"The best soldiers in the world are the ones who know what they are fighting for..." was the premise of the short lived series What Are We Fighting For? 

For six weeks in the spring of 1942, the Columbia Network set up a series of remote broadcasts various Army installations around the country, including the Military Academy at West Point, Fort Meade, MD, Camp Claiborne, LA, and others.

Live audiences were usually officers and enlisted men, often only days or weeks away from shipping out to the front lines. Sponsored and recorded by the War Department, these historical broadcasts were used in training and new troops orientation.

Speakers in this series were mostly CBS correspondents who had already been in the war zone. Edward R. Murrow spoke on "The Road To War", recounting Nazi aggression and summarizing his reports from London during the blitz. The job of reporting the progress of America's war efforts from Pearl Harbor to date fell to Lee White, who had been injured during the conflict in the Balkans. Perhaps the climax of the series came in the last episode when WWI hero Sgt. Alvin York addressed his reactivated unit, the 82nd Infantry, the "All American Division", at Camp Claiborne in Louisiana.

There was no effort made to disguise the propaganda of What Are We Fighting For? American fighting men were anxious and enthusiastic to get into the fight and to get the job done. One might say this has always been true of America's brave service men and women.