foot of new territory in Europe.”⁷ The episode, which the APC crafted as informational as well as ideological, served several purposes. First, it was a vehicle to educate the service members and their families living abroad about their mission and role in the defense of Western Europe. Whether viewed in military movie theaters prior to the main feature or in unit classrooms, the film worked to inculcate an anticommunist, pro-West, pro-NATO mindset in the audience, very much in line with the information and education mission. Second, the episode, as well as those that would follow, stressed the “alliance’s contribution to collective security” and the point that the “related network of U.S. military facilities were not there for American benefit, but to protect Europe.”⁷ This was particularly important to organizations such as the US Information Agency (USIA), which at the time was peddling the idea of an “Atlantic community” of common needs and concerns. This would essentially make the United States appear to be a part of a larger whole and mask any appearance of shaping and steering Western European attitudes and thinking, “to minimize the psychological disadvantages generated by . . . impressions of U.S. hegemony in Western Europe.”⁷ Follow-on episodes, “Why NATO?” (TV-402) in 1958, “Decade of NATO” (TV-491) in 1959, and “NATO: The Changed Face of Europe” (TV-632) in 1964, all continued to transmit that message. As guest narrator for the first, the noted news analyst Edward R. Murrow answered the question “Why NATO?” for the audience by reiterating that the organization’s key mission was to prevent the nations of Western Europe from falling to the same fate as those of the East, which had succumbed to Soviet occupation. Consequently, it would make possible through NATO a “bond welding the Old World and the New.”⁷ Chilling proof of that missive came with the crushing of the incipient Hungarian Revolution of 1956 by Warsaw Pact forces under control of the Kremlin. As a result, Western Europeans and Americans alike understood the aggressive nature of the communist bloc. The last episode, “NATO: The Changed Face of Europe” followed suit, reminding viewers of NATO’s mission and their responsibility to support it at the risk of losing their own freedoms, adding with a hint of braggadocio that the face of Europe “has been transformed to one of despair among the Communist satellites and of unprecedented prosperity among the free nations.”⁷

The timing of this collection of Big Picture episodes was not coincidental. They appeared in the mid-1950s as the army found itself locked in a desperate competition with the other services to prove its relevancy in the Cold War. The APC produced other contemporary episodes. such as “Research and Development in the Arctic” in 1957 and “Army Satellites” in 1958, to give a boost to the army’s image as a technologically savvy service, but the NATO episodes told a different, yet more compelling, story. Intentionally scripted, they underscored the key role the army was playing in the defense of Western Europe. Certainly the US Air Force and US Navy had a presence there, but it was the army that was manning the borders and physically occupying the ground that the East was coveting. As the black-and-white images of The Big Picture flashed across television screens in America, it was evident that the army’s ground forces were playing a key role in the defense of Western Europe.

On occasion the army used The Big Picture to single out certain NATO partners for special recognition. Such was the case with the episode titled “U.S. Army and the Boy Scouts” (TV-520). The story line described the close relationship and joint mission training between the United States and Denmark, a key NATO partner. This was an essential relationship, which established a presence of Western powers at the top of the globe, a short distance from the Soviet threat. Similarly, an earlier episode, “Salute to the Canadian Army” (TV-414), produced in 1958, recounted the close relationship and history shared between the United States military and the Canadian armed forces. Highlighting the fact that they were “partners in the defense of two free nations” and that they were “serving the common purpose of free nations everywhere,” it contained footage of Canadians fighting alongside Americans during World War II and in Korea.⁵³ Crews from the APC filmed the episode on location at several sites in Canada under the guidance of a Canadian military advisor. Subsequently, stations of the Canadian Broadcast Network telecast the show and included a special French narration for the predominantly French speaking areas. The APC was well pleased with the results. These appeared in a letter from the director of public relations (Canadian Army) to Maj. Gen. Harry P. Storke, CINFO. Among the assorted accolades, it noted that “the picture was an unqualified success in Canada” and that “it certainly has been of benefit to the Canadian Army.”⁵⁴ Aside from cementing a special relationship between the two nations, the episode’s warm reception in Canada contributed to the continued cultivation of an interested Big Picture audience north of the border.

The Big Picture episode on SEATO served the same purpose as those focusing on NATO, to inform and excite. As the narrator in that film proclaimed, it was created as a counterbalance to Chinese communist influence in the region and was “a force defending liberty and the independence of free nations,” not very different from those describing the mutual defense of Western Europe.⁵⁵ Black-and-white images played out in footage showing columns of well-drilled multinational forces marching past cheering crowds, and a bank of member-nation flags snapping in the breeze. In parallel to these episodes were others that addressed the American resolve in Asia. “Japan—Our Far East Partner” (TV-254) and “Aid to Nationalist China” (TV-293) described the bolstering of relationships with those nations in the common cause of defense against aggression in that region of the globe. But scripted into all these episodes about special alliances and relationships was the hope that political elites in the United States would take notice and not threaten to slash the army budget or mandate lower manpower levels.

Another purpose these episodes served was to describe to the viewer the United States’ application of the “soft power” approach in cementing the important Cold War relationships and cultivating new ones. It was through specially designated civil affairs programs that the army ingratiated itself with nations in need. One such episode, “You in Japan” (TV-354), served to instruct service members and their families about the culture and traditions of their host nation. Its intention was to foster strong relations between the people of both countries. Another, “The Army’s Helping Hand” (TV-790), which aired in 1970, addressed the teams of American military engineers, medical personnel, construction crews, and scientists who applied their skills in a wide variety of humanitarian projects around the globe. Footage of servicemen building schools and bridges or offering vaccines to villagers helped to reinforce the idea of a beneficent United States, not necessarily out for hegemonic gain, but simply acting as a good neighbor. This was a view into America’s application of a “soft power” approach to convince other nations of the good intentions of the United States and to encourage them to accept the ideologies of the West.

Games of Brinksmanship

The Big Picture also played a role in providing a view into those critical moments of brinksmanship that played out during the Cold War. On 12 August 1961, as communists began construction on the fence line that would eventually grow into the infamous wall separating East from West in Berlin, tensions between the two superpowers reached a dangerous high. Thousands of West Berliners immediately began protesting the action that would restrict their movement into the Soviet-controlled zone of the city and that would prevent the exodus of thousands of East Berliners to the West. At the same time, NATO forces in West Germany went on high alert and the United States began moving an army mechanized battle group to the city to reinforce the brigade already there. The front page of the European Stars and Stripes headlines raised the alarm: “1,500 U.S. Troops Sent to Bolster Berlin Force: Johnson Says U.S. Pledges Lives for Berlin.”⁵⁶ It was a dangerous gambit made by the Soviets to put pressure on the Americans to leverage concessions in diplomatic discussions involving the future of West Germany and to stem the flood of lost labor from the East. But it also provided fodder for Western propagandists, who saw the move as yet another opportunity to inform and educate by citing the aggressions of the East and the necessity of maintaining a strong anticommunist Western alliance.

The Big Picture brought this story to its television viewers in three specially crafted episodes: “U.S. Army in Berlin: Timetable for Crisis” (TV-530) in 1961, “U.S. Army in Berlin: Checkpoint Charlie” (TV-536) in 1962, and “Road to the Wall” (TV-560) also in 1962. The first pair provided some historical background leading up to the crisis, but focused on the impact on the lives of West Berliners and the reaction of American forces stationed in West Germany and Berlin. The last episode offered a view into the historical progression of communism from early conceptualization by Karl Marx, through the Russian Revolution in 1917, to the end of World War II and the construction of the Berlin Wall. As the account unfolded, the film emphasized the aggressive nature of communism, how its precepts robbed millions of their individual liberties, and how “they [communists] intend to put the world on their road.”⁵⁷ The intent of the film was not only to inform and frighten viewers, but to offer them assurance that the West was there to protect them: “We intend that the world shall be free.”⁵⁸ This was communicated with a fierce resolve that “each new threat must be met, force with force as in Korea,” and the knowledge that “the choice is not Red or dead, the choice lies between ignorance and wisdom, cowardice and bravery, slavery or freedom.”⁵⁹ Subsequently, the government released a version of the film through the Directorate of Armed Forces Information and Education (AFIE) in a separate documentary form for television in 1963. It received a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short, proof of the critics’ and public’s approval. Tensions between the East and West remained high during the mid-1960s, and The Big Picture played its role to record events, share them with its audience, and shape the way they interpreted them.

In each of these episodes the Berlin Wall figured as the centerpiece. It appeared in angled camera shots, both high and low, that followed the length of the barrier stretching into a distant vanishing point. It stood like a silent sentinel, brick stacked atop brick, the top crowned with thorny barbed wire. The camera offered gray-toned scenes accompanied by the sounds of heavy pounding percussion. The lens framed faces peering over sections of the wall, troubled, with eyes searching for loved ones on the opposite side. A gravelly voiced narrator read the scripted words, reminding viewers of the ideological differences between the East and West. But always, regardless of the episode, the wall figured prominently. It became the embodiment of the politics that kept the sides apart during the Cold War. It was an enduring representation for the West of the communists’ denial of freedoms and liberties, and The Big Picture used the iconic wall to clarify the stakes of the Cold War battle.

The second major Cold War event The Big Picture captured was the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. In two separate 1963 episodes, “Pentagon Report” (TV-580) and “One Week in October (Cuban Missile Crisis)” (TV-619), the program described the events surrounding the emplacement of the Soviet nuclear-ready missiles in Cuba, the desperate diplomatic brinksmanship that followed, the blockade of the island, and the eventual removal of the weapons. Each of the episodes painted Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev in the role of the archvillain who orchestrated the communists’ plans. As the narrator in “Pentagon Report, 1963” noted, Khrushchev claimed that Soviet interventions around the world were merely to support “wars of liberation and popular revolt.”⁶⁰ “We prefer to call them subversion and covert aggression” was the narrator’s retort.⁶¹ That characterization of the Soviet leader continued through the Big Picture episodes, whether it was describing his actions in Cuba or the controversy surrounding the Berlin Wall, which began with Khrushchev’s veiled threats against Western allies’ presence in that city in 1958 and culminated with the start of construction in August 1961.⁶² In contrast, The Big Picture projected the United States in the role of champion of oppressed peoples and guardian of Western freedoms. The narration in these episodes couched the results in terms of a victory for the United States and a rebuke of communism. In both events, the Berlin Wall and the Missile Crisis, The Big Picture served to recount the crises to its attentive viewers, and it concluded both features with an ever present ringing endorsement of the military: “The United States can be proud of our armed forces, alert to meet every challenge. The spirit that safeguards our country is the will to serve and the will to win of everyone in uniform.”⁶³

Vietnam, a Tough Sell

None of the Big Picture episodes seemed to carry a message that resonated in the sphere of public opinion so much as those that featured the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, which was at the time considered to be an essential piece of the containment barrier. Certainly, by any count, the Big Picture series featured more episodes on army operations in Vietnam than any other individual subject. The APC produced forty-one between 1962 and 1971, and of those, thirty four appeared during the last five years. By following these films during the course of the series, viewers could trace the trajectory of American military interests in that nation from an earnest commitment to stop a communist threat to presentations that seemed tragically out of sync with the political zeitgeist of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Beginning in 1962 with “Hidden War in Vietnam” (TV-562), and then “The Fight for Vietnam” (TV-574) in 1963, viewers caught the almost conspiratorial undertones of operations in the Southeast Asian jungles that targeted a danger that few Americans really appreciated. “Hidden War in Vietnam” told the story of American Special Operations Forces (SOF) soldiers, whose mission it was to train the local populace to fight and win “a dirty war, fought without uniforms on a battlefield without boundaries.”⁶⁴ The episode “Fight for Vietnam” described that country’s importance as “a strategic location affecting the whole of Southeast Asia,” which had turned into “another battlefield of the Cold War” through the “coercive terror and false promises of Communism.”⁶⁵ Examination of the narratives and intents of these Big Picture episodes, together with other early ones such as “U.S. Army Advisor in Vietnam” (TV-605) and “Operation Montagnard” (TV-607), makes it apparent that the CINFO produced these with the intended purpose of informing and shaping Americans’ thoughts about maintaining the nation’s commitment in Southeast Asia.

After the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in 1964, the American public began to lose some of its confidence in the political and military leadership.⁶⁶ The Big Picture reflected this change in attitude through the production of episodes that seemed to project a harder sales pitch as a counterbalance to negative opinions regarding American involvement. “Action Vietnam” (TV-654) in December 1964, followed by “Why Vietnam?” (TV-674) and “The Unique War” (TV-680), all seem to have been produced for that purpose. Scripted to tell the story of “a dirty, many-sided, complex struggle, a twilight war, fought in shadow and stealth,” they sought to describe a desperate fight by American heroes against a nefarious enemy.⁶⁷ Detailing the sacrifices and commitment of American service members, the episode “Action Vietnam” opened with footage of an army officer receiving the Medal of Honor from President Johnson for bravery on the battlefield in Vietnam. It featured a somber, staged ceremony filmed at the White House. Playing on well-worn patriotic sentiments, the Big Picture narrative and images continued to sell the conflict as a necessary consequence of containing the communist menace. In building a national consensus to support the war effort the producers may, however, have sacrificed reality for propaganda value. As Professor David E. James notes in his commentary on Vietnam War documentaries, interpretive discrepancies existed between the narrative and the actual events. For example, “Why Vietnam?” takes license in discussing the sequence of historical events leading up to the war by offering a skewed view. James points out: “Blatantly misrepresenting history, [President] Johnson argued in the film that Vietnam was a defensive war.”⁶⁸ Johnson’s claims arrived on the heels of the manufactured Tonkin Gulf incident and are evidence of the disconnect that existed between the reality and the message in some of the Big Picture scripts. The audiovisual design reinforces the deception in several ways. As film scholar Claudia Springer notes, the producers of most Department of Defense compilations were confident in crafting films that communicated certain messages through the use of visual symbolism. Evidence of that practice exists in the Big Picture series. While the tone of the films is consistently supportive of the government’s position for intervention in Vietnam, the sometimes subtle use of imagery manipulates the viewer’s acceptance of that message. Springer identifies the almost Capra-like technique of using images of children to “evoke feelings of pity and outrage in the viewer.”⁶⁹ This observation holds through a number of Big Picture episodes such as “Action Vietnam” (1965), “Why Vietnam?” (1965), and “The Unique War” (1966). Laced throughout these films are scenes of rural villages and hamlets with docile women, children, and older Vietnamese performing the tasks of daily life, innocently and simply, making them potential targets of aggression. Other scenes such as those in “Action Vietnam” stun the viewer with images of burning villages and fleeing children, with soldiers carrying dead bodies of the young and crowds fighting back flames that are consuming their livelihoods and freedoms. Background music fills the ear with the drama of the moment and feelings of frenetic panic. These films conjure an enemy that like a dark demonic shadow lurks, unseen and dangerous, haunting the lives of these “innocents” and threatening their liberties. As the narrator somberly confides, the “face and name is Communism.”⁷⁰ In a well-timed symbolic gesture in “The Unique War” the camera shows a small Vietnamese boy beating a snake to death with a stick at the same moment a voice-over comments on “the threat to freedom that Communist aggression poses.”⁷¹ It was a venomous danger, threatening to poison the minds of naïve peasants. This monolithic “communism” carried “all the negative associations already embedded in the public imagination” and was central to production efforts to introduce a Manichean-like understanding of the Cold War world to viewers.⁷²

Figure 3.1. Filming of an episode of The Big Picture in the APC studio in the presence of two South Vietnamese military technical advisors. Working closely with foreign liaisons on filming projects was another way to build strong relationships with allied nations. (Image Source: In Focus, August 1964)

Other visual connections that touch on American ideals also appear in The Big Picture. For example, “The Unique War” includes scenes of a cluster of Vietnamese children worshipping in a simple village church. Here, the visual and scripted narratives conflate to evoke from the American audience feelings of paternalism and anger against the godless communist interloper and to encourage the Western-style intervention of Americans come to save the day. This practice of manipulated imagery begins in episodes produced earlier in the conflict, such as “The Fight for Vietnam” (1963) and “Operation Montagnard” (1964), and it carries through to later films such as “Vietnam Village Reborn” (TV-705) (1967). Compounding these views of the villagers was the evidence of a growing divide between the Americans and the Vietnamese. As Tony Shaw notes regarding images of the war in his work Hollywood’s Cold War, film productions that stripped villagers of any dialogue or commentary rendered them powerless. They were simply the “white man’s burden,” to be herded, manipulated, and tolerated as was necessary in the prosecution of the war.⁷³

It is also important to note that another component of the Department of Defense films, including The Big Picture, was an ethnographic treatment, adopted to add texture and a veneer of sincerity to the messages. They fell, however, well short in application. In place of offering a comprehensive study of a particular people and culture, The Big Picture offered only clumsy, sophomoric descriptions that provided the soldier, and the viewing audience, “a special opportunity” to get to know Vietnam and its people.⁷⁴ The hope was that this type of thinly veiled ethnography could serve as a recruiting vehicle to attract the interest of service members and a catalyst to enlist a commitment from taxpayers at home. More important, as Springer notes, these films want the viewer to believe they are “receiving an intimate perspective of Vietnamese life,” but they present the Vietnamese as “simple-minded, mired in tradition, and dependent on American aid.”⁷⁵ These efforts to cast episodes in the light of a National Geographic cultural study fell short and instead created a dichotomy, leaving the audience to wonder about the purpose. Were the Americans there as benefactors or in a martial spirit to wage war? Even as narrators declared that “this is a war whose objective is to win the hearts and minds of the people,” their voices cautioned soldiers to be wary of the enemy who often lurked among the villagers.⁷⁶ Army medics bathed children and tended to their wounds as warnings of Viet Cong guerrillas laced the narratives, while bombs poured from the underbellies of B-52s and villagers made their ambling way on bicycles. Episodes often superimposed a brutal, unconventional war over pastoral scenes of a simple people, leaving audiences to interpret the messages. This effort at an ethnographic study leaves many Vietnam-era Big Picture episodes coming across as awkward and contrived, cobbled together from too many competing messages. In this way, they often failed to communicate any clear meaning.

As the decade unfolded, the APC continued to produce a plethora of Vietnam-themed episodes. When protests on college campuses began to intensify in 1967, then exploded across America after the beginning of the Tet Offensive during January–February 1968, The Big Picture still held the line through unwavering messages of support for military involvement in that area of the globe. A favored technique employed by producers to maintain viewer interest at this time was to incorporate Hollywood stars, such as John Wayne and Bob Hope, as participants in various segments. This, however, became more difficult as the war became more unpopular. A survey of titles reveals that a majority of the episodes after 1967 were about the missions and accomplishments of specific units operating in Southeast Asia. From “Screaming Eagles in Vietnam” (TV-714) about the 101st Airmobile Division, to “The Ninth Infantry Division” (TV-746), to “The Americal Division” (TV-768) about the 23rd Infantry Division, at least fifteen episodes celebrated the patriotic achievements of the soldiers in those units, who were performing their duty as they understood it. Still, as the American public grew weary of supporting a seemingly interminable war and confidence in national leadership continued to erode, these Big Picture episodes appeared to be transmitting an archaic and faded message linked to a dated Cold War strategy. This contributed to some of the ire felt by members of Congress, such as J. William Fulbright, who accused the military of improperly transmitting foreign policy messages, which was beyond the scope of its responsibilities.

Eventually, as the conclusion of direct American military involvement in Vietnam drew near, together with the end of the Big Picture series in 1971, the APC producers crafted an episode titled “Progress to Peace” (TV-792). It was an attempt to explain the United States’ exit strategy from the conflict and to bring the history of American involvement there full circle. Narrated by popular actor Raymond Burr, it explained the Vietnamization process as a natural consequence of the overall strategic scheme, wrapping it with an insouciance that obscured any admission of culpability or accountability for the final result. As Burr explained to the viewer, when the end of the 1960s arrived, “the time had come with another major change in the character of the war in Vietnam. That is, free world forces would begin to phase out of the war as the people and armed forces of South Vietnam became capable of filling the gap.”⁷⁷ True or not, that was the final policy message from The Big Picture. Although two more episodes about the war followed, they were little more than historical summaries of unit operations in Southeast Asia.⁷⁸

These Big Picture episodes, which the APC produced in a familiar, straightforward documentary format, offered a contrasting lens to a contemporary treatment of military operations in Vietnam through entertainment television. As historian Scott Laderman suggests, a strong current existed in the television industry in the 1960s that eventually carried the medium away from the war and its surrounding controversy, even as The Big Picture stayed the Cold War course. Early in the conflict, weekly series such as Alcoa Premiere (ABC, 1961–1963), and the “fictional vignettes” of the dramatic series Navy Log offered shows that tended toward a patriotic celebration of America’s involvement in Southeast Asia, in consonance with the early Big Picture episodes.⁷⁹ By middecade however, fictionalized shows began to diverge and offered perspectives of American foreign policy that were both cynical and ambivalent. As Laderman notes, after the 1968 Tet Offensive, networks understood that “confronting the war’s increasingly contentious politics on network television would prove difficult,” and they drew back from such controversy.⁸⁰ Through the trajectory of fictionalized television’s reflections of the war, The Big Picture remained consistent in its message for the necessity of involvement in Vietnam as a key element of America’s Cold War containment strategy. This course of action eventually drew criticism from an increasing number of political elites, such as J. William Fulbright, who brought enough pressure to bear to eventually precipitate the termination of the series.

Whither Anticommunism?

Unpacking the anticommunist rhetoric integrated into the Big Picture narratives compels an examination of those messages to understand whether over time they changed. In reviewing the earliest episodes, produced during the desperate years of the Korean War, it is no surprise that the first narrator somberly intoned that the show was about “an army committed by you the people of the United States to stop Communist aggression wherever it may strike.”⁸¹ This hard anticommunist edge persisted through the episodes of 1950s and the early 1960s as The Big Picture brought audiences to the Arctic in “Operation Blue Jay” (TV-227) in 1952 and “Top of the World” (TV-543) in 1962, where the challenge was to forestall communist expansion even in the remote northern climes. That sharp focus on anticommunism, which was one of the originating goals of the show, continued as the East and West played games of Cold War brinksmanship with the construction of the Berlin Wall and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Scripted narratives consistently piqued viewers’ fears of creeping communism as a singular monolithic shadowy entity that crept bogeyman-like through episodes, threatening lives, livelihoods, and liberties. Producers telegraphed those messages into the Vietnam era through the “Hidden War in Vietnam” (TV-562) in 1962, to “Vietnam Crucible” (TV-736) in 1968. There was little deviation through all these productions but for the rescripting of the show’s introduction, which eliminated a description of “communist aggression” and replaced it with words that proclaimed a wider global army mission to simply protect “against aggression.” It was a move away from direct provocation of a committed enemy by producers.

As domestic antiwar paroxysms increased after 1968, The Big Picture shifted its focus from Vietnam and anticommunist rhetoric to episodes that featured a modern army on the cutting edge of science and technology, fully engaged with local communities, the environment, and society. Although occasional episodes on Vietnam still appeared, army studios began producing titles such as “Meeting Tomorrow’s Challenge” (TV-765, 1970), “A Day in America” (TV-776, 1970), “A Visit to Mars” (TV-778, 1970), and “Toward a Better Environment” (TV-808, 1971), absent any anticommunist scripting. By 1971 the geopolitical environment was changing; President Nixon was preparing to engage with the People’s Republic of China and follow the path to détente with the Soviet Union. Hard words were out of place. By the time the series came to an end that year, anticommunist rhetoric had not changed—it simply disappeared.

The Big Picture was the longest-lasting informational television series of the Cold War period. Said differently: “With its breadth of distribution and length of availability, it was probably the most widely viewed series in television history.”⁸² Appearing weekly, in prime time and through broad syndication, it provided a window into the tense geopolitical confrontation between the East and West for millions of viewers, coming into homes and barracks, for the public and service members. It served as a useful vehicle to remind both groups of the gulf of differences between the two sides and of their responsibilities to guard against the loss of their precious freedoms. As such, it was a valuable contributor to the United States’ grand strategy for containing the spread of the communist stain in the early decades of the Cold War and promoting the army’s role in the effort.