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

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