Mission to Moscow

Mission to Moscow was a film released in 1943 based on Ambassador Joseph E. Davies's memoir of the same title. Davies was sent to the Soviet Union at the request of president Franklin D. Roosevelt to assess the geopolitical situation in Europe in 1941. To my amazement, Ambassador Davies was quite an exceptional man in that, despite being bourgeois himself, he greatly admired many of the achievements of the Stalin regime and the Soviet people. Unfortunately, Davies was also fairly credulous regarding some of internal affairs of the USSR. For example, he accepted the testimony given at Moscow Trials as actually being factual with a naïveté matched only by the likes of Grover Furr.

The film also gives a rather two-dimensional portrayal of the events leading to the Second World War. The Fascists and National Socialists are constantly depicted as bent on "world domination," when anyone familiar with the history of fascism knows that, despite being imperialists, the fascists' (including Hitler's) ambitions never went as far as controlling the entire world. Still, I rather enjoyed the movie and believe that several forum members would as well.