Out of Darkness

Looking through the shorts that are coming up on TCM in the next day, one that's new to me but looks interesting is Out of Darkness, which will be on at about 11:45 PM tonight, after The Bride Came C.O.D.. (The feature is well worth watching, as Bette Davis and James Cagney do comedy together.) This one is part of the Passing Parade series, and from the IMDb synopsis, looks at the Germans trying to shut down the Belgian press that isn't toeing the line after the Germans occupied Belgium in both World Wars.

The short was released in March of 1941, so it was several months before the US joined the war after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor. I've mentioned a few times in the past how Hollywood had begun to make a few movies very critical of the Nazis, and how this nearly got them into trouble with the Senate. (I linked to an academic paper some years back, but the academic died and the link to that paper changed.) I'd think it would have been obvious to audiences back in 1941 how a short about the Kaiser's government going after Belgian papers in the first World War was really just a veiled attack on what the Nazis would have been doing.