“A Campaign of Truth”

This chapter, by Katarina Loukopoulou, discusses the Marshall Plan (MP) documentary films about Greece in the post–World War II geopolitical context. Drawing on archival research, it explores documentaries that propagated the beneficial impact on Greece of the U.S.-funded European Recovery Program (1948–52, widely known as “Marshall Plan”) both in terms of economic reconstruction and geopolitical stability. It then analyses the audio-visual rhetoric of two MP films about Greece— Victory at Thermopylae (1950) and Island Odyssey (1950)—in relation to the ideological context of the Greek Civil War (1945–49), during which U.S. military intervention played a decisive role. The chapter contributes to the growing literature about the MP publicity campaign and Cold War cultural propaganda.

Archaeology · Context (archaeology) · Economic history · Geopolitics · Ideology · Media studies · Political science · Politics · Publicity · Rhetoric · Sociology · Spanish Civil War · Theology · Victory · Australian History and Society · Contemporary and Historical Greek Studies · History · Italian Fascism and Post-war Society · Law · Philosophy