In the decades following the First World War, motion pictures became the main entertainment of the masses worldwide. Motion pictures offered ordinary people a temporary escape from the hard realities of international tensions, uncertainty, unemployment, and personal frustrations. Motion pictures also became powerful tools of indoctrination, especially in countries with dictatorial regimes.

Radio also dominated popular culture after the war. In 1920 the first major public broadcasts were made in Great Britain and the United States. Every major country quickly established national broadcasting networks. In the United States these were privately owned and financed by advertising. In Europe, China, Japan, India, and elsewhere the typical pattern was direct government control. By the late 1930s more than three-fourths of the households in both democratic Great Britain and dictatorial Germany had at least one radio. Radio was well suited for promoting patriotism and spreading political propaganda. Radios were revolutionary in that they were capable of reaching all of a nation’s citizens at once, offering them a single perspective on current events, and teaching them a single national language and pronunciation.