In 1937, the British novelist Phyllis Bottome published the anti-Nazi novel The Mortal Storm. In 1940, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer brought out the anti-Nazi movie The Mortal Storm, starring Margaret Sullavan and James Stewart. In 2010, the DVD version of the 1940 MGM movie The Mortal Storm came out. In 2024, Alexis Pogorelskin published Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War: The Case of The Mortal Storm (Bloomsbury Academic).

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Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) December 13, 2024: I was born in March 1944 in Ossining, New York, my father's hometown. However, at the time of my birth, my father (1916-2007) was in the U.S. Army and was stationed in Dover, England, as part of the troop buildup there for D-Day. In any event, he returned home to Ossining and his family in 1945 when I was eighteen months old.

Therefore, the entire history of World War II (1939-1945), including the emergence of Adolf Hitler (1889-1945) and the rise of Nazis to power in Germany, has been part of the large cultural matrix surrounding my birth in March 1944. It has long been important to me to learn about cultural and historical events that happened before I was born in March 1944.

Briefly, technologically advanced Germany was defeated in World War I (1914-1918) after the United States entered the war. Subsequently, the technologically advanced Germany, under the leadership of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis in the 1920s, the 1930s, and the 1940s, was again defeated in World War II after the United States entered the war. Hitler rose to power in Germany on a wave of resentment and conspiracy theories.

American Culture in the 20th and 21st Centuries

Yes, in the twenty-first century in the United States, Donald Trump also rose to power on a wave of resentment and conspiracy theories. As a result, the term Nazis has been widely and wildly bandied about. However, in the present essay, I am here referring to the historical Nazis in Germany.

For a psychological analysis of Donald Trump, see the American Jewish psychiatrist Justin A. Frank's insightful book Trump on the Couch: Inside the Mind of the President (Avery/ Penguin Random House, 2018).

But also see my 3,300-word essay titled "Thomas B. Edsall on the Convicted Felon Trump, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" and my 4,000-word piece titled "Probe: Trump's Ardent Male MAGA Supporters, and Walter J. Ong's Thought" in the online journal New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, volume 4, number 2 (2024):

.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/nexj/issue/view/2872

Now, the distinguished Jewish op-ed columnist Paul Krugman (born in 1953; B.A. in economics, Yale University, 1974; Ph.D. in economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1977; Nobel Prize in Economics, 2008), op-ed columnist at The New York Times since January 2000, highlights the relatively recent rise of resentment in our contemporary American political culture in his final op-ed column titled "My Last Column: Finding Hope in an Age of Resentment" (dated December 9, 2024) in The New York Times:

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In it, Paul Krugman says, "What strikes me, looking back [to January 2000], is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment."

As an aside, I want to say here that as the author of now more than 650 op-ed commentaries published at OEN since September 2009, I admire Paul Krugman as a weekly op-ed columnist for The New York Times. I write my intermittent op-ed commentaries at OEN as the spirit moves me. But I could not write a new op-ed commentary once a week. It takes a certain creativity that I do not have to write an op-ed commentary once a week.

For further information about Paul Krugman, see the Wikipedia entry "Paul Krugman":

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Now, my favorite scholar, the American Jesuit Walter J. Ong (1912-2003; Ph.D. in English, Harvard University, 1955) of Saint Louis University, discusses the American characteristic of optimism in "The American Catholic Complex" in his book Frontiers in American Catholicism: Essays on Ideology and Culture (Macmillan, 1957, pp. 1-23, esp. pp. 10, 12-13, and 14-15).

In any event, I decided to take a look at the American Jewish historian Alexis Pogorelskin's new 2024 book Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War: The Case of The Mortal Storm (Bloomsbury Academic).

The term Nazis in the title of Alexis Pogorelskin's new 2024 book Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War is a shortened form of the German name for National Socialism - which advanced the theory of the Aryan race and racial purity.

Now, I should also mention here that Alexis Pogorelskin also published the article "Phyllis Bottome's The Mortal Storm: Film and Controversy" in The Space Between, volume VI, number 1 (2010): pp. 39-58.

Phyllis Bottome (1884-1963) was the British novelist who wrote the 1937 novel The Mortal Storm, on which the 1940 Hollywood movie The Mortal Storm is based.

For further information about Phyllis Bottome, see the Wikipedia entry "Phyllis Bottome":

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In Alexis Pogorelskin's "Notes" in her 2010 article (pp. 55-56), she says, "This essay is dedicated to the memory of Claudine West [1890-1943]" - the British-born chief scriptwriter of the 1940 MGM movie The Mortal Storm - and of many other MGM movies between 1929 and 1944.

For further information about Claudine West, see the Wikipedia entry on "Claudine West":

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Now, for a wide-ranging discussion of Hollywood movies in the 1930s about the rise of Hitler and the Nazis in Germany, see Thomas Doherty's book Hollywood and Hitler, 1933-1939 (Columbia University Press, 2013). Thomas Doherty discusses Hitler's Reign of Terror (1934); the anti-Nazi docudrama by Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr., I Was a Captive of Nazi German (1936); and Professor Mamlock (1938):

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Walter J. Ong's Media Ecology Account of Our Western Cultural History

Now, for Ong, my favorite scholar, mentioned above, movies with soundtracks are part of what he famously refers to as our contemporary secondary oral culture (i.e., the oral culture advanced by the communications media that accentuated sound (television, telephones, radio, tape-recording devices, movies with soundtracks, and the like). For Ong, the communications media that accentuate sound reached a critical mass of cultural predominance around 1960.

Ong famously differentiates our contemporary secondary oral culture from the historic primary oral culture of oral-aural communication that predominated before phonetic alphabetic literacy emerged in ancient Hebrew culture and in ancient Greek culture.

For discussion of phonetic alphabetic writing and ancient Hebrew culture, see my article "Walter Ong and Harold Bloom Can Help Us Understand the Hebrew Bible" in Explorations in Media Ecology, volume 11, numbers 3&4 (2012): pp. 255-272.

But what the Jewish biblical scholar James L. Kugel refers to as the great shift in his 2017 book The Great Shift: Encountering God in Biblical Times (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt) can be interpreted as exemplifying what Ong refers to as the aural-to-visual shift in his 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, mentioned above.

For discussion of the historical Jesus and his oral-aural teaching, see my article "Walter J. Ong's Bold Thought and John Dominic Crossan's Timid View of the Historical Jesus" in the online journal New Explorations: Studies in Culture and Communication, volume 2, number 2 (2022):

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But also see the Luther New Testament scholar Werner H. Kelber's 1983 book The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (Fortress Press).

For discussion of oral tradition and the emergence of phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Greek culture, see the classicist Eric A. Havelock's landmark book Preface to Plato (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1963). In it, Havelock refers to the Homeric mentality, which involves imagistic thinking, and the Platonic mentality, which involves more abstract thinking.

For all practical purposes, what Havelock refers to as the Homeric mentality is the equivalent of what Ong refers to as orally based thought and expression in his 1982 book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen; pp. 36-57).

Now, in 2020, W. W. Norton and company, in collaboration with the foundation of the Works of C. G. Jung, published the seven-volume set of Jung's Black Books: 1913-1932: Notebooks of Transformation, edited by Sonu Shamdasani; translated by Martin Liebscher, John Peck, and Sonu Shamdasani.

The prolific Swiss psychiatrist and psychological theorist Carl Gustav Jung (1875-1961) experienced an extraordinary mid-life crisis. Jung's Black Books: 1913-1932 are the extraordinary record he made of his extraordinary mid-life crisis.

In volume 1, Sonu Shamdasani provides an introduction titled "Toward a Visionary Science: Jung's Notebooks of Transformation" (pp. 11-120).

In Sonu Shamdasani's subsection titled "The Intoxication of Mythology" (pp.13-15), he says, "In Transformations and Symbols of the Libido [1912], Jung differentiated two kinds of thinking. Taking his cue from William James, among others, he contrasted directed thinking and fantasy thinking. The former was verbal and logical. The latter was passive, associative, and imagistic. The former was exemplified by science and the latter by mythology. Jung claimed that the ancients [before the influence of phonetic alphabetic literacy] lacked the capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition. Fantasy thinking took place when directed thinking ceased. Transformation and Symbols of the Libido [1912] was an extended study of fantasy thinking, and of the continued presence of mythological themes in the dreams and fantasies of contemporary individuals" (p. 14).

The present essay is deliberately extremely associative as one way for me to honor the associative nature of what Jung terms here fantasy thinking.

According to Alexis Pogorelskin's account of the British novelist Phyllis Bottome, the author of the 1937 novel The Mortal Storm, on which the 1940 Hollywood movie The Mortal Storm is based, the novelist Phyllis Bottome engaged in what I would characterize as the associative spirit writ large by associating the action in her 1937 novel with Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865) and the American Civil War (1861-1865), and with Harriet Beecher Stowe's famous novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852).

Now, obviously, both Havelock and Ong reject Jung's claim that "the ancients lacked a capacity for directed thinking, which was a modern acquisition."

However, once we accept Havelock's and Ong's linking of what Jung here refers to as directed thinking with phonetic alphabetic literacy in ancient Greek culture, then we can see what Jung here refers to as fantasy thinking is aligned with what Havelock refers to as the Homeric mentality, on the one hand, and, on the other, what Jung here refers to as directed thinking is aligned with what Havelock refers to as the Platonic mentality.

Similarly, apart from Jung's mistaken claim about directed thinking being a modern acquisition, we can also align what he refers to as fantasy thinking with what Ong refers to as orally based thought and expression, on the one hand, and, on the other, we can align what Jung refers to here as directed thinking with what Ong refers to as phonetic alphabetic literacy.

Having made these alignments here, I now must point out that Jung engaged in extraordinary self-experimentation in which he allowed himself to experience what he refers to here as fantasy thinking. In due time, he came to refer to this dangerous process as engaging in active imagination. Joan Chodorow assembled all the passages in which Jung describes active imagination in the book Jung on Active Imagination (Princeton University Press, 1997).

It should be obvious that neither Havelock nor Ong believes that persons today can return to what Havelock refers to as the Homeric mentality or to what Ong refers to as orally based thought and expression.

Indeed, Ong explicitly refers to residual forms of primary oral cultures today - suggesting that he does not think that pristine examples of primary oral cultures exist today. Moreover, Ong famously differentiates our contemporary secondary oral culture brought to us by communications media that accentuate sound from primary oral culture based on oral-aural communication.

In any event, in 1952, Jung published the revised version of his 1912 book Transformations and Symbols of the Libido. The 1952 revised and re-titled version has been published in English as Symbols of Transformation: An Analysis of the Prelude to a Case of Schizophrenia, 2nd ed., translated by R. F. C. Hull (Princeton University Press, 1967). See Part One, Chapter II: "Two Kinds of Thinking" (pp. 7-33).

Now, in both the 1912 edition titled Transformations and Symbols of the Libido and the 1952 revised and re-titled edition titled Symbols of Transformation, we find two words repeated: (1) Symbols and (2) Transformation (singular in 1952, but plural in 1912).

Now, Ong entered the Jesuit novitiate in Florissant, Missouri, in September 1935, slightly more than two years after he had graduated from Rockhurst College (now Rockhurst University) in Kansas City, Missouri. For Ong and for all Jesuits, Jesuit formation is lengthy, and Jesuit formation clearly aims to bring about the transformation of the Jesuits being formed.

Questions: To what extent was young Ong transformed during his lengthy Jesuit formation? To what extent, was Father Ong subsequently further transformed after he had been ordained a Jesuit priest and had completed his Jesuit formation and had undertaken his doctoral studies in English at Harvard University?

In any event, in the early 1950s, when Ong was researching his Harvard University doctoral dissertation on the French Renaissance logician Peter Ramus (1515-1572), he experienced the big breakthrough insight that transformed his adult life. Thereafter, Ong never tired of talking and writing about what he in his 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue referred to as the aural-to-visual shift in cognitive processing in our Western cultural history.

In my case, my life was transformed when I transferred to Saint Louis University in the fall semester of 1964 and took my first course from Father Ong. (Over the years, I took five courses from Ong.) At the age of 20 in 1960, slightly more than 60 years ago now, I became infatuated with Father Ong and his work - and my infatuation with his work has endured for more than 60 years now.

However, my life was further transformed when I began writing about his work in late December 1973 and early January 1974. As a result, I tend to think of 1974 as the inception of my mid-life crisis.

During my years of teaching at the University of Minnesota Duluth (1987-2009), my life was further transformed in December 1994 when I bought a house in Duluth and became a homeowner.

After I retired at the end of May 2009, my adult life was further transformed as I moved from being a classroom teacher to becoming an op-ed commentator in September 2009 when I posted my first of now more than 650 OEN articles - including some about Ong's work.

After I retired at the end of May 2009, my life was also further transformed as I undertook various home improvements.

Now, taking various hints from Ong, I discuss Ong's account of our contemporary secondary oral culture in my essay "Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today" in the well-organized anthology Media, Consciousness, and Culture: Explorations of Walter Ong's Thought, edited by Bruce E. Gronbeck, Thomas J. Farrell, and Paul A. Soukup (Sage Publishing, 1991, pp. 194-209).

In my 1991 essay "Secondary Orality and Consciousness Today," I discuss the Jungian psychoanalyst Erich Neumann's masterful synthesis of C. G. Jung's thought titled The Origins and History of Consciousness, translated from the German by R. F. C. Hull (Pantheon Books, 1954; orig. German ed., 1949). I also quote Ong's masterful summary of Neumann's 1954 book in his 1971 book Rhetoric, Romance, and Technology: Studies in the Interaction of Expression and Culture (Cornell University Press, pp. 10-11):

"The stages of psychic development as treated by Neumann are successively (1) the infantile undifferentiated self-contained whole symbolized by the uroboros (tail-eater), the serpent with it tail in its mouth, as well as be other circular or global mythological figures [including Nietzsche's imagery about the eternal return?], (2) the Great Mother (the impersonal womb from which each human infant, male or female, comes, the impersonal femininity which may swallow him [or her] up again), (3) the separation of the world parents (the principle of opposites, differentiation, possibility of change, (4) the birth of the hero (rise of masculinity and of the personalized ego) with its sequels in (5) the slaying of the mother (fight with the dragon: victory over primal creative but consuming femininity, chthonic forces), and (6) the slaying of the father (symbol of thwarting obstruction of individual achievement, [thwarting] what is new), (7) the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous [i.e., "married" within one's psyche] kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness), and finally (8) the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism [such as Nietzsche's overman] - or, more properly, personalism - of modern man [sic])."

Ong also sums up Neumann's Jungian account of the stages of consciousness in his (Ong's) book Fighting for Life: Contest, Sexuality, and Consciousness (Cornell University Press, 1981, pp. 18-19; but also see the "Index" for further references to Neumann [page 228]), the published version of Ong's 1979 Messenger Lectures at Cornell University.

Now, regarding the Great Mother of stage (2) of the eight stages of consciousness, Neumann published The Great Mother" An Analysis of the Archetype, translated from the German by Ralph Manheim (Pantheon Books, 1955).

As you can see, Ong in his 1971 summary of the eight stages of consciousness sees cutting-edge thought "today" (i.e., in 1971) as based on the experience of "the transformation (new unity in self-conscious individualization, higher masculinity, expressed primordially in the Osiris myth but today entering new phases with heightened individualism - or, more properly, personalism - of modern man [sic]."

Nevertheless, on the more popular level of consciousness today, I see our secondary oral culture today in 2024 as representing the widespread movement of many people today, both women feminists and men feminists, into stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann discusses - "the freeing of the captive (liberation of the ego from endogamous kinship libido and the emergence of the higher femininity, with woman now as person, anima-sister, related positively to ego consciousness)."

In addition, I see what the Jungian psychoanalyst Edward C. Whitmont refers to as the return of the goddess in the human psyche today as representing in his own favored terminology the widespread movement of many people today, both women feminists and men feminists, into stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness that Neumann discusses.

However, I do not see the misogynist Trump and his many misogynistic male MAGA supporters as feminists. As a result, I do not see them as having yet experienced stage seven of the eight stages of consciousness discussed by Neumann.

In any event, Ong experienced the big breakthrough media ecology insight in the early 1950s that he subsequently never tired of celebrating when he was researching his 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue: From the Art of Discourse to the Art of Reason (Harvard University Press; for specific references to Ong's media-ecology account of our Western cultural history in it, see the entry on aural-to-visual shift in the "Index" [p. 396]). Peter Ramus (1515-1572) was the French Renaissance logician and educational reformer and Protestant martyr whose works in logic were extremely influential in his day.

Ong's 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue was not only his pioneering media ecology account of our Western cultural history, but also his pioneering account of the print culture that emerged in our Western cultural history after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s.

Along with Ong's 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, the following four books are also pioneering studies of the print culture that emerged in our Western cultural history after the Gutenberg printing press emerged in Europe in the mid-1450s:

(1) Richard D. Altick's The English common Reader: A Social History of the Mass Reading Public, 1800-1900 (University of Chicago Press, 1957);

(2) Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin's The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing, 1450-1800, translated from the French by David Gerard; edited by Geoffrey Nowell-Smith and David Wootton (Verso, 1976; orig. French ed., 1958);

(3) Jurgen Habermas' The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society, translated from the German by Thomas Burger with the assistance of Frederick Lawrence (MIT Press, 1989; orig. German ed., 1962);

(4) Marshall McLuhan's The Gutenberg Galaxy: The Making of Typographic Man [sic] (University of Toronto Press, 1962; for specific page references to Ong's publications about Ramus and Ramist logic, see the "Bibliographic Index" [pp. 286-287]).

Today scholarly studies of print culture, in various languages, are far too numerous for anyone to compile a comprehensive bibliography of them comparable in scope to Marco Mostert's 2012 book A Bibliography of Works on Medieval Communication (Brepols).

Now, even though I regularly refer to Ong's big breakthrough insight in the early 1950s, I want to say here that even though he did indeed experience a breakthrough insight in the early 1950s, it strikes me as too pedestrian just to refer to his insight as an insight. After all, the experience of insight is common enough that the Canadian philosopher and theologian Bernard Lonergan (1904-1984) devoted his breakthrough philosophical treatise Insight: A Study of Human Understanding (1957) to delineating the common human experience of insight.

See Bernard Lonergan, Insight: A Study of Human Understanding, 5th edition, edited by Frederick E. Crowe and Robert M. Doran, as volume 3 of the Collected Works of Bernard Lonergan (University of Toronto Press, 1992).

Consequently, it now strikes me as more apt for me to characterize Ong's big media ecology breakthrough insight in the early 1950s as an experience of personal revelation for Ong - on the order of the personal revelations that the Spanish mystic St. Ignatius Loyola (1491-1556), the founder of the Jesuit order (known formally as the Society of Jesus, experienced at various times, but never quite articulated (except for noting that he had experienced them).

Now, I would draw your attention to the subtitle of Ong's 1967 seminal book The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (Yale University Press), the expanded version of Ong's 1964 Terry Lectures at Yale University.

In the Wikipedia entry "Prolegomena (disambiguation," we are told that the word "Prolegomena" in Ong's subtitle "is an ancient Greek word used to mean 'prologue' of 'introduction,' to introduce a larger work, e.g., a book":

Click Here (usually plural prolegomena) is, Future Metaphysics by Immanuel K"

So we would not expect to see the word "Prolegomena" to be preceded by the modifier "Some" as it is in Ong's subtitle. However that may be, Ong's subtitle seems to modestly indicates that he is simply setting forth in his book "Some" introductory considerations that should be taken into consideration in any and all cultural and religious histories in the future. Of course, this has not yet happened to any notable extent.

Yes, Ong's media ecology account of our Western cultural history is open to religion and religious studies. Because Ong was himself a Jesuit, it is not surprising that his thought is open to religion and religious studies as well as to literary studies. Nevertheless, I would be remiss if I did not note here that supposedly debunking religion is a characteristic of certain widely lionized authors and trends of thought in prestige English-speaking academia, such as the thought of the prolific French authors Jacques Derrida (1930-2004) and Michel Foucault (1926-1984).

For information about Jacques Derrida, see the Wikipedia entry "Jacques Derrida":

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For information about Michel Foucault, see the Wikipedia entry "Michel Foucault":

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Now, because Jacques Derrida published three important books in French in 1967, I will speak here of his popularity in prestige English-speaking academia as extending in the United States from roughly 1970 to the present time. In the November 5, 2023, presidential election, President-elect Donald Trump won a resounding victory - and the Democratic Party suffered a humiliating defeat. Trump's MAGA movement is anti-elitist. And many Americans see the Democratic Party as dominated by elitists - and wokeness and their version of social justice.

Now, the Roman Catholic Church also advances a version of social justice. See the lay English theologian Anna Rowland's 2021 book Towards a Politics of Communion: Catholic Social Teaching in Dark Times (T&T Clark).

But there is little similarity between the broad contours of Catholic social teaching and the far more specialized focus of the social justice themes of many American academics and their elitist comrades in the Democratic Party today.

Donald Trump's resounding anti-elitist victory in the 2024 presidential election was also a resounding rejection of the social justice elitists in the Democratic Party today.

But where does the Democratic Party go from such a resounding defeat?

In any event, for further discussion of Ong's media ecology thought in his 1958 massively researched book Ramus, Method, and the Decay of Dialogue, see my somewhat lengthy OEN article "Walter J. Ong's Philosophical Thought" (dated September 20, 2020):

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Ong's 1982 summative book Orality and Literacy: The Technologizing of the Word (Methuen) was published in the prestigious New Accents book series. It is Ong's most accessible book -- as well as his most widely read and most widely translated book.

For an introductory-level survey of Ong's life and eleven of his books and selected articles, see my award-winning book Walter Ong's Contributions to Cultural Studies: The Phenomenology of the Word and I-Thou Communication (Hampton Press, 2000). My book received the Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology, conferred by the Media Ecology Association in June 2001.

For an introductory-level selection of Ong's wide-ranging publications, see the 600-page Ong Reader: Challenges for Further Inquiry, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Hampton Press, 2002).

For a wide-ranging selection of Ong's essays related to religion and religious studies, see his four volumes of essays titled Faith and Contexts, edited by Thomas J. Farrell and Paul A. Soukup (Scholars Press, 1992a, 1992b, 1995, and 1999).

For a year-by-year listing of Ong's 400 or so distinct publications (not counting translations or reprintings as distinct publications), including bibliographic information about translations and reprintings, see Thomas M. Walsh's "Walter J. Ong, S.J.: A Bibliography 1929-2006" in the 2011 anthology Language, Culture, and Identity: The Legacy of Walter J. Ong, S.J., edited by Sara van den Berg and Thomas M. Walsh (Hampton Press, pp. 185-245).

Well, through the preceding wide-ranging drum roll and fanfare about Walter J. Ong's work about our Western cultural history, I have now sufficiently established his media ecology account of our Western cultural history as the broad framework in which we can now consider the American Jewish historian Alexis Pogorelskin's new 2024 book about the 1940 anti-Nazi Hollywood movie The Mortal Storm.

Alexis Pogorelskin on the 1940 Anti-Nazi Movie The Mortal Storm

Disclosure: Alexis Pogorelskin (born in 1944; B.A. in history, Bryn Mawr College, 1966; Ph.D. in history, Yale University, 1976) and I are both retired faculty members at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). In addition to being born in the same year (1944), we both started teaching at UMD in the fall of 1987. End of disclosure.

Now, according to Cheryn Reitan in public relations at UMD, Alexis Pogorelskin "taught the history of Hollywood at the Russian State University for the Humanities on a Fulbright in Moscow and was a Rhodes Visiting Fellow at St. Hilda's College in Oxford, UK. In 2015, she was the first Vera Brittain Scholar on Women and War at the University of Southampton, UK. That year, she traveled to Ukraine and Poland and saw where the events of the Holocaust took place:

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Now, To prepare myself to read Alexis Pogorelskin's new 2024 book Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War: The Case of The Mortal Storm, I viewed the 2010 DVD version of the 1940 MGM movie The Mortal Storm about "the impact on Germans after Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany and gains unlimited power" (according to the Wikipedia entry on the movie "The Mortal Storm") on the big-screen television in the living room of my home in Duluth, Minnesota.

The 1940 Hollywood movie The Mortal Storm stars the following cast:

Margaret Sullavan (1909-1960), as the non-Aryan Freya Roth, daughter of the non-Ayran Professor Viktor Roth and his Aryan wife Amelie Roth - in effect, an independent Jewish feminist in this 1940 Hollywood movie; in the end, Freya attempts to escape, on skis, from Germany into Austria with the pacifist Martin Breitner; but they are tracked down by Freya's former fiance' Nazi Fritz Marberg and Nazi soldiers; Fritz orders the soldiers to open fire on the two skiers; Freya is hit; she dies over the border in Austria.

For further information about Margaret Sullavan, see the Wikipedia entry "Margaret Sullavan":

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James Stewart (1908-1997), as the wholesome Aryan pacifist Martin Breitner, one of the non-Aryan Professor Viktor Roth's students; in the great Hollywood tradition of good guys versus bad guys, you know from the outset of the movie that the wholesome Aryan pacifist Martin Breitner is going to be the lead good guy in this 1940 Hollywood movie and that the Nazis are going to be the bad guys; this 1940 MGM movie was not designed to make the Nazi propaganda department in Germany happy; but Hitler and the Nazis were truly bad guys - the Holocaust was evil.

For further information about James Stewart, see the long (52 single-spaced pages printed out) Wikipedia entry about the remarkable "James Stewart":

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Robert Young (1907-1998), as the handsome Aryan Nazi Fritz Marberg, a Nazi, another one of the non-Ayran Professor Viktor Roth's students, who wants to marry non-Aryan Freya Roth; the misogynistic Aryan Nazi Fritz Marberg is the lead bad guy in the 1940 Hollywood movie about the Nazi bad guys in Germany.

For further information about Robert Young, see the Wikipedia entry on "Robert Young (actor)":

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Frank Morgan (1890-1949), as the non-Aryan [i.e., Jewish] scientist Professor Viktor Roth; as the 1940 Hollywood movie opens, it is January 30, 1933, the professor's 60th birthday; by coincidence, the radio announcement comes through that Adolf Hitler has been elected chancellor of Germany; but Professor Viktor Roth is wary of Hitler and the Nazis; you know from the outset of this 1940 Hollywood movie that Professor Viktor Roth is not going to survive the rise of Hitler and the Nazis to power in Germany; the thing about this 1940 MGM movie that I found most peculiar is the use of the term "non-Aryan" instead of the obvious term "Jew"; I have no idea how American moviegoers in 1940 reacted to the use of the term "non-Aryan" in the movie; however, the use of the term "non-Aryan" in the 1940 movie does accentuate the Nazi doctrine of racial purity for the so-called Aryan race in Germany; according to Alexis Pogorelskin, Louis Mayer, the head of MGM, himself a Jew, imposed this peculiar term on the 1940 MGM movie The Mortal Storm; but the use of this roundabout peculiar term in a movie that clearly was not designed to please the Nazi propaganda department in Germany strikes me today as positively quaint!

For further information about Frank Morgan, see the Wikipedia entry on "Frank Morgan":

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For further information about Louis Mayer, see the Wikipedia entry on "Louis B. Mayer":

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Irene Rich (1891-1988), as Mrs. Amilie Roth, the Aryan wife of the non-Aryan Professor Viktor Roth and mother of Freya Roth and young Rudi Roth as well as Otto von Rohn and Erich von Rohn, the Aryan Nazi stepsons of the non-Aryan Professor Viktor Roth.

For further information about Irene Rich, see the Wikipedia entry "Irene Rich":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irene_Rich

Gene Reynolds (1923-2020), as young Rudi Roth, the young son of the non-Aryan Professor Viktor Roth.

For further information about Gene Reynolds, see the Wikipedia entry on "Gene Reynolds":

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Maria Ouspenskaya (1876-1949), as the Aryan Mrs. Hilda Breitner, the mother of the Aryan pacificist Martin Breitner.

For further information about Maria Ouspenskaya, see the Wikipedia entry on "Maria Ouspenskaya":

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Robert Stack (1919-2003), as the Aryan Otto von Rohn, a Nazi, one stepson of the non-Aryan Professor Viktor Roth.

For further information about Robert Stack, see the Wikipedia entry on "Robert Stack":

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William T. Orr (1917-2002), as the Aryan Erich von Rohn, a Nazi, the other stepson of the non-Aryan Professor Viktor Roth.

For further information about William T. Orr, see the Wikipedia entry on "William T. Orr":

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Dan Dailey (1915-1978), as Holl.

For further information about Dan Dailey, see the Wikipedia entry on "Dan Dailey":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Dailey

Ward Bond (1903-1960), as Franz.

For further information about Ward Bond, see the Wikipedia entry on "Ward Bond":

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Bond

Bonita Granville (1923-1988), as Elsa.

For further information about Bonita Granville, see the Wikipedia entry on "Bonita Granville":

Click Here

For discussion of the Holocaust, see the American Catholic author James Carroll's 2001 candid book Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews: A History (Houghton Mifflin).

Now, clearly, the 1940 Hollywood movie The Mortal Storm has a star-studded cast, with an extraordinary heroine in the independent Jewish feminist Freya Roth (played by the popular Hollywood star Margaret Sullavan), and with an attractive German hero in the pacificist Martin Breitner (played by the popular Hollywood star James Stewart).

In effect, the 1940 Hollywood movie The Mortal Storm candidly dramatizes certain American values versus Nazi values!

Now, according to the Wikipedia entry "The Mortal Storm," quoted above, "It is implied that Freya, her father and [her young brother] Rudi are Jews, but the word 'Jew' is never actually used, and they are identified as 'non-Aryans."

"The Mortal Storm was one of the few directly anti-Nazi Hollywood films released before the American entry into World War II in December 1941."

"The film infuriated the Nazi government; as a result, all MGM films were subsequently banned in Germany":

Click Here

The 1940 MGM movie The Mortal Storm was reviewed glowingly in The New York Times by Bosley Crowther (1905-1981), film critic at The New York Times from 1940 to 1967, in the review titled "THE SCREEN: 'The Mortal Storm,' a Deeply Tragic Anti-Nazi Film, at the Capitol - 'Hot Steel' at the Rialto" (dated June 21, 1940--although the page is no longer there).

Bosley Crowther says, "At Last and at a time when the world is more gravely aware than ever of the relentless mass brutality embodied in the Nazi system, Hollywood has turned its camera eye upon the most tragic human drama of our age. In Metro's 'The Mortal Storm,' which opened yesterday at the Capitol, a grim and agonizing look is finally taken into Nazi Germany - into the new Nazi Germany of 1933, when Hitler took over the reins and a terrible wave of suppression and persecution followed. And, on the basis of recorded facts and the knowledge that its drama is authentic, this picture turns out to be one of the most harrowing and inflammatory fictions ever placed on the screen. There is no mincing of words about it: 'The Mortal Storm' falls definitely into the category of blistering anti-Nazi propaganda."

Because Bosley Crowther's review of The Mortal Storm is overwhelmingly positive, I take his characterization of it as being in "the category of blistering anti-Nazi propaganda" as meant as laudatory praise. In any event, I myself would also characterize it as blistering anti-Nazi propaganda -- in the most positive connotation of propaganda.

In conclusion, the most efficient way for me to provide you with an overview of Alexis Pogorelskin's new 2024 book Hollywood and the Nazis on the Eve of War is to tell you its contents:

"List of Figures" (p. viii).

"Acknowledgments" (pp. ix-xi).

"Prologue" (pp. xii-xiii).

"Introduction" (pp. 1-6).

Chapter 1: "A Matter of Timing" (pp. 7-26).

Chapter 2: "Novelist of War" (pp. 27-74).

Chapter 3: "Selling The Mortal Storm to Hollywood" (pp. 75-114).

Chapter 4: "In Production, 1939" (pp. 115-150).

Chapter 5: "In Production, 1940" (pp. 151-184).

Chapter 6: "June 20, 1940: Did Anyone Have Time to Go to the Movies?" (pp. 185-228).

Chapter 7: "The Response to The Mortal Storm, 1940" (pp. 229-248).

Chapter 8: "The Response to The Mortal Storm, 1941" (pp. 249-287).

"Epilogue: Hollywood Almost Missed the Bus, Again" (pp. 289-304).

"Essay on Sources" (pp. 305-311).

"Index" (pp. 312-332).

"Notes" appear at the end of each chapter.

Authors Website: http://www.d.umn.edu/~tfarrell

Authors Bio:

Thomas James Farrell is professor emeritus of writing studies at the University of Minnesota Duluth (UMD). He started teaching at UMD in Fall 1987, and he retired from UMD at the end of May 2009. He was born in 1944. He holds three degrees from Saint Louis University (SLU): B.A. in English, 1966; M.A.(T) in English 1968; Ph.D.in higher education, 1974. On May 16, 1969, the editors of the SLU student newspaper named him Man of the Year, an honor customarily conferred on an administrator or a faculty member, not on a graduate student -- nor on a woman up to that time. He is the proud author of the book WALTER ONG'S CONTRIBUTIONS TO CULTURAL STUDIES: THE PHENOMENOLOGY OF THE WORD AND I-THOU COMMUNICATION (Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press, 2000; 2nd ed. 2009, forthcoming). The first edition won the 2001 Marshall McLuhan Award for Outstanding Book in the Field of Media Ecology conferred by the Media Ecology Association. For further information about his education and his publications, see his UMD homepage: Click here to visit Dr. Farrell's homepage.

On September 10 and 22, 2009, he discussed Walter Ong's work on the blog radio talk show "Ethics Talk" that is hosted by Hope May in philosophy at Central Michigan University. Each hour-long show has been archived and is available for people who missed the live broadcast to listen to. Here are the website addresses for the two archived shows:

Click here to listen the Technologizing of the Word Interview

Click here to listen the Ramus, Method & The Decay of Dialogue Interview