In the run-up to the election, we’re all listening to speeches - and many of them are grappling with the very idea of America: what do we want America to be? This episode of Fishko Files goes back to the World War II era, when, as WNYC's Sara Fishko tells us, Hollywood movies were asking the same question - or rather, answering it.

Jeanine Basinger's The World War II Combat Film: Anatomy of a Genre, David Welky's The Moguls and the Dictators, and Thomas Doherty's Projections of War are available online.

Some of the films mentioned are available to stream, including:

The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

The Great Dictator (1941)

Casablanca (1943)

Watch on the Rhine (1943)