Governments, of course, sought to harness their cultural institutions to the war effort.    After Pearl Harbor brought America into the war, Hollywood enthusiastically joined the fray, and movie studios cooperated to a remarkable degree with the military and the Office of War Information. 

Hollywood made hundreds of films related to the war.   These movies sought to explain the issues in familiar terms, define the roles Americans should assume, help us understand our allies and enemies, and navigate the changes on the home front.   It's not an exaggeration to say that movies "played the most important role" in explaining the war to the average American. 

Considering his background—a British native, he didn't move to Hollywood until 1939—and that his best-known films were made in a later era—the 1950s and 1960s—it's easy to overlook the fact that Alfred Hitchcock, the iconic master of suspense, directed four of the best war movies to come out of Hollywood. 

Hitchcock's war films include, in order:  "Foreign Correspondent" (1940), "Saboteur" (1942), "Lifeboat" (1944), and "Notorious" (1946).  And, while these films share a view that our Axis enemies were evil, this is Hitchcock, and his movies are seldom straight-forward or one-dimensional.  As the authors of We'll Always Have the Movies: American Cinema during World War II conclude, "Hitchcock was too independent to follow the conventions of wartime films too closely." 

"Foreign Correspondent," Hitchcock's first war movie—and his second American-made film following "Rebecca"—was completed as German bombs began to fall on London.  Hitchcock, like many in Hollywood, hoped to persuade Americans to abandon their neutrality in the face of this menace.  Aware of the depth of isolationist sentiment, however, he treaded lightly.  "Foreign Correspondent" is first and foremost a smart spy thriller. 

The foreign correspondent of the title is crime reporter Johnny Jones (Joel McCrea) whose New York editor dispatches him to Europe to find out what's really happening.  As luck would have it, he quickly stumbles onto a Nazi spy ring posing as a peace group.  The spies kidnap a diplomat, Mr. Van Meer (Albert Basserman), who knows secret treaty terms that the Nazis want. 

The conspirators conceal the kidnapping with the public assassination of a Van Meer look-a-like.  Jones uncovers the ruse but has no evidence.  Teaming up with the beautiful daughter of the head of the spurious peace movement, Carol Fisher (Laraine Day), Jones sets out to rescue Van Meer and unmask the spies.  Carol is, of course, ignorant of her father's real activities and to complicate matters falls in love with Jones. 

"Foreign Correspondent" is an intelligent, entertaining thriller graced with excellent performances, haunting images, and genuine suspense.  It also portrays Nazis as devious at best and ends with a transparent plea for U.S. intervention to save Europe.  Such was the reality of 1940. 

"Saboteur" (1942) is Hitchcock's most blatantly propagandistic World War II film.  There is no ambiguity here about the relative merit of the combatants, and Hitchcock has several characters give impassioned speeches praising the American Way of freedom and democracy.  The saboteurs—a cabal of pro-fascist fifth columnists—are caricatures of evil duplicity.

The story follows the travails of Barry Kane (played by a miscast Robert Cummings), a defense-industry employee who's framed for an act of sabotage at a Los Angeles aircraft factory.  Chased by the cops, Kane races across country in pursuit of the real saboteurs.  He's accompanied by a reluctant Pat Martin (Priscilla Lane), a beautiful billboard model he meets along the way.  The final act takes place at the Statue of Liberty—a fitting setting given the patriotic nature of the film. 

"Saboteur" was produced early in the war when the outcome was still in doubt which likely explains Hitchcock's monolithic patriotic approach.  But as the war unfolded and the outcome became less clouded, Hitchcock's maverick nature reasserted itself and his final two war films—"Lifeboat" (1944) and "Notorious (1946)—challenged wartime conventions. 

The moral certainly of "Saboteur" becomes moral ambiguity in Hitchcock's 1944 "Lifeboat."  Based on a story by novelist John Steinbeck, "Lifeboat" follows the travails of a group of survivors from a torpedoed freighter.  The seven survivors include a beautiful, but vain, journalist (played by Tallulah Bankhead), an angry blue-collar seaman, a millionaire industrialist, and an African American steward.   

Things get really interested when they pull an eight survivor from the sea: the captain of the German submarine that sank them.  The survivors have to decide whether to throw the German overboard or depend on him to sail them to Bermuda and safety. 

Hitchcock's final war movie, "Notorious" (1946), was released as the post-war Nuremberg Trials kept the Nazi menace in the spotlight. 

Many of the Nazi ringleaders had escaped the Allied dragnet—South America being a favorite destination—and others seemed less than repentant.  Thus, Hitchcock's theme, the presence of a Nazi ring in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, determined to carry on the Fuhrer's work, was plausible to movie audiences in 1946. 

To reinforce the danger, Hitchcock begins the movie with the sentencing of an American convicted of spying for the Germans.  The convicted traitor threatens the judge: "You can put me away, but you can't put away what's going to happen . . . to this whole country next time."  Beaten but unbowed, the Nazis remain a potential threat. 

Alicia Huberman (Ingrid Bergman), the patriotic daughter of the convicted spy, is recruited by an American agent, T.R. Devlin (Cary Grant), to infiltrate the Nazi cabal in Rio.  Alicia is chosen not only for her patriotism but also for her notorious reputation for drinking and apparent promiscuity.  Soon enough, Devlin begins to fall for the beautiful spy, but he lets her reputation get in the way.  When the Nazi ringleader proposes to Alicia, Devlin encourages her to accept—a decision they both regret.

This is Hitchcock, the master of suspense who delighted in putting his heroines in situations of great danger.  The race to save the damsel and foil the Nazi plot to engineer a nuclear bomb is vintage Hitchcock. 

Soon enough, the Nazis faded as villains as the Soviets replaced them.  Hitchcock, likewise, moved on.  "Notorious" was his last word on World War II. 

Hitchcock's war movies were important in many respects, but his greatest creativity still lay ahead.  In fact, the films that would insure his reputation as the master of suspense—"Rear Window," "Vertigo," "North by Northwest," and "Psycho," among them—wouldn't start showing up until 1954.  They are rightfully considered classics and should be seen by all film enthusiasts.  But, don't ignore Hitchcock's earlier films—especially his war movies.  They offer a valuable prism through which to view the most cataclysmic event of the twentieth century.