On this day in ...... 1940 (70 years ago today), more than a year before the attack at Pearl Harbor would draw the United States into World War II, Hollywood released the talking motion picture The Great Dictator, "the only major film of its period to bitterly satirize Nazism and Adolf Hitler." Director and star of the movie was Charlie Chaplin, appearing in his first "talkie" role following a celebrated career in silent films. According to this site:
(Prior October 15 posts are here, here, and here.)The film is unusual for its period, as the United States was still formally at peace with Nazi Germany. Chaplin's film advanced a stirring, controversial condemnation of Hitler, fascism, antisemitism, and the Nazis, the latter of whom he excoriates in the film as "machine men, with machine minds and machine hearts".
