Mrs. Miniver (character) President Franklin D. Roosevelt credited it for hastening America's involvement in the war. Winston Churchill is said to have claimed that it had done more for the Allied cause than a flotilla of battleships. Churchill is further quoted by Bernard Wasserstein in his book, "Barbarism and Civilization," as saying that the book (and later the film) was worth "six divisions of war effort." In 1942, when the film came out, Roosevelt ordered it rushed to theaters. The film adaptation of "Mrs. Miniver" was produced by MGM in 1942 with Greer Garson in the leading role and William Wyler directing. Under
War film the "Why We Fight" propaganda series from Frank Capra; the War Department's Information-Education Division started out making training films for the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy; the Army made its own through the U.S. Signal Corps, including John Huston's "The Battle of San Pietro". Hollywood made films with propaganda messages about America's allies, such as "Mrs. Miniver" (1942), which portrayed a British family on the home front; "Edge of Darkness" (1943) showed Norwegian resistance fighters, and "The North Star" (1943) showed the Soviet Union and its Communist Party. Towards the end of the war popular books provided higher quality