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.

Prologue -- Act I. Behind the scenes in a sundered country: the Nazis set the stage in the European Theater -- Introducing the Fuhrer, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler -- The road to the Third Reich -- From choric theater to party rally -- From party rally to German cinema -- Theater of the absurd -- Entr'acte -- Act II. Curtain going up : the lion roars -- The home front: to the airwaves -- A counter-message gets through -- The British rewrite the German script -- Two British radio stations -- Act III. Point/counterpoint : dramatic conflict -- Roosevelt and the isolationists -- Churchill and Roosevelt write the script backstage -- The Nazi counter-message to America -- FDR and a platoon of poets -- The American "patriotic" press responds! -- War comes to America's movie theaters -- On the road with Wild Bill Donovan -- Act IV. Before the final curtain -- The Allies launch a crusade -- Stalingrad compels a revision of the Nazi script -- Interlude -- The Tehran Conference -- A D-Day production -- Miscues and misinterpretations of the Allied script -- Operation Joker -- The beginning of the end -- The end of the beginning.

Includes bibliographical references.

"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."--Provided by publisher.