10 War Films That Were Basically Just Propaganda

Guess who we’re pitted against in this movie? That’s right. Say it with me:

"The communists!"

Released in 1968, The Green Berets came at a point when anti-war sentiment was hitting its peak in the US. John Wayne was deeply concerned and set out to make a powerful pro-military, anti-communist film.

Wayne asked for and received full cooperation with the US military and government during filming.

In The Green Berets, John Wayne reduces a decades-long conflict into a simple game of cowboys and Indians, with the film being panned for oversimplifying what was in reality a much more complex conflict.

This is best represented in the young Vietnamese boy named Ham Chuck. Ham Chuck is a war orphan that the Green Berets unofficially adopt. Rather than acting as a fleshed-out character representing the human cost of the war, Ham Chuck acts as a mascot for the soldiers.

The film ends with Wayne’s character telling Ham Chuck that the whole war is being fought for him. This frames the Vietnam War in easy and favorable terms; the US saving the innocent Vietnamese from the evils of communism.

This sentiment also ignores the real issues at the heart of the Vietnam War. These include things like the US Containment Policy, wartime attrocities and decades of European colonization that led to the conflict in the region.