Spinning History

Book excerpt: In this fascinating book, more relevant than ever in today's political climate of "alternative facts," bestselling author and historian Nathaniel Lande explores the Great War at the heart of the twentieth century through the prism of theater. He presents the war as a drama that evolved and developed as it progressed, a production staged and overseen by four contrasting masters: Roosevelt, Churchill, Hitler, and Stalin. Each leader used all the tools at his disposal to present his own distinctive vision of the global drama that was the Second World War. Each area of the media was fully exploited. Brilliantly conceived oratory was applied to underscore each vision. Impression management, the art of political spin, was employed to drive the message home with the careful use of black and white propaganda. Each side employed uniforms, meticulously staged events, and broadcast their messages via all media available—motion pictures, radio broadcasts, songs, posters, leaflets, and beyond. Their ambitions were similar, but each leader had his own distinct methods, his own carefully created script for elaborately produced and often wildly successful acts and campaigns of deception to win hearts and minds on the frontlines and the home front. The result of this investigation is a wholly distinctive and often surprising work of history, a book that manages to cast a fresh light on the most obsessively studied conflict in human history.