Chaplin the film maker earned the enmity of isolationist America's political establishment for "The Great Dictator."

His closing speech, an artistically flawed but emotionally eloquent plea for concerted international intervention against Hitler's persecution of the Jews, instantly earned Chaplin a subpoena to appear before a hastily formed, isolationist, anti-war Senate subcommittee on war propaganda in September of 1941.

also helped earn him (in the files of the FBI), the quaint political epithet of "premature anti-fascist

Chaplin's speech in "The Great Dictator" was seen as inciting to war.

Throughout 1942, he campaigned vigorously on behalf of Russian War Relief and a Second Front.

in late 1942. Westbrook Pegler, a conservative journalist...Equating Chaplin's activities in support of our military alliance with the Soviets as pro-Communist and therefore anti-American, he recommended his deportation. http://www.american.edu/academic.depts/soc/run.html   

 

http://www.videosift.com/video/The-Great-Dictator-Starring-Charlie-Chaplin-1940    

 

 

 

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