What the U.S. Government Told Soldiers About Communism in 1955

At the height of the Cold War, the United States government produced films like this one to show its own military personnel what they believed they were up against. Communist Blueprint For Conquest is Armed Forces Information Film No. 76, produced in 1955 by the U.S. Armed Forces Information Service and featuring Boris H. Klosson of the Department of State — a career Foreign Service officer who specialised in Soviet affairs — walking soldiers through the precise methods and techniques the Communist Party used to seize power in a country. Step by step. Country by country. Using animation, schematic charts, and the flat authority of a man who genuinely believed every word he was saying. The film covers the full playbook as Washington understood it at the time: infiltration of trade unions and labour movements, the targeting of artists and intellectuals, the manipulation of class grievances, the use of a disciplined party minority to control a disorganised majority, and the final consolidation of power once democratic institutions had been hollowed out from within. Whether you regard this as accurate historical analysis, Cold War propaganda, or some combination of both, it is a remarkable document of how the United States government thought about the communist threat in 1955 — and what it deemed important enough to teach to every soldier in uniform. The film arrived via the Delaware County Committee on Patriotism, a collection of 118 release prints produced largely by organisations on the American political right between the 1950s and 1970s. It begins abruptly — the first reel is missing — and what survives is described in the Army's own index as covering "the Weapon of Subversion."