Well 60,000,000 people did then die, so it seems a reasonable level of preachiness.

I took the comment as ironic. A-fucking-men to Chaplin's sentiment, anyway.

"did then die" is understating it. The Great Dictator was filmed in 1939, long before most of the world knew the true horrors that had and would take place. Chaplin wasn't alone in calling out the dangers, but he was in the minority.

> Chaplin wasn't alone in calling out the dangers,

A very honourable mention to Alexander Korda.

Particularly 'Things To Come', his 1936 film warning of the rise of fascism in Europe, global war and the dangers of air bombardment (thereby bringing mechanised warfare to civilian populations for the first time).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Things_to_Come

And yes, it is based on the HG Wells story.

That's probably the best kind of "preachy". And back then, it really was required as anti-semitism was definitely at its peak then.

Nineteen-fucking-forty release year. About a year earlier (mind, production leads release by quite a bit) we had, infamously, turned away almost a thousand Jews on the St Louis seeking asylum—of whom, about a quarter would ultimately die in the holocaust, after re-settling in countries that Nazi Germany eventually conquered.

It's hard not to see the relevance of Communism to the speech, too, that being the one of a couple things that loomed (much) larger in the average German mind than the "Jewish question", in the rise of Nazism. No accident that Chaplin would find himself on the wrong side of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), I guess.

It's maybe the great pre-war (from the American perspective, of course—'39 was the start for Europe, and earlier still for China and other places like Ethiopia) WWII movie.