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Title: Psychological Warfare
Author: Paul M. A. Linebarger
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Language: English
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Psychological Warfare
By
PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER
_School of Advanced International Studies_
DUELL, SLOAN AND PEARCE
NEW YORK
COPYRIGHT 1948, 1954, BY PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER
All rights reserved. No part of this book in excess of five hundred
words may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from
the publisher.
Library of Congress Catalog Card No. 48-1799
SECOND EDITION
SECOND PRINTING
MANUFACTURED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
_FOR
GENEVIEVE, MY WIFE,
WITH LOVE_
Transcriber's Notes:
Text originally marked up as bold is surrounded by =, text in italics by
_. All footnotes can be found after the Appendix, before the Index.
Obvious printer's errors have been remedied, a list of all other changes
can be found at the end of the document. Note: While the list of charts
mentions a "Chart X", no such chart was contained in the book.
Preface to the Second Edition
The present edition of this work has been modified to meet the needs of
the readers of the mid-1950s. The material in the first edition
following page 244 has been removed; it consisted of a chapter hopefully
called "Psychological Warfare and Disarmament." A new Part Four,
comprising three fresh chapters, has been added, representing some of
the problems confronting students and operators in this field. Pages
1-243 are a reprint from the first edition.
This edition, like the first, is the product of field experience. The
author has made nine trips abroad, five of them to the Far East, since
1949. He has profited by his meeting with such personalities as Sir
Henry Gurney, the British High Commissioner for the Federation of
Malaya, who was later murdered by the Communists, meetings with
Philippine, Republic of Korea, Chinese Nationalist, captured Chinese
Communist and other personalities, as well as by association with such
veterans in the field as General MacArthur's chief psywar expert,
Colonel J. Woodall Greene. To Colonel Joseph I. Greene, who died in
1953, the author is indebted as friend and colleague. He owes much to
the old friends, listed in the original acknowledgment, who offered
their advice and comment in many instances.
Many readers of the first edition wrote helpful letters of comment. Some
of their suggestions have been incorporated here. The translators of the
two Argentine editions of this book; the translator of the Japanese
edition, the Hon. Suma Yokachiro; and the translator of the first and
second Chinese editions, Mr. Ch'ên En-ch'êng--all of them have made
direct or indirect improvements in the content or style of the work.
The author also wishes to thank his former student, later his former ORO
colleague, now his wife, Dr. Genevieve Linebarger, for her encouragement
and her advice.
The author hopes that, as U. S. agencies and other governments move
toward a more settled definition of doctrine in this field, a third
edition--a few years from now--may be able to reflect the maturation of
psywar in international affairs. He does not consider the time
appropriate for a fundamental restatement of doctrine; he hopes that
readers who have suggestions for future definitions of scope, policy, or
operations can communicate these to him for inclusion in later printings
of this book.
P.M.A.L.
_3 August 1954_
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book is the product of experience rather than research, of
consultation rather than reading. It is based on my five years of work,
both as civilian expert and as Army officer, in American psychological
warfare facilities--at every level from the Joint and Combined Chiefs of
Staff planning phase down to the preparing of spot leaflets for the
American forces in China. Consequently, I have tried to avoid making
this an original book, and have sought to incorporate those concepts and
doctrines which found readiest acceptance among the men actually doing
the job. The responsibility is therefore mine, but not the credit.
Psychological warfare involves exciting wit-sharpening work. It tends to
attract quick-minded people--men full of ideas. I have talked about
psychological warfare with all sorts of people, all the way from Mr. Mao
Tse-tung in Yenan and Ambassador Joseph Davies in Washington to an
engineer corporal in New Zealand and the latrine-coolie, second class,
at our Chungking headquarters. I have seen one New York lawyer get
mentally befuddled and another New York lawyer provide the solution, and
have seen Pulitzer Prize winners run out of ideas only to have the
stenographers supply them. From all these people I have tried to learn,
and have tried to make this book a patchwork of enthusiastic
recollection. Fortunately, the material is non-copyright; unfortunately,
I cannot attribute most of these comments or inventions to their
original proponents. Perhaps this is just as well: some authors might
object to being remembered.
A few indebtednesses stand out with such clarity as to make
acknowledgment a duty. These I wish to list, with the caution that this
list is not inclusive.
First of all, I am indebted to my father, Judge Paul M. W. Linebarger
(1871-1939), who during his lifetime initiated me into almost every
phase of international political warfare, whether covert or overt, in
connection with his life-long activities on behalf of Sun Yat-sen and
the Chinese Nationalists. On a limited budget (for years, out of his own
pocket) he ran campaigns against imperialism and communism, and for
Sino-American friendship and Chinese democracy, in four or five
languages at a time. For five and a half years I was his secretary, and
believe that this experience has kept me from making this a book of
exclusively American doctrine. There is no better way to learn the
propaganda job than to be whipped thoroughly by someone else's
propaganda.
Second only to my debt to my father, my obligation to the War Department
General Staff officers detailed to Psychological Warfare stands forth.
By sheer good fortune, the United States had an unbroken succession of
intelligent, conscientious, able men assigned to this vital post, and it
was my own good luck to serve under each of them in turn between 1942
and 1947. They are, in order of assignment: Colonel Percy W. Black,
Brigadier General Oscar N. Solbert, Colonel Charles Blakeney, Lieutenant
Colonel Charles Alexander Holmes Thomson, Colonel John Stanley,
Lieutenant Colonel Richard Hirsch, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Buttles,
Colonel Dana Johnston, Lieutenant Colonel Daniel Tatum, and Lieutenant
Colonel Wesley Edwards. Their talents and backgrounds were diverse but
their ability was uniformly high. I do not attribute this to the
peculiar magic of Psychological Warfare, nor to unwonted prescience on
the part of The Adjutant General, but to plain good luck.
Especial thanks are due to the following friends, who have read this
manuscript in whole or in part. I have dealt independently with the
comments and criticism, so that none of them can be blamed for the final
form of the book. These are Dr. Edward K. Merat, the Columbia-trained
MIS propaganda analyst; Mr. C. A. H. Thomson, State Department
international information consultant and Brookings Institution staff
member; Professor E. P. Lilly of Catholic University and concurrently
Psychological Warfare historian to the Joint Chiefs of Staff; Lieutenant
Colonel Innes Randolph; Lieutenant Colonel Heber Blankenhorn, the only
American to have served as a Psychological Warfare officer in both World
Wars; Dr. Alexander M. Leighton, M.D., the psychiatrist and
anthropologist who as a Navy lieutenant commander headed the OWI-MIS
Foreign Morale Analysis Division in wartime; Mr. Richard Hirsch; Colonel
Donald Hall, without whose encouragement I would never have finished
this book; Professor George S. Pettee, whose experience in strategic
intelligence lent special weight to his comment; Colonel Dana Johnston;
Mr. Martin Herz, who may some day give the world the full account of the
mysterious Yakzif operations; and Mrs. M. S. Linebarger.
Further, I must thank several of my associates in the propaganda
agencies whose thinking proved most stimulating to mine. Mr. Geoffrey
Gorer was equally brilliant as colleague and as ally. Dean Edwin Guthrie
brought insights to Psychological Warfare which were as much the
reflection of a judicious, humane personality as of preeminent
psychological scholarship. Professor W. A. Aiken, himself a historian,
provided data on the early history of U. S. facilities in World War II.
Mr. F. M. Fisher and Mr. Richard Watts, Jr., of the OWI China Outpost,
together with their colleagues, taught me a great deal by letting me
share some of their tasks and my immediate chief in China, Colonel
Joseph K. Dickey, was kind to allow a member of his small, overworked
staff to give time to Psychological Warfare. Messrs. Herbert Little,
John Creedy and C. A. Pearce have told me wonderful stories about their
interesting end of propaganda. Mr. Joseph C. Grew, formerly Under
Secretary of State and Ambassador to Japan, showed me that the
processes of traditional responsible diplomacy include many skills which
Psychological Warfare rediscovers crudely and in different form.
Finally, I wish to thank Colonel Joseph I. Greene in his triple role of
editor, publisher and friend, to whom this volume owes its actual being.
While this material has been found unobjectionable on the score of
security by the Department of the Army, it certainly does not represent
Department of the Army policy, views, or opinion, nor is the Department
responsible for matters of factual accuracy. I assume sole and complete
responsibility for this book and would be glad to hear the comment or
complaint of any reader. My address is indicated below.
PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER
2831 29th Street N.W.
Washington 8, D. C.
20 June 1947
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
PART ONE: DEFINITION AND HISTORY
CHAPTER 1: Historic Examples of Psychological Warfare 1
CHAPTER 2: The Function of Psychological Warfare 25
CHAPTER 3: Definition of Psychological Warfare 37
CHAPTER 4: The Limitations of Psychological Warfare 48
CHAPTER 5: Psychological Warfare In World War I 62
CHAPTER 6: Psychological Warfare In World War II 77
PART TWO: ANALYSIS, INTELLIGENCE, AND ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION
CHAPTER 7: Propaganda Analysis 110
CHAPTER 8: Propaganda Intelligence 132
CHAPTER 9: Estimate of the Situation 150
PART THREE: PLANNING AND OPERATIONS
CHAPTER 10: Organization for Psychological Warfare 168
CHAPTER 11: Plans and Planning 194
CHAPTER 12: Operations for Civilians 203
CHAPTER 13: Operations Against Troops 211
PART FOUR: PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AFTER WORLD WAR II
CHAPTER 14: The "Cold War" and Seven Small Wars 244
CHAPTER 15: Strategic International Information Operations 268
CHAPTER 16: Research, Development and the Future 283
APPENDIX: Military PsyWar Operations, 1950-53 301
INDEX 309
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1: A Basic Form of Propaganda 2
2: Nazi Troop Morale Leaflet 4
3: One of the Outstanding Leaflets of the War 5
4: The Pass Which Brought them in 6
5: Revolutionary Propaganda 9
6: Propaganda for Illiterates 10-11
7: Propaganda Through News 13
8: One of the Mongol Secret Weapons 14
9: Black Propaganda from the British Underground, 1690 18-19
10: Secret American Propaganda Subverting the Redcoats 20
11: Desertion Leaflet from Bunker Hill 21
12: Money as a Carrier of Propaganda 22-23
13: Surrender Leaflet from the AEF 70
14: Radio Program Leaflet, Anzio, 1944 82
15: Radio Leaflet Surrender Form, Anzio, 1944 83
16: Invitation to Treason 84
17: Anti-Radio Leaflet 86
18: Anti-Exhibit Leaflet 96
19: Propaganda Against Propaganda 100
20: Re-Use of Enemy Propaganda 102
21: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Slogans 118
22: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Technique 119
23: Direct Reply Leaflet 120
24: Black Use of Enemy Subversive Materials 121
25: Black Use of Enemy Information Materials 122-123
26: Religious Black 124
27: Malingerer's Black 125
28: Nostalgic Black 133
29: Nostalgic White, Misfire 134
30: Nostalgic White 135
31: Oestrous Black 137
32: Oestrous Grey 138
33: Oestrous Grey, Continued 139
34: Obscene Black 141
35: Informational Sheet 142
36: Counterpropaganda Instructions 144
37: Defensive Counterpropaganda 146
38: Black "Counterpropaganda" 148
39: Leaflet Production: Military Presses 169
40: Leaflet Production: Rolling 169
41: Leaflet Distribution: Attaching Fuzes 170
42: Leaflet Distribution: Packing the Boxes 171
43: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Boxes 172
44: Leaflet Distribution: Bombs at the Airfield 172
45: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Bombs 173
46: Leaflet Distribution: The Final Result 174
47: Consolidation Propaganda: The Movie Van 175
48: Consolidation Propaganda: Posters 176
49: Consolidation Propaganda: Photo Exhibit 176
50: Consolidation Propaganda: Door Gods 188
51: Basic Types: Start of War 198
52: Basic Types: Troop Morale 212
53: Paired Morale Leaflets 213
54: Troop Morale Leaflet, Grey 214
55: Chinese Communist Civilian Morale Leaflet 215
56: General Morale: Matched Themes 215
57: The Unlucky Japanese Sad Sack 216-217
58: Civilian Personal Mail 218-219
59: Basic Types: Newspapers 220
60: Basic Types: Spot-News Leaflets 221
61: Basic Types: Civilian Action 222
62: Basic Types: Labor Recruitment 224
63: Action Type: Air-Rescue Facilities 231
64: Pre-Action News 232
65: Direct Commands to Enemy Forces 233
66: Basic Types: Contingency Commands 234
67: Tactical Surrender Leaflets 235
68: Basic Types: Surrender Leaflet 236
69: Improved Surrender Leaflet 239
70: End of War 241
71: Official Chinese Letter 250
72: Intimidation Pattern 256
73: Communist Wall Propaganda 258
74: Divisive Propaganda, Korean Model 266
75: UN Propaganda 302
76: Korean Leaflet Bomb, Early Model 303
77: UN Themes 305
78: Home-front Morale 306
79: The Famous Airplane Surrender Leaflet 308
Chart I 92
Chart II 95
Chart III 112
Chart IV 130
Chart V 180
Chart VI 181
Chart VII 183
Chart VIII 185
Chart IX 190
Chart X 248
PART ONE
DEFINITION AND HISTORY
CHAPTER 1
Historic Examples of Psychological Warfare
Psychological warfare is waged before, during, and after war; it is not
waged against the opposing psychological warfare operators; it is not
controlled by the laws, usages, and customs of war; and it cannot be
defined in terms of terrain, order of battle, or named engagements. It
is a continuous process. Success or failure is often known only months
or years after the execution of the operation. Yet success, though
incalculable, can be overwhelming; and failure, though undetectable, can
be mortal.
Psychological warfare does not fit readily into familiar concepts of
war. Military science owes much of its precision and definiteness to its
dealing with a well defined subject, the application of organized lawful
violence. The officer or soldier can usually undertake his task of
applying mass violence without having to determine upon the enemy. The
opening of war, recognition of neutrals, the listing of enemies,
proclamation of peace--such problems are considered political, and
outside the responsibility of the soldier. Even in the application of
force short of war, the soldier proceeds only when the character of the
military operation is prescribed by higher (that is, political)
authorities, and after the enemies are defined by lawful and
authoritative command. In one field only, psychological warfare, is
there endless uncertainty as to the very nature of the operation.
Psychological warfare, by the nature of its instruments and its mission,
begins long before the declaration of war. Psychological warfare
continues after overt hostilities have stopped. The enemy often avoids
identifying himself in psychological warfare; much of the time, he is
disguised as the voice of home, of God, of the church, of the friendly
press. Offensively, the psychological warfare operator must fight
antagonists who never answer back--the enemy audience. He cannot fight
the one enemy who is in plain sight, the hostile psychological warfare
operator, because the hostile operator is greedily receptive to attack.
Neither success nor defeat are measurable factors. Psychological
strategy is planned along the edge of nightmare.
=The Understanding Of Psychological Warfare.= In a formal approach to
this mysterious part of the clean-cut process of war, it might be
desirable to start with Euclidian demonstrations, proceeding from
definition to definition until the subject-matter had been delimited by
logic. Alternatively it might be interesting to try a historical
approach, describing the development of psychological warfare through
the ages.
The best approach is perhaps afforded by a simplification of both a
logical and historical approach. For concrete examples it is most
worthwhile to look at instances of psychological warfare taken out of
history down to World War II. Then the definitions and working
relationships can be traced and--with these in mind--a somewhat more
detailed and critical appraisal of World Wars I and II organizations and
operations can be undertaken. If a historian or philosopher picks up
this book, he will find much with which to quarrel, but for the survey
of so hard-to-define a subject, this may be a forgivable fault.
[Illustration: _Figure 1: A Basic Form of Propaganda._ This American
leaflet, issued during the Philippine landings, was dropped on inhabited
Philippine areas in order to obtain local civilian cooperation with the
landing forces. It can be called the "civilian-action" type.]
Psychological warfare and propaganda are each as old as mankind; but it
has taken modern specialization to bring them into focus as separate
subjects. The materials for their history lie scattered through
thousands of books and it is therefore impossible to brief them. Any
reader contemplating retirement from the army to a sedentary life is
urged to take up this subject.[1] A history of propaganda would provide
not only a new light on many otherwise odd or trivial historical events;
it would throw genuine illumination on the process of history itself.
There are however numerous instances which can be cited to show
applications of psychological warfare.
=The Use Of Panic By Gideon.= One of the earliest (by traditional
reckoning, 1245 B.C.) applications was Gideon's use of the lamps and
pitchers in the great battle against the Midianites.
The story is told in the seventh chapter of the Book of Judges. Gideon
was in a tactically poor position. The Midianites outnumbered him and
were on the verge of smiting him very thoroughly. Ordinary combat
methods could not solve the situation, so Gideon--acting upon more
exalted inspiration than is usually vouchsafed modern commanders--took
the technology and military formality of his time into account.
Retaining three hundred selected men, he sought for some device which
would cause real confusion in the enemy host. He knew well that the
tactics of his time called for every century of men to have one
light-carrier and one torch-bearer for the group. By equipping three
hundred men with a torch and a trumpet each, he could create the effect
of thirty thousand. Since the lights could not be turned on and off with
switches, like ours, the pitchers concealed them, thus achieving the
effect of suddenness.
[Illustration: _Figure 2: Nazi Troop Morale Leaflet._ In this leaflet,
used on the Italian front in 1944, the Nazis did not call for any
specific action from their American GI readers. Their aim was merely
depression of American morale for future exploitation by action
propaganda. Note the extreme simplicity of the message. Throughout World
War II, the Nazis were misled by their own tendentious political
intelligence reports and consequently overestimated the kind and degree
of American opposition to Franklin D. Roosevelt. They mistook normal
complaint for treasonable sedition; hence, leaflets such as this seemed
practical to the Germans.]
[Illustration: _Figure 3: One of the Outstanding Leaflets of the War._
Prepared in 1945 for distribution by B-29s operating over Japan, this
leaflet lists eleven Japanese cities which were marked for destruction.
The leaflet is apparently of the civilian-action type, calling on
Japanese civilians to save their own lives. At the same time, it had the
effect of shutting down eleven strategically important cities, thus
hurting the Japanese war effort while giving the Americans a reputation
for humanity and also refuting enemy charges that we undertook
indiscriminate bombing.]
[Illustration: _Figure 4: The Pass Which Brought them in._ Germans liked
things done in an official and formal manner, even in the midst of
chaos, catastrophe and defeat. The Allies obliged, and gave the Germans
various forms of very official-looking "surrender passes," of which this
is one. The original is printed in red and has banknote-type engraving
which makes it resemble a soap-premium coupon. (Western Front, 1944-45,
issued by SHAEF.)]
He had his three hundred men equipped with lamps and pitchers. The lamps
were concealed in the pitchers, each man carrying one, along with a
trumpet. He lined his forces in appropriate disposition around the enemy
camp at night and had them--himself setting the example--break the
pitchers all at the same time, while blowing like mad on the trumpets.
The Midianites were startled out of their sleep and their wits. They
fought one another throughout their own camp. The Hebrew chronicler
modestly gives credit for this to the Lord. Then the Midianites gave up
altogether and fled. And the men of Israel pursued after the
Midianites.[2] That settled the Midianite problem for a while; later
Gideon finished Midian altogether.
This type of psychological warfare device--the use of unfamiliar
instruments to excite panic--is common in the history of all ancient
countries. In China, the Emperor-usurper Wang Mang on one occasion tried
to destroy the Hunnish tribes with an army that included heavy
detachments of military sorcerers, even though the Han Military Emperor
had found orthodox methods the most reliable; Wang Mang got whipped at
this. But he was an incurable innovator and in 23 A.D., while trying to
put down some highly successful rebels, he collected all the animals out
of the Imperial menagerie and sent them along to scare the enemy:
tigers, rhinoceri, and elephants were included. The rebels hit first,
killing the Imperial General Wang Sun, and in the excitement the animals
got loose in the Imperial army where they panicked the men. A hurricane
which happened to be raging at the same time enhanced the excitement.
Not only were the Imperial troops defeated, but the military propaganda
of the rebels was so jubilant in tone and so successful in effect that
the standard propaganda theme, "Depress and unnerve the enemy
commander," was fulfilled almost to excess on Wang Mang. Here is what
happened to him after he noted the progress of the enemy: "A profound
melancholy fell upon the Emperor. It undermined his health. He drank to
excess, ate nothing but oysters, and let everything happen by chance.
Unable to stretch out, he slept sitting up on a bench."[3] Wang Mang was
killed in the same year, and China remained without another economic new
deal until the time of Wang An-shih (A.D. 1021-1086), a thousand years
later. Better psychological warfare would have changed history.
=Field Propaganda Of The Athenians And The Han.= A more successful
application of psychological warfare is recorded in the writings of
Herodotus, the Greek historian:
Themistocles, having selected the best sailing ships of the Athenians,
went to the place where there was water fit for drinking, and engraved
upon the stones inscriptions, which the Ionians, upon arriving the
next day at Artemisium, read. The inscriptions were to this effect,
'Men of Ionia, you do wrong in fighting against your fathers and
helping to enslave Greece. Rather, therefore, come over to us or if
you cannot do that, withdraw your forces from the contest and entreat
the Carians to do the same. But if neither of these things is
possible, and you are bound by too strong a necessity, yet in action,
when we are engaged, behave ill on purpose, remembering that you are
descended from us and that the enmity of the barbarians against us
originally sprang from you.'[4]
This text is very much like leaflets dropped during World War II on
reluctant enemies, such as the Italians, the Chinese puppet troops, and
others. (Compare this Greek text with _Figure 5_.) Note that the
propagandist tries to see things from the viewpoint of his audience. His
air of reasonable concern for their welfare creates a bond of sympathy.
And by suggesting that the Ionians should behave badly in combat, he
lays the beginning of another line--the propaganda to the Persians,
"black" propaganda making the Persians think that any Ionian who was
less than perfect was a secret Athenian sympathizer. The appeal is sound
by all modern standards of the combat-leaflet.
Another type of early military propaganda was the political denunciation
which, issued at the beginning of war, could be cited from then on as
legal and ethical justification for one side or the other. In the
Chinese _San Kuo_ novel, which has probably been read by more human
beings than any other work of fiction, there is preserved the alleged
text of the proclamation of a group of loyalist pro-Han rebels on the
eve of military operations (about A.D. 200). The text is interesting
because it combines the following techniques, all of them sound: 1)
naming the specific enemy; 2) appeal to the "better people"; 3) sympathy
for the common people; 4) claim of support for the legitimate
government; 5) affirmation of one's own strength and high morale; 6)
invocation of unity; 7) appeal to religion. The issuance of the
proclamation was connected with rather elaborate formal ceremony:
The House of Han has fallen upon evil days, the bonds of Imperial
authority are loosened. The rebel minister, Tung Cho, takes advantage
of the discord to work evil, and calamity falls upon honorable
families. Cruelty overwhelms simple folk. We, Shao and his
confederates, fearing for the safety of the imperial prerogatives,
have assembled military forces to rescue the State. We now pledge
ourselves to exert our whole strength, and to act in concord to the
utmost limit of our powers. There must be no disconcerted or selfish
action. Should any depart from this pledge may he lose his life and
leave no posterity. Almighty Heaven and Universal Mother Earth and the
enlightened spirits of our forefathers, be ye our witnesses.[5]
Any history of any country will yield further examples of this kind of
material. Whenever it was consciously used as an adjunct to military
operations, it may appropriately be termed military propaganda.
[Illustration: _Figure 5: Revolutionary Propaganda._ When revolution
favors one side or the other in war, revolutionary propaganda becomes an
instrument which is used by one constituted government against another.
This leaflet was issued by the Azad Hind Fauj (Free India Army) of the
Japanese puppet Subhas Chandra Bose. (Singapore, then called Shonan,
1943 and 1944.) The leaflet avoids direct reference to the Japanese, and
is therefore "block" propaganda. Its theme is simple: the British are
alleged to eat while the Hindus starve. At the time, this argument had
some plausibility. There was famine in Bengal, but no white men were
found among the thousands of emaciated dead.]
=Emphasis on Ideology.= In a sense, the experience of the past may,
unfortunately, provide a clue to the future. The last two great wars
have shown an increasing emphasis on ideology or political faith (see
definition, page 30 below) as driving forces behind warfare, rather than
the considerations of coldly calculated diplomacy. Wars become more
serious, and less gentlemanly; the enemy must be taken into account not
merely as a man, but as a fanatic. To the normal group-loyalty of any
good soldier to his army, right or wrong, there is added the loyalty to
the Ism or the Leader. Warfare thus goes back to the Wars of Faith. It
is possible that techniques from the Christian-Mohammedan or from the
Protestant-Catholic wars of the past could be reëxamined with a view to
establishing those parts of their tested experience which may seem to
be psychologically and militarily sound in our own time. How fast can
converts be made from the other side? In what circumstances should an
enemy word of honor be treated as valid? How can heretics (today, read
"subversive elements") be uprooted? Does the enemy faith have weak
points which permit enemy beliefs to be turned against personnel at the
appropriate times? What unobjectionable forms should leaflets and
broadcasts follow in mentioning subjects which are reverenced by the
enemy but not by ourselves?
[Illustration: _Figure 6: Propaganda for Illiterates._ Propaganda
reached out for the mass audience in World War II. Some of the most
interesting developments in this line were undertaken by CBI Theater
facilities and their Japanese competitors. The leaflet shown above is
designed to tell its story in Hindustani (Devanagari script) or in
Romanized Hindustani to Indians who could read either form, and in
pictures to the illiterates. It starts with the Union Jack and ends with
the Congress flag used by the puppet pro-Japanese Indian leader, Subhas
Chandra Bose.]
[Illustration: _Figure 7: Propaganda Through News._ News is one of the
best carriers of psychological warfare to the enemy. One of these
newspapers is directed by the Allies to the German troops in the Ægean
Islands; the other by the Germans to the Americans in France. Of the
two, the Allied paper (in German) is the more professional job. Note the
separation of appeals from the news, the greater newsiness of the news
columns, and the explanation provided for third-party civilians in their
own Greek language (top right).]
The expansion of the Islamic Faith-and-Empire provides a great deal of
procedural information which cannot be neglected in our time. It has
been said that men's faith should not be destroyed by violence, and that
force alone is insufficient to change the minds of men. If this were
true, it would mean that Germany can never be de-Nazified, and that
there is no hope that the democratic peoples captured by totalitarian
powers can adjust themselves to their new overlords or, if adjusted, can
be converted back to free principles. In reality warfare by Mohammed's
captains and successors demonstrated two principles of long-range
psychological warfare which are still valid today:
A people can be converted from one faith to the other if given the
choice between conversion and extermination, stubborn individuals being
rooted out. To effect the initial conversion, participation in the
public ceremonies and formal language of the new faith must be required.
Sustained counterintelligence must remain on the alert against
backsliders, but formal acceptance will become genuine acceptance if all
public media of expression are denied the vanquished faith.
If immediate wholesale conversion would require military operations that
were too extensive or severe, the same result can be effected by
toleration of the objectionable faith, combined with the issuance of
genuine privileges to the new, preferred faith. The conquered people are
left in the private, humble enjoyment of their old beliefs and folkways;
but all participation in public life, whether political, cultural or
economic, is conditioned on acceptance of the new faith. In this manner,
all up-rising members of the society will move in a few generations over
to the new faith in the process of becoming rich, powerful, or learned;
what is left of the old faith will be a gutter superstition, possessing
neither power nor majesty.
These two rules worked once in the rise of Islam. They were applied
again by Nazi overlords during World War II, the former in Poland, the
Ukraine and Byelorussia, the latter in Holland, Belgium, Norway and
other Western countries. The rules will probably be seen in action
again. The former process is difficult and bloody, but quick; the latter
is as sure as a steam-roller. If Christians, or democrats, or
progressives--whatever free men may be called--are put in a position of
underprivilege and shame for their beliefs, and if the door is left open
to voluntary conversion, so that anyone who wants to can come over to
the winning side, the winning side will sooner or later convert almost
everyone who is capable of making trouble. (In the language of Vilfredo
Pareto, this would probably be termed "capture of the rising elite"; in
the language of present-day Marxists, this would be described as
"utilization of potential leadership cadres from historically superseded
classes"; in the language of practical politics, it means "cut in the
smart boys from the opposition, so that they can't set up a racket of
their own.")
[Illustration: _Figure 8: One of the Mongol Secret Weapons._ The Mongol
conquerors used rumor and terror in order to increase their military
effectiveness. Once they came to power, they used spectacular military
displays as a means of intimidating conquered peoples. This old French
engraving shows a war-howdah mounted on four elephants allegedly used by
Kublai Khan, grandnephew to Genghis Khan and friend of Marco Polo the
Venetian. Obviously impractical for field use, the vehicle is well
suited for ceremonial display and mere mention of it is a factor for
"warfare psychologically waged."]
=The Black Propaganda Of Genghis Khan.= Another demonstration of
psychological warfare in the past was so effective that its results
linger to this day. It is commonly thought that the greatest conqueror
the world has seen--Temujin, the Genghis Khan--effected his Mongol
conquests with "limitless hordes" of wild Tatar horsemen, who flooded
the world by weight of sheer numbers. Recent research shows that the
sparsely settled countryside of Inner Asia could not have produced
populations heavy enough to overwhelm the densely settled areas of the
great Mongol periphery by weight alone. The empire of the Khan was built
on bold military inventiveness--the use of highly mobile forces, the
full use of intelligence, the coordination of half-global strategy, the
application of propaganda in all its forms.[6] The Mongols were fighting
the Sung Dynasty in China and the Holy Roman Empire in Prussia four
thousand miles apart when neither of their adversaries knew (in more
than rumor) that the other existed. The Mongols used espionage to plan
their campaigns and deliberately used rumor and other means to
exaggerate accounts of their own huge numbers, stupidity, and ferocity.
They did not care what their enemies thought as long as the enemies
became frightened. Europeans described light, hard-hitting _numerically
inferior_ cavalry as a "numberless horde" because Mongol agents
whispered such a story in the streets. To this day most Europeans do not
appreciate the lightness of the forces nor the cold intelligence of
command with which the Mongols hit them seven centuries ago.
Genghis even used the spies of the enemy as a means of frightening the
enemy. When spies were at hand he indoctrinated them with rumors
concerning his own forces. Let the first European biographer of Genghis
tell, in his own now-quaint words, how Genghis put the bee on Khorezm
(Carizme):
And a Historian, to describe their Strength and Number, makes the
Spies whom the King of _Carizme_ had sent to view them, speak thus:
They are, say they to the Sultan, all compleat Men, vigorous, and look
like Wrestlers; they breathe nothing but War and Blood, and show so
great an Impatience to fight, that the Generals can scarce moderate
it; yet though they appear thus fiery, they keep themselves within the
bounds of a strict Obedience to Command, and are intirely devoted to
their Prince; they are contented with any sort of Food, and are not
curious in the choice of Beasts to eat, like Mussulmen [Mohammedans],
so that they are subsisted without much trouble; and they not only eat
Swines-Flesh, but feed upon Wolves, Bears, and Dogs, when they have no
other Meat, making no distinction between what was lawful to eat, and
what was forbidden; and the Necessity for supporting Life takes from
them all the Dislike which the _Mahometans_ have for many sorts of
Animals; As to their Number, (they concluded) _Genghizcan's_ Troops
seem'd like the Grasshoppers, impossible to be number'd.
In reality, this Prince making a Review of his Army, found it to
consist of seven hundred thousand men....[7]
Enemy espionage can now--as formerly--prove useful if the net effect of
it is to lower enemy morale. The ruler and people of Khorezm put up a
terrific fight, nevertheless, despite their expectation of being
attacked by wolf-eating wrestlers without number; but they left the
initiative in Genghis' hands and were doomed.
However good the Mongols were in strategic and tactical propaganda,
they never solved the problem of consolidation propaganda (see page 46,
below). They did not win the real loyalty of the peoples whom they
conquered; unlike the Chinese, who replaced conquered populations with
their own people, or the Mohammedans, who converted conquered peoples,
the Mongols simply maintained law and order, collected taxes, and sat on
top of the world for a few generations. Then their world stirred beneath
them, and they were gone.
=The Blindness Of John Milton.= Moving across the centuries for an
example, it is interesting to note that John Milton, author of _Paradise
Lost_ and of other priceless books of the English-speaking world, went
blind because he was so busy conducting Oliver Cromwell's psychological
warfare that he disregarded the doctors' warning and abused his ailing
sight. And the sad thing about it was that it was not very good
psychological warfare.
Milton fell into the common booby-trap of refuting his opponents item by
item, thus leaving them the strong affirmative position, instead of
providing a positive and teachable statement of his own faith. He was
Latin Secretary to the Council, in that Commonwealth of England which
was--to its contemporaries in Europe--such a novel, dreadful, and
seditious form of government. The English had killed their king, by
somewhat offhanded legal procedures, and had gone under the Cromwellian
dictatorship. It was possible for their opponents to attack them from
two sides at once. Believers in monarchy could call the English
murderous king-killers (a charge as serious in those times as the charge
of anarchism or free love in this); believers in order and liberty could
call the British slaves of a tyrant. A Frenchman called Claude de
Saumaise (in Latin form, Salmasius) wrote a highly critical book about
the English, and Milton seems to have lost his temper and his judgment.
In his two books against Salmasius, Milton then committed almost every
mistake in the whole schedule of psychological warfare. He moved from
his own ground of argument over to the enemy's. He wrote at excessive
length. He indulged in some of the nastiest name-calling to be found in
literature, and went into considerable detail to describe Salmasius in
unattractive terms. He slung mud whenever he could. The books are read
today, under compulsion, by Ph.D. candidates, but no one else is known
to find them attractive. It is not possible to find that these books had
any lasting influence in their own time. (In these texts written by
Milton in Latin but now available in English, Army men wearying of the
monotonous phraseology of basic military invective can find extensive
additions to their vocabulary.) Milton turned to disappointment and
poetry; the world is the gainer.
The vocabulary of seventeenth-century propaganda had a strident tone
which is, perhaps unfortunately, getting to be characteristic of the
twentieth century. The following epithets sound like an American Legion
description of Communists, or a Communist description of the Polish
democrats, yet they were applied in a book by a Lutheran to Quakers. The
title of the tirade reads, in part:
... a description of the ... new Quakers, making known the sum of
their manifold blasphemous opinions, dangerous practices, Godless
crimes, attempts to subvert civil government in the churches and in
the community life of the world; together with their idiotic games,
their laughable action and behavior, which is enough to make sober
Christian persons breathless, and which is like death, and which can
display the lazy stinking cadaver of their fanatical doctrines....
In its first few pages, the book accuses the Quakers of obscenity,
adultery, civil commotion, conspiracy, blasphemy, subversion and
lunacy.[8] Milton was not out of fashion in applying bad manners to
propaganda. It is merely regrettable that he did not transcend the
frailties of his time.
=Other Instances From History.= Innumerable other instances of
propaganda in warfare and diplomacy could be culled out of history;
these would not mean much if they were presented as mere story-telling.
The cultural factors would have to be figured out; the military
situation would need to be appraised in realistic terms; the media
available for psychological warfare would have to be charted pretty
carefully, before the instances would become usable examples. Here are
some of the most promising topics:
Naval psychological warfare techniques used by the Caribbean pirates to
unnerve prospective victims.
Cortez's use of horses as psychological disseminators of terror among
the Aztecs, along with his exploitation of Mexican legends concerning
the Fair God.
The failure of Turkish psychological warfare in the great campaigns of
1683 which left the issue one of purely physical means and cost Turkey
the possible hegemony of central Europe.
The propaganda methods of the British East India Company in the conquest
of India against overwhelming Indian numerical superiority. (Edmond
Taylor mentions these in his _Richer by Asia_.)
The preventive psychological warfare system set up by the Tokugawa
shoguns after 1636, which bottled up the brains of the Japanese through
more rigorous control than has ever been established elsewhere over
civilized people.
The field psychological warfare of the Manchus, who conquered China
against odds running as much as 400 to one against them, and who used
terror as a means of nullifying Chinese superiority.
The propaganda of the European feudal classes against the peasant
revolts, which identified the peasants with filth, anarchy, murder, and
cruelty.
The Inquisition considered as a psychological warfare facility of the
Spanish Empire.
The agitational practices of the French Revolutionaries.
Early uses of rockets and balloons for psychological effect.
The beginnings of leaflet-printing as an adjunct to field operations.
Such a list just begins to touch on subjects which can and should be
investigated, either as staff studies or by civilian historians.
Collection of the materials and framing of sound doctrines for
psychological warfare are no minor task.
[Illustration: _Figure 9: Black Propaganda from the British Underground,
1690._ When William of Orange took the crown of England away from the
timid rascal, James II, he met opposition from the Loyalists devoted to
the Stuarts. This broadsheet demonstrates an early form of black
propaganda. It also provides a good instance of propaganda material
borrowing a familiar form of expression in order to get its message
across, in this case, the tradesman's enumeration of debit and credit.]
[Illustration: _Figure 10: Secret American Propaganda Subverting the
Redcoats._ Readers of Charles Dickens' great novel, _Barnaby Rudge_,
will remember that anti-Catholicism was a lively propaganda issue in
England at the time of the American Revolution. This American propaganda
avoids discussion of the theme of American independence--a topic on
which Englishmen were liable to hold united opinions--and instead
attempts to subvert British troops by means of the anti-Catholic appeal.
(Original source unknown; from War Department files. Probable date,
1775.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 11: Desertion Leaflet from Bunker Hill._ This
leaflet is as valid today as the day it was written. No source is
indicated, but neither is any attempt made to suggest a false source
different from the true one; it is in modern parlance "grey" propaganda.
Wealth, food, health and economic status are played up simultaneously;
difficult political issues are not argued--they are sidestepped.]
=The American Revolution.= In the American Revolution, psychological
warfare played a very important role. The Whig campaign of propaganda
which led up to colonial defiance of Britain was energetic and expert in
character, and the very opening of hostilities was marked by passionate
appeals to the civilian population in the form of handbills. The
American forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill used one of the earliest
versions of front-line combat propaganda (see Figure 11). The appeal was
as direct as could be wished. Artful use was made of the sharp class
distinctions then existing between British officers and enlisted men;
fear was exploited as an aid to persuasion; the language was pointed.
Even in our own time, the Bunker Hill propaganda leaflet stands as a
classic example of how to do good field propaganda.
The Americans made extensive use of the press.[9] When the newspaper
proprietors veered too far to the Loyalist side, they were warned to
keep to a more Patriotic line. If, in the face of counter-threats from
the Loyalists, the newspaper threatened going out of business
altogether, it was warned that suspension of publication would be
taken as treason to America. The Whigs, before hostilities, and their
successors, the Patriots of the war period, showed a keen interest in
keeping the press going and in making sure that their side of the story
got out and got circulated rapidly. In intimidation and control of the
press, they far outdistanced the British, whose papers circulated
chiefly within the big cities held as British citadels throughout the
war. Political reasoning, economic arguments, allegations concerning the
course of the war, and atrocity stories all played a role.
[Illustration: _Figure 12: Money as a Carrier of Propaganda._ The note
on the left above is French revolutionary currency; observe the use of
revolutionary slogans. Next to it is the famous Russian 10,000 ruble
bill which calls for the world revolution in seven languages. The
Japanese peso note (at top of page 22) carries American propaganda on
the reverse; captured notes were overprinted by Psychological Warfare
Branch during the Philippine campaign and dropped back on the enemy. The
two five-rupee notes date from the Japanese occupation of Burma. The
lower of the two was issued by Americans as a means of deriding the
Japanese.]
George Washington himself, as commander of the Continental forces,
showed a keen interest in war propaganda and in his just, moderate
political and military measures provided a policy base from which
Patriot propagandists could operate.
Some wars are profoundly affected by a book written on one side or the
other; the American revolutionary war was one of these. Thomas Paine's
_Common Sense_ (issued as a widely sold series of pamphlets) swept
American opinion like wildfire; it stated some of the fundamentals of
American thinking, and put its bold but reasonable revolutionary case in
such simple terms that even conservatives in the Patriot group could not
resist using it for propaganda purposes.[10] _Common Sense_ has become a
classic of American literature, but it has its place in history too, as
"the book that won the war." Other pamphleteers, with the redoubtable
Sam Adams in the lead, also did well.
American experience in the Mexican war was less glorious. The Mexicans
waged psychological warfare against us with considerable effect, ending
up with traitor American artillerymen dealing out heavy murder to the
American troops outside Mexico city. Historians in both countries gloss
over the treason and subversion which occurred on each side.
In the Civil War, psychological warfare was practised by both Lincoln
and the Confederacy in establishing propaganda instrumentalities in
England and on the continent of Europe. The Northern use of Negro
troops, which was followed, at the end of the war by the Confederate
plans for raising Negro troops, did not become the major propaganda
issue it might have because of the community of feeling on the two
sides, indecision on each side as to the purpose of the war (apart from
the basic issue of union or disunion), and the persistence of
politics-as-usual both North and South of the battle line.
=Boers And Burmese.= In the latter part of the nineteenth century, two
sets of British wars indicate the effect psychological warfare can play.
The British conquered both Burma and the Boers. The Burmese were more
numerous, had the larger country, and (if they had had leadership
comparable to the Japanese leadership of the time) could have developed
the larger military potential. But Burma was conquered by the British in
a final war which went on quietly and ingloriously. No nation came to
their aid. They did not even get a chance to surrender. The British
simply ended the war in the middle by announcing the end of the Burmese
government, and by making a one-sided declaration that Burma was annexed
to the Empire of India. The political death of Burma occurred on 1
January 1886, but the event has been forgotten.
The Boers, on the other hand, made a stir throughout the world. They got
in touch with the Germans, Irish, Americans, French, Dutch, and
everybody else who might criticize Britain. They stated their case
loudly and often. They waged commando warfare, adding the word
_commando_ to international military parlance, and sent small units deep
into the British rear, setting off a mad uproar and making the world
press go crazy with excitement. When they finally gave in, it was on
reasonable terms for themselves; they left the British with an
internationally blacked eye.
Nobody remembered the Burmese; everybody remembered the Boers. The Boers
used every means they could think of; they did everything they could.
They even captured Winston Churchill.
These examples may show that the military role of propaganda and related
operations is not as obscure or intangible as it may have seemed. They
cannot be considered history but must be regarded as a plea for the
writing of history. More recent experience is another question, and
involves tracing the doctrines pertaining to psychological warfare which
have now become established military procedure in the modern armies.
CHAPTER 2
The Function of Psychological Warfare
Psychological warfare in the broad sense, consists of the application of
parts of the science called psychology to the conduct of war; in the
narrow sense, psychological warfare comprises the use of propaganda
against an enemy, together with such military operational measures as
may supplement the propaganda. Propaganda may be described, in turn, as
organized persuasion by non-violent means. War itself may be considered
to be, among other things, a violent form of persuasion. Thus if an
American fire-raid burns up a Japanese city, the burning is calculated
to dissuade the Japanese from further warfare by denying the Japanese
further physical means of war and by simultaneously hurting them enough
to cause surrender. If, after the fire-raid, we drop leaflets telling
them to surrender, the propaganda can be considered an extension of
persuasion--less violent this time, and usually less effective, but
nevertheless an integral part of the single process of making the enemy
stop fighting.
Neither warfare nor psychology is a new subject. Each is as old as man.
Warfare, being the more practical and plain subject, has a far older
written history. This is especially the case since much of what is now
called psychology was formerly studied under the heading of religion,
ethics, literature, politics, or medicine. Modern psychological warfare
has become self-conscious in using modern scientific psychology as a
tool.
In World War II the enemies of the United States were more fanatical
than the people and leaders of the United States. The consequence was
that the Americans could use and apply any expedient psychological
weapon which either science or our version of common sense provided. We
did not have to square it with Emperor myths, the Führer principle or
some other rigid, fanatical philosophy. The enemy enjoyed the positive
advantage of having an indoctrinated army and people; we enjoyed the
countervailing advantage of having skeptical people, with no inward
theology that hampered our propaganda operations. It is no negligible
matter to be able to use the latest findings of psychological science in
a swift, bold manner. The scientific character of our psychology puts us
ahead of opponents wrapped up in dogmatism who must check their
propaganda against such articles of faith as Aryan racialism or the
Hegelian philosophy of history.
=Psychological Warfare as a Branch of Psychology.= Good propaganda can
be conducted by persons with no knowledge of formal psychology. The
human touch, the inventive mind, the forceful appeal--things such as
these appear in the writings of gifted persons. Thomas Paine never read
a word of Freud or Pavlov, yet Paine's arguments during the
Revolutionary War played subtly on every appeal which a modern
psychologist could catalogue. But war cannot, in modern times, assume a
statistical expectation of talent. Psychology makes it possible for the
able but ordinary statesman or officer to calculate his persuasion
systematically and to obtain by planning those results which greater men
might hit upon by genius.
What can psychology do for warfare?
In the first place, the psychologist can bring to the attention of the
soldier those elements of the human mind which are usually kept out of
sight. He can show how to convert lust into resentment, individual
resourcefulness into mass cowardice, friction into distrust, prejudice
into fury. He does so by going down to the _unconscious_ mind for his
source materials. (During world War II, the fact that Chinese babies
remain unimpeded while they commit a nuisance, while Japanese babies are
either intercepted or punished if they make a mess in the wrong place,
was found to be of significant importance in planning psychological
warfare. See below, page 154.)
In the second place the psychologist can set up techniques for finding
out how the enemy really does feel. Some of the worst blunders of
history have arisen from miscalculation of the enemy state of mind. By
using the familiar statistical and questionnaire procedures, the
psychologist can quiz a small cross section of enemy prisoners and from
the results estimate the mentality of an entire enemy theater of war at
a given period. If he does not have the prisoners handy, he can
accomplish much the same end by an analysis of the news and propaganda
which the enemy authorities transmit to their own troops and people. By
establishing enemy opinion and morale factors he can hazard a reasoned
forecast as to how the enemy troops will behave under specific
conditions.
In the third place, the psychologist can help the military psychological
warfare operator by helping him maintain his sense of mission and of
proportion. The deadliest danger of propaganda consists of its being
issued by the propagandist for his own edification. This sterile and
ineffectual amusement can disguise the complete failure of the
propaganda _as_ propaganda. There is a genuine pleasure in talking back,
particularly to an enemy. The propagandist, especially in wartime, is
apt to tell the enemy what he thinks of him, or to deride enemy
weaknesses. But to have told the Nazis, for example, "You Germans are a
pack of murderous baboons and your Hitler is a demented oaf. Your women
are slobs, your children are halfwits, your literature is gibberish and
your cooking is garbage," and so on, would have stiffened the German
will to fight. The propagandist must tell the enemy those things which
the enemy will heed; he must keep his private emotionalism out of the
operation. The psychologist can teach the propaganda operator how to be
objective, systematic, cold. For combat operations, it does not matter
how much a division commander may dislike the enemy; for psychological
warfare purposes, he must consider how to persuade them, even though he
may privately thirst for their destruction. The indulgence of hatred is
not a working part of the soldier's mission; to some it may be helpful;
to others, not. The useful mission consists solely of making the enemy
stop fighting, by combat or other means. But when the soldier turns to
propaganda, he may need the advice of a psychologist in keeping his own
feelings out of it.
Finally, the psychologist can prescribe media--radio, leaflets,
loudspeakers, whispering agents, returned enemy soldiers, and so forth.
He can indicate when and when not to use any given medium. He can, in
conjunction with operations and intelligence officers, plan the full use
of all available psychological resources. He can coordinate the timing
of propaganda with military, economic or political situations.
The psychologist does not have to be present in person to give this
advice. He does not have to be a man with an M.D. or Ph. D. and years of
postgraduate training. He can be present in the manuals he writes, in
the indoctrination courses for psychological warfare officers he sets
up, in the current propaganda line he dictates by radio. It is useful to
have him in the field, particularly at the higher command headquarters,
but he is not indispensable. The psychologist in person can be dispensed
with; the methods of scientific psychology cannot. (Further on,
throughout this book, reference will be made to current psychological
literature. The general history of psychology is described in readable
terms in Gregory Zilboorg and George W. Henry, _A History of Medical
Psychology_, New York, 1941, and in Lowell S. Selling, _Men Against
Madness_, New York, 1940, cheap edition, 1942.)
Propaganda can be conducted by rule of thumb. But only a genius can make
it work well by playing his hunches. It can become true psychological
warfare, scientific in spirit and developed as a teachable skill, only
by having its premises clearly stated, its mission defined, its
instruments put in systematic readiness, and its operations subject to
at least partial check, only by the use of techniques borrowed from
science. Of all the sciences, psychology is the nearest, though
anthropology, sociology, political science, economics, area studies and
other specialties all have something to contribute; but it is psychology
which indicates the need of the others.
=Psychological Warfare as a Part of War.= An infantry officer does not
need to study the whole nature of war, in order to find his own job.
Tradition, military skill, discipline, sound doctrine--these have done
the job for him. Sun Tzu, Vegetius, Frederick, Clausewitz and a host of
lesser writers on war have established the place of combat in war, and
have appraised its general character.
How much the traditional doctrines may be altered in the terrible light
of atomic explosion, no one knows; but though the weapons are novel, the
wielders of the weapons will still be men. The motives and weaknesses
within war remain ancient and human, however novel and dreadful the
mechanical expedients adopted to express them.
Warfare as a whole is traditionally well defined, and psychological
warfare can be understood only in relation to the whole process. It is
no mere tool, to be used on special occasion. It has become a pervasive
element in the military and security situation of every power on earth.
Psychological warfare is a part of war. The simplest, plainest thing
which can be said of war--any sort of war, anywhere, anytime--is that it
is _an official fight between men_. Combat, killing, and even
large-scale group struggle are known elsewhere in the animal kingdom,
but war is not. All sorts of creatures fight; but only men declare,
wage, and terminate war; and they do so only against other men.
Formally, war may be defined as the "reciprocal application of violence
by public, armed bodies."
If it is not _reciprocal_, it is not war, the killing of persons who do
not defend themselves is not war, but slaughter, massacre, or
punishment.
If the bodies involved are not _public_, their violence is not war. Even
our enemies in World War II were relatively careful about this
distinction, because they did not know how soon or easily a violation of
the rules might be scored against them. To be public, the combatants
need not be legal--that is, constitutionally set up; it suffices,
according to international usage, for the fighters to have a reasonable
minimum of numbers, some kind of identification, and a purpose which is
political. If you shoot your neighbor, you will be committing mere
murder; but if you gather twenty or thirty friends, together, tie a red
handkerchief around the left arm of each man, announce that you are out
to overthrow the government of the United States, and _then_ shoot your
neighbor as a counterrevolutionary impediment to the new order of
things, you can have the satisfaction of having waged war. (In practical
terms, this means that you will be put to death for treason and
rebellion, not merely for murder.)
Finally, war must be _violent_. According to the law of modern states,
all the way from Iceland to the Yemen, economic, political, or moral
pressure is not war; war is the legalization, in behalf of the state, of
things which no individual may lawfully do in time of peace. As a matter
of fact, even in time of war you cannot kill the enemy unless you do so
on behalf of the state; if you had shot a Japanese creditor of yours
privately, or even shot a Japanese soldier when you yourself were out of
uniform, you might properly and lawfully have been put to death for
murder--either by our courts or by the enemies'. (This is among the
charges which recur in the war trials. The Germans and Japanese killed
persons whom even war did not entitle them to kill.)
The governments of the modern world are jealous of their own monopoly of
violence. War is the highest exercise of that violence, and modern war
is no simple reversion to savagery. The General Staffs would not be
needed if war were only an uncomplicated orgy of homicide--a mere
getting-mad and throat-cutting season in the life of man. Quite to the
contrary, modern war--as a function of modern society--reflects the
institutional, political complexity from which it comes. A modern battle
is a formal, ceremonialized and technically intricate operation. You
must kill just the right people, in just the right way, with the right
timing, in the proper place, for avowed purposes. Otherwise you make a
mess of the whole show, and--what is worse--you lose.
Why must you fight just so and so, there and not here, now and not then?
The answer is simple: you are fighting against _men_. Your purpose in
fighting is to make them change their minds. It is figuratively true to
say that the war we have just won was a peculiar kind of advertising
campaign, designed to make the Germans and Japanese like us and our way
of doing things. They did not like us much, but we gave them
alternatives far worse than liking us, so that they became peaceful.
Sometimes individuals will be unpersuadable. Then they must be killed or
neutralized by other purely physical means--such as isolation or
imprisonment. (Some Nazis, perhaps including the Führer himself, found
our world repellent or incomprehensible and died because they could not
make themselves surrender. In the Pacific many Japanese had to be killed
before they became acceptable to us.) But such is man, that most
individuals will stop fighting at some point short of extinction; that
point is reached when one of two things happens:
Either, the defeated people may lose their sense of organization, fail
to decide on leaders and methods, and give up because they can no
longer fight as a group. This happened to the American Southerners in
April, 1865. The President and Cabinet of the Confederate States of
America got on the train at Richmond; the men who got off farther
down the line were "refugees." Something happened to them and to the
people about them, so that Mr. Davis no longer thought of himself as
President Davis, and other people no longer accepted his commands.
This almost happened in Germany in 1945 except for Admiral Doenitz.
Or, the defeated people can retain their sense of organization, and
can use their political organization for the purpose of getting in
touch with the enemy, arranging the end of the war, and preparing,
through organized means, to comply with the wishes of the conquerors.
That happened when Britain acknowledged American independence; when
the Boers recognized British sovereignty; when Finland signed what
Russia had dictated; and when Japan gave up.
Sometimes these things are mixed. The people might wish to make peace,
but may find that their government is not recognized by the enemy. Or
the victors may think that they have smashed the enemy government, when
the new organization is simply the old one under a slightly different
name, but with the old leaders and the old ideas still prevailing.
It is plain that whatever happens wars are fought to effect a
psychological change in the antagonist. They are then fought for a
psychological end unless they are wars of extermination. These are rare.
The United States could not find a people on the face of the earth whose
ideas and language were unknown to all Americans. Where there is a
chance of communication, there is always the probability that one of the
antagonistic organizations (governments)--which have already cooperated
to the extent of meeting one another's wishes to fight--will
subsequently cooperate on terms of primary advantage to the victors.
Since the organizations comprise human beings with human ways of doing
things, the change must take place in the minds of those specific
individuals who operate the existing government, or in the minds of
enough other people for that government to be overthrown.
The fact that war is waged against the minds, not the bodies, of the
enemy is attested by the comments of military writers of all periods.
The dictum of Carl von Clausewitz that "war is politics continued by
other means" is simply the modern expression of a truth recognized since
antiquity. War is a kind of persuasion--uneconomical, dangerous, and
unpleasant, but effective when all else fails.
=Ideology.= An ideology is a system of deep-rooted beliefs about
fundamental questions in human life and affairs.[11] Ideology also plays
a part in psychological warfare. A difference in beliefs which does not
touch fundamentals is commonly termed a difference of _opinion_. You may
believe in high tariffs; and I, in no tariff. You may believe in One
World; I may not. You may support Republicans; I, Democrats. Despite
these differences both of us can still believe in dollars as a method of
paying income, in marriage as a system of setting up the family, in
private property for most goods industrial or personal, in the
Government of the United States, in majority rule, in democratic
elections, in free speech, and so on.
If our difference of opinion is so inclusive that we can agree on
nothing political, our differences have gone from mere opinion into the
depths of _ideology_. Here the institutional framework is affected. You
and I would not want to live in the same city; we could not feel safe in
one another's presence; each would be afraid of the effect which the
other might have on the morals of the community. If I were a Nazi, and
you a democrat, you would not like the idea of my children living next
door to yours. If I believed that you were a good enough creature--poor
deluded devil--but that you were not fit to vote, scarcely to be trusted
with property, not to be trusted as an army officer, and generally
subversive and dangerous, you would find it hard to get along with me.
It was not metaphysical theories that made Protestants and Catholics
burn one another's adherents as heretics in early wars. In the
seventeenth century, the Protestants knew perfectly well what would
happen if the Catholics got the upper hand, and the Catholics knew what
would happen if the Protestants came to power. In each case the new
rulers, fearful that they might be overthrown, would have suppressed the
former rulers, and would have used the rack, the stake, and the dungeon
as preventives of counterrevolution. Freedom cannot be accorded to
persons outside the ideological pale. If an antagonist is not going to
respect your freedom of speech, your property, and your personal safety,
then you are not obliged to respect his. The absolute minimum of any
ideology is the assumption that each person living in an ideologically
uniform area (what the Nazi General Haushofer, following Rudolf Kjellen,
would call a _geo-psychic_ zone) will respect the personal safety, etc.,
of other individuals in the same area.
In our own time, we have seen Spaniards get more and more mistrustful of
one another, until years of ferocious civil war were necessary before
one of the two factions could feel safe. Spain went from republican
unity to dictatorial unity in four years; in neither case was the unity
perfect, but it was enough to give one government and one educational
system control of most of the country. The other countries of the world
vary in the degree of their ideological cohesion. Scandinavia seemed
serene until the German invasion brought to the surface cleavages,
latent and unseen, which made Quisling a quisling. Russia, Italy,
Germany and various other states have made a fetish of their ideologies
and have tried to define orthodoxy and heresy in such a way as to be
sure of the mentality of all their people. But most of the countries of
the world suffer from a considerable degree of ideological confusion--of
instability of basic beliefs--without having any immediate remedy at
hand, or even seeking one.
=Education.= Education is a process usually institutional by which the
people of a given area transmit to their successors, their own children,
the purely practical information needed in modern life, together with a
lot of other teachings designed to make good men and women, good
citizens, good Christians or other believers, of them. In the democratic
states this process is ideological only in some parts of the curriculum;
elsewhere in the field of opinions, the government seeks to control
ideology only negatively--through laws concerning obscenity, blasphemy,
subversion, and so on.
In the states which are ideologically self-conscious and anxious to
promote a fixed mentality, the process of education is combined with
agitation and regulation, so that the entire population lives under
conditions approximating the psychological side of war. Heretics are put
to death or are otherwise silenced. Historical materialism and the
Marxian "objectivity," or the _Volk_, or _Fascismo_, or
_Yamato-damashii_, or "new democracy" is set up as the touchstone of all
good and evil, even in unrelated fields of activity. Education and
propaganda merge into everlasting indoctrination. And when such states
go to war against states which do not have propaganda machinery, the
more liberal states are at a disadvantage for sheer lack of practice in
the administrative and mechanical aspects of propaganda. Education is to
psychological warfare what a glacier is to an avalanche. The mind is to
be in both cases captured, but the speed and techniques differ.
=Salesmanship.= Salesmanship is related to psychological warfare.
Propaganda is often compared to another art of our time--industrialized
salesmanship through mass printing and telecommunications. This bad
parallel was responsible for much of the inept American propaganda
overseas in the early part of the war; some of our propagandists had a
fundamental misconception of the nature of wartime propaganda.
Allegiance in war is a matter of ideology, not of opinion. A man cannot
want his own side to lose while remaining a good citizen in all other
respects. The desire for defeat--even the acceptance of defeat--is of
tragic importance to any responsible, sane person. A German who wanted
the Reich to be overthrown was a traitor to Germany, just as any
American who wished us to pull out of the war and exterminate American
Jews would have been a traitor to his own country. These decisions
cannot be compared with the choice of a toothpaste, a deodorant, or a
cigarette.
Advertising succeeds in peacetime precisely because it does not matter;
the choice which the consumer makes is of slight importance to himself,
even though it is of importance to the seller of the product. A
Dromedary cigarette and an Old Coin cigarette are both cigarettes; the
man is going to smoke one anyhow. It does not matter so much to him. If
Dromedaries are associated in his mind with mere tobacco, while Old
Coins call up unaccountable but persistent memories of actresses' legs,
he may buy Old Coins. The physical implements of propaganda were at hand
in 1941-1942, but we Americans had become so accustomed to their use for
trivial purposes that much of our wartime propaganda was conducted in
terms of salesmanship.
In a sense, however, salesmanship does serve the military purpose of
accustoming the audience to appeals both visual and auditory. The
consequence is that competing, outside propaganda can reach the domestic
American audience only in competition with the local advertising. It is
difficult for foreign competition to hold attention amid an almost
limitless number of professionally competent commercial appeals. A
Communist or Fascist party cannot get public attention in the United
States by the simple expedient of a "mass meeting" of three hundred
persons, or by the use of a few dozen posters in a metropolitan area.
Before the political propagandist can get the public attention, he must
edge his media past the soap operas, the soft drink advertisements, the
bathing beauties advertising Pennsylvania crude or bright-leaf tobacco.
The consequence is that outside propaganda either fails to get much
public attention, or else camouflages itself to resemble and to exploit
existing media. Clamorous salesmanship deadens the American citizen to
his own government's propaganda, and may to a certain extent lower his
civic alertness; but at the same time, salesmanship has built up a
psychological Great Wall which excludes foreign or queer appeals and
which renders the United States almost impervious to sudden ideological
penetration from overseas.
=Psychological Warfare and Public Relations.= Psychological warfare and
public relations are different in the direction in which they apply.
Psychological warfare is designed to reach the enemy. Public relations
is designed primarily to reach the home audience. Both reach neutrals,
sometimes confusingly much. In some nations, the two functions were
combined in a single instrumentality, as in the Japanese _Joho Kyoku_
(see page 184, below). The American army and navy traditions of public
relations are based on the ideas that the news should be as complete as
military security may permit, that it should be delivered speedily and
interestingly, that it should enhance the confidence of the people in
their armed services, and that its tenor (no less than its contents)
should not aid the enemy morale. These ideas are justified in terms of
sound newspaper practice, but they can lead to a weak psychological
warfare position when we must deal with an inventive and enterprising
enemy.
It is not possible to separate public relations from psychological
warfare when they use the same media. During World War II, the Office of
War Information prepared elaborate water-tight plans for processing war
news to different audiences; at their most unfortunate, such plans
seemed to assume that the enemy would listen only to the OWI stations,
and that the American public releases issued from Army and Navy would go
forth to the world without being noted by the enemy. If a radio in New
York or San Francisco presented a psychological warfare presentation of
a stated battle or engagement, while the theater or fleet public
relations officer presented a very different view, the enemy press and
radio were free to choose the weaker of the two, or to quote the two
American sources against each other.
=Psychological Warfare and Morale Services.= All modern armies, in
addition to public relations, also employ morale services
facilities--officers or employees whose function it is to supply troops
with entertainment, educational materials, political indoctrination, and
other attention-getting materials. Morale services are the prime overt
defense against enemy psychological warfare, and by a program of keeping
the attention of the troops, can prevent the enemy from establishing
effective communication. During World War II, the Armed Forces Radio
Service of the United States established global radio service for
Americans, and incidentally turned out material of top importance to
United States propaganda. Naturally, enemy and allied peoples would pay
more serious heed to communications from Americans _to_ Americans than
they would to materials which they knew had been concocted for
themselves. The American morale services in the last war indignantly
rejected the notion that they were a major propaganda facility,
rightfully insisting that their audience counted on getting plain
information, plain news, and plain education without ulterior propaganda
content. The fact that in a theater of war _all communication has
propaganda effect_ was not always taken into account, and only on one
or two critical occasions was there coordination of stress and timing.
It must be said, however, that propaganda by any other name is just as
sweet, and that the conviction of the propagandist that he is not a
propagandist can be a real asset. Morale services provided the American
forces with news, entertainment, and educational facilities. Most of the
time these morale facilities had huge parasitical audiences--the global
kibitzers who listened to our broadcasts, read our magazines, bought our
paper-bound books on the black markets. (It was a happy day for Lienta
University at Kunming, Yünnan, when the American Information and
Education set-up began shipping in current literature. The long-isolated
Chinese college students found themselves deluged with good American
books.)
The morale services lost the opportunity to ram home to their
G.I.-plus-foreign audience some of the more effective points of American
psychological warfare, but they gained _as propagandists_ by not
admitting, even to themselves, that they _were_ propagandists. Since the
United States has no serious inward psychological cleavages, the general
morale services function coordinated automatically with the
psychological warfare function simply because both were produced by
disciplined, patriotic Americans.
In the experience of the German and Soviet armies, morale services were
parts of a coordinated propaganda machine which included psychological
warfare, public relations, general news, and public education. In the
Japanese armies, morale services were directed most particularly to
physical and sentimental comforts (edible treats, picture postcards,
good luck items) which bore little immediate relation to news, and less
to formal propaganda.
=Related Civilian Activities.= In a free nation, the big media of
communication will remain uncoordinated even in time of war. The press,
the stage, motion-pictures, part of the radio, book publishing and so on
will continue. Psychological warfare has in such private facilities a
constantly refreshed source of new material for news or for features. By
a sparing but well considered liaison with censorship, psychological
warfare can effect negative control of non-governmental materials, and
can prevent the most overt forms of enemy propaganda from circulating on
the home front.
News becomes propaganda when the person issuing it has some purpose in
doing so. Even if the reporters, editors, writers involved do not have
propaganda aims, the original source of the news (the person giving the
interview; the friends of the correspondents, etc.) may give the news
to the press with definite purposes in mind. It is not unknown for
government officials to shift their rivalries from the conference room
to the press, and to provide on-the-record or off-the-record materials
which are in effect _ad hoc_ propaganda campaigns. A psychological
warfare campaign must be planned on the assumption that these civilian
facilities will remain in being, and that they will be uncoordinated;
the plan must allow in advance for interference, sometimes of a very
damaging kind, which comes from private operations in the same field.
The combat officers can get civilian cars off the road when moving
armored forces into battle but the psychological warfare officer has the
difficult task of threading his way through civilian radio and other
communication traffic over which he has no control.
Psychological warfare is also closely related to diplomacy. It is an
indispensable ingredient of strategic deception. In the medical field,
psychological warfare can profit by the experiences of the medical
corps. Whenever a given condition arises among troops on one side,
comparable troops on the other are apt to be facing the same condition;
if the Americans are bitten by insects, the same insects will bite the
enemy, and enemy soldiers can be told how much better the American
facilities are for insect repulsion. Finally, psychological warfare is
intimately connected with the processing of prisoners of war and with
the protection of one's own captured personnel.
Psychological warfare is a field to itself, although it touches on many
sciences and overlaps with all the other functions of war. It is
generally divisible into three topics: the general scheme of
psychological warfare, the detection and analysis of foreign
psychological warfare operations, and the tactical or immediate conduct
of psychological warfare. Sections of this book deal with each of these
in turn. In each case it must be remembered, however, that psychological
warfare is not a closed operation which can be conducted in private, but
that--to be effective--psychological warfare output must be a part of
the everyday living and fighting of the audiences to which it is
directed.
CHAPTER 3
Definition of Psychological Warfare
Psychological warfare seeks to win military gains without military
force. In some periods of history the use of psychological warfare has
been considered unsportsmanlike.[12] It is natural for the skilled
soldier to rely on weapons rather than on words, and after World War I
there was a considerable reluctance to look further into that
weapon--propaganda--which Ludendorff himself considered to be the most
formidable achievement of the Allies. Nevertheless, World War II brought
a large number of American officers, both Army and Navy, into the
psychological warfare field: some of the best work was done without
civilian aid or sponsorship. (Capt. J. A. Burden on Guadalcanal wrote
his own leaflets, prepared his own public-address scripts, and did his
own distributing from a borrowed Marine plane, skimming the tree tops
until the Japanese shot him down into the surf. He may have heard of OWI
at the time, but the civilians at OWI had not heard of him.)
Psychological warfare has become familiar. The problems of psychological
warfare for the future are problems of _how better_ to apply it, not of
whether to apply it. Accordingly, it is to be defined more for the
purpose of making it convenient and operable than for the purpose of
finding out what it is. The whole world found out by demonstration,
during World Wars I and II.
Psychological warfare is not defined as such in the dictionary.[13]
Definition is open game. There are three ways in which "psychological
warfare" and "military propaganda" can be defined:
first, by deciding what we are talking about in a given situation,
book, conversation, or study course;
second, by determining the responsibilities and authority involved in
a given task;
or third, by stating the results which are believed to be
accomplishable by the designated means.
Plainly, the staff officer needs a different definition from the one
used by the combat officer; the political leader would use a broader
definition than the one required by soldiers; the fanatic would have his
own definition or--more probably--two of them; one (such as "promoting
democracy" or "awakening the masses") for his own propaganda and
another (such as "spreading lies," "corrupting the press," or "giving
opiates to the people") for antagonistic propaganda.[14] Definition is
not something which can be done once and forever for any military term,
since military operations change and since military definitions are
critically important for establishing a chain of command.
The first method of definition is satisfactory for research purposes; it
may help break a politico-military situation down into understandable
components. The second method--the organizational--is usable when there
exists organization with which to demonstrate the definition, such as,
"Propaganda is what OWI and OSS perform." The third method, the
operational or historical, is useful in evaluating situations after the
time for action has passed; thus, one may say, "This is what the Germans
did when they thought they were conducting propaganda."
Since the first lesson of all propaganda is _reasoned disbelief_, it
would be sad and absurd for anyone to believe propaganda about
propaganda. The "propaganda boys" in every army and government are
experts at building up favorable cases, and they would be unusual men
indeed if they failed to work up a fine account of their own
performance. Propaganda cannot be given fair measurement by the claims
made for it. It requires judicious proportioning to the military
operations of which it is (in wartime) normally a part.
=Broad and Narrow Definitions.= The term _propaganda_ springs from the
name of that department of the Vatican which had the duty of propagating
the faith. A multitude of definitions is available. Among Americans,
Walter Lippmann, Harold Lasswell and Leonard W. Doob have done some of
the most valuable critical, analytical, and historical writing, but a
host of other scholars have also made contributions, some of them works
of very real importance.[15] For the purposes of explaining what this
book is about, propaganda may be defined as follows: _Propaganda
consists of the planned use of any form of communication designed to
affect the minds, emotions, and action of a given group for a specific
purpose._
This may be called the broad definition, since it would include an
appeal to buy Antident toothpaste, to believe in the theological
principle of complete immersion,[16] to buy flowers for Uncles on
Uncles' Day, to slap the Japs, to fight fascism at home, or to smell
nice under the arms. All of this is propaganda, by the broad definition.
Since War and Navy Department usage never put the Corps of Chaplains,
the PX system, the safety campaigns, or the anti-VD announcements under
the rubric of propaganda, it might be desirable to narrow down the
definition to exclude those forms of propaganda designed to effect
private or nonpolitical purposes, and make the definition read:
_Propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of public or
mass-produced communication designed to affect the minds and emotions
of a given group for a specific public purpose, whether military,
economic, or political._
This may be termed the everyday definition of propaganda, as it is used
in most of the civilian college textbooks.[17] For military purposes,
however, it is necessary to trim down the definition in one more
direction, applying it strictly against the enemy and making it read:
_Military propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of
communication designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given
enemy, neutral or friendly foreign group for a specific strategic or
tactical purpose._
Note that if the communication is not _planned_ it cannot be called
propaganda. If a lieutenant stuck his head out of a tank turret and
yelled at some Japs in a cave, "Come on out of there, you qwertyuiop
asdfgs, or we'll zxcvb you all to hjkl, you etc.'s!," the communication
may or may not work, but--in the technical sense--it is not propaganda
because the lieutenant did not employ that form of communication planned
and designed to affect the minds or emotions of the Japanese in the
cave. Had the lieutenant given the matter thought and had he said, in
the Japanese language, "Enemy persons forthwith commanded to cease
resistance, otherwise American Army regrets inescapable consequences
attendant upon operation of flamethrower," the remark would have been
closer to propaganda.
Furthermore, propaganda must have a known purpose. This element must be
included in the definition; a great deal of communication, both in
wartime and in peacetime, arises because of the pleasure which it gives
to the utterer, and not because of the result it is supposed to effect
in the hearers. Sending the Japanese cartoons of themselves, mocking the
German language, calling Italians by familiar but inelegant names--such
communications cropped up during the war. The senders got a lot of fun
out of the message but the purpose was unintelligently considered. The
actual effect of the messages was to annoy the enemy, stiffening his
will-to-resist. (Screams of rage had a place in primitive war; in modern
military propaganda they are too expensive a luxury to be tolerated.
Planned annoyance of the enemy does, of course, have its role--a minor,
rare and special one.)
"Psychological warfare" is simple enough to understand if it is simply
regarded as application of propaganda to the purposes of war, as in the
following definition:
_Psychological warfare comprises the use of propaganda against an
enemy, together with such other operational measures of a military,
economic, or political nature as may be required to supplement
propaganda._
In this sense, "psychological warfare" is a known operation which was
carried on very successfully during World War II under the authority of
the Combined and Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is in this sense that some
kind of a "Psychological Warfare Unit" was developed in every major
theater of war, and that the American military assimilated the doctrines
of "psychological warfare."
However, this is only one of several ways of using the term,
"psychological warfare." There is, in particular, one other sense, in
which the term became unpleasantly familiar, during the German conquest
of Europe, the sense of _warfare psychologically waged_. In the American
use of the term, psychological warfare was the supplementing of normal
military operations by the use of mass communications; in the Nazi sense
of the term, it was the calculation and execution of both political and
military strategy on studied psychological grounds. For the American
uses, it was modification of traditional warfare by the effective,
generous use of a new weapon; for the Germans it involved a
transformation of the process of war itself. This is an important enough
distinction to warrant separate consideration.
=Warfare Psychologically Waged.= Various labels were devised to name
Hitler's queer, terrifying strategy for the period 1936-1941. One
writer, Edmond Taylor, called it "_the strategy of terror_" in a book by
that name (Boston, 1940), and also "the war of nerves." Another,
Ladislas Farago, a political journalist who started out as an authority
on the Axis fifth column in the Near East and ended up in American naval
psychological warfare planning, put forth a book called _German
Psychological Warfare: A Critical, Annotated and Comprehensive Survey
and Bibliography_ (New York, 1941), which digested hundreds of German
works on topics pertaining to psychology and war, much of this material
concerned personnel practices, psychosomatic medicine, and other
non-propaganda aspects of psychology, but the book as a whole was an
impressive demonstration of how much the Germans had done to make their
war scientific. Other articles and books on the Nazi "inventions"
followed in rapid succession.
After the excitement had died down, it was found that the novelty of the
German war effort lay in two special fields:
first, the perfect or perfect-seeming synchronizing of political,
propaganda, subversive, and military efforts;
second, the use of the findings of modern psychology for the
attainment of military goals.
The Germans set the pace, in the prewar and early war period and United
Nations psychological warfare tried to keep up, even though the two
efforts were different in scope and character.
In conquering Europe, the German staff apparently used opinion analysis.
Much of this analysis has turned out to have been superb guesswork; at
the time, it looked as though the Nazis might have found some scientific
formula for determining just when a nation would cave in. In the conduct
of war, the Germans waged a rapid war--which was industrially,
psychologically and militarily sound, as long as it worked. Their
"diplomacy of dramatic intimidation" used the war threat to its full
value, with the result that the Czechoslovaks surrendered the
Sudetenland without a shot and then submitted themselves to tyranny half
a year later; the Germans wrung every pfennigs worth of advantage out of
threatening to start war, and when they did start war, they deliberately
tried to make it look as horrible as it was. The psychologists had
apparently taught the German political and military intelligence people
how to get workable opinion forecasts; German analysis of anti-Nazi
counterpropaganda was excellent. Add all this to strategy and field
operations which were incontestably brilliant: the effect was not that
of mere war, but of a new kind of war--the psychological war.
The formula for the psychological war is not to be found in the books of
the psychologists but in the writings of the constitutional lawyers. The
totality of war is a result of dictatorship within government; total
coordination results from total authority. The "secret weapon" of the
Germans lay in the power which the Germans had openly given Hitler, and
in his use of that power in a shrewd, ruthless, effective way. The
Führer led the experts, not the experts the Führer. If the Germans
surprised the world by the cold calculation of their timing, it was not
because they had psychological braintrusters inventing a new warfare,
but because they had a grim political freak commanding the total
resources of the Reich. Even in wartime, no American President has ever
exercised the authority which Hitler used in time of peace; American
Cabinet members, military and naval figures, press commentators and all
sorts of people are free to kibitz, to offer their own opinions, to
bring policy into the light of day. That is as it should be. The same
factors which made "psychological warfare" possible in the beginning of
the war were the ones which led to Germany's futile and consummate ruin
in 1944-45: excessive authority, an uninformed public, centralized
propaganda, and secret political planning.
That kind of "psychological warfare"--war tuned to the needs of
fanatically sought lusts for power, war coordinated down to the nth
degree, waged in the light of enemy opinion and aiming at the political
and moral weaknesses of the enemy--is not possible within the framework
of a democracy. Even from within Imperial Japan, Pearl Harbor had to be
waged secretly as a _purely_ naval operation; those Japanese who would
have told the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals that an
unannounced attack was the best way to unify all American factions
_against_ Japan were obviously not brought into the planning of the
Pearl Harbor raid. The Japanese still had too much of their old
parliamentary spirit left over, as Ambassador Grew's reports show; the
military had to outsmart the home public, along with the foreigners. In
the Western dictatorships, the home public is watched by élite troops,
secret police, party cells, and is made the subject of psychological
warfare along with the victim nations. Hitler could turn the war spirit
on and off; the Japanese did not dare do so to any effective extent.
"Psychological warfare" was too dictatorial a measure even for prewar
Japan; it is therefore permanently out of reach of the authorities of
the United States. After war starts, we are capable of surprising the
enemy with such things as incendiary raids, long-range bombers, and
nuclear fission; but we cannot startle with the start of war. The United
States is not now capable and--under the spirit of the Constitution, can
never be capable--of surprising an enemy by the _timing of aggression_.
If the same were true of all other nations, peace would seem much nearer
than it does.
German psychological warfare, in the broad sense of warfare
psychologically waged, depended more on political background than on
psychological techniques. Disunity among the prospective victims, the
complaisance of powers not immediately affected, demonstration of new
weapons through frightful applications, use of a dread-of-war to harness
pacifism to appeasement, the lucky geographic position of Germany at the
hub of European communications--such factors made the German war of
nerves seem new. Such psychological warfare is not apt to be successful
elsewhere except for aggressions by dictatorships against democracies;
where the democracies are irritable, tough, and alert, it will not work
at all.
The psychological warfare which remains as a practical factor in war is
therefore not the Hitlerian war of nerves, but the Anglo-American
application of propaganda means to pre-decided strategy. Let him who
will advocate American use of the war of nerves! He will not get far
with commentators publishing his TOP SECRET schedule of timing, with
legislators very properly catechizing him on international morality,
with members of his own organization publishing their memoirs or airing
their squabbles right in the middle of the operation. He would end up by
amusing the enemy whom he started out to scare. Psychological warfare
has its place in our military and political system, but its place is a
modest one and its methods are limited by our usages, morality, and law.
=Propaganda: Definitions.= Propaganda has been defined (above, page 39).
It remains to distinguish some of the other technical and professional
terms which apply in this field. In operational terms, propaganda can be
distinguished by the consideration of five elements:[18]
1. Source (including Media)
2. Time
3. Audience
4. Subject
5. Mission
These factors are given in approximate order of importance to the
analyst, and provide a good working breakdown for propaganda analysis
when expert staffs are not available. The five factors can be remembered
by memorizing the initial letters in order: S-T-A-S-M. The last factor,
"Mission," covers the presumed effect which the enemy seeks by
dissemination of the item.
Without going into the technique of field propaganda analysis (described
below, page 115), it is useful to apply these analysis factors to the
definition of some subordinate types of military propaganda.
_Source_ is the most important. If the source is open and acknowledged,
the government issuing it is putting the propaganda on the record before
the world, and must therefore issue the propaganda with a certain amount
of dignity and with an eye to the future. If the source is faked, then
it is important for the government or army to make sure that the faking
is a good job, and that the propaganda cannot readily be traced back.
Two very different techniques are employed. Open sources require
responsible public officials, preferably men with international
reputations, who will get the best effect from use of the name and
facilities of the government. Use of an open source usually (but not
always) implies belief of the disseminator in the veracity of his
materials. Fabricated sources require persons adept at illicit
imaginativeness, impromptu forgery, and general devilment, combined with
a strong sense of discipline and security. The United States was so
chary of mixing the two kinds of propaganda during World War II that it
operated them in different categories, giving rise to the three
following types:
_White propaganda_ is issued from an acknowledged source, usually a
government or an agency of a government, including military commands at
various levels. This type of propaganda is associated with overt
psychological operations.
_Grey propaganda_ does not clearly identify any source.
_Black propaganda_ purports to emanate from a source other than the true
one. This type of propaganda is associated with covert psychological
warfare operations.
White propaganda is shown in figure 4, which does everything possible to
make the message the official message of the British and American
governments. The border is done up in handsome banknote fashion; the
great seals of the nations are handsomely displayed; the signatures of
the commanding generals are shown as further attestation of the
openness and good faith of the issuer of the propaganda.
Figure 38 was also prepared by British-American authority; it too had
the job of making Germans surrender. But in this case, nothing was done
to make the British-American source evident; indeed, every effort was
made to hide the source, so that the German who read it would think that
it came from within his own territory. The two different kinds of
propaganda were both of them needed; each supplemented the other but
they had to be kept apart as far as possible.
In the field of radio, the difference between Covert and Overt was even
more plain. During World War II, the ether over Europe was filled with
appeals from radio stations both public and covert in character. The
British spoke to the Germans over B.B.C., making no effort to conceal
the fact that they were British. But they also spoke to the Germans over
clandestine stations, which pretended to be free-lancing Nazis, German
army stations, or freedom group operations. The Germans, comparably,
beamed official German news to the United States in English; but they
also pretended to be Americans broadcasting from an isolationist radio
in the American mid-west. In some cases, the belligerent powers used the
identical radio transmission facilities for overt and covert propaganda.
Radio Saipan, under the Americans, was most of the time the relay for
the acknowledged San Francisco programs; intermittently OSS borrowed it,
and it then became a "Japanese" station. (Under such conditions, black
radio cannot remain black very long.)
In terms of the timing, propaganda can be subdivided into two further
categories, strategic and tactical. Strategic propaganda is conducted
with no immediate effect in view. Its purpose is to wear down the enemy
by psychological changes that may extend over months. Figure 19, warning
the Germans of the remote future, is an example of this in leaflet form.
Tactical propaganda is operated to accomplish an immediate short-range
purpose, and normally does not cover a long time-span. Only in a few
cases, such as leaflets for a besieged enemy unit, is tactical
propaganda run for a purpose that encompasses a long delay between the
operation and the expected result. These two forms may be defined as
follows:
_Strategic propaganda_ is directed at enemy forces, enemy peoples, and
enemy-occupied areas in their entirety, and--in coordination with
strategic planning--is designed to effectuate results planned and
sought over a period of weeks, months, or years.
_Tactical propaganda_ is directed at specific audiences, usually
named, and is prepared and executed in support of localized combat
operations.
Another set of distinctions can be set up, depending on the relationship
of the propaganda operation to the simultaneous hostile propaganda
operations, namely offensive or defensive propaganda. Before the advent
of World War II, this distinction appeared to be significant but
experience on almost all fronts indicated that it meant little when
applied to day-in day-out necessities of actual practice. Propaganda is
so intimately keyed to the news and opinion situation that it does not
usually bear elaborate pre-operational analysis. Elaborate planning very
often ends up in the locked files; the distinction of offensive and
defensive means little in routine work. However, for the sake of the
record, the distinction can be listed:
_Defensive propaganda_ is designed to maintain an accepted and
operating form of social or other public action. (Soviet propaganda
for the Five Year Plans is a conspicuous instance.)
_Offensive propaganda_ is designed to interrupt social action not
desired by the propagandist, or to predispose to social action which
he desires, either through _revolutionary_ means (within the same
society) or _international_, either diplomatic or belligerent (between
different societies).
Another set of distinctions arises from the purpose which the propaganda
officer or group may have in mind for the people whom he addresses.
These distinctions, like offensive-defensive, are theoretical rather
than practical, and did not often appear in the actual operations,
although all the more hush-hush plans made elaborate references to them:
_Conversionary propaganda_ is designed to change the emotional or
practical allegiance of individuals from one group to another.
_Divisive propaganda_ is designed to split apart the component
subgroups of the enemy and thereby reduce the effectiveness of the
enemy group considered as a single unit. (An instance is provided by
the Allied effort to make German Catholics think first as Catholics,
then as Germans.)
_Consolidation propaganda_ is directed toward civil populations in
areas occupied by a military force and is designed to insure
compliance with the commands or policies promulgated by the commander
of the occupying force.
_Counterpropaganda_ is designed to refute a specific point or theme of
enemy propaganda. (Japanese charges of American atrocities usually
followed American charges of Japanese atrocities.)
Except for those terms that are firmly rooted in the literature of
propaganda, most of the distinctions can be forgotten; the basic
distinctions are those determined by the task involved, and not by the
propaganda content.
World War II brought up a very sore issue between military and civilians
with respect to propaganda in areas with unsettled governments--such as
Darlanist North Africa, Communist China, all of Siam. (See, also,
discussion of World War II, below, page 77 ff.) In these areas every
military act involved the definition of the political relations of the
United States Government to the governments locally enjoying authority.
Were we at war with them, or not? And so on. In these cases, politics
itself became a vital foundation to propaganda, especially when the
local authorities were themselves active in the propaganda field. The
American theater and unit commanders had to decide what kinds of
political promises they could or could not make. In this job, they had a
more difficult task than did the British, who possessed in the Political
Warfare Executive a pooling facility which coordinated foreign policy
with propaganda.[19] Could we promise freedom from France to the
Algerians? Or immunity to the Siamese who re-doublecrossed in the matter
of allegiance and got ready to subvert the Japanese? Or the Yenan people
who wanted us to highjack the Generalissimo as a price of their support?
Or the Indonesians who might oppose the Japanese and already opposed the
Dutch? Such questions transcended propaganda. Their decision made
propaganda, or unmade it; but the deciding power was outside the
authority of the propaganda people.
Political warfare is therefore, in administrative terms, a higher-level
activity than propaganda, and may be defined as follows:
_Political warfare consists of the framing of national policy in such
a way as to assist propaganda or military operations, whether with
respect to the direct political relations of governments with one
another or in relation to groups of people possessing a political
character._
Such policy-framing does not normally fall within the authority of the
Army or Navy, though these may be consulted and called upon to effect
appropriate military action. An outstanding instance of the use of
political warfare was President Roosevelt's impromptu enunciation of the
theme "Unconditional Surrender" at Casablanca. The theme affected not
only our propaganda, but the types of surrenders which American generals
could accept from Germans.
CHAPTER 4
The Limitations of Psychological Warfare
Psychological warfare cannot be known simply in terms of what it is; it
must also be understood in relation to the limits which are imposed on
it. The limitations can be described under four headings:
political limitations;
security limitations;
limitations arising from media;
limitations of personnel.
Like all limitations, these are handicaps only to the person who lacks
the courage and resourcefulness to turn them into assets. Propaganda is
dependent on politics, even for such front-line requirements as
"definition of the enemy," yet intelligent exploitation of political
goals yields valuable results. Security is an asset to any army; its
price is rarely too high a price to pay for protection, but a selective
and flexible censorship can lead to positive advantages. _Media_--that
is, the actual instrumentalities by which propaganda is conveyed--are
the ordnance of psychological warfare. They limit the performable job
but they also make it possible in the first place. And as in any
military operation, success depends most of all on proper use of
personnel.
Each of these merits discussion. The experience drawn upon has, in
almost all instances, been that of World War II. As in most other
fields, common sense runs a close second to experience as a guide in new
methods of struggle.
=Political Limitations of Psychological Warfare.= Politics has great
influence on the content of psychological warfare. The relationship
between two warring states is not one of complete severance; on the
contrary, in wartime the relationship becomes abnormal, acute,
sensitive. Each belligerent takes a strong interest in the other, in its
affairs and weaknesses. During World War II the American armed services,
government, and people learned more about the Japanese than they would
have in twenty years of peacetime education. Japanese names made news.
The purposes and weaknesses of the Japanese became the objects of hatred
and--along with the hatred--intense scrutiny.
Each warring nation tries to turn the known enemy interest in itself
into favorable channels. The propagandists of each country try to give
the enemy the news which the enemy wants, while so arranging that news
as to create a drop in enemy morale, to develop uncertainty in enemy
policies, to set enemy cliques into action against each other. The
propagandist sometimes becomes very agitated because he recognizes as a
technician propaganda opportunities which national policy prohibits his
using. The propagandist who is so intent on his target that he forgets
his broader responsibilities can often spoil the entire operation.
German broadcasters who emphasized the anti-capitalist character of
National Socialism in the programs beamed to Eastern Europe found that
B.B.C. picked up the most tactless statements and repeated them to
Western Europe, where the Germans posed as anti-Bolshevik champions of
private property. American attacks on the Germans for associating with
Japanese monkey-men were passed along by the Japanese to the Chinese,
who did not like the slur either. The most notorious example of
backfiring propaganda was of course the famous "Rum, Romanism, and
Rebellion" phrase, which may have made James G. Blaine lose to Grover
Cleveland in the national election of 1884; the phrase was used by a
Republican clergyman in New York, referring to the Democrats, and
implied that the Wets (anti-prohibitionists), Catholics, and Southerners
were important components in the Democratic Party. (This may have been
true, but it pleased none of them to have the matter pointed out with
such epithets; the phrase succeeded in its short-range purpose, that of
rousing Republicans, but failed by rousing the enemy even more and
offending neutral-minded persons as well.)
The balance between home-front politics and field psychological warfare
is difficult to maintain. The closer the psychological warfare officer
is to the enemy, the more apt he is to think of the mission in terms of
getting the enemy to come on over. Why quibble about a few phrases if
the words will save lives, matériel, and time? Unfortunately the phrase
that is successful against the enemy on the battle front may prove to be
an irritant to the home public, with the sure consequence that the enemy
will pick it up and send it back to do harm. Similarly, home-front
propaganda can get out to do the theaters of operation harm: "Do your
utmost--save lard!" sounds silly to men in combat areas.
This can be illustrated by the propaganda problem of the Japanese
Emperor. It would have helped domestic American politics to call the
Japanese Emperor a monkey, a swine, a lunatic, a witch-doctor or
comparable names; some people did so. But if the American government had
done so at home for the purpose of rousing its own public, the Japanese
home public would have been roused even more with the net result that
the Americans would have lost by such attacks. If the Russians
promised--as in another instance they are reported to have done--good
food and warm clothes to the Germans on the winter fronts, the Nazis
passed that promise along to the Russian civilians, who would not think
well of Stalin's letting Fascist invaders be plump and snug while they
themselves nearly starved. For the enemy audience, it is good to
portray excellent care of enemy personnel; for the home audience, it is
poor. For the home audience it is sometimes good to present the enemy as
ruthless lunatics, beasts in human form, cruel degenerates, and so on;
but the same claims, falling into enemy hands, can be used to the
disadvantage of the originator by being relayed to the enemy home
audience.
Furthermore, sound psychological warfare must take account of the fact
that its ultimate aim is the successful ending of the war. For the end
to be successful it must occur--the fighting must stop and the nations
must enter into altered but renewedly peaceful relations. Propaganda
that promises the enemy too much will alienate both allies and home
public. But propaganda that promises bloody vengeance hurts possible
peace movements in the enemy camp. None of the great powers in World War
II went so far as to promise specific frontiers for the postwar period.
They kept their promises vague, knowing that a definite promise would
please somebody but alienate everyone else; furthermore, by not
promising, the expectations of the hopeful parties can be kept at a
higher pitch. If the French do not _know_ that they will get the Saar
they will fight so much the harder; but if they are promised the Saar
they come in a very short while to regard the promise as a settled
matter, and proceed to ask for something else. Meanwhile, other possible
claimants to the Saar either have a sense of grievance or lose interest
in the matter. For this reason, postwar political uncertainty can be a
propaganda asset.
President Roosevelt, in his conduct of the political world role of the
United States, promised Manchuria to the Chinese, Korea "in due course"
to the Koreans, and the integrity of the French Colonial Empire to the
French; outside of that he avoided specific promises. In another
instance (to put a complicated matter baldly), the British promised
Palestine to both the Arabs and to the Jews in World War I, and
consequently got themselves into a political mess which, thirty years
later, was still a mess.
=Definition of the Enemy.= Another significant connection between
politics and propaganda is found in definition of _the nature of the
enemy_. For combat operations, it is easy (most of the time) to tell who
the enemy is; he is the man with the other uniform, the foreign
language, the funny color or physique. For psychological operations, it
is not that easy. The sound psychological warfare operator will try to
get enemy troops to believing that the enemy is not themselves but
somebody else--the King, the Führer, the élite troops, the capitalists.
He creates a situation in which he can say, "We're not fighting _you_."
(This should not be said too soon after extensive use of bombs or
mortars.) "We are fighting the So-and-so's who are misleading you." Some
of the handsomest propaganda of World War II was produced by the Soviet
experts along this line. Before the War was over, Soviet propaganda
created a whole gallery of heel-clicking reactionary German generals _on
the Russian side_, and made out that the unprofessional guttersnipe
Hitler was ruining the wonderful German Army in amateurish campaigns.
Joseph Stalin's ringing words, "The German State and the German _Volk_
remain!" gave the Russians a propaganda loophole by which they implied
that Germany was not the enemy--no, not Germany! just the Nazis. This
was superb psychological warfare, since the Russians had already built
up the propaganda thesis that the common people (workers and peasants)
were automatically--by virtue of their class loyalty--on the side of the
workers' country, Russia. That left very few Germans on the other side.
For psychological warfare purposes, it is useful to define the enemy as:
(1) the ruler;
(2) or the ruling group;
(3) or unspecified manipulators;
(4) or any definite minority.
It is thoroughly unsound to define the enemy too widely. On the other
hand, too narrow a definition will leave the enemy the opening for a
peace offensive if the ruler dies, or if the ruling group changes part
of its composition. It was fear of a peace move by the German generals,
plus the desire to maintain the precarious anti-German unity of the
occupied countries, which led the United States and Britain to adopt the
policy of defining the German Reich rather than Naziism as the enemy. In
the instance of Japan, we defined the enemy as the militarists and
"Fascists," with the capitalists a poor second, and left the Emperor and
people with whom to make peace.
If the psychological warfare campaign is operated for a definite
political purpose, it is possible for politics to be an aid rather than
a limitation. The operator can describe his own political system in its
most radiant light. He can say complimentary things about the enemy
leaders or groups who might come over (though he should avoid giving
them the kiss of death which the Nazis gave certain prominent American
isolationists, by praising them too much). He can promise his own brand
of Utopia.
If the politics are defensive, vague, well-meaning but essentially
non-committed, psychological warfare has to avoid making blunders. In
World War II we could not say that we were against one-party states,
because our largest ally (Russia) was a one-party state. We could not
attack the ruin of free enterprise by the Japanese and German
governments since socialism existed on the Allied side too. We could not
bring up the racial issue, because our own national composition rendered
us vulnerable to racial politics at home. There was a huge catalog of
_Don'ts_ (usually not written down but left to individual judgment) in
every propaganda office. Whenever we violated them, we paid the price in
adverse opinion.
=Promises.= Finally, psychological warfare must avoid promises that may
not be kept. The Americans during World War II never promised much as a
government, but individual American agents promised all sorts of things
which could not be delivered. We promised the Dutch their homeland and
empire by implication; we promised the Indonesians self-government, also
by implication; and we promised everybody, including the Japanese,
access to Indonesian raw materials. It is highly probable that
individual Americans, off-the-record, stated that they "expected,"
"hoped," or "thought" that their government would fulfill each of these
promises. The three are not compatible, especially the first and second.
The New York banker, James Warburg, has written a book, _Unwritten
Treaty_, pointing out that the United States promised just about
everything to everybody during the war (he was in OWI and he ought to
know), and that it is going to take a generous, wise, and intelligent
foreign policy to fulfill--even in part--the promises which we made. The
promises of the loser are forgotten; he can write them off and start
international policies with a clean slate. But the promises of the
victor remain, and have to be carried out or else repudiated.
The psychological warfare officer should not make promises to persons in
occupied territory, to friendly guerrillas, to underground movements, or
to enemy troops when those promises are not backed up by word-for-word
quotations from the head of his government or someone of Cabinet rank.
The promises may not conform with promises which other psychological
warfare officers are making to other groups. (In China, some American
officers told the Chinese Communists that the Chinese Communists were
wonderful people, and would be sure to get American material aid and
political sympathy against Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, other
American officers told the Chinese government people that the United
States did not propose to short-circuit recognition of the Chinese
government, or to interfere in internal Chinese affairs. The two sets of
Chinese heard about the American promises and, for a while, could not
decide whether Americans were fools or liars. Much the same sort of
thing happened in our dealings with French, Serbs, and Poles.) It is a
poor piece of work for a combat officer to promise elections,
liberties, labor rights, or even food to people in his path, unless the
rear echelon people will be able to deliver the goods when they come up.
And it is an irresponsible radio or leaflet man who makes promises
without finding out whether his government is in a position, in relation
to the political situation, to back up the promises one way or other.
His nation itself will be called a liar if he slips up.
=Security Limitations.= Another serious set of limitations arises from
security problems.
The very conduct of psychological warfare encroaches upon perfectionist
plans for security. Security is designed to keep useful information from
reaching the enemy; propaganda operations are designed to get
information to him. Security is designed to keep the enemy from knowing
true figures; but propaganda must have a lot of good, current, _true_
information if it is to be believed. Security demands that military and
naval news be withheld until the extent of the enemy's knowledge is
known; propaganda is designed to tell the enemy the news faster than his
own sources tell him, thus discrediting enemy news. Security demands
that dubious persons, intimately associated with the enemy, be kept away
from communications facilities; propaganda officers have to keep an eye
open for people who speak the enemy language well, who can address the
enemy sympathetically and get his attention, who have a keen
appreciation of the enemy culture.
Often, it is plain, psychological warfare and security officers get in
each other's way. This conflict was lessened by American censorship
organization during World War II. The United States Office of Censorship
under Byron Price achieved a distinguished record of smooth, reasonable,
and modest operation. It took an adult view of the intelligence of the
American public, and permitted bad news to reach the public except when
the Services or the White House intervened. Much of the story of this
office is told in Theodore Koop's exciting book, _Weapon of
Silence_,[20] which makes it plain that censorship sought to avoid
developing negative psychological warfare campaigns on its own
initiative.
The usual wartime security procedures apply with special force to
psychological warfare operations. Civilian employees who are qualified
as political experts, as writers, or as propaganda analysts are often
well-educated and artistic. They are apt to value classified information
highly for the pleasure which they can derive by violating
security--that is, by showing "people they can trust" how much they are
"in on" certain operations. The temptation to show off is almost
irresistible. (The vice is not unknown even in military echelons.) An
atmosphere of excessive security easily degenerates into melodrama,
bringing out in many individuals a silly zest for displaying to others
how much TOP SECRET information they possess. Where military and
civilian personnel work together, this human weakness is stimulated by
rivalry. Even among the Germans in World War II, propaganda groups were
easily infected by an atmosphere of gossip and intrigue.
=Security Procedures.= Security procedures for psychological warfare
involve the usual common-sense precautions which apply to all
operations, and which may be summarized in the following rules:
(1) Classification should be kept at an absolute minimum. No
information should be classified unless there are genuinely strong
reasons for supposing that it would benefit the enemy. Classification
and declassification should be the responsibility of designated
officers trained for the task. (In World War II, many American
civilians classified information recklessly, with the result that all
classification became a subject of disrespect. The author once found a
highly classified inter-Allied plan in the hands of an elderly woman
stenographer in Washington, who safeguarded the information by leaving
the papers in a desk drawer which had no pull. The drawer had to be
opened with a nail file and that fact comprised the "security.")
(2) Security should apply, generally speaking, to units as a whole,
taking working units up to the limit of face-to-face working
acquaintance as a base. It is unsound procedure to give certain
individuals a higher level of information than others, since the
privileged individuals will be tempted to display their inside
knowledge, and the underprivileged individuals will be goaded by
unwholesome, resentful, and acute curiosity. Either the entire unit
should be given the information, or denied it.
(3) Security should not be applied for editorial purposes. Censorship
is a separate function. Improper security procedures, vesting
arbitrary powers in stated officers, may tempt the security officer to
express his personal literary, artistic, or political preferences
under the guise of maintaining security. The inevitable consequence is
the breakdown of both security and of procedure. Censorship should be
applied in conformity with national or theater censorship policies.
Review and estimate of radio or leaflet output is another function.
(4) Security for printed materials is easy enough to maintain. The
leaflets can be sent to the G-2 to check, or wherever else security
functions may be vested. Radio security is another problem.
Experience in World War II indicates that spot news cannot wait for
routine security, but must be processed through. Two types of control,
supplementing one another, are desirable:
_Security liaison_ on a 24-hour basis should be available to the radio
operatives for the rapid processing of military news. The security
duty officer should be indoctrinated with an attitude of
cooperativeness, based on an understanding of the value of propaganda,
and should conceive it as his mission to explain the needs of radio
propaganda to his superiors, rather than taking the attitude of being
superior to the radio operatives. There is a sound psychological
reason for this. The presence of a sympathetic security officer will
increase cooperativeness on the part of the propaganda broadcaster. An
unsympathetic one will merely maintain the official dignity of his
office and position. High morale on the part of script writers is more
important than high morale of security officers.
_Security supervision_ can be exercised by monitoring facilities: that
is, the security officers can equip themselves with a good radio
receiver and listen to the broadcasts without ever meeting the
broadcasters. A critical frame of mind on the part of such security
personnel is desirable. Unlike liaison officers, they need not be
cooperative. Since their criticism applies after the operation, they
can afford to apply rigorous standards. (During most of 1942 and 1943,
no one in Washington had any idea of what actually _went out_ from San
Francisco. The civilians who broadcast to Japan received elaborate
orders to do this and to do that, but the Washington policy-makers did
not know what was going on the air. On one occasion, the civilian
propaganda broadcasters told the Army in Washington that the
information was too highly classified to be released or circulated.
The result was that Army and Navy found out what OWI was doing by
receiving reports from listeners in the Pacific.)
Security liaison can check propaganda output in the process of
transmission; security supervision can check the output after it goes on
the air, and can transmit through channels recommendations for punitive
or corrective action. The final military connection should exist (for an
all-military psychological warfare group) in the person of a responsible
commanding or executive officer. For a civilian group functioning under
military control the military connection should lie in the hands of an
officer capable of watching a great deal and of saying little. Attempts
by security to act as propagandists have been found to be as disastrous
as the efforts of operators to get along without security.
=Media Limitations.= Psychological warfare should not broadcast into
areas in which radio sets are unknown. Psychological warfare should not
drop books to illiterates. These rules seem obvious but they have often
been violated. Psychological warfare should not assume that an extensive
news or morale campaign is going to achieve the desired results unless
there is trustworthy intelligence to the effect that propaganda is
getting through.
It is ridiculous to broadcast to the masses of a country when the masses
are known not to have radio facilities. This was done in the
anti-Japanese broadcasts of OWI, at least in the early part of the war,
in which mass-audience soap operas and popular music were sent to Japan
on the short-wave--this despite reports that short-wave sets were almost
unknown outside governmental or plutocratic circles. What was known was
that the Japanese government itself had listening facilities, and that
the content of American broadcasts was relayed through Japanese military
and governmental groups. The propaganda (to fit the medium, radio)
should have been designed _to affect the persons actually reached_, and
not an audience known to be out of reach. The mere fact that enemy
counterpropaganda mentions one's own material is nothing more than a
professional exchange of compliments. Goading the enemy radio into a
reply may be fun, but unless non-propagandists are known to be
listening, the fun is expensive and unprofitable.
(It is really fun, though. The author suggested in the spring of 1942
that the San Francisco radio carry an item to the effect that "American
art lovers" hoped the Japanese would move their priceless books and
paintings away from the great cities. This was preparation for eventual
nagging on the topic, "the air raids will get you if you don't watch
out!" The radio civilians in San Francisco put the item on the air.
Nothing was heard from the Japanese on the subject. Four days later,
Radio Luxembourg [then under Nazi control, of course] broadcast in
German to Europe that a spokesman for the "beastly American Air
Ministry" had told the Japanese that the Americans planned to destroy
cultural monuments. The Nazi commentator added that this was
characteristic of the actions of uncivilized Americans. New York picked
up the German broadcast. The author enjoyed seeing his item go all the
way around the world, but in retrospect he wonders whether he did any
good other than to please himself. He did do the actual harm of giving
the Nazis another point to distort.)
_Media_ consist simply of the facilities possessed. These are, most
commonly:
(1) Standard-wave radio;
(2) Short-wave radio;
(3) Loudspeakers;
(4) Leaflets;
(5) Pamphlets;
(6) Books;
(7) Novelties.
The limitations consist simply of applying the right medium at the right
time. Radio broadcasts need be made only when receiving sets are known
to exist. Written material should be dropped only to areas in which at
least some people can read. (The OWI in China, at the request cf CBI
Forward Echelon Headquarters, made up the leaflet showing pictures only.
This was designed for the aboriginal hillmen between China and Tibet--to
tell them to rescue downed American pilots. Broadcasting to these people
would have been as profitable as spitting in the ocean. None of them
could read, much less understand radio.) The probable number of
listeners or readers should be calculated conservatively, taking enemy
policing, amount of enemy interest, customs of the people, tension among
enemy troops or civilians and other appropriate factors into account.
Occasionally propaganda media exceed the expected limitations. The
Americans and British dropped leaflets on Berlin. The leaflets had
little key numbers in the corners, showing to which series they
belonged, and could thus be arranged in series. The Germans prohibited
civilians from picking up the leaflets. The Nazi authorities followed up
the prohibition by sending the _Hitlerjugend_ and _Hitlermädel_ out to
pick up the leaflets and turn them in for destruction. The boys and
girls did their job with gusto. Vast quantities were turned in for
destruction. What the Nazis discovered--too late, too late--was that the
schoolchildren had begun collecting the leaflets, using the key numbers
to make up perfect sets. Some numbers were rarer than others, so that
the Hitlerite children swapped Allied leaflets all over Berlin, trying
to make up attractive albums. Mother and Father--who did not dare pick
the leaflets up off the street for fear the Gestapo might be
watching--found a convenient file, reasonably complete, in the room of
little Fritzl or Ermintrude! The most hopeful British or American
planner could not have counted on such a happy result.
=Maximum Performance of Personnel.= Another limitation, to be found in
any psychological warfare operation, is that imposed by the types of
personnel available. It would be a rash commander who assumed that he
had air support because he saw airplanes--without knowing whether air
crews were available. A microphone does not make a propagandist.
Personnel using the speaking voice have to be good speakers; merely
knowing the language is not enough. Writing personnel must be up to the
level of professional writers. On the other hand, the available
personnel must not be driven above its limits of performance: often an
attempt to do a too-professional job will defeat the propaganda. (When
the Japanese pretended to be perfectly American, and used the corny
obsolete slang of the 1920's, they aroused more contempt than they would
have done had they confined themselves to rather bookish, plain
English.)
The psychological warfare operation must be gauged to the personnel
facilities no less than to the material facilities. (In China, the
author sat in with an expert on medieval and modern Japanese art, who
was writing leaflets which were to be dropped on the Japanese garrisons
of the Yangtze cities. The expert wrote pure, dignified Japanese, but
the Chinese-Japanese language experts brought up the point, "Would the
Japanese common soldier understand this kind of talk?" For a while, we
had no plain-spoken Japanese at hand, and we had to send our Japanese
leaflets from Chungking up to Yenan, where the Japanese Communists read
the leaflets and wrote back long detailed criticisms.)
Whenever the politico-military situation permits, it is sound procedure
to check output with live enemies, either interned civilians or captured
military personnel. A shrewd interrogator can soon find out whether the
comments from the enemy jury are honest or not.
Intelligent psychological warfare procedures have often turned
liabilities into assets. Absence of a good orchestra has compelled
propagandists to make up current music schedules by recording enemy
musical programs, re-broadcasting them with new spoken commentary.
Failure to obtain native speakers (such as genuine home-grown Japanese,
or Chinese with the properly slurred Wu dialect) has led to the use of
substitutes that proved better than the original. There is no point in
trying to establish _rapport_ with the enemy unless you talk his
language with effortless perfection on the one end of the scale--or else
admit that you really are a foreigner, on the other end of the scale. It
is easier to build up the image of a trustworthy enemy than it is to
create trust in a traitor. Frequently the attempt to talk the enemy's
own language is less successful than a frank acceptance of handicaps.
In actual practice this means that either--
(a) the speaker should be authentically perfect in use of the enemy
language, whether spoken or written as script; _or_
(b) the speaker should make no effort to conceal his foreign accent.
In British broadcasts to Germany, for example, it was found to be
desirable for the radio announcers to have British accents in their
German, rather than the Viennese or Jewish lilt which many of them did
have. A Nazified audience was so infected with anti-Semitism that no
Jewish speaker could carry much weight, no matter how cogent his
arguments nor how eloquent his appeals. The British tone in the voices
of other speakers actually helped carry conviction. The Germans were
prepared to listen to a genuine Britisher, and might have been
disappointed if he had spoken letter-perfect _German_.[21]
Furthermore, with the perfect speaker of the enemy language there is
always the question, "What is that guy doing over there?" A traitor is
less appealing than an open enemy spokesman; a traitor has to be
sensationally good in order to get across at all. Lord Haw Haw was one
of a kind, but he seems to have had genuine theatrical talent along with
a crazy zeal which persuaded his hearers that though he was on the wrong
side, he did believe his own line. The perfect speaker, whether enemy
renegade or friendly linguist, has an inglorious role at the beginning
of war, when enemy morale is high and the enemy population has not had
time to think over the problem of changing sides. Only toward the end of
the war, or in any morale downgrade, the man who says, "Come on over!
See? I'm here. It's fine," has a chance of being believed.
The propaganda administrator must use his personnel thoughtfully. It is
a waste of talent and--in advance field units, of life as well--to
impose tasks which operatives cannot handle. An American _nisei_ from
California should not be asked to talk slangy _Edokko_ Japanese; a
soldier detailed to psychological warfare, because of some special
linguistic qualification, should not be considered a great journalist,
radio commentator, or actor just because he speaks the right language.
If he is given a microphone, and the feeling of having an audience (one
that cannot write adverse fan mail), it will be easy for the average man
to overestimate the effect of his own talk. The intelligent officer
tries to see his staff as the enemy would see them; he keeps their
limitations in mind. If they speak the enemy language perfectly, they
fall under suspicion as traitors; if they speak it poorly, they may
sound like bunglers or jackasses. Nevertheless, propaganda must come
from men and through words written by men, and the flavor must be
fitted to the situation. Advance planning should therefore consider the
available personnel as an actual factor in estimating the situation.
=Counterpropaganda.= Counterpropaganda could be listed as a limitation,
as the enemy combat strength is sized up in physical warfare. This,
however, is one of the points at which psychological warfare differs
from other forms. If the propaganda message is worth putting across, it
need not be geared to what the enemy is saying. Enemy propaganda should,
in well conducted operations, be taken into account only when it becomes
an asset. That is, the enemy need only be heeded when he tells a
whopping lie, or comes forth with a piece of hyprocrisy so offensive to
his own people that it needs little improvement to be adapted for
counterpropaganda. Most enemy themes are beyond reach, especially those
of inter-ideological warfare. The Nazis and Russians made the best
propaganda against each other when they got down to the basic
necessities of life, not when they were trying to weave finespun
theories about each other's way of thinking or of life. Refutation is a
joy; it is delightful to talk back. But the best propaganda is only
incidentally counterpropaganda. It uses enemy blunders and counteracts
enemy success by building up unrelated successes of its own.
This does not mean that propaganda analysis is not needed. Somewhere in
every psychological warfare unit there must be an intelligence group
servicing the operation. If, for example, the enemy has announced that
the candy your aviators are dropping is poisoned (and has proved it by
dropping some of "your" candy, made by his black-operations boys and
actually poisoned), there is no point in calling him a liar; you may not
know for some time whether poisoned candy has been dropped or not. If
the enemy commander has shown his troops photographs of prisoners whom
your side has taken and "murdered" (according to his well staged
photos), it is not a good idea to ask people to surrender without
sending along equally convincing pictures of well cared for prisoners.
If the enemy alleges that you and your allies are rioting in the streets
or stealing each other's womenfolk, or that one of you is doing all the
fighting while the other sits around in safe staging areas, it may be a
good idea to send along some leaflets showing inter-allied cooperation
on your side, or to run a few radio shows on the subject.
This consists merely of reckoning the enemy propaganda as part of the
psychological warfare situation, and of using the enemy as part of the
background to your own advantage. The moment you start letting him take
the initiative, your propaganda wags along behind his. Tell _his_ people
something _he_ can't deny. Let him sit up nights worrying about how he
will counteract _you_. Make him drive his security officers crazy trying
to release figures that will please your G-2 in order to reassure his
home audience. Really good propaganda does not worry about
counterpropaganda. It never assumes that the enemy propagandist is a
gentleman: he is by definition a liar. Your listeners and you are the
only gentlemen left on earth.
CHAPTER 5
Psychological Warfare in World War I
World War I saw psychological warfare transformed from an incidental to
a major military instrument, and later it was even called the weapon
which won the war. The story spread, since the Germans liked to imagine
that they had been talked out of winning, and since ex-propagandists
among the Allies enjoyed thinking that their own cleverness had been
decisive when even the tremendous violence of trench warfare had
produced nothing more than a stalemate. If psychological warfare is
considered in the broad sense, it seems plain that it was among the
decisive weapons of 1914-1918. The political decency of the Allies, the
appeal of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, the patent obsolescence of
the Kaiser and what he stood for, the resurgence of Polish, Baltic,
Finnish, Czechoslovak and South Slav nationalisms--all these played a
real part in making Germany surrender in 1918. More real than the role
of guns, men, ships, planes, tanks? This cannot be answered: it is like
asking of a long-distance runner whether his heart, lungs, legs, or head
contributed most to his success. Since war is waged by and against all
parts of the human personality--physical condition, skills,
intelligence, emotions, and so on--it is impossible to distinguish
between the performance of one kind of weapon and the other in the
attainment of a goal itself complex--governmental surrender. Only a
weapon which left no enemy survivors could claim for itself undisputed
primacy in victory.
Propaganda came to prominence in war because the nations involved had
made mass-communications part of their civilian lives. The appearance of
huge newspapers, systematic advertising, calculated political publicity,
and opinion manipulation in other forms made it inevitable that skills
which developed in civilian life should be transferred to the military.
In general, _the psychological warfare efforts of each belligerent were
the direct equivalent of his peacetime nonpolitical propaganda
facilities_. (By way of exception, the peculiar genius of the Bolshevik
leaders stimulated a propaganda effort disproportionate to the
facilities, either of personnel or matériel, to be found in pre-1914
Russia.)
Nations rarely change their basic character in time of war. When war
starts it is usually too late to re-educate generations already grown
up, teach them wholly new skills, or develop administrative or
operational procedures unknown in peacetime life. Sometimes, by great
effort, a nation can transform a small available cadre into large, new
and effective units on the political, military, economic or social
fronts. Even then, the character of the war effort will be colored and
influenced by the experience of the men undertaking it. The British had,
in 1914, one of the world's finest news systems, a highly sophisticated
press, and extensive experience in international communication for
technical and commercial purposes, notably the undersea cable system,
and they turned these to war use with considerable smoothness. The
Germans had a far more regimented press and a more limited network of
commercial and technical connections. The British, furthermore, had a
diplomatic and consular service of superb quality; comparable German
services included a much higher proportion of bunglers and enthusiasts.
From the very beginning the British had the lead. They nailed German
propaganda as propaganda, while circulating their own as news, cultural
relations, or literature. The Germans who boasted that they were a
"cultured" people had their naïveté rewarded when the British let the
German word _Kultur_ become a synonym for boorish pedantic arrogance.
The Germans had the awful habit of putting many of their own
unattractive emotions into words, and the even more ruinous habit of
then printing the words. In many instances, the British simply let the
Germans think up braggadocio or vengeful phrases, then circulated the
German phrases to the world. The English language was permanently
enriched by some of these: _strafe_ comes from the German plea that God
"strafe" (punish) England. The actual "Hymn of Hate" was originally a
song made up by Germans for Germans. The word "Hun" was applied to the
German Army by Kaiser Wilhelm himself, and so on. Furthermore, the
Germans created in their press and information services a condition of
bureaucratic snafu which has rarely been excelled in any war. National
character certainly worked out its automatic vengeances in World War I.
The American psychological warfare effort of 1917-1919 also drew heavily
on familiar skills: the American press, second only to that of the
British at the time; the church, Y.M.C.A., and Chautauqua groups; and
the wealth of private clubs which flourish under our liberal system of
laws and usages. Other nationalities made efforts similarly in keeping
with their peacetime facilities. The Japanese were adroit, but even at
that time confused by the mix-up of trying to be a "civilized" power but
simultaneously expansionist. The French showed high professional skill
in adapting their military and diplomatic personnel to propaganda tasks.
France's position as battleground ensured her of the rage of her own
people and the sympathy of neutrals, giving propaganda from Paris a
hearing. The Chinese, though undergoing the downfall of the Yüan
Shih-k'ai dictatorship and lapsing into chaos, maintained an impeccable
diplomatic front and played a weak hand for everything it was worth;
they had their private quasi-war with the Japanese in 1915. That they
did so while putting the blame for Allied disunity squarely on the
Japanese where it belonged is to their credit.
The weight of the propaganda war, as of the material war, fell on its
prime contestants, Britain, Germany, and the United States. The private
and revolutionary groups which emerged as the revolutionary governments
played a vigorous part because they had few other functions to distract
their attention. The Republic of Czechoslovakia got its start in
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1918, and fought psychological warfare from
the instant it took form; not till later did it assume the weightier and
more expensive responsibilities of ruling and warring.
=The British Effort.= In World War I, the British made most of the
mistakes and learned most of the lessons which the Americans were to
make and to learn in World War II. The British Foreign Office formed a
War Propaganda Bureau in 1914, but a great deal of the effort was done
by private facilities (patriotic associations) or by lower political and
military echelons of the government and armed forces--and without
coordination. Things became so confused that at the mid-point of the
war, the British organized a Department of Information with Colonel John
Buchan at its head. (Buchan will be remembered by all adventure-lovers
as author of _The Thirty-nine Steps_, _The Courts of the Morning_, and
other first-class thrillers; he was also made a peer under the style,
Lord Tweedsmuir, and became a popular Governor-General of Canada.)
Buchan did not always get along with the committee which floated above
him, telling him how to run his business.
The British, like the Germans, had immense organizational difficulties.
The British ended up by inventing a distinction of roles. Thus they
finished World War I with two separate propaganda agencies. The Ministry
of Information, under Lord Beaverbrook, with Colonel Buchan as Director
of Intelligence, carried on civilian psychological warfare outside
Britain; the National War Aims Committee carried on civilian
psychological warfare within Britain. Military psychological warfare was
carried on by military and civilian agencies, both. The British required
five years of honest effort, bitter wrangling, and positive political
invention in order to devise a psychological warfare system sufficient
to meet the needs of a great power at war. They did not let their
administrative difficulties prevent their conduct of correct, poised and
highly moral propaganda, nor impede their use of plentiful funds and
high ingenuity in getting their propaganda across.[22]
The British set the pace in coordinating political warfare with
news-propaganda, and in effecting workable liaison between national
policy-makers and operational and public-relations chiefs of the armed
services. It is not likely that, even in World War II, the
Americans--within the looser, younger, bigger framework of our more
compendious government--achieved as good results in terms of timing.
State-War-Navy-OWI-OSS-Treasury timing of related events or news items
was obtained through most of World War II in the following manner: the
federal agency affected did whatever it was going to do anyhow, and
other federal agencies took notice after the event, initiating their
related actions, if any were feasible, then and only then. The British
sought to get around this in World War I by correlating their policy
toward various countries with their policy involving different
departments. They were not totally successful but they learned a lot;
the net product of their propaganda was, for most of its purposes,
superb.
=The German Failure In Propaganda.= German writers, after World War I,
sometimes attributed the superiority of the British in propaganda to the
innate fiendishness of Britishers as contrasted with the gullible purity
of Germans. The psychoneurotic non-com who made himself famous to the
world's cost did not make this mistake. In _Mein Kampf_ Hitler stated
categorically that the British had understood the professional touch in
propaganda while the Germans had not. Hitler's contempt for the masses
was shown in his explicit statement of their inattentiveness, their poor
response to formal logic, their affirmative reaction to simple one-sided
reiteration. He said: "[In England] ... propaganda was a weapon of the
first class, while with us it was a sop to unemployed politicians...."
German nationalists of whatever stripe found themselves in accord when
they blamed their military defeat on the enemy's use of propaganda. They
thus succeeded in maintaining the myth, already sedulously inculcated
for two centuries, that the German army could not be beaten in the
field. The extremists and crackpots among them went on to develop the
"stab-in-the-back" theory that an unbeaten Germany was betrayed from
within by Jews, socialists, and democratic people. (The mutually
exclusive alternatives--namely that either Allied propaganda was
fiendishly good, and the Germans merely innocent victims, or else that
Allied propaganda was ineffectual and the anti-war sentiment a purely
German development--did not keep the Hitlerites from exploiting both
alibis simultaneously.)
The postwar period of the 1920's saw, therefore, the curious spectacle
of the Germans lauding American psychological warfare, and counting it
as a major factor of defeat, while the Americans naturally emphasized
the fighting record of American troops.
As for Kaiserist propaganda, it started out with the twin curses of
amateurishness and bureaucracy, each of them crippling but deadly when
paired. German writers and scholars ran wild in 1914 and 1915 in trying
to put the blame on the Allies; amateurish in public relations, they
succeeded in arousing a tremendous amount of antagonism. They were
handicapped by the ponderosity of the German Imperial Government, by the
intervention of persons unfamiliar with news or advertising (at that
time the most obvious sources of civilian propaganda personnel), and by
a military stodginess which made German press communiqués infuriating
even to anti-British readers. Overseas propaganda developed through
poorly secured clandestine channels, and was mixed up with espionage and
sabotage personnel. Inescapable "breaks" gave all German agents a bad
name. George Sylvester Viereck, who has enjoyed the odd distinction of
being our most vocal pro-German sympathizer in both wars with Germany,
later wrote a naïve but revealing account of his operations under the
title _Spreading Germs of Hate_ (Boston, 1930). (No British information
officer was guilty, even after the war, of a comparable breach of
taste.) Viereck praises the British for their sang-froid and skill;
coming from him, the praise is more than deserved.
More seriously, German propaganda lacked both organization and moral
drive. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolai, the Imperial German General Staff
officer responsible, puts part of the blame on the German press and on
the press officers of the Army and the Reich: "In fact, the enemy
remained virtually untouched by any kind of German propaganda. This
reproach falls against the press, it would seem, as well as on the
responsible officials.... Internationally minded papers themselves
failed to cooperate. Yet it was precisely these which were circulated
and esteemed abroad. Newspapers with other (pro-militarist) editorial
policies, failing to get leadership from the Government, could not aim
at any unified effect.... Instead, the goal of the governmental press
leadership remained a thoroughly negative one: to prevent the press from
doing harm to national policy."[23]
Without developing his theme into systematic doctrine for psychological
warfare, the German colonel stated the basic defect of World War I from
the German point of view. Writing in 1920, he went on to say: "The enemy
alleges simply to have copied our front-line propaganda when he
initiated his. In so doing, he is guilty of a deliberate untruth, made
for the sake of removing the moral blot which is attached to his
victory...." Nicolai could not overcome the supposition that propaganda
was a dirty and unsoldierly device and that it was much more honorable
for armies to exchange loss of life than to save men on both sides by
talking the enemy into surrendering, but he went on to the real point at
issue. "Furthermore, it was not moralistic misgivings which kept us from
applying to the enemy front lines a propaganda campaign as successful as
theirs, but very sober practical obstacles. There were available to us
none of the (psychological) points of attack at which propaganda would
have been effective against the enemy forces, points such as the enemy
found in our own domestic conditions. What was lacking was political
propaganda as precursor of military."
What the Germans failed to learn in World War I, they later learned and
applied in World War II. The German Imperial Government started in 1914
with a defiant assurance of its own power. Power was not sought among
the masses so far as Kaiser Wilhelm was concerned; one inherited it from
one's ancestors, along with an army, and the masses had better keep
their noses out of it. The Hitlerite German government of 1939 began its
world war only after two decades of shrewd, conscienceless, bitter
domestic propaganda. Hitlerism had come to power by first wooing and
then bullying the common man, and the Nazi chiefs, in their strategy of
terror or "warfare psychologically waged," subsequently applied the same
tactics to the international community. Hitler conquered Europe with
these tactics; he started with flattery, made scenes, and ended with
cold brutality. These were the skills of the urban slum.
=The Creel Committee.= The fabulous American propaganda, of which the
Germans expressed such dread, was the work of two agencies. The civilian
agency was the Committee on Public Information, universally known as the
"Creel Committee" after its chairman, Mr. George Creel. The military
agency was the Propaganda Section (or Psychologic Section), G-2D,
General Headquarters, American Expeditionary Forces, under Captain Heber
Blankenhorn.
The Creel Committee had the superlative advantage of possessing a chief
who enjoyed the confidence of the President and whose participation in
national policy was on a high enough level to give propaganda
coordination to other governmental policies on a basis of equality.
Creel himself considered the task to be one of advertising, and he
organized his Committee with extreme looseness, expanding it rapidly.
Although his total gross budget for the war was only a fraction of OWI's
budgets in World War II, he systematized most of the publicity
activities then available.
News services were maintained by means of a news bureau in Washington
that fed material to the commercial press and processed other material
to publicity missions abroad. Heavy emphasis was placed on the home
audience for Creel's mission covered all phases of propaganda work.
Sections were set up for posters, advertising, "Four Minute Men"
(volunteer local speakers in all American communities), films, American
minority groups and the foreign-language press, women's organizations,
information bureaus, syndicated features, and cartoons. The young but
already large American motion picture industry was made a channel
whereby American propaganda movies went to both the United States and
overseas audiences. In one instance Creel got the American producers to
threaten Swiss exhibitors with a boycott unless they showed American
propaganda film along with the features.
Missions were sent to France, England, Italy, Switzerland, Holland,
Spain, Scandinavia, Mexico and other Latin American countries, China,
and Russia. It was not considered necessary to send American
propagandists to Japan in World War I. The Japanese were given the
American propaganda file and were asked to use it; they said they would.
The Creel Committee was run in simple, almost chaotic fashion. Agencies
proliferated whenever a new idea turned up. The basic concept was that
of domestic American agitation, as practiced commercially through
advertising and socially through the civic clubs. The war propaganda
left a rather bad taste in the mouth of many Americans, and the
boisterous joviality of the arousers probably produced negative
attitudes which encouraged pacifism and isolationism in the postwar
years. The purely technical side of the work was done well, but at the
terrible cost of overshooting national commitments.
America emerged from the war disappointed at home and discredited
abroad--so far as the heated propaganda of "making the world safe for
democracy" was concerned. A more modest more calculated national
propaganda effort would have helped forestall those attitudes which, in
turn, made World War II possible. Creel and his fellow-workers did not
remember that beyond every war there lies a peace, in its own way as
grim and difficult as war. They did not understand that no war is the
last war, that leeway must be left for propaganda to be effective
_again_. They said that World War I would be the last of all wars;
perhaps they believed it themselves.
=General Pershing's Headquarters.= The civilians of the Creel committee
patronizingly claimed to have helped the G-2 men at A.E.F. Headquarters
run psychological warfare. In the official history of Captain
Blankenhorn's group, which centered from the very beginning on leaflet
production, there is little reference to outside aid. Radio did not
exist as a means of mass communication, and loudspeakers then surpassed
an ordinary megaphone very little, if at all; hence communication with
the enemy had to be through print. Leaflets were basic.
The Americans at A.E.F. concentrated on morale and surrender leaflets.
They did work that was superb from the point of view of common-sense
psychology. They used British and French experience in applying
techniques of leaflet distribution, making inventions and improvements
of their own. Balloons and airplanes were the chief methods for air
distribution; the plane-borne leaflet bomb was a development of World
War II. Extensive improvements were made in the procedures of leaflet
distribution by means of mortars.
The morale leaflets used the anti-militarist, pro-democratic sentiments
of the world at that time. The autocracy and inefficiency of the German
government provided an excellent target. Since propaganda against the
upper classes was not yet regarded as a Communist monopoly, considerable
appeal was introduced for the common German soldier against his
generals, nobles, officials, and capitalists. German nationalism was
attacked by means of sectional appeals to Lorrainers and Bavarians. The
news that America was in fact producing vast weapons, that the American
army was truly in Europe, that the German retreats were really
serious--these were used in morale form (see below, page 212) rather
than as spot-news leaflets.
It was in the primary mission of combat propaganda--the inducement to
surrender--that the Americans excelled themselves. They produced
limitless appeals (see Figure 13) promising the Germans first-class
American food when they surrendered. Emphasis was indeed on all
surrender themes--good food, human care, privileges under international
law, patriotic value of remaining alive, opportunity to return to loved
ones, and so forth. But the Americans went over these variously, and
came back to the topic of food. For an army of hungry men who knew that
their homeland starved behind them, the enumeration of things to eat had
obsessive value.
Haughty and incompetent, the German high command tried to counteract
Allied leaflets--particularly the American leaflets--by the use of
appeals to "disregard propaganda." While the German armies plainly
backed down toward defeat, such German statements preached about the
situation. They did not put the common soldier's plight in concrete
terms. They did not say, "You will be unemployed, poor, sick,
dishonored, lonely, if you surrender. Your wife will be beaten by
Frenchmen, your daughters raped by savages, your father and mother
starved to death by the food prices." Such tactics had to wait for a
later war. In 1918, the German command, senile and fussy, pointed out
that enemy leaflets were propaganda (nasty! nasty!) and that good German
soldiers would remember their duty. For men who probably imagined they
could smell white bread baking, bacon frying, and coffee cooking across
the lines, such wordage was nonsense. The Germans came on over to
surrender.
[Illustration: _Figure 13: Surrender Leaflet from the AEF._ Though this
American combat leaflet from World War I copies the original form of the
German _Feldpostkarte_ (field postcard, an early precursor of the V-mail
form), it is not black propaganda since neither source nor intent is
concealed. "When you are taken prisoner, by the Americans, give this to
the first officer who checks your identities." The prisoner is commanded
to fill in his own battle-order history. By marking out appropriate
items, he indicates whether he is hurt or not and can explain that he is
well cared for and fed "beef, white bread, potatoes, beans, plums,
genuine bean coffee, milk, butter, tobacco, etc."]
Captain Blankenhorn's unit, without benefit of psychologists, developed
a German morale analysis chart. This was made up before scientific
polling had become a common technique, and was consequently based on a
group of selected known factors given arbitrary weight and then averaged
into a total. It was not, "number of German prisoners per hundred who
express attitudes characterized by doubt" but "the U-boat situation,"
"unity in Germany," and other abstracted generalities which were used as
controls. The chart was carefully kept, and sought to follow morale from
its causative factors rather than by a percentage count of attitudes
discovered in the newspapers or among prisoners.
=The Bolshevik and Chinese Revolutions.= The dynamic propaganda
development of this period came about in Russia. The Russian revolution
began as reaction to an adverse military situation, disesteemed
leadership, economic hardship, and long overdue reforms. In its first,
or constitutional phase, it had an inevitableness about it; there was
little resistance to the revolution, and the popular mood was one of
relief, joy, easement. However, the majority group of the Russian
Socialists interpreted the Marxist philosophy to mean (putting it
bluntly) that the end is justified by the means. They believed that they
had developed a system of politico-economic forecasting which, while not
always certain, was close to certain. And they further believed that no
one else, lacking this system of forecasting, could lead the workers and
peasants to their historically inevitable freedom. This philosophy may
sound beside the point, but it is not. Such abstruse doctrines of
Hegelianism and Marxism were used by the majority-Socialists (known by
their Russian name, _Bolshevik_) to give themselves a sense of
unconditional rightness. From the first phase of the revolution on, the
Bolsheviks pitilessly sabotaged all other democratic groups. There was
no point in helping other groups, when Bolsheviks alone had the inner
secrets of history at their command.
In the geniuses Lenin and Trotzky, the Bolshevik movement found its
leadership. Lenin had no use for democracy as it was known in America.
To him it was a sham, a front for the great capitalist trusts,
which--even though the capitalists themselves might not know it--were
doomed to get bigger on a shrinking market, until international
capitalist war, bankruptcy, and working-class revolution was the result.
Lenin was as sure that this would happen as he was that the sun would
rise the next morning. The only dispute was the matter of timing; a few
Bolshevik pessimists thought that the capitalist world might last into
the 1920's.
Such a frame of mind led to a very deadly kind of psychological warfare.
The Bolsheviks despised their opponents, desiring to "liquidate" them
(this meant breaking down a group and preventing its reforming as a
group, but came above all to mean mass murder). They were so
antagonistic to the "capitalist" world that they hated God, patriotism,
national history, churches, money, private property, chastity, marriage,
and verse that rhymed, all with equal intensity. Moscow became the Mecca
for the eccentrics and malcontents of the world and for some years
Russia was in fact looser in morals than any other civilized country.
Hatred for the capitalist world enabled the Bolsheviks to throw Russian
Czarist patriotism into the discard. They delighted in getting Russian
troops to desert at the front; the Germans delighted in this, too. But
the Bolsheviks were certain they would have the last laugh because they
knew it was only a matter of weeks or months before the revolution--the
_inevitable_ revolution, forecast by Karl Marx's peculiar
economics--broke out in Germany as well. The Russian devil-may-care
attitude toward all established forms of society was perfectly
characterized by Trotzky's flip but deadly answer to the German military
negotiators at the Brest-Litovsk negotiations. When the Germans balked
at some point, "All right," said Trotzky, "no war and--no peace."
The Germans insisted that if the Bolsheviks did not sign the dictated
peace terms the German army would make more war.
Fine, said Trotzky in effect, he didn't mind. Go ahead and make war. It
wouldn't worry him or his army. They would go somewhere else and would
refuse to play games with capitalists.
This stopped the Germans in their tracks. They did not want to send
their troops into a starving country that roared with subversive
doctrines. They knew that while Trotzky wasted their time quibbling over
negotiations, his printing presses worked night and day telling the
German troops that the war was over, that capitalism was on its way out,
that the workers' revolution was coming, everywhere, for everybody, with
food, peace, plenty, atheism and all the other delights of the good
Bolshevik life. The Russians finally signed the surrender treaty but in
point of fact, the German divisions on the Eastern front were
contaminated by Bolshevism, and when they came back across Germany they
brought the message of freedom and peace with them. Germany did have an
abortive Communist revolution--partly because of Russian
operations--though it was stopped by an alliance of the moderate
Socialists and the dependable remnants of the army.
The Russians went on merrily through a living hell. For five more years
the Bolshevik leaders held their country together with wretched
industrial production, poor food, bad weapons. They had amazingly high
morale among their own select Bolshevik group, and against the common
people they had two weapons, propaganda and terror. (The terror was
symptomatic of the first of the modern totalitarian dictatorships; its
domestic police role is not a part of psychological warfare.)
The Bolshevik propaganda was probably the finest propaganda effort ever
known in history down to that time--down, perhaps, all the way to our
own time. The political limit was beyond reach; anything in the old
world was fair game. Things the sober Soviet citizen of 1946 would
regard with veneration were open to ridicule in 1919-1922: patriotism,
religion, national sovereignty, international law, treaties with or
between capitalist states. There flowed from Russia a world-wide stream
of propaganda, mostly clandestine, some of it overt. In every nation of
the world there was, to a greater or less degree, a "Red scare"; the
propaganda of the Bolsheviks was regarded as having mystical subversive
powers which no other operation could match. In retrospect it seems
absurd that anyone could have worried about the Americans of the 1920's
revolting against their own Constitution; but a lot of people, including
the Attorney General of the United States, did indeed worry.
They had cause for alarm though not for the reasons they supposed. Much
of the magic of Bolshevik propaganda arose from its taking up where
British, French and American propaganda left off. The psychological
warfare of the Allies had made the sad mistake of promising a new, a
better world to everyone on earth. When the war ended, and conditions
went back to normal, many people in the world did not consider
"normalcy" the fulfillment of that better world. The Bolshevik
propaganda reaped the harvest which the Allied propagandist had sown and
then left untended. Expectations, whipped up beyond normal, turned to
Bolshevism when the Western democracies abandoned both domestic and
foreign propaganda operations. The strategic advantage of Bolshevik
propaganda was overwhelming. The Allies had gotten the world ready for
it, so that the wild Utopia of the Leninists temporarily made sense to
millions.
This does not mean that the Bolshevik propaganda of the 1920s was not
good. It was good, technically, psychologically, politically--but good
in terms of achieving an immediate scare at the cost of long-range
confidence. The eventual cost to the Soviet Union was terrible. The
Soviet government isolated itself and declared a condition of open
psychological warfare against every other government on earth, including
the United States. (This so exasperated Presidents Wilson, Harding,
Coolidge, and Hoover that they refused to recognize the Soviet Union.)
The Bolshevik propaganda was carried by:
Russian government channels;
Communist "party" channels (the Communists not really being a
political party, anywhere, but using the name "party" to designate the
hierarchy of a dogmatic, ruthless and fanatical political religion);
trade unions;
individual subversive operators;
"cover organizations";
trade, consular and other official missions;
leaflets in the mails;
posters, books and other literature;
films;
radio.
The theme throughout was plain: the world revolution is coming, by
inescapable economic laws discovered by our theory. The world
revolution, which _will_ come, will remove the _owning_ classes from
control of the productive capital, and will put all capital in the hands
of the workers. "The expropriators will be expropriated." Thereupon the
economic laws we have found in Marx's books will cease their bad
influence and will guarantee world peace, world prosperity, happiness,
human freedom. This is not an appeal (they said); this is _science_.
This is _objective_. We _know_. Listen!
The Communists harped on these basic themes. They waged political
warfare along with the psychological. Every attempt of the non-Communist
countries to discuss the situation was termed "conspiracies of the
warmongers." The word "democratic" was reserved to the Communists or to
non-Communists who were certain to cause Communism no trouble. The
Communists invented an entirely new vocabulary, which the Soviet and
other Communist papers still use, with meanings that have the same
emotional value (plus-value, or, "that's _good_!") as in America or
Britain, but which have entirely different meanings in concrete
practice. "Democracy" means "free elections"; "free elections" mean that
the people elect "democratic leaders"; but "democratic leaders" are not
the people who are elected in non-Communist countries. Non-Communist
leaders are usually dubbed "tools" or "stooges" of something; they are
"servile" or "reactionary." Real "democratic leaders" are only those
people approved by the international Communist movement. It _knows_. By
_science_.
What was the net effect of such psychological warfare? In the first
place, much use of common terms without regard to ultimate fulfillment
means that Communist propaganda is self-defeating. It can succeed only
in situations of desperation, anarchy, or terror. That is satisfactory
to the Communist leaders, because they think their _science_ tells them
that the capitalist states will lead to desperation, anarchy and terror
anyhow. Secondly, Communist propaganda sacrifices all other values to
the propaganda. One has to be a religious fanatic (of the Marxist sort)
to turn it out; one has to be ready for a totally new creed in order to
keep on accepting it. International understanding, patriotism,
truthfulness, freedom of action, artistic conscience--all these are
sacrificed to propaganda. In the end, _everything is propaganda_ to the
Communist. Nothing which hurts Communism can be true. They have their
_science_. (If you would like to look at this fabulous _science_, read
_The Communist Manifesto_, V. I. Lenin's _The Teachings of Karl Marx_,
and Stalin's latest current compilation of speeches. You will be
impressed by the crazy logic, the genuine but ill-informed zeal.) Third
and most important, Communist psychological warfare is continuous. The
themes may change--sometimes provocative, sometimes almost
conciliatory--but the machinery, the operation, does not. Communist
propaganda is therefore seasoned and professional, dependent on a
powerful police-state at home and on uneducated or emotionally ill
fanatics abroad, except for those few countries where Communism is so
stable as to attract hard-headed or practical idealistic men.
This Bolshevik success, rather than the splendid but short-lasting
accomplishments of the Allies in World War I, kept psychological warfare
on the map. Modern Communism is permanent psychological warfare in
action.
The Communist leaders unwittingly made a tremendous mistake between 1922
and 1927. They invited the military and political staff of the Chinese
Nationalists (Kuomintang) to cooperate with them. Filled with their own
Communist sense of certainty, it never occurred to them that anyone else
could outsmart them. The Chinese did. Their military chief of mission in
Moscow learned everything that the Communists had to teach about
irregular fighting, subversive propaganda, revolutionary situations,
mass agitation. He then went home and got more Communist aid to carry
out the military phase of the Nationalist revolution, which started
under way in the summer of 1922. The old war-lord armies were helpless
in the face of agents, agitators, poster crews, student strikes, press
propaganda and indoctrinated troops. The most sensational war in modern
Asia involved relatively little combat. The Nationalist leader used all
the Communist psychological warfare techniques, and added a few more of
his own. His name was Chiang Kai-shek.
In 1927 the Communists began a debate in Moscow as to whether they had
used the Nationalists enough or not. One group said they might as well
liquidate the Nationalists, Sunyatsenism, Chiang Kai-shek and all; the
other said they should use the Nationalists a little longer, to carry on
the struggle against American, Japanese, and British "imperialism."
Chiang Kai-shek displayed a keen interest in these formal theoretical
discussions which, thanks to his Moscow training, he understood
perfectly. While the Communists were still debating when and how to
hijack him, he hijacked them. In the fall of 1927, he turned against
them, using the weapons of terror and propaganda, and then shifting to
the more solid ground of economic development. They have not forgiven
him. Nationalist China to this day possesses a working duplicate of the
Moscow propaganda facilities which the Communists, unconscious of the
humor of it, call "fascist." (What is anti-Communist for whatever cause
_is_ Fascist, they say.)
The Russian revolution of 1917-1922 and the Chinese revolution of
1922-1927 represent the situations created by Communist psychological
warfare. Since that time, except for Spain, Communist psychological
warfare has failed in every single attempt to come to power outside
Russia. Following World War II, Communist psychological warfare proved
itself capable of holding countries only _after_ the military force had
occupied or won them. The magic has gone out of Communist propaganda; it
can keep control only with heavy military pressure behind it. But in the
far past, it has been capable of winning--as in Russia and
China--without outside military aid. With a renovation of techniques,
doctrines, and personnel, it may do so again.
CHAPTER 6
Psychological Warfare in World War II
Bolshevik accomplishments in psychological warfare were often regarded
as part of the peculiar mischief of Marxism, not as techniques which
could be learned and used by other people. Similarly, the history-making
sweep of the Chinese Nationalist armies northward in 1922-1927 was
considered to be specially and incomprehensibly Chinese; possible
lessons which might have been learned from Chinese Communist
psychological warfare were left unheeded by officials and students in
the West. Meanwhile Germany, the greatest power of Europe, had been
fighting bitter internal psychological warfare battles[24] which looked
like heated internal politics. Not until Adolf Hitler assumed the
Reich's Chancellorship and began using his Brown-shirt methods for
foreign affairs did other people wake up to the existence and
application of the new weapon.
(The War College files, for example, show that not one single officer
was assigned full-time to study of these problems during 1925-1935. For
the entire period 1919-1929, there are listed only two War College
research papers on the subject. Yet the American Army was far from
negligent. It was an excellent army, though crippled by outright poverty
of personnel and materials. The Army was simply American, and like the
rest of America for a while took the world for granted.)
The National Socialist German Workers' Party, as Hitler called his
movement, was a conglomerate built up around a few determined fanatics.
The Nazis do not appear to have believed their own doctrines to anything
like the degree to which the Communists believed theirs. From the first,
the Nazis regarded propaganda very consciously as a new, fierce
instrument which led to the accomplishment of _modern_ power. The
Communists had proclaimed that democracy was a fake; the Nazis agreed.
The Communists had shown that a minority with a sacred mission of its
own invention could get mass support for a government that claimed to be
_for_ the people, even though it was obviously not by the people nor
_of_ them. The Nazis took this as a model. The Communists had shown that
a modern man-god could be set up and worshipped in a twentieth-century
state, and called leader (_Vozhd_ in Russian). The Nazis elevated the
Soviet practice all the way into a principle, the principle of the
leader (_Führer_ in German).
The Communists had shown that an organization calling itself a _party_,
actually a quasi-religious hierarchy with strong internal discipline,
definite membership, and active organizational components, could control
fifty times its own membership. The Nazis organized the same general
sort of party, copying the Italian Fascists in part, but copying more
from the direct example of the German Communists right in front of them.
The Communists had shown that such a movement needed to have youth
branches, women's organizations, labor sections, clubs of its own, and
so on, calling this "mass organization." The Nazis copied this too.
The machinery of Naziism was in many ways a copy of Communism, applied
to allegedly different ends, (the Nazis had an Aryan myth; the
Communists had their pseudo-economics). But the important thing about
them both was the destruction of the _end_ by the _means_; the problem
of getting and keeping power despite the people was so obsessive that
propaganda became all-important. Theoretically, the _end_ (to the Nazi,
German world rule; to the Communist, the fulfillment of history in
universal communism) was the most important thing. But since any means
at any time which led to that end was good, and since the Party bosses
were the sole ones who could determine whether a particular action led
to the very remote end or not, the outcome in both Russia and Germany
became the conscienceless seeking of power for its own sake.
The new psychological warfare, a cause as well as a means of World War
II, arose from the subjection of other considerations to _propaganda_.
The propaganda addict takes everything with a ton of salt; what he does
believe is lost in what he doesn't believe. The ordinary controls of
civilized life--regard for truth, regard for law, respect for neighbors,
obedience to good manners, love of God--cease to operate effectively,
because the propaganda-dizzy man sees in everything its propaganda
content and nothing else. Everything, from a girl dancing on a stage to
an ecclesiastic officiating in a cathedral, is either _for_ him or
_against_ him. Nothing is innocent; nothing is pleasurable; everything
is connected with his diseased apprehension of power. Before he gets
power, he hates the people who have power; he does not trust their
intelligence, esteem their personalities, believe in their good will, or
credit their motives.[25] They must be scum, because they hold power
when _he_, the propaganda-infatuated man, is a member of the group that
_should_ hold it. Yet when such a man comes to power he hates his
colleagues and comrades. Remembering the cold cynical way in which he
himself sought power, knowing that his brother fanatics have the same
ruthless arrogance, the propaganda-using Party man cannot trust anyone.
Blood purges, mass trials, liquidations, removal of families,
concealment of crimes--all these result from the establishment of
propaganda in an overdeveloped role.
It is against such people that we--ordinary folk, Americans--dared wage
psychological warfare during World War II. Propaganda had grown into
ideology; the world was convulsed with monstrous new religions. For
instance: the greatest journalist of the Soviet Union, Karl Radek, was
placed on trial for treason. He was asked by the prosecutor, Vyshinsky,
"These actions of yours were deliberate?"
Radek answered: "Apart from sleeping, I have never in my life committed
any undeliberate actions."[26]
This answer sums up the mood of the totalitarian who is obsessed by
propaganda. He comes to believe that all activity, whether his own or of
other people, has meaning. He had developed the sense of responsibility
that made him violate tenets which Americans, in a free society, regard
as fundamental to human nature: things like self-respect, kindliness,
love of family, pity for the unfortunate.
This kind of mentality was found chiefly in the National Socialist and
Communist states, and to a lesser degree in dictatorships such as Italy;
by contrast, reactionary Japan was almost democratic. This mentality
makes it possible for the ruler to control his own people enough to
undertake "warfare psychologically waged." Without domestic fanaticism
and domestic terror, governments have to fall back on "psychological
warfare"--that is, the mere supplementing of politics and military
operations by propaganda. It is vain to expect a free people in a free
country to submit to such humiliating control, even for the purpose of
winning a war. What made the psychological warfare of World War II
peculiar was the fact that our enemies fought one kind of war ("warfare
psychologically waged," or total war) and we fought them back with
another. Theoretically, it is possible to argue that we had no business
succeeding.
But we did succeed.
=The Pre-Belligerent Stages.= The propaganda-conscious Axis states had
first to control their own people enough to wage aggressive war. They
then had to split their possible enemies, to make piecemeal victory
possible. They had to stay on good terms with the Soviet Union (Hitler
till 1941; Japan till the last week of war). They had to frighten their
immediate enemies while assuring their eventual enemies. This called for
a great deal of propaganda.
Pre-belligerent operations required extensive use of "black" propaganda.
Since their political systems aroused hostility and anger in audiences
which they wished to address, the aggressors sought to disguise their
propaganda. They used pacifist groups to keep the democracies from
rearming. Militarist groups were encouraged to keep the democracies from
undertaking domestic reforms or discussing military matters with Russia.
Financial groups were contacted to preserve the fiction of normal
international relations. Cultural groups were employed to preserve
friendliness for their respective nationalities as such. The Japanese
did a little global propaganda and for a while subsidized several
magazines in this country, but in general they concentrated their main
effort in the immediate area of their military operations.
It was the Germans who developed world-wide pre-belligerent propaganda
to a fine art. They exploited every possible disunity which could
contribute to the weakness of an enemy. They were not choosy about
collaborators. If the Communist Party of the United States lent a hand
(as it did between September, 1939 and June, 1941, terming the war "an
imperialist war"; after Russia got in, the war was called "the
democratic anti-fascist war"), the Nazis did not object. They willingly
listened to men who had fantastic schemes for world peace and later used
such men as aids in getting appeasement. They tried to rouse Catholics
against Communists, Communists against democrats, Gentiles against Jews,
whites against negroes, the poor against the rich, the rich against the
poor, British against Americans, Americans against British--anyone
against anyone, as long as it delayed action against Germany and
weakened the enemy potential. They went to special pains to organize
German-speaking minorities in non-German countries, but they never
neglected using people who had no open connection with Naziism at all.
This work was performed, so far as the open propaganda itself was
concerned, through the instrumentalities of the Reich's Ministry for
Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment under control of that malignant
intelligence, Paul Josef Göbbels. The broader program was not solely a
publicity matter, and was operated chiefly through Party channels. The
German capacity to learn was demonstrated by the contrast between World
War I and World War II. In World War I the Germans lacked political
motifs, professionalism, and coordination; in World War II they had all
of these.
=German Accomplishments.= Three basic propaganda accomplishments were
achieved by the Germans. First, in the political warfare field, they
succeeded in making large sections of world opinion believe that the
world's future was a choice between Communism and Fascism. Since they
and the Communists agreed on this the point seemed well taken. Actually,
there is no historical or economic justification for supposing that
those two forms of dictatorship constitute a real choice in the first
place, or that the civilized and truly free countries need ever depart
from their ancient freedoms in the second place.
Second, in the strategic field, they made each victim seem the last.
There was still hope that war would not arise, even while the Spanish
Republic was being strangled before the eyes of the world. The British
hoped that they could stay out even after Czechoslovakia fell. Astute
though the Russians were, they hoped to stay out even after Britain and
France fought. And as late as December 6, 1941 many Americans still
believed that the United States would avoid war. This suited the Nazis'
book; take them on one at a time.
Thirdly, in the purely psychological field the Germans used outright
fright. They made their own people afraid of Communist liquidations.
They brazenly showed movies of their blitzkriegs to the governing groups
of prospective victims, just to lower morale. When one nation is really
ready to fight, and the other knows it, the nation that doesn't want to
fight can be reduced to something resembling a nervous breakdown by
constant uncertainty. (The author was in Chungking during the summer of
1940, when the German propaganda agent, Wolf Schenke, showed these
German movies to the Chinese leaders. The author asked for an invitation
and did not get it; it was for Chinese only, said Schenke. But the
Chinese were not awed, or made fearful of the power of Japan's ally.
They simply said, "Nice movie ... that's the kind of thing we used to do
in the Ch'in dynasty," and let it go at that.)
=The British-German Radio War.= With the outbreak of war the British and
Germans found radio at hand. Neither had to change broadcasting policies
a great deal. Each could reach almost all of Europe on standard-wave;
each could jam the other's wave lengths, never with complete success,
and the struggle centered around a contest for attention. Who could get
the most attention? Who could get the most credence? Who could affect
the beliefs, emotions, loyalties of friendly, neutral, and enemy
listeners the most?
[Illustration: _Figure 14: Radio Program Leaflet, Anzio, 1944._ These
leaflets were dropped by the Germans on American troops at Anzio in
April 1944. They show an interesting tie-in between two forms of
propaganda. The counterpropaganda to the British Broadcasting
Corporation is slight; chief emphasis is on entertainment value of the
German radio programs. (From photograph taken by Signal Corps and
released through War Department Bureau of Public Relations.)]
The Germans showed evidence of real planning. Their public relations
facilities were perfectly geared to their propaganda facilities. When
the Germans wanted to build the British up for a let-down, they withheld
military news favorable to themselves. During the fight for Norway, they
even spread rumors of British successes, knowing that if British morale
went up for a day or two, it would come down all the harder when
authentic bad news came through the War Office. When the Germans wanted
to turn on a war of nerves, their controlled press screamed against the
victim; when they turned it off their press was silent. The Germans thus
had the advantage of not needing to make much distinction between news,
publicity, and propaganda. All three served the same purpose, the
immediate needs of the Reich.
[Illustration: _Figure 15: Radio Leaflet Surrender Form, Anzio, 1944._
Willingness of prisoners to surrender sometimes involves speedy
communication of their names to their families, as in the preceding
illustrations. At other times, prisoners are very unwilling to be
identified and want their faces masked. This leaflet combines radio
program announcements with the standard surrender pass.]
The Germans put on the following types of news propaganda:
(1) Official OKW (_Oberkommando der Wehrmacht_, or _Wehrmacht_ HQ)
communiqués. (These rarely departed from the truth, though they
naturally gave favorable situations in detail and unfavorable ones
scantily.)
(2) Official government releases, marked by considerable dignity,
possessing more political content than the military communiqués.
(3) News of the world, part of it repeated from the British radio,
part plain non-controversial news (for stuffing), and part (the most
important part) news of genuine curiosity value to the listeners but
which, at the same time, had the propaganda effect of damaging belief
in the Allied cause.
(4) Feature items, comparable to feature articles in newspapers, which
tried to concentrate on a single topic or theme.
(5) Recognized commentators, speaking openly and officially.
(6) Pseudonymous commentators, pretending to speak from a viewpoint
different from that of the German Government, but who were announced
as being broadcast over the official German radio system. (Of these
the British traitor William Joyce, since hanged, known as "Lord Haw
Haw," was the most notorious. His colleagues were the American
traitors Fred Kaltenbach and Douglas Chandler. At the end of the war
Chandler was tried in Boston and sentenced to life imprisonment but
Kaltenbach fell into Soviet custody and died.)
(7) Falsified stations, which pretended to have nothing at all to do
with Germany. (The "New British Broadcasting Company" transmitted
defeatist propaganda with a superficial anti-German tone. Others took
a strong Communist line and sought to build up opposition to the
British government within England.)
(8) Falsified quotations on the official German radio. (Sometimes it
was easier to make up an imaginary foreign source, ostensibly quoted
in the German program, rather than to set up a special fake program
for the purpose.)
(9) "Planted" news sources quoted on the German radio. (A great deal
of the German news was culled out of Swedish, Spanish and other papers
which were either secretly German-controlled or which--as in the case
of the United States papers involved--were so sympathetic to Germany
that they voluntarily printed German-inspired news which the Nazis
could then quote from a "neutral" or "enemy" source.)
(10) Open falsification of BBC (British Broadcasting Company, the
official British agency) materials--at which the Germans were not
necessarily caught by their ordinary listeners, but at which BBC
caught them.
(11) Ghost voices and ghost programs, transmitted on legitimate Allied
wave lengths when the Allied transmitters went off the air, or else
interrupting the Allied broadcasts by transmitting simultaneously.
[Illustration: _Figure 16: Invitation to Treason._ Another German
leaflet, also from Anzio, combines the radio surrender-notice form with
a political invitation to Britishers to commit treason. The Germans had
a few British traitors in their "Legion of St. George," and a few
American civilian renegades, but in general this line of appeal was
useless. The last paragraph of the appeal is such naïve trickery that it
probably aroused suspicion in the minds of the men it was supposed to
persuade.]
Of all these, it was soon found that the communiqués and government
releases were the most important, although the bulk of the station time
had to be diversified with other types of program. The Germans and
British both found that radio was important as a starting point for
news. It was more valuable to have the press (as in England) or rumor
(as in Germany) pass along an item than it was to rely on the direct
listeners. Each side sought to make opinion analyses of the enemy; some
of the British studies were clever in technique. The radio propagandists
had to ask themselves _why_ they made propaganda. It is simple to make
mischief, spreading rumors or putting practical jokes into circulation.
Such antics do not necessarily advance a military-political cause.
Sustained psychological warfare required--as both British and German
radio soon found out--a deliberate calculation of the particular enemy
frame of mind to be cultivated over a long period of time. When radio
stations had to broadcast day after day whether anything happened or
not, it became difficult to continue to circulate news without faking it
and losing the confidence of enemy listeners.
On the German side, the German radio had the forced attention of the
entire world. As long as the Germans had the strategic initiative for
field warfare, they were in a position to make news scoops whenever it
suited them. The security policies of the Allies often gave the Germans
a monopoly of news on a given operation. There was never any danger that
the Germans were not listened in on; the danger the Nazi operators had
to worry about was disbelief. Hence the Germans tried to keep a moderate
tone in their news, tried to prepare between crises for the news that
would become sensational during crises.
The Germans soon learned a basic principle of war radio. They learned
not to permit radio to run ahead of their military capacities. At first,
when their spokesmen promised attainment of a given goal by a given
time, and the army failed to live up to the schedule, the British radio
picked up the unfulfilled promise and dangled it before the world as
proof that the Germans were weakening. The Germans thereupon effected
Army-radio liaison so that the radio people could promise only those
things which the army was reasonably sure of delivering. (When Allied
propaganda analysis woke up to this fact, it added one more source of
corroboratory intelligence to be checked. (See page 126.))
The British had their hands full getting news out in the languages of
the occupied countries. It was immensely difficult for them to follow
the politics of the underground. German counterespionage, under the
deadly _Sicherheitsdienst_, made it difficult to keep track of opinion
in the occupied countries. Work against Naziism depended on the temper
of the people; propaganda against collaborators had to distinguish
between outright evil collaborators and those public officials who
stayed on out of a sense of mistaken or necessary duty. The British did
not necessarily announce themselves at any time as anti-Communist, and
collaborated for short-range purposes with Communists all over the
Continent. Mr. Churchill himself shifted his North Balkan political
support from Mikhailovich to Broz-Tito. But it was vitally necessary to
know just how and when to change support from one group to the other.
Since the undergrounds had very few radio transmitters, and none of
these was reliable during most of the war, the British faced the task of
providing radio facilities for all of the occupied countries. The
consequence was to make their radio warfare highly sensitive to
politics; they had to address the right people with the right language
at the right time, on penalty of failure.
[Illustration: _Figure 17: Anti-Radio Leaflet._ Sometimes
ground-distributed leaflets were used in an attempt to counteract enemy
radio propaganda. This leaflet, circulated in France by the Nazis, uses
the form of an Allied leaflet and accuses the Armed SS of wanting such
things as a decent Europe, and end to atrocious killings every
twenty-five years, and a worthy life. Allied broadcasters are identified
as Jews.]
To effect this end, the British set up an agency which never had an
American counterpart, the Political Warfare Executive (known by its
initials, PWE). This agency had representation from the War Office, the
Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the Ministry of Information. The PWE
was the policy-servicing and coordinating agency for all British
external propaganda, and left the execution of its operations to the
Ministry of Information (MOI) and to the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). British radio propaganda maintained a high level of
effectiveness. American officials and propagandists often complained
that the British were running the entire war in their own national
interest. The charge was unjust. The British had facilities for knowing
exactly what they wished to do and when they wished to do it. If the
Americans came along without clear policies or propaganda purposes, it
was natural that the British should take the lead and let the Americans
string along if they wished. Furthermore, the British were usually
scrupulous in yielding to America's primary interest in areas they felt
to be American problems--Japan, China, the Philippines. They were least
cooperative when the OWI tried to spread the ideals of Mr. Henry Wallace
in Burma or to explain the CIO-PAC to the Hindus.
No clear victor emerged from the Anglo-German radio war; the victory of
the United Nations gave the British the last say. In the opinion of
many, the British were one war ahead of the United States. They had
profited by their World War I experience, and by their two years'
operational lead which they had on the Americans. But side-by-side with
the Germans, it is harder to appraise their net achievements. The
British had immense political advantages; the resentment of a conquered
continent worked for them. But they had disadvantages too. The enemy
worked from the starting point of a fanatical and revolutionary
philosophy; the British had the tedious old world to offer. The postwar
interrogations of civilians in Germany showed that an amazingly high
proportion of them had heard BBC broadcasts, and that many of the ideas
and attitudes which the British propagandized were actually transmitted
to the enemy. On the British side, it is almost impossible to find any
surviving traces of the effect of Nazi propaganda. Had the war been
purely a radio war this test might be conclusive. But if psychological
warfare supplements combat, combat certainly supplements propaganda. The
great British and American air raids over Europe unquestionably created
an intense interest in British and American plans and purposes.
It is historically interesting to note that the Germans went on fighting
psychological warfare even after the death of Hitler and the surrender
of the jury-rigged government of Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, which
functioned 6-23 May 1945 at Flensburg under Allied toleration. This
resulted from the inability of the 21st Army Group swiftly to initiate
information control. The Flensburg radio, still under Nazi direction,
emphasized Anglo-American differences with the Soviet Union in every
possible way short of direct appeals. German naval radio also carried on
propaganda for a while, using topics such as the sportsmanship of the
German surrender, the hatred of the German Navy for atrocities committed
by the Nazis, and the usefulness of the phantom government to the
Western Allies.
=Black Propaganda.= Subversive operations formed a major part of the
Nazi pre-belligerent effort. The Germans planted or converted quislings
wherever they could, and when they failed to have time to prearrange
stooges they converted them rapidly after arrival. (A major cause of the
German defeat is to be found in the fantastic political policies
followed in the Ukraine and neighboring Soviet Socialist Republics. In
these areas, despite the Soviet boast that Russia had no fifth
columnists within her borders, the Germans found thousands of helpers.
The Nazis organized a large army (General Vlassov's Russian Army of
Liberation) out of Soviet prisoners, and these troops were usable and
docile. But in the political warfare field the Germans were too
cocksure. They let their men go wild in orgies of cruelty against the
local population; the economic system went entirely to pieces. The
natives then became convinced that the worst possible conditions of
Sovietism were infinitely better than the best that Naziism could
offer.)
These subversive groups were formed by political means. Propaganda aid
was offered to such an extent that it was often difficult to tell how
much of the quisling movement was spontaneously native, and how much
mere cover for a purely German operation.
In the latter phase of the European war, the Russian Communists followed
the German Nazi example of having tame natives ready to take over the
government of occupied areas. In Poland, the so-called Lublin Committee
took over the government from the constitutional Polish
Government-in-exile at London. In Jugoslavia, the Russian-trained
propagandist, Tito, seized the leadership from the recognized Minister
of War, Draja Mikhailovich, after the British and American governments
had shifted their support to him; later Mikhailovich was put to death.
The Russian army brought along to Germany a considerable number of
German Communists. In Czechoslovakia the strength of the constitutional
regime was such as to compel the pro-Russians to allow the prewar
leadership a precarious toehold in the new government. The same cadres
of sympathetic persons who had been useful as propaganda sources for
psychological warfare during the period of hostilities became useful
instruments of domination after hostilities ended. The British and
Americans, with their belief that government should spring from the
liberated and defeated peoples, did not prepare and equip comparable
groups to rival the Communist candidates; only in Italy and Greece did
the friends of the Western Allies stay in power, and then only because
they were the nearest equivalent of _de jure_ authorities. In the
Scandinavian and Low Countries the national leadership reemerged without
prodding or interference by the Western Allies; they passed from the
sphere of psychological warfare (that is, of being someone's cover) to
that of world politics.
Specific black propaganda operations were of considerable value.
However, black propaganda is more difficult to appraise than overt
propaganda. Analytical and historical studies, gauging the results
obtained by Black operations in relation to their cost, are not yet
available. (Certain particular operations are described later in this
book, pages 208 and 237.)
=American Operations: OWI and OSS.= Long after the outbreak of war in
the Far East, and even after the coming of full war in Europe, neither
the civilian nor military portions of the American government possessed
propaganda facilities. This is not as serious as it may sound, for the
United States is lucky in possessing a people well agreed on most
fundamentals. The commercial press, radio, magazine, and book publishing
facilities of the country for the most part expressed a national point
of view without being prodded. (The isolationist issue never brought in
the question of America's basic character.) Before the war, and even
after the government entered the field, private American news and
publishing continued to engage in operations which had the effect if
not the intention of propaganda. OWI at its most vigorous could scarcely
have reached the audience that had been built up by the
_Time-Life-Fortune_ group, not to mention the _Reader's Digest_, both of
which became truly global in coverage during the war years. American
movies already had a world-wide audience. The propaganda turned out
unwittingly by such agencies may not have had the gloss and political
smoothness of Dr. Paul Josef Göbbels best productions, but it had
something no government propaganda had--the possession of a readership
all of which was unmistakably voluntary, obtained by the appeal of
authentic interest and entertainment--and proved by an ability to charm
money out of people's pockets.
The American problem of propaganda was thus not a simple one. Total
psychological warfare was out of reach if we were to remain a free
people. Otherwise the simple-seeming thing to have done would have been
to put a government supervisor in every newspaper, radio station and
magazine in the country, and coordinate the whole bunch of them together
in the national interest. Simple-seeming. Actually, such an attempt
would have been utter madness, touching off a furious political fight
within the country and meeting legal obstacles which would have remained
insurmountable as long as there was a Constitution with courts to
enforce it. The simplest official action which the United States could
take was therefore hedged about by the presence of private competitors
who would watch it enviously, jealous of their established rights and
privileges, and by the operational interference which vigorous private
media would have on public media.
The then Mr. or Colonel, later General, William Donovan had tasted the
delights of political warfare when President Roosevelt sent him to
Belgrade to talk the Serbs into fighting instead of surrendering. He was
successful; the Serbs fought. He came back to the United States with a
practical knowledge of what political warfare could do if qualified
personnel operated on the spot. The outbreak of the Russo-German war
lent urgency to American action in the political-intelligence field as
well as in the propaganda field. On 11 July, 1941 President Roosevelt
issued an order appointing Colonel Donovan as Coordinator of
Information. The agency became known by the initials COI.[27]
The primary mission of COI was the collection of information and its
processing for immediate use. Large numbers of experts were brought into
its Research and Analysis Branch, designed to do for the United States
in weeks what the research facilities of the Germans and Japanese had
done for them over a matter of years. The inflow of material was
tremendous and the gearing of scholarship to the war effort produced
large quantities of political, sociological, geographic, economic and
other monographs, most of them carefully classified SECRET, even when
they were copied out of books in the Library of Congress. However, it
was not the research wing of the COI that entered the broadcasting
field.
Radio work was first done by an agency within COI called FIS--Foreign
Information Service. In the few months before Pearl Harbor the group
became organized in New York under the leadership of Robert Sherwood,
the dramatist, and got a start in supplying the radio companies with
material. The radio scripts were poorly checked; there was chaos in the
matter of policy; little policing was possible, and the output reflected
the enthusiasm of whatever individual happened to be near the
microphone. Colonel Donovan had moved into this work without written and
exclusive authorization from the White House; hence there followed a
lamentable interval of almost two years' internal struggle between
American agencies--a struggle not really settled until the summer of
1943, well into the second year of war. The occasion for struggle arose
from lack of uniform day-to-day propaganda policy and from an unclear
division of authority between the operating agencies. But the work was
done.
Radio operations had to be coordinated with strategy on the one hand and
foreign policy on the other, and we sought to develop methods for doing
this. It is significant that all the major difficulties of American
psychological warfare were administrative and not operational. There was
never any serious trouble about getting the facilities, the writers, the
translators, the telecommunications technicians. What caused trouble
were problems of personality and personal power, resulting chiefly from
the lack of any consensus on the method or organization of propaganda
administration.
Military Intelligence Division had created an extremely secret
psychological warfare office at about the time that the COI was
established; this had broad intelligence and policy functions, but no
operational facilities. It was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Percy Black,
who began auspiciously by putting Dr. Edwin Guthrie in office as his
senior psychological adviser. This ultra-quiet office was called Special
Study Group; it and the COI developed very loose cooperative relations,
consisting chiefly of SSG making suggestions to COI which COI might or
might not use as it saw fit. Meanwhile, the Rockefeller Office was
conducting independent broadcasts to Latin America; the Office of Facts
and Figures was dispensing domestic information; and at the height of
the psychological warfare campaigning, there were at least nine
unrelated agencies in Washington, all directly connected with
psychological warfare, and none actually subject to the control of any
of the others.[28]
[Illustration: _Chart I_
STATE-------WAR---------PRESIDENT--WHITE--OFFICE OF-NAVY--------OFFICE OF
DEPARTMENT DEPARTMENT | +--HOUSE ECONOMIC DEPARTMENT STRATEGIC
| | | | STAFF WARFARE | SERVICES
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| G2 I&E BPR | | |-------++---------+-+----------++
| +---+-----+ | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
OFFICE OF EACH THEATER OFFICE OF----OTHER-----OTHER----INTER-ALLIED
COORDINATOR--------+| |+----WAR CABINET WAR FACILITIES
OF INTER- INFORMATION AGENCIES AGENCIES
AMERICAN--------+ +-----+ | +--+
AFFAIRS | | | |
| | | | |
SEMIOFFICIAL | | | +-----+
PRIVATE UNOFFICIAL COMMERCIAL COMMERCIAL ^ ^
AGENCIES---------AGENCIES RADIO (PRIVATE) | |
PUBLISHERS | |
| |
| |
ANYBODY
<--- WHO FELT
LIKE TRYING
(Source: The author's observations.)]
A year of wrangling produced the solution, after a Joint Psychological
Warfare Committee had been set up under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
had failed to fulfill an effective policy-supervising function. On 13
June, 1942 the President created the Office of War Information. This
agency was given control directly or indirectly over all domestic
propaganda, and over white propaganda abroad, except for the Western
Hemisphere, which remained under the Rockefeller Committee in the State
Department. The FIS was taken from the COI, and the COI took on the new
name of OSS--Office of Strategic Services--under which it retained three
major functions:
(1) continuation of scholastic and informal intelligence;
(2) black propaganda operations (given _explicit_ authority only in
March, 1943);
(3) subversive operations, in collaboration with regular military
authority.
The OWI was placed under Mr. Elmer Davis, a Rhodes scholar and novelist
who had become one of the nation's most popular radio commentators. The
FIS was perpetuated under the control of Mr. Robert Sherwood, who had a
most extraordinary coterie of odd personalities assisting him: Socialist
refugees, advertising men, psychologists, psychoanalysts (of both the
licensed and lay varieties), professional promoters, theatrical types,
German professors, a commercial attaché, young men just out of college,
oil executives, and popular authors (novelists, slick writers, Pulitzer
winners, pulp writers, humorists, poets and a professional pro-Japanese
writer, fresh off the Imperial Japanese Embassy payroll).
The War Department agency, under the Military Intelligence Service of
G-2, had been renamed Psychological Warfare Branch and had executed
within the G-2 structure the equivalent of a knight's move in chess,
ending up at a new place on the TO with no observable change in function
or authority; it had passed under the authority of Colonel (later
Brigadier General) Oscar Solbert, a West Pointer with wide international
and business experience; he had been out of the Army as a top official
with Eastman Kodak, after a cosmopolitan army career which sent him all
over Europe and gave him one tour of duty as a White House aide. With
the establishment of OWI, Colonel Solbert's office fissiparated like an
amoeba; the civilian half of Psychological Warfare Branch, with a few
officers, went over to OWI to be a brain-trust for the foreign broadcast
experts, who failed to welcome this accession of talent; the military
half remained as an MIS agency until 31 December, 1943, when OWI
abolished its half and MIS cooperated by wiping out the other, leaving
the War Department in the middle of a war with no official psychological
warfare agency whatever, merely some liaison officers. Psychological
warfare became the responsibility of designated individual officers in
OPD--(the Operations Division of the General Staff), an outfit
celebrated for conscientious overwork, as well as in MIS and the War
Department got along very nicely. Meanwhile OWI and OSS fought one of
the many battles of Washington, each seeking control of foreign
propaganda. The D.C. and Manhattan newspapers ran columns on this fight,
along with news of the fighting in Russia, Libya, and the Pacific. For
one glorious moment of OSS, it seemed that the President had signed over
all foreign propaganda functions conducted outside the United States to
OSS, cutting the OWI out of everything except its New York and San
Francisco transmitters; the OWI was stricken with gloom and collective
indigestion. The next day, the mistake was rectified, and OWI
triumphantly planned raids on the jurisdiction of OSS. Meanwhile, the
following things were happening:
Highly classified plans for psychological warfare were being drafted for
both the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff. These were discussed at
various meetings and then classified a little higher, whereupon they
were locked up, lest the propaganda writers and broadcasters see them
and break security on them by obeying and applying them.
Broadcasts--thousands of words in dozens of languages--were transmitted
to everyone on earth. They were written by persons who had little if any
contact with Federal policy, and none with the military establishment,
except for formal security. The plans at the top bore no observable
relation to the operations at the bottom.
[Illustration: _Chart II_
PRE-O.W.I. ORGANIZATION O.W.I. ORGANIZATION
+------------+ +------------+
| | | |
| PRESIDENT | | PRESIDENT |
| | | |
+----+-------+ +--------+---+
| |
| +------------+ |
| | OFFICE OF |\ |
+--+ FACTS AND | |
| | FIGURES | \ |
| +------------+ |
| \ |
| +------------+ +-------------+ |
| | OFFICE OF | \_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ >| OFFICE OF +--+
+--+ GOVERNMENT |- - - - - - - - - - - - - ->| WAR | |
| | REPORTS | _ _ _ _ _ >| INFORMATION ||
| | ACTIVITIES | / CLEARANCE } | x
| +------------+ | |
| / | x
| +-------------+ | |
| | DIVISION OF | / | x
| | INFORMATION | | |
+--+ OF OFFICE | / | x
| |FOR EMERGENCY| | |
| | MANAGEMENT | / | x
| +-+---------+-+ | |
| | | / +-------------+ | x
| | +-----+-----+ | CONSTITUENT +--+ |
| | | GENERAL |_/ | AGENCIES OF | | x
| | |INFORMATION| | O.E.M. |x-+x--+
| | | ACTIVITIES| +--+----------+ | x
| | +-----------+ | | |
| | | | x
| | +-----------+ +-----+-------+ | |
| | |INFORMATION| | INFORMATION | | x
| +---+ SERVICES +- - - - - - - - - ->| DIVISIONS | | |
| | FOR O.E.M.| +-------------+ | x
| | AGENCIES | | |
| +-----------+ | x
| | |
| +--------------+ +--------------+ | x
| |COORDINATOR OF| |COORDINATOR OF| | |
+--+INTER-AMERICAN| |INTER-AMERICAN+--+ x
| | AFFAIRS | | AFFAIRS | | |
| +-----------+--+ +--+-----------+ | x
| | | | |
| +-----+------+ +-----+------+ | x
| | INFORMATION| | INFORMATION| | |
| | ACTIVITIES | | ACTIVITIES | | x
| +------------+ +------------+ | |
| | x
| +--------------+ +--------------+ | |
+--+ DEPARTMENTS | | DEPARTMENTS +--+ x
| AND AGENCIES | | AND AGENCIES +x--x--+
+-----------+--+ +---+----------+
| |
+-----+------+ +------+-----+
| INFORMATION| | INFORMATION|
| DIVISIONS | | DIVISIONS |
+------------+ +------------+
Does not include the functions of voluntary censorship of mass media and
of censorship of international communications between civilians which
were performed by the Office of Censorship after December 1941.
(Source: Bureau of the Budget: _The United States at War_, Washington,
1947, p. 225.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 18: Anti-Exhibit Leaflet._ In the China Theater,
we heard that the Japanese had organized a big exhibit in Canton,
showing the starved and apathetic population some pieces of shot-down
planes as demonstration of defeat of American air power. We made up this
leaflet quickly, and dropped it on the city while the exhibit was still
in progress. (China, 1944.)]
When Washington agencies wanted to find out what the broadcasts really
were saying, the actual working offices at New York and San Francisco,
their feelings hurt at not having been consulted by the Joint Chiefs,
refused (on _their_ security ground) to let anyone see a word of what
they were sending out. This baffled other Washington agencies a great
deal. (The author, who was then detailed from the War Department to OWI,
outflanked this move in one instance by getting a report on a San
Francisco Japanese Broadcast from the Navy Department. It had been
monitored by an American submarine out in the Pacific.)
Large overseas offices were set up at various foreign locations. Some of
these went down to work quickly, efficiently, smoothly, and did a
first-class job of presenting wartime America to foreign peoples;
others, with the frailties of jerry-built government agencies, lapsed
into inefficiency, wild goose chases, or internal quarrels.
Lastly, the poor British officials continued to wander around
Washington, looking for their American opposite numbers in the
propaganda field--looking for one and always finding a dozen.
That was in 1942-1943.
By 1945, this had all become transformed into a large, well run, well
integrated organization. Three weeks before Japan fell, the OWI finally
prepared an official index of its propaganda "Directives"--that, is, of
the official statement of what kinds of propaganda to make, what kinds
not to make. The overseas units had been associated with the
metropolitan short-wave. Personnel had been disciplined. Techniques had
become more precise. Under the command of Lieutenant Commander Alexander
Leighton, an M.D. who was also a psychiatrist and anthropologist,
careful techniques were devised for the analysis of Japanese and German
morale. Comparable though dissimilar work on Europe had been done by a
staff associated with Harold Lasswell. The propaganda expert Leonard W.
Doob had been appointed controlling and certifying officer for every
single order of importance.
The military relationship had been clarified. The War Department, acting
through G-2, had reestablished a psychological warfare office under the
new name of Propaganda Branch, under the successive commands of
Lieutenant Colonel John B. Stanley, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Buttles,
and Colonel Dana W. Johnston. The new branch undertook no operations
whatever, but connected War Department with OWI and OSS for policy and
liaison, and represented one-half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (an
appropriate naval officer from a comparable office representing the
other half) at the weekly policy meetings of OWI. Military needs in
psychological warfare had been settled by regarding the Theaters in this
respect as autonomous, and leaving to the respective Theater Commanders
the definition of their relationships with OWI and OSS, and their use of
each. OSS and OWI had passed the stage of rival growth, and consulted
one another enough to prevent operational interference. Each had
sufficient military or naval supervision to prevent interference with
cryptographic security, communication and deception operations.
=The Lessons.= The major job of psychological warfare passed to the
Theaters. In some theaters this was kept by the commander directly under
his own immediate supervision, and OWI was used simply as a propaganda
service of supply. In others, OWI was an almost independent agent. In
some places, OWI worked with OSS as in the European Theater, in others
independently, as in the China-Burma-India Theater. In one, it worked
completely without OSS (SWPA), since General MacArthur did not let OSS
into his Theater at all. (OSS got in the general area anyhow; with Navy
permission, it turned up blithely, highly nautical on Saipan.) These
Theater establishments were the ones that set up local standard-wave
programs which the enemy could hear in volume. They provided the
loudspeaker units which were taken right into combat. They serviced the
ground and air combat echelons with leaflets as needed. They moved along
behind the advances, opening up information booths and explaining to
liberated natives why each did not get the four freedoms, the three
meals a day, and the new pair of shoes he thought he had been promised
by the American radio.
These military establishments are better described under operations,
since it was their functioning which defined--down to the limit of
present-day experience--American military doctrine concerning the
conduct of psychological warfare in theaters of war. In concluding the
historical summary of psychological warfare, it is interesting to look
at three major points which emerge plainly from the experience of World
War II--points which either were not discovered in World War I, or else
failed to make an impact on the minds of the responsible officials and
informed citizens.
The first of these is simple. It became almost a litany with Colonel
Oscar Solbert, when he sought to indoctrinate civilian geniuses with
military proprieties: _Psychological warfare is a function of command._
If command chooses to exercise it, it will succeed. If command neglects
it, or if it is operated independently of military command, it will
either interfere with the conduct of war proper, or it will be wasted.
It took us two bitter years to learn this lesson. Political warfare
cannot be waged without direct access to the White House and the
Department of State; field operations cannot be conducted unless they
meet at some common staff point with field command. No one can succeed
in improvising alleged policy and presenting that policy as United
States policy, and get away with it. Sooner or later actual policy
catches up with him. In the field, no civilian can write leaflets for
air or ground distribution unless he has some idea of when, where, why,
and how they will be used.
The second lesson of World War II, set forth by Colonel Solbert and Dr.
Edwin Guthrie was simply this: _Atrocity propaganda begets atrocity._
Everyone knows that war is cruel, sad, shameful to the soul of man;
everyone knows that it hurts, degrades, injures the human body; everyone
knows that it is not pleasant to undergo, nor even to look at. If any
particular war is worth fighting, it is worth fighting for some reason
other than the crazily obvious one--the fact that it is already war. It
is a poor statesman or general who cannot give his troops and people an
inspiring statement of their own side in war. Atrocity propaganda reacts
against war in general; meanwhile, it goads the enemy into committing
more atrocities. The anti-atrocity rule was not lifted in World War II
(save for one or two notable exceptions, such as President Roosevelt's
delayed announcement of the Japanese having executed the Doolittle
flyers) except for the specific purpose of preventing some atrocity that
seemed about to occur in a known situation from actually occurring.
Atrocity propaganda heats up the imagination of troops, makes them more
liable to nervous or psychoneurotic strain. It increases the chances of
one's own side committing atrocities in revenge for the ones alleged or
reported. Furthermore, atrocity propaganda scares the enemy out of
surrendering, and gives the enemy command an easier responsibility in
persuading their troops to fight with last-ditch desperation.
The third lesson was equally simple: _America does not normally produce
psychological warfare personnel in peacetime, and if such personnel are
to be needed again, they will have to be trained especially and in
advance._
=Qualifications for Psychological Warfare.= Effective psychological
warfare requires the combination of four skills in a single individual:
(1) An effective working knowledge of U.S. government administration
and policy, so that the purposes and plans of the government may be
correctly interpreted.
(2) An effective knowledge of correct military and naval procedure and
of staff operations, together with enough understanding of the arts of
warfare, whether naval or military, to adjust propaganda utterance to
military situations and to practical propaganda operations in forms
which will dovetail.
(3) Professional knowledge of the media of information, or of at
least one of them (book-publishing, magazines, newspapers, radio,
advertising in its various branches), or of some closely related field
(practical political canvassing, visual or adult education, etc.).
(4) Intimate, professional-level understanding of a given area (Italy,
Japan, New Guinea, Kwangtung, Algeria), based on first-hand
acquaintance, knowledge of the language, traditions, history,
practical politics, and customs.
On top of these, there may be a possible fifth skill to make the
individual perfect:
(5) Professional scientific understanding of psychology, anthropology,
sociology, history, political science, or a comparable field.
The man who steps up and says that he meets all five of these
qualifications is a liar, a genius, or both.
There is no perfect psychological warrior.
However--and the qualification is important--each psychological warfare
team represents a composite of these skills. Some members have two or
three to start with, the others virtually none. But all of the
personnel, except for men with peculiarly specialized jobs (ordnance
experts; cryptographers; translators; calligraphers), end up with a
professionalism that blends these together. They may not meet
professional standards as
officials-officers-journalists-Japanologists-psychoanalysts when they
return from psychological warfare operations against the Japanese, but
they have met men who are one or more of these, and have picked up the
rudiments of each skill--enough, at least, to suspect what they do not
know.
The advertising man or newspaperman (skill 3) who goes into
psychological warfare must learn something of the enemy, neutral or
friendly groups whom he addresses (skill 4), something of United States
civilian government procedures (skill 1), something of military or naval
organization and operations (skill 2) and ideally something of
psychology or sociology or economics, depending on the topic of his work
(skill 5).
[Illustration: _Figure 19: Propaganda Against Propaganda._ As an
occasional stunt, propaganda is directed against propaganda. Hitler did
so in his book, _Mein Kampf_. The leaflet, shown in the original and in
facsimile, was used by the Allies on the Germans in the West. A German
leaflet, addressed to their own troops ("defensive propaganda"), was
picked up, X'd out, copied, and refuted.]
The psychological soldier deals with enemy troops in their _civilian_
capacity; he addresses them as _men_, he appeals to their non-military
characteristics in most instances, and he does not follow sportsmanship,
as men did in other wars, by helping the enemy command maintain
discipline. Furthermore, the soldier works with writers, illustrators,
translators, script-writers, announcers and others whose skills are
primarily civilian, and he takes his policy cues from the civilian
authority at the top of the war effort. An infantry colonel does not
have to worry about what the Secretary of State is saying, if the
colonel is on the field of battle. But an officer detailed to
psychological warfare must remain attuned to civilian life even if he
has seen no one out of khaki for two months straight.
Personnel was probably the biggest field problem of the entire war.
Should psychological warfare be needed again, it will take careful
culling of personnel to obtain the necessary staff and operators. The
continuation of psychological warfare techniques, in part at least, by
both civilian and military agencies in time of peace will, it may be
hoped, provide the U.S. with a cadre for the next time. Very little of
the living experience of the Creel Committee was carried over into OWI.
Walter Lippmann, who had worked with both Creel and Blankenhorn, was not
a participant. Carl Crow, the advertising man and writer from Shanghai,
worked on China for the Creel Committee in World War I and on China
again for OWI in World War II. He was exceptional, and took no major
part in setting up indoctrination. One of the OWI executives in 1946,
shortly after his return to civilian life, read James Mock and Cedric
Larson's account of the Creel Committee, _Words That Won the War_
(Princeton, 1939); his interest was avid. When he finished, he said,
"Good Lord, those people made the same mistakes we made!"
He had forgotten that the Creel Committee record had been available all
the way through.
=Effects of American Operations.= The net effects of the work of
civilian-operated propaganda are hard to appraise because the radio
broadcasts and leaflets for civilians were designed to have a long-range
effect on the enemy. Statistical computations come to nothing. It would
appear likely that some parts of our psychological warfare actually
lengthened the war and made it more difficult to win. The "unconditional
surrender" formula, the publicity given to proposals for the
pastoralization of Germany, the emphasis on Japanese savagery with its
implied threat of counter-savagery were not overlooked by the enemy
authorities. It is certain that other parts of our psychological warfare
speeded up the end of the war, saved lives, increased the war effort
which was enormous when measured in terms of the expenditure of
manpower, matériel and time involved.
[Illustration: _Figure 20: Re-Use of Enemy Propaganda._ Leaflets
sometimes develop an enemy pictorial or slogan theme and use it
effectively against the original disseminators. Employing the colors and
insignia of the U.S. Air Force, this Nazi leaflet for Frenchmen makes no
attempt to minimize American bombing to the French. Instead, it uses the
Allied heading, "The hour of liberation will ring...." Then it adds the
grim point, "Make your will, make your will."]
One operation alone probably repaid the entire cost of OWI throughout
the war. The Japanese offered to surrender, but with conditions. We
responded, rejecting the conditions. The Japanese government pondered
its reply, but while it pondered, B-29s carried leaflets to all parts of
Japan, giving the text of the Japanese official offer to surrender. This
act alone would have made it almost impossibly difficult for the
Japanese government to whip its people back into frenzy for suicidal
prolongation of war. The Japanese texts were checked between Washington
and Hawaii by radiophotograph and cryptotelephone; the plates were put
into the presses at Saipan; the big planes took off, leaflets properly
loaded in the right kind of leaflet bombs. It took Americans three and a
half years to reach that point, but we reached it. Nowhere else in
history can there be found an instance of so many people being given so
decisive a message, all at the same time, at the very dead-point between
war and peace.
The Japanese had done their best against us, but their best was not
enough. We got in the last word, and made sure it was the last.
=Soviet Experience.= Soviet psychological warfare used Communist party
facilities during World War II, turning them on and off as needed. But
Soviet psychological war efforts were not characterized by blind
reliance on past experience. They showed a very real inventiveness, and
the political policies behind them were both far-sighted and
far-reaching.
The Soviet government was the one government in the world which could be
even more totalitarian than Nazi Germany. Many Americans may consider
this a moral disadvantage, but in psychological warfare it has very
heavy compensating advantages. The Soviet people were propaganda-conscious
to an intense degree, but the authorities took no chances. Revolutionary
Communist themes were brilliantly intermingled with patriotic Russian
items. Army officers were given extraordinary privileges. Everyone was
given epaulettes. The Communist revolutionary song, the famous
_Internationale_, was discarded in favor of a new Soviet hymn. History
was rewritten. The Czars were honored again. The Church was asked to
pray for victory. The Soviet officials were able to tailor their social
system to fit the propaganda. They did so, even to the name of the war.
They call it the Great Patriotic War. Outsiders may murmur, "What war
is not?" But the Russian people liked it, and the regime used
traditionalism and nationalism to cinch Communism in the Soviet Union.
In their combat propaganda the Russians were equally ruthless and
realistic. They appealed to the memory of Frederick the Great of
Prussia, they reminded the Germans of Bismarck's warning not to commit
their forces in the East, they appealed to the German Junker caste
against the unprofessional Nazi scum who were ruining the German army,
and they used every propaganda trick that had ever been heard of. They
turned prisoners into a real military asset by employing them in
propaganda, and talked a whole staff of Nazi generals into the Free
Germany movement.
Only in radio did the Russians retain some of their old revolutionary
fire with its irritating qualities for non-Communist peoples. This was
explicable in terms of the audience. The Russians could keep their
domestic propaganda half-secret by imposing a censorship ban on those
parts of it, or those comments on it, which they did not wish known to
Communists abroad. The censorship was a permanent institution, in war
and out, and therefore did not impose special difficulty. They could
keep their front-line propaganda quiet, since they did not allow their
Allies to send military observers up front, and the Nazis could be
counted on not to tell the world about effective anti-Nazi propaganda.
But their radio propaganda had to be audible to everyone. Hence the
radio propaganda was the least ingenious in using reactionary themes
effectively. The Russians and Germans both used black radio, but since
each policed the home audience rigorously against the other, it is
possible that the efforts cancelled out.
=Japanese Developments.= The Japanese invented little in psychological
warfare. They made excellent and judicious use of news to the American
audience. They actually got much more official Japanese news into the
American press during the war years than they had succeeded in placing
during peacetime, when they had offices in American cities. They did so
by maintaining the regular Domei news service in English-language Morse
wireless for the American press, ready-edited for the newspaper offices.
They put by-lines on the stories and it is said they sometimes even told
the American newspapers: "Please hold until nine AM Eastern War Time.
Thank You. Domei." In dealing with Asiatic audiences, special Japanese
_butai_ did a great deal of black propaganda along with subversive
operations, but they displayed little initiative as to the use of basic
techniques. Their chief merits were industry, patience, and the delivery
of a first-class news service.
=Chinese Uses.= The Chinese Communist forces broke all records for
certain specialized aspects of combat propaganda. Japanese prisoners
were given cordial welcome, better food than they had in the Army, the
company of maidens, rich gifts, and political indoctrination about the
freedom of Japan. These soldiers then went with the Chinese Communists
back to the front lines and talked Japanese sentries out of their
strong-points. The Yenan forces went to great pains with this
propaganda, and even "elected" a Japanese prisoner to the City Council
of Yenan. The author talked with the Political Director of the Chinese
Communist authority at Yenan, and with some of the Japanese in Communist
China. There was evidence of a real understanding of the problems of the
Japanese common soldier, and of real sympathy with him, which the
Japanese enlisted men were quick to feel. The Communists went so far as
to throw gift packages into the Japanese lines--not booby-traps, just
nice gifts with the polite request for a reply. They learned the names
of Japanese field telephone operators, and then spliced into the line
and argued politics with them in a rough and jolly way. When they had
enough prisoners they kept the most promising converts for political
training. They fed the ordinary prisoners well, entertained them
royally, and sent them back to their own lines with the suggestion that
the Chinese Communists would appreciate it if their good Japanese
brethren would in combat please shoot their rifles in the air, thus
making sure of not hitting Communists while at the same time avoiding
unnecessary trouble with the Japanese officers.
Under "Chiang the Chairman," the Chinese national government waged a
dignified, humane kind of psychological warfare against Japan. Few
people remember an odd chapter out of modern history, the Chinese
bombardment of Nagasaki, although it is possible that Asiatic historians
of the future will make a substantial contrast between the Chinese who
struck the first blow at that city and the Americans who struck the
last. Shortly after the outbreak of the full quasi-war between China and
Japan in 1937, the Generalissimo ordered his bombers to attack Japan.
American-built Chinese bombers appeared over Kyushu, the first invaders
to show up since the shoguns repelled Kublai Khan 656 years earlier. But
instead of dropping bombs, they dropped leaflets denouncing aggression
and inferentially pointing out that while the Japanese were uncivilized
enough to bomb their fellow-Asiatics, the Chinese were too civilized to
undertake reprisals in kind.
The Generalissimo's troops also had fraternization and front-line
propaganda, but not to the extent to which the Chinese Communists did.
The Generalissimo himself followed a very liberal (not in the Leftist
but the true sense) political line toward Japan. He uttered no threat
of vengeance. He was the first leader of a great nation to say that the
Japanese Emperor question was to be settled by letting the Japanese
themselves choose their own form of government after the war was all
over. He had Japanese on his political staffs--democratic persons whom
his officials encouraged--and regular Japanese broadcasts were kept up
throughout the war on the Chungking radio.
PART TWO
ANALYSIS, INTELLIGENCE, AND ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION
CHAPTER 7
Propaganda Analysis
Opinion analysis pertains to what people think; propaganda analysis
deals with what somebody is trying to make them think. Each form of
analysis is a new and flourishing field in civilian social research; the
bibliographies of Smith, Lasswell and Casey, and the current reviews in
the _Public Opinion Quarterly_[29] demonstrate the existence of a large
and growing literature on the subject. Each year, new textbooks in the
field or current revisions of old ones can be counted on to bring
scholastic and scientific findings up to date.
Technical writings on visual education, religious conversion, labor
organization, practical politics, revolutionary agitation, and on
commercial advertising have frequent bearing on propaganda analysis.
Propaganda cannot be analyzed in a logical vacuum. Every step in the
operation is intensely practical. There is nothing timeless about it,
other than that common sense which is based on the nature of man. The
ancient Chinese three-character classic, from which several billion
Chinese have tried to learn to read, says:
_Jên chih ch'u
Hsing pên shan;
Hsing hsiang chin,
Hsi hsiang yüan._
Freely translated, this means, "When people are born, they all start
_good_, but even though they all start out about the same, you ought to
see them after they have had time to become different from one another
by picking up habits here and there!"[30] The common nature of man may
be at the basis of all propaganda and politics, but incentives to action
are found in the stimuli of varied everyday environments. Certain very
elementary appeals can be made _almost_ without reference to the
personal everyday background ("cultural-historical milieu") of the
person addressed. Yet in a matter as simple as staying alive or not
staying alive--in which it might be supposed that all human beings would
have the same basic response--the difference between Japanese and
Americans was found to be basic when it came to surrender. To Japanese
soldiers, the verbal distinction between _surrender_ and _cease
honorable resistance_ was as important as the difference between life
and death. The Japanese would not survive at the cost of their honor,
but if their honor were satisfied, they willingly gave up.
Propaganda is directed to the subtle niceties of thought by which people
maintain their personal orientation in an unstable interpersonal world.
Propaganda must use the language of the mother, the schoolteacher, the
lover, the bully, the policeman, the actor, the ecclesiastic, the buddy,
the newspaperman, all of them in turn. And propaganda analysis, in
weighing and evaluating propaganda, must be even more discriminating in
determining whether the propaganda is apt to hit its mark or not.
=Monitoring.= The first requisite of propaganda analysis is materials to
be analyzed. In time of peace, it is usually enough to send a
subscription to the newspaper, magazine, or pamphlet series, and to buy
the books as they come out. Poster propaganda is more difficult to
obtain, and frequently requires on-the-spot contacts. Dr. David Rowe
brought back from Occupied China, in the early days of the Sino-Japanese
war, a spectacularly well done and interesting series of Japanese and
quisling posters. They were not hard to come by, once he was there, but
he had to go about twenty thousand miles to get them and return.
In obtaining printed propaganda, better results will be achieved if the
same sources are followed consistently over a period of time than if one
triumphant raid is carried through. The choice may look like this (_see
Chart III_). If, in this instance the propaganda analysis is to be a
one-man enterprise in a small country or area in time of peace, the one
man can collect all the different kinds of samples in March and can then
spend several months trying to see how they add up. By the time his
analysis is ready, it will be badly dated and will necessarily be less
interesting to the recipients than would a report which was
up-to-the-week. Furthermore, unless the analyst knows the area very well
indeed, he will risk mistaking transient issues for basic ones. If the
Old Agrarians happen to be accused of Right Wing Deviationism during the
week of 3-10 March, the analyst may falsely conclude that the Old
Agrarian issue is tempestuous or profound.
Unless he has a large staff, faces a special crisis or pursues a
scholarly purpose, the analyst does well to pick the alternative
illustrated in the vertical column. He should pick his media carefully,
accepting the advice of people who know the area intimately. In an
opinion-controlled area, it is wise to take both a direct government
propaganda paper and an opposition of semi-independent paper, if such
exist. Local papers are often better guides to domestic propaganda than
are big metropolitan papers. The propagandists of the country know that
foreigners may watch the big papers, and they will reserve their most
vicious, naïve, or bigoted appeals for the local press.
[Illustration: _Chart III._
JANUARY I
FEBRUARY H I
MARCH B C D E G H I J K L
APRIL A B C D E F G H I J K L
MAY A B C D E F G H I J K L
JUNE B C D E G H I J K L
JULY H I J
AUGUST I
Key to Chart:
A POSTERS
B ADVERTISEMENTS
C CITY DAILY PAPERS
D LOCAL DAILY PAPERS
E WEEKLY PAPERS
F MAGAZINES
G SPECIAL JOURNALS
H GOVERNMENT RELEASES
I MOTION PICTURE ANNOUNCEMENTS
J REPORTS OF SPEECHES
K RADIO PROGRAMS
L OTHER MEDIA
]
Along with the local press of one or two selected localities, the
analyst should select several government personages and should follow
every word of theirs he can find. The basic principle is for the analyst
himself to determine the range of materials to be covered by deciding
his own work-load in advance. This in turn depends on the time he has
available for the task, his mastery of the language, his interest in the
projects, probable interruptions due to semiofficial elbow-bending, and
other personal factors.
The rule remains: _Consistent analysis of the same output with reference
to basic topics over a sustained period will inevitably reveal the
propaganda intention of the source._ (It must be pointed out that the
expert analyst still is needed to select topics and to confirm
interpretations.) To make a first guess as to whether the intended
effect is being achieved or not, the analyst uses himself as a
propaganda guinea pig. What does he think of the issues? What might he
have thought otherwise? What would he think if he were a little less
intelligent, a little more uncritical, than he is? And to complete the
analysis, the analyst must go out to the audience that receives the
materials and find out what effect the propaganda has had by asking them
about it (see interrogation, page 145).
=Printed Materials.= The most readily available sources of propaganda
are not printed ones. Especially in time of hostilities, it may not be
easy to subscribe to enemy materials by the process of sending an
international postal money order. Delays involved in transmitting the
printed materials may make them useless for spot analysis, and valuable
only for long-range basic studies of morale. The propagandist who is
being analyzed may oblige by reading large numbers of editorials on the
radio. (During the last war, officers and citizens occasionally exploded
with alarm when Radio Tokyo quoted a _Life_ or New York _Times_
editorial several hours after it appeared. They naturally supposed that
the Japanese had a secret short-wave transmitter running from New York
City direct to Tokyo, and overlooked the fact that the OWI may have
quoted long excerpts in slow Morse code on its trans-Pacific beam to
China. The Japanese had picked it up, used subquotes, and beamed it
back.)
Printed matter goes on the air in any major news operation. It is only a
matter of time before telephoto facilities develop in line with the
experimental New York _Times_ edition printed in San Francisco during
the United Nations organizational conference. This was sent, all in one
piece, by wirephoto to Frisco and reprinted. The delay between the two
editions was merely a matter of minutes. In the future, wireless
telephoto may reduce this to seconds, so that all belligerents can
simply tune in on each other's major newspapers.
=Radio.= For the present radio remains the biggest source of propaganda
intake. Radio is convenient. It can be picked up illegitimately without
too much fear of detection. For the cost per person reached, it is
certainly the cheapest way of getting material to millions of people
promptly. It lends itself to monitoring, and even standard (long)
wavelengths can be picked up from surprisingly great distances.
The only defense against enemy use of radio monitoring or broadcasting
consists of the application of wired radio--which means plugging all the
radio sets in on the telephone circuit, putting nothing on the air, and
defying the enemy to eavesdrop. If the radio sets are then policed, and
are made incapable of receiving wireless material, that particular
audience is effectively cut off from the enemy. (When the Red Army, with
its acute propaganda-conscious security, moved into many Eastern
European cities, the first thing it did was to round up all the radios
which the Nazis had overlooked. This prevented the liberated peoples
from being enslaved by the "filthy reactionary lies" of the American and
British governments, and made sure that the peoples would stay
liberated under influence of their local Soviet-controlled newspapers.)
Wired radio is expensive. Radio suppression is difficult; the successful
concealers of radio receivers become two-legged newspapers and go around
town spreading all the hot dope which the authorities are trying to
suppress. Scarcity puts a premium on such news; rumor then becomes
unmanageable. Except for strangely drastic situations, it is probable
that the great powers will continue to tolerate radio reception even
though it may mean letting foreign subversive propaganda slip in now and
then.
It is therefore likely that radio broadcasts will be available for
monitoring for the pre-belligerent stages of the next war, should war
come again in our time, and that radio may last through a great part or
all of the duration of the war. Factors which cannot now be foreseen,
such as radio control of weapons, will affect this.
Radio propaganda analysis follows the same considerations as those which
govern choice of materials for analyzing printed matter. It is a surer
method to follow one or two programs on a station than to make wide
random selections. A standard-wave transmitter to the home audience
comes closer to revealing the domestic scene than would a global
rebroadcast of ostensibly identical material. Radio has a further
advantage over print. Few nations print out separate propaganda for each
foreign-language area, while almost every large and medium-sized country
has international facilities for broadcast. Since the programs are
beamed to different language groups, the senders automatically make up
propaganda lines for each audience.[31]
Attentive monitoring can provide material for distinguishing the various
lines which any given nation is sending out to its friends, neighbors,
or rivals. Frequently the differences between these lines make good
counterpropaganda. If you hear the Germans telling the Danes that all
Nordics are supermen and all non-Nordics scum, while telling the
Japanese that the National Socialist idea of the world transcends
pluto-democratic race prejudice, put the two quotations together and
send them back to the Danes and the Japanese both.
Radio, unlike print, cannot be held for the analyst's convenience. It is
physically unhandy to try to file actual recordings of enemy broadcasts
for preservation and reference. When the analysis center is large, as it
would be if near the headquarters of a government or a theater of war,
the difficulties of monitoring involve problems of stenographic and
language help. The monitors themselves can then be stenographers, taking
verbatim dictation. They write down the enemy broadcast word-for-word,
either right off the air or from records. The editor then selects the
most important parts of the day's intake for mimeographic or other
circulation. Important material can be put in a daily radio summary of
enemy propaganda for the area monitored. The rest of it can be sent
along by mail, put in files and classified (lest the enemy government
find out what its own propagandists really were saying), preserved on
the recording, or destroyed.
During World War II these basic verbatim reports played a very important
part. The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service did the job for the
United States, operating through the war years under the Federal
Communications Commission. It has since been shifted from FCC to the War
Department, and from the War Department to the Central Intelligence
Group. Its materials sometimes are unclassified, although during most of
the war they were marked _restricted_, and they are not available to the
public except through microfilm copies of the Library of Congress file.
These FBIS daily reports skimmed the cream off the enemy news
broadcasts, and included editorial or feature material which might have
intelligence or policy interest.
=Monitoring by a Single Individual.= Where monitoring must be done by a
single individual or a very small staff, it is desirable to find a basic
news broadcast and to take it down verbatim where possible. This gives
the analyst the chance of a second look at his materials and keeps him
from having to make snap judgments of what is important and what is not,
right during the course of the broadcast. Selection of a basic news
program, followed by reference to speeches, plays, lectures and other
programs that indicate the over-all tone of the day's output, will make
it possible for one person to do an adequate monitoring job on about
one-eighth of his full-time work per station. This does not leave him
time to do much fancy analysis, or to prepare graphs, but he can pass
along the general psychological warfare situation so far as that
particular beam on that particular transmitter is concerned.
The most likely situation for the isolated consul, businessman, officer,
missionary, or amateur is one in which he can get a certain amount of
stenographic help in taking down the broadcast material. The radio for
monitoring varies in accordance with general reception conditions.
Practically all the U. S. Army Signal Corps receivers will perform
satisfactorily for local monitoring; so too will ordinary private sets,
including the larger portables. An automobile radio can often be driven
away from interference and from a hilltop or the edge of a lake can pick
up a standard-wave station that cannot be distinguished on a much larger
house set in the city. For transoceanic or world-wide reception, a
short-wave receiver is of course necessary.
It is unwise to pick a sample that involves too much rapid speech, such
as a foreign soap opera. The best reception is almost always the Morse
code transmission of news or the slow dictation-speed reading of news
from one central station to outlying news offices or substations.
Selection of a program which usually comes in, arrangement for a
verbatim copy of the program, daily checking of the news under standard
analysis procedures--this gives a very fair cross-section.
One man sitting at Hankow could find out just what both the
Generalissimo and the Chinese Communists were trying to tell the
French-understanding and the Dutch-understanding listeners in the Far
East. Another with pipe and slippers in Brussels could keep tab on the
basic Russian lines to the Spanish-speaking world. Such monitoring
obviously comes in handy for newspapers, commercial firms, governments,
military establishments, speculators, and research institutions.
=Identification: Propaganda vs. Truth.= The point will invariably arise:
"This tells me how to listen to a foreign radio. Okay, I'll get the
news, the lectures, the plays--all the rest of it. But so what? How am I
going to know what's the truth and what's propaganda? How can I tell 'em
apart? Tell me that!"
The answer is simple: "If you agree with it, it's truth. If you don't
agree, it's propaganda. Pretend that it is all propaganda. See what
happens on your analysis reports."
Propaganda was defined (at the beginning of this book) as follows:
_Propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of communication
designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a
specific purpose._ Taking a lesson from Communist theory, we can say
that any form of mass-communication is operated for propaganda purposes
_if no other motive for running it is evident_. Human beings talk; they
like to talk. Much private talk is idle--but only an imbecile would talk
over a radio network just for the pleasure of hearing himself talking.
Propaganda is presentation for a purpose; it is the _purpose_ that makes
it propaganda, and not the truthfulness or untruthfulness of it.
The collected news of any modern country contains more truth each day
than any one man can could read in a lifetime. The reporters, editors,
writers, announcers who collect truth not only collect it; they select
it. They have to. Why do they select it? That is the propaganda
question. If they select it to "affect the minds and emotions of a given
group for a specific purpose," it is propaganda. If they report that a
little girl fell out of bed and broke her neck--with the intent of
frightening parents among their listeners into following the Safe Homes
Week Campaign--that is propaganda. But if they report it because it is
the only death in the community, and because they might as well fill up
the program, it is not propaganda. If you put the statement on the air,
"An American negro workman in Greensboro, N. C., got eighty cents for a
hard day's work last week," that can be presented and interpreted as:
(a.) simple news, if there is something more to the story, about what
the man said, or how he spent the eighty cents on corn meal to feed
his pet tarantula;
(b.) anti-capitalist propaganda, if you show that eighty cents is
mighty little money for American business to pay its workers;
(c.) pro-capitalist propaganda, if you show that the eighty cents will
buy more than two weeks' wages of a worker in the city of Riga, when
it comes to consumer goods;
(d.) anti-White propaganda, if you show the man got only eighty cents
because he was a Negro.
And so on, through a further variety of interpretations. The facts--man,
happening, amount, place, time--are _true_ in each case. They could be
sworn to by the whole membership of an interfaith conference. But the
interpretation placed on them--who communicates these facts to whom?
why? when?--makes them into propaganda.
And interpretation can no more be true or untrue than a Ford car can be
vanilla or strawberry in flavor. The questions of truth and of
interpretation are unrelated categories. The essence of motive is that
it is ultimately private and impenetrable, and interpretation commonly
involves imputation of motive. You can dislike an interpretation; you
can kill a man for believing it; you can propagandize him out of
believing it; but you cannot sit down and _prove_ that it is untrue.
Facts and logic are useful in propaganda, but they cannot be elevated to
the point where you can say, "Is it propaganda or is it true?" Almost
all good propaganda--no matter what kind--is true. It uses truth
selectively.
There is no secret formula which, once applied, provides an unfailing
test for propaganda. It is not possible for a person unfamiliar with the
part of the world affected, with the topic discussed, with the
interested parties, and with the immediate politics involved to put his
finger on an item and say, "This Rightist charge is propaganda," and
then to turn and say, "But that Rightist statement is not propaganda. It
is fact." Untruthful statements are made at times for other than
propaganda purposes; truthful statements may be propaganda or not. The
analyst must himself be an interested party. He must determine ahead of
time what he will regard as propaganda, and what not. And he must do so
by delimiting the field of his analysis before he starts. No one person
or staff of people could ever trace all the motives behind a single
statement; even to attempt that, he would have to be a novelist of the
school of Marcel Proust. (And he would end up feeling like James Joyce,
Gertrude Stein, or Franz Kafka.)
[Illustration: _Figure 21: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Slogans._
Home-front propaganda was sometimes repeated in an inappropriate place,
in order to achieve an effect contrary to that originally intended.
These Nazi leaflets, dropped on American detachments in Europe, used
modifications of the "It's Your Job!" posters and advertisements used by
the U.S. for home-front purposes.]
[Illustration: _Figure 22: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Technique._ When
the content of enemy propaganda cannot be attacked, the media themselves
can sometimes be criticized. This German leaflet attempted utilization
of potential suspicions of Hollywood. In so doing, it used three
techniques: built up from a news item, suitably faked; raised suspicion
of the movies which the Germans knew our Army showed for morale
purposes; and spread racial hate.]
The analyst looks in the direction in which the message is going. He
defines the _propaganda presentation_ of the people who get the message
in terms of _all the public information to which the persons addressed
have access_. If he does not know the purpose of the message, he may
divine it from the character of the audience and from the effect he
presumes the message may reasonably be expected to have upon the
audience. If he does not know the audience, he can at least follow the
physical transit of the message. In what language does it move? Whence?
Whither? When?
[Illustration: _Figure 23: Direct Reply leaflet._ World War II
propagandists often succumbed to the temptation of using the enemy
materials and sending them right back. Sarcasm can be effective if the
reader identifies himself with the speaker and not with the addressee.
In this Nazi leaflet from the Anzio beachhead, the Germans probably
antagonized more Americans than they befriended. A simple statement of
the news would have been more effective. (Signal Corps photo.)]
=The Stasm Formula.= The formula given earlier (page 44) was found
useful in the spot analysis of German broadcasts, both open and
clandestine, and Japanese materials, during the last months of the war.
The formula reads:
=S=ource (including Media)
=T=ime
=A=udience
=S=ubject
=M=ission
The neologism, _Stasm_, may serve a mnemonic purpose.
The formula works best in the treatment of monitored materials of which
the source is known. First point to note is the character of the source.
There are several choices on this: the true source (who really got it
out?) and the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also, the
first-use source (who used it the first time?) and the second-use source
(who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). Take the statement:
"Harry said to me, he said, 'I never told anybody that Al's wife was a
retired strip-teaser.' Mind you, I don't pretend to believe Harry, but
that's what he said, all right." What are the possible true sources for
the statement of fact or libel concerning Al's unnamed wife? What are
the alternatives on ostensible sources? First use? Second use? The
common sense needed to analyze this statement is of the same order as
the process involved in analyzing the statement: "Reliable sources in
Paris state that the visit of the American labor delegation has produced
sensational repercussions in Moscow, and that Moscow, upon the basis of
the American attitude, is determined to press for unification of the
entire German labor movement."
[Illustration: _Figure 24: Black Use of Enemy Subversive Materials._
This leaflet, printed in brilliant red, white and blue, was found in the
printshop of a Nazi military propaganda company overtaken in Lorraine.
It apparently dates from 1939-40, when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germans
were at peace, with the result that Communists throughout the world
opposed the "imperialist war." The leaflet may or may not be duplicated
from a French Communist original; the important thing is its reuse by
the Germans. This constitutes black propaganda in one of its purest
forms.]
It is soon evident that the mere attribution of source is a job of high
magnitude. A systematic breakdown of the STASM formula produces the
following analysis outline, applicable to any single propaganda item,
civil or military, in war or peace, spoken, visual, or printed. There
are many other possible arrangements; the one given below is not
represented as having official sanction or mysterious powers of its own.
It has simply worked well for the author.
[Illustration: _Figure 25-A: Black Use of Enemy Information Materials._
The Nazis used this leaflet on the Western Front. The real source was a
German propaganda unit; the ostensible source was U.S. Army facilities.
Note that the leaflet has nothing to do with stopping VD among troops,
which is what the originals sought; instead, its effect is to depress
American troop morale.]
[Illustration: _Figure 25-B: Block Use of Enemy Information Materials._
Compare this with the preceding leaflet. The real source in both cases
is enemy. The ostensible source in both cases is the U.S. Army. The
ostensible mission in both cases is the prevention of VD. But the
mission is entirely different in the second leaflet. The first was
addressed to troops--Americans--designed to make them feel bad. The
second was dropped on civilians--Filipinos--whom the Japanese thus tried
to stir up against the Americans. (Leyte Campaign. Courtesy of Mr.
Robert Kleiman.)]
=Complete Breakdown of a Single Propaganda Item.=
a. _Source_
(1) True source ("Where does it really come from?")
(a) Release channel ("How did it come out?") if different from true
source without concealing true source
(b) Person or institution in whose name material originates
(c) Transmitting channel ("Who got it to us?"), person or
institution effecting known transmission--omitting, of course,
analyst's own procurement facilities
(2) Ostensible source ("Where does it pretend to come from?")
(a) Release channel ("Who is supposed to be passing it along?")
(3) First-use and second-use source (first use, "Who is said to have
used this first?"; second use, "Who pretends to be quoting someone
else?")
(a) Connection between second-use source and first-use source,
usually in the form of attributed or unacknowledged quotation; more
rarely, plagiarism
(b) Modification between use by first-use and second-use sources,
when both are known
(i) Deletions
(ii) Changes in text
(iii) Enclosure within editorial matter of transmitter
(iv) Falsification which appears deliberate
(v) Effects of translation from one language to another
b. _Time_
(1) Time of events or utterance to which subject-matter refers
(2) Time of transmission (publishing, broadcasting, etc.)
(3) Timing of repetitions
(4) Reasons, if any are evident, for peculiarities of timing
c. _Audience_
(1) Intended direct audience ("in English to North America"; "a paper
for New York restaurant operators")
(2) Intended indirect audience (program beamed "in English to North
America" but actually reaching Hong Kong and Singapore by deliberate
plan of the sender; "a paper for New York restaurant operators" being
faked and sent to Southeast Europe in fact)
(3) Unintended audience (a Guadalcanal native studying _Esquire_; your
aunt reading the _Infantry Journal_; a Chinese reading American
wartime speeches against the "yellow devils" of Japan)
(4) Ostensibly unintended direct audience (such as an appeal to
strikers in very abusive-sounding language, sent to businessmen to
build up opinion _against_ the strikers, or Hitler's black use of the
forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion)
d. _Subject_ ("What does it say?")
(1) Content listed under any convenient heading as though it were
_straight news or intelligence_
(2) Content epitomized as demonstrating _new propaganda technique_
(such as, "_Now_ they're trying to get us out of Tientsin by appeals
to our isolationists!")
(3) Content which may be useful in _counterpropaganda_ (such as, "They
said that the Greeks are our witless puppets, so let's pass that along
to the Greeks")
(4) Significance of content for _intelligence analysis_ (examples:
When the Japanese boasted about their large fish catch, it was an
indication their fishing fleet was short of gasoline again, and that
the fish catch was actually small; when the Nazis accused the Jews of
sedition, it meant that rations were short and that the Nazi
government was going to appease the populace by denying the Jews their
scanty rations by way of contrast)
e. _Mission_
(1) Nation, group, or person attacked
(2) Relation to previous items with the same or related missions
(3) Particular psychological approach used in this instance (such as
wedge-driving between groups, or between people and leaders, or
between armed services; or demoralization of audience in general; or
decrease of listeners' faith in the news)
(4) Known or probable connection with originator's propaganda plan or
strategy
[Illustration: _Figure 26: Religious Black._ Perhaps because of their
contact with Americans who happened to be missionaries, the Japanese
overemphasized the effect of religion on Americans. They attempted crude
appeals on religious themes. It is doubtful that leaflets such as this
had any practical effect. (Philippines, 1944-45.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 27: Malingerer's Black._ One of the favored
targets of black propaganda is the malingerer. Suspicion of successful
malingering inevitably hurts the morale of a unit. Even if the enemy's
instructions are not followed, the troops may suspect genuine
psychoneurotics of having faked their troubles. Almost all participants
in World War II issued such instructions; the Allied samples are not
available for publication. This is a Japanese leaflet from the
Philippines, 1944-45.]
Such an outline would be useful only if it were applied in common-sense
terms, without turning each item into an elaborate project and thus
losing the woods in the trees. In most cases, it would suffice to state
the item briefly for reference and study in the order of the entries.
When poorly trained help is available, it is of course necessary to
print or mimeograph a form to be used.
It is as vain to prescribe a propaganda analysis procedure without
knowing the user as to prescribe an office filing system while knowing
neither the nature of the office nor the kind of files kept. In time of
war, subordinate commanders in operational areas will need to keep files
at a minimum, while rear echelon or national facilities may be able to
keep files of enormous range and thoroughness. In the recording of a
large number of propaganda items, however, the material becomes
hopelessly unmanageable unless there is some standardized system for
organizing it. Mere alphabetization leads inevitably to the question,
alphabetization of what?, and the analysis function can be exercised
more readily in terms of the _sources_ of propaganda than in terms of
its incidental topics.
=Identification of Enemy Plans and Situations.= Propaganda has its
inevitable mirror image which gradually becomes plain to the analyst. If
the analyst is careful, using shrewd judgment in appraising specific
missions, he will gradually see forming in his files a record of the
immediate and long-range aims of the propaganda originators. This
becomes possible only when enough material is available, over a period
of time to make up a complete list of the probable enemy propaganda
objectives for the period covered. The intent of propaganda is always a
result observable as action, however remote the action may be from the
date of operation. Much of the propaganda of the Communist Party in the
United States is directed to the inculcation of correct _scientific_
thinking (see pages 70-74) which will be of decisive use only when the
remote Day of Revolution arrives. Few of the Communist leaders, even in
private conference, would venture to predict the exact year of the Day
of Revolution; some may not even expect to see it; but they believe that
if the propaganda is effective, the "proletariat" will be "militant" and
its leaders will be conscious of their "historic role." From the
propaganda of today, the action may be anticipated, no matter how
distant it may seem; once the action is determined, the relation of
other propaganda items to that action can be traced.
In war, the action sought is something militarily harmful to the
enemy--strikes against his production, panic in his population,
complaint from his consumers, mistrust from his newspaper readers and
radio listeners (resulting in eventual subversive or negative action on
their part), surrender of his troops, disunity of his political
leadership to be expressed in deadlocks, and so on. In pre-belligerent
or peacetime propaganda, the action sought is against the war-making
capacity of the audience--against war itself, if the propagandist feels
that his own population is in no immediate danger of being infected by
defeatism.
=Estimating the Enemy's Propaganda Situation.= In addition to presenting
a picture of the enemy goals, and of the psychological means he
considers to be useful in reaching those goals, propaganda analysis is
also valuable in presenting the enemy's own propaganda situation. He
avoids certain topics because he must. He talks about others because
circumstances force him to do so.
For example, if the Germans stop talking about rations for Jews (in the
World War II situation), it may be that their own people, filled with
anti-Semitic poison, have been protesting the issuance of rations.
Alternatively, it may mean that the Nazi authorities have just cancelled
Jewish rations and are letting the Jews starve or are murdering them
overtly. If the Germans follow this up with an item on the poor barley
crop, it may be that they are preparing the sentimental and humane
listeners in their own audience for the announcement of Jewish
starvation. If they run Paris-quisling accounts of Jewish hoarding, and
of Jews concealing large quantities of food, it means that they are
almost certain to be under pressure to explain their Jewish policies and
that, therefore, two factors face the German propagandist: first, he
must get ready to announce the attack on the Jews; second, he thinks
that the Jewish situation is going to arouse anti-Nazi sentiment even in
Germany (if these are German-language programs) and he is therefore
compelled to defend something because public opinion is believed by him
to be against it. Out of a silence (no further news on rations), a
domestic item (poor barley crop), and a foreign item (Paris Jews
allegedly hoarding), it is possible to reconstruct a whole situation.
The reconstruction may fall, if other interpretations arise, but it
provides a starting guess.
The situation of enemy morale is often reportable through propaganda
analysis long before it can be described by eyewitnesses. Omissions of
attacks on the Church may indicate that the religious problem has become
touchy. Failure to attack Communism may mean that the government is
seeking a diplomatic deal with a Communist state. Mention of children
may refer to the fact that parents complain of cold schools, bad food,
absent doctors. Good morale is shown by a quiet tone in propaganda; bad
morale is shown by extremes, whether of silence or of great vehemence.
It is useful to know what the enemy propagandist thinks he is doing,
what he considers the obstacles to his propaganda. Such considerations
inevitably get to be embodied in the propaganda itself. A tone of
extreme defiance, poor international cooperation, war bluster and so on
may often spring from the desire to divert a hungry or discontented home
public from its real worries at home to imaginary worries abroad.
=Propanal as a Source of Military Intelligence.= Propaganda analysis, or
_propanal_ for short, can serve as a very useful adjunct to military
intelligence even if when not directly connected with counterpropaganda
operations. In the first place, the enemy must give news, comment,
opinion, entertainment in order to get attention. The incidental content
and make-up of this propaganda is itself useful study material. If his
ink is bad, his paper poor, his language incorrect, it shows shortages
of supply and personnel. If he boasts about his victories, he usually
gives his version of place names and aids cartographic reporting. In
mentioning the names of heroes, he may supply order-of-battle. In making
a good story out of his economic situation, he fills in missing
statistics; even if the figures are falsified, they must be falsified
for a purpose and can be used in conjunction with others in making up an
estimate.
Nothing is as smart as a human being except another human being. What
any one man can try to achieve in the way of deceit, another man can try
to figure out. The bulk of propaganda, short of peremptory tactical
leaflets, is filled with information about the enemy's personnel, his
opinion of himself, his opinion of you, his state of mind, his order of
battle, his economic system, and all the rest. The Japanese government,
throughout the war, kept the United States informed _in English_ of the
changes of ministers and other high officials in the Japanese
government. This gave us good political background. There was no use
their trying to hide it over a long period of time, and presumably _Joho
Kyoku_ (the Imperial Japanese Board of Information) figured that the
help it gave the Americans, in filling out their political intelligence
files for them, would be more than counterbalanced by the fact that such
news would make American newspapermen, officials, officers and others
read the propaganda in order to get the facts.
Over and above the direct contribution to straight news or intelligence,
enemy propaganda in times of war or crisis affords a clue to enemy
strategy. If the coordination is not present the propaganda may do the
enemy himself harm. But the moment coordination is present, and one end
of the coordinate is handed over to us, we can start figuring what the
coordination is for. Sometimes propaganda is sacrificed for weightier
considerations of security; German propaganda gave little advance
warning of a war with the U.S.S.R., and Soviet propaganda gave none. In
other instances, the coordination does give the show away.
In 1941-1942, the Japanese radio began to show an unwholesome interest
in Christmas Island in its broadcasts to Japanese at home and abroad.
Christmas Island, below Sumatra, was pointed out as a really important
place, and tremendously significant in naval strategy. Subsequently the
Japanese armed forces went to and took Christmas Island. The home public
was delighted that this vital spot had been secured. Of course,
Christmas Island was not as important as the Japanese radio said it was,
but the significant thing was that the radio talked about it _ahead of
time_. For what little it was worth the Japanese had given us warning.
Enemy realization of an impending defeat may be preceded by
disparagement of the importance of the area in which the defeat is to
take place, or by description to the home audience of the enormous
strength which enemy forces face at that particular place. Enemy
action--when the enemy is security-minded--may be anticipated from his
complete silence on something which he would normally talk about. It
must have seemed odd that the Americans stopped talking about nuclear
fission altogether, when prewar years had seen a certain number of news
items on the subject in the New York press each month.
A nation getting ready to strike _à la_ Pearl Harbor may prepare by
alleging American aggression. A nation preparing to break the peace
frequently gets out peace propaganda of the most blatant sort, trying to
make sure that its own audience (as well as the world) will believe the
real responsibility to lie in the victim whom he attacks. Hitler
protested his love of Norwegian neutrality; then he hit, claiming that
he was protecting it from the British. No hard-and-fast rules can be
made up for all wars or all belligerents. The Germans behaved according
to one pattern; the Japanese, another.
For example, the German High Command sought to avoid bragging about
anything they could not actually accomplish. They often struck blows
without warning but they never said they would strike a blow when they
knew or believed that they could not do it. The British and Americans
made up a timetable of this, and were able to guess how fast the Germans
thought they were going to advance in Russia. Knowing this, the British
and Americans planned their propaganda to counter the German boasts;
they tried to pin the Germans down to objectives they knew the Germans
would not take, in order to demonstrate to the peoples of Europe that
Nazi Germany had finally bitten off more than it could chew.
Later, the Allies remembered this German habit when the Nazis on the
radio began talking about their own secret weapons. When the British
bombed the V-1 ramps on the French coast, the German radio stopped that
talk. The British therefore had additional grounds for supposing that
the ramps they had bombed were a part of the secret weapon the Germans
bragged about. The British further knew that the Germans would try to
counter the psychological effect of the announcement of Allied D-Day
with some pretty vivid news of their own. When the German radio began
mentioning secret weapons again, the British suspected that the Germans
had gotten around the damage done to the ramps. D-Day came; the Germans,
in one single broadcast designed to impress the Japanese and Chinese,
announced that the secret German weapon was about to be turned loose,
and that more such weapons would follow. One day later the first V-1 hit
London.
[Illustration: _Chart IV._
ENEMY MENTION OF SELECTED TOPICS, FIRST HALF-YEAR, NUMBER OF MENTIONED
TOPICS PER 10-DAY PERIOD, WITH REFERENCE TO NAVAL WARFARE, FOOD SUPPLY
AND SECRET WEAPONS]
In order to follow this type of propaganda, a quantitative chart is
needed. A sample imaginary chart for a three-month period is given in
chart IV. This chart reveals at a glance the fact that the enemy kept
mentioning food supply and naval warfare until the middle of March,
because he presumably thought his blockade runners would bring in more
food. After March, food drops in emphasis but naval warfare continues to
be stressed. In May, following enemy admission to himself of the
hopeless naval situation, naval warfare drops almost altogether out of
sight. Foodstuffs continue to be modestly mentioned as the enemy
explained away minor difficulties, but the use of secret weapons
propaganda shows that the enemy propagandists had to have something
sensational to keep up the courage of the home audience. Whether the
enemy really had a secret weapon or not, depends on the national
character, past records, and so forth. The Germans and Japanese both
said they had world-shaking secret weapons. The Germans delivered; the
Japanese did not.
Such quantity records will also be useful in showing the enemy's
propaganda statistically with reference to number of words uttered on
each of his major subjects, number of inches of newspaper columns for
specified kinds of news, and so on. Percentage charts show which major
shifts his propaganda performs. Audience charts (that is, how much time
he spends addressing workers, pacifists, mothers, minorities, etc.) show
which groups he is really trying to reach. Emphasis charts for selected
topics on which your own propaganda has been active show how much you
force him to talk about something which he may not wish to discuss.
Such statistical use is possible only if usable records are maintained.
A basic item-by-item file of all important or new items, combined with a
worksheet of the amount of radio time or printed space the enemy put
into use for a stated period, will provide the materials needed for
propanal. Propanal is indispensable to psychological warfare. It sifts
ordinary intelligence out from propaganda in one process, processing
straight intelligence ready for the intelligence people to use, yet
providing analysis for psychological warfare purposes.
For peacetime purposes, it is to be remembered that though enemies may
hide their scientists, their launching ramps, or their rockets, they
cannot hide the occasion for war, nor their own readiness measures. No
government can afford to seem the plain unqualified aggressor.
_Propanal_ may prove to be one of the soundest war-forecasting systems
available to us in a period of ultra-destructive weapons. Psychological
mobilization may be disguised: it cannot be concealed.
CHAPTER 8
Propaganda Intelligence
The psychological warfare operator can usually count on two basic
interests of his listener. In the field he can be sure that the enemy
troops are interested in themselves. In the enemy homeland he can be
sure that the civilians are interested in _their_ enemy--himself. He has
therefore a certain leeway in which he can be sure of doing no harm, and
may accomplish good, if he confines his propaganda to simple, factual
and plainly honest statements on these subjects. Pompousness, intricacy
and bad taste will recoil against him; it is unwise to employ these even
when the situation is well under control. In a developing situation the
propagandist can remain safe by confining himself to simple statements
as to how strong his country's armed forces are, how realistic and
effective their leadership. Elementary information giving the favorable
aspects of his economic, strategic and diplomatic situation may also
prove valuable initial propaganda.
This interest can be counted on throughout the war. The enemy is always
news. The wise enemy realizes this and keeps himself in the news,
trusting that in the wider understanding of himself, his politics and
culture there is the opening for a more favorable peace in the event of
defeat, or for a more docile submission in the event of his own victory.
Only unimportant enemies fail to become news. (Few Americans, for
example, realize that we were at war with Bulgaria in World War II. Had
the Bulgars developed sensational weapons, there would have been a
sudden upswing of interest in them. People would have realized that
Bulgaria, like Hungary and long-lost Avaria, was once a fierce Asiatic
state grafted onto the European system; the fabulous power of the Old
Bulgarian Empire would have become known, and the names of Krum, Symeon
and the Czar Samuel added to our calendar of hate. But Bulgaria never
did enough against the United States to count as an enemy, and even
succeeded, by diplomatic ineptitude, in getting into a state of war with
all the Axis Powers and all the United Nations simultaneously; Bulgaria
escaped the fame which goes with hostility. Contrast this with Japan:
thousands of Americans have learned Japanese; Japanese national
character is known to us; war has done in a five-year span what
education could not have accomplished in a generation.) The wise
propagandist can, when in doubt, play good music on the air, or he
can--with equal prudence--give the enemy his own elementary-school
history and language texts. These do no harm, and may achieve
something.
[Illustration: _Figure 28: Nostalgic Black._ Soldiers in all wars have
gotten homesick. Propaganda appeals to homesickness in many ways. One of
the simplest is the device shown in this German black leaflet, which
shows the husband turning off the alarm clock while the wife wakes up.
The printed message on the reverse makes out a discouraging case for the
soldier's opportunity to return home, pointing out that the GI in
Europe, even after victory, will face "that nasty jungle war ... in the
Far East." No identification of the leaflet is given.]
[Illustration: _Figure 29: Nostalgic White, Misfire._ Figure 30 was
carefully adapted to Japanese customs. The mere fact that the Americans
knew enough about Japan to celebrate a homey Japanese holiday was
probably enough to make the Japanese reader examine the leaflet
carefully. Here is a combined nostalgic and surrender leaflet showing
how surrender leads the Japanese soldier back to his wife and children.
The drawing looks American rather than Japanese, and it is not likely
that a genuine Japanese could have been made homesick by use of this
leaflet.]
[Illustration: _Figure 30: Nostalgic White._ On March 5 of every year
the Japanese celebrate the colorful custom of Boys' Day. Kites in the
form of carp are flown over the cities and countryside and millions of
families set out to give their little sons an excursion or some other
treat. (It is characteristic of the Japanese that there is no Girls'
Day.) This leaflet, from Psychological Warfare Branch, USAFPA, was
designed for dropping on May 5. It ends with the appeal, "You must guard
the strength of the new Japan, your treasure, your children." Thus it
combines homesickness, patriotism, and pre-surrender indoctrination.]
=News as Intelligence.= Harmlessness is, however, a poor ideal for men
at war; the propagandist who keeps out of mischief is doing only half
his job. To make his message take effect he must convey to the enemy
those kinds of information which tend to disrupt enemy unity, discount
enemy expectation of success, lower the enemy will to resist. He cannot
do so by means of recorded symphonies or tourist lectures, no matter how
well done. He must turn to the first weapon of propaganda, the news.
The official propagandist is not a newspaperman. Since he speaks for an
army or a government, his utterance is _officially responsible_. He must
be as timely as the peacetime press, but must at the same time be as
cautious as a government press agent. He is torn between two
responsibilities: his responsibility to the job of propaganda, which
requires him to get interesting information and get it out to the enemy
quickly; and his responsibility to the official policies of his own
government, which requires him to release nothing unconfirmed, nothing
that could do harm, or that might embarrass or hurt the government. (A
sort of institutional schizophrenia is common to all propaganda
offices.)
The sources of news are various. Classified incoming operational reports
of the Army and Navy contain material of high interest to the enemy.
There are obvious reasons for denying access to such information to the
propaganda people. Propaganda men might think of their audience first
and security second. If they do not know the secret information, but are
advised by military consultants who do, security will be better
maintained and the propagandist will not labor under the handicap of a
double standard of information--what they know, and what they dare to
tell.
In technically advanced countries, the regular commercial facilities of
press and radio continue to do a normal news job, and usually do better
work than the drafted amateurs in the government. (What intelligence
agency in Washington could compile a weekly report as comprehensive,
well edited and coldly planned as _Time_ magazine?[32] The author often
yearned to paraphrase _Time_, rearranging it and classifying it TOP
SECRET, in order to astound his associates with the inside dope to which
he had access.) The nature of news is not affected by its
classification, and the distinction between news produced on the Federal
payroll and news produced off it often consists of the superior
professionalism of the latter.
The intelligence that goes into the making of propaganda must compete
for attention with the home newspaper of the enemy. It must therefore be
up-to-date, well put, authentic. There is no more space in propaganda
for the lie, farce, hoax, or joke than there is room for it in a
first-class newspaper. Even if exaggerations or nonsense appear in the
commercial press of his own country, the propagandist must realize that
he is Honorary G-2 to the enemy--a G-2 whose function consists of
transmitting news _the ultimate effect of which should be bad_ but which
should go forth with each separate item newsworthy and palatable. (A
little trick of the human mind helps all propagandists in this regard.
Most people have a streak of irresponsibility in them, which makes bad
news much more interesting than good. There is a yearning for bad news
and a genuine willingness to pass it along. Bad news increases the
tension upon the individual and tickles his sense of the importance of
things; good news relieves the tension, and to that extent has the
effect of a let-down.)
The palatability of news is not concerned so much with its content as
with its trustworthiness to the enemy, its seeming to deal with straight
fact, its non-editorialized presentation. (One of the reasons why Soviet
Communist propaganda, after all these years, is still relatively
unsuccessful, lies in the incapacity of the Communists to get out a
newspaper with news in it. They put their editorial slant in all their
news articles. "Man bites dog" would not make the front page in Russia
unless the dog were Stalinist and the man reactionary.)
[Illustration: _Figure 31: Oestrous Black._ Young human beings,
especially young males, are apt to give considerable attention to sex.
In areas of military operations, they are removed from the stimuli of
secondary sex references which are (in America) an accepted part of
everyone's daily life: bathing beauty photos, magazine covers,
semi-nudes in advertisements, etc. Our enemies tried to use the
resulting pin-up craze for propaganda purposes, hoping that a vain
arousal of oestrum would diminish morale. This choice Japanese item is
from the Philippines. (The best collection of these is kept in a locked
file--for experts only--at the Library of Congress.)]
The Japanese who obediently hated the Americans when it was their duty
to do so nevertheless could not help looking at maps that showed where
the Americans actually were. Nazis who despised us and everything we
stood for nevertheless studied the photographs of our new light bombers.
The appeal of credible fact is universal; propaganda does not consist of
doctoring the fact with moralistic blather, but of selecting that fact
which is correct, interesting, and bad for the enemy to know.[33]
On the friendly side of the battle lines, the procurement of our own
news is a budgetary matter. The propaganda office can subscribe to the
news tickers, newspapers, telegraph services, and so on. How much is a
matter of administrative housekeeping. In the field, the communications
officer can frequently steal news from the news agencies of his own
country or allied countries by the process of picking it out of the air.
It would be highly unpatriotic of the news agency to send him a bill in
the zone of operations, and he can classify his record copies of his
material RESTRICTED so that the owners of the material would have no
legitimate business acquiring copies that could later be taken into
court to support a claim. (Americans would not do this, of course; the
reference is to Byzantines.)
[Illustration: _Figure 32: Oestrous Grey._ This and the succeeding
illustration show a series of four leaflets which the Nazis used against
American troops in Europe. Anti-morale in intent, they rely on the
illustrations to get attention and then develop their malicious,
salacious anti-Semitic story. The series illustrates the strength and
weakness of Nazi propaganda.]
[Illustration: _Figure 33: Oestrous Grey, Continued._ Concluding the
series begun in the preceding illustrations, these Nazi leaflets tried
to lower American morale by combining oestrum, resentment,
discouragement and inter-American hatred. The Dr. Mordecai Ezekiel
mentioned in No. 2 is a real person, a splendid American and
conscientious official. The Nazis used his name because it was so
plainly Jewish, hoping that the ignorance of the American troops would
permit their lies to spread.]
=The Need for Timeliness.= Some white propaganda and all black
propaganda needs to be written so as to fit in with what the enemy is
reading, listening to, or talking about in his home country. The use of
antiquated slang, an old old joke, reference to a famous man as living
when he died some time ago, lack of understanding of the new wartime
conditions under which the listener lives and worries--such things sour
a radio program quickly. In radio, the propagandist must be living in
the same time as his listeners. Since the propagandist cannot shuttle
between the enemy country and his own radio office (unless he is a
braver and more elusive man than governments ever call for); he must try
to get the up-to-the-minute touch by other means. Without it he is lost.
He will be talking about something that happened a long time ago, not
the situation which he is trying to affect.
This need may be called _timeliness_.
It can be served by obtaining all the most recent enemy publications
that may be available, by listening attentively to enemy prisoners and
captured civilians, and by carefully analyzing the enemy's current
broadcasts to his own people. The Nazis made the unnecessary mistake of
assuming that isolationism used the same old language after Pearl
Harbor. They were right in assuming that there was considerable
anti-internationalist and anti-Roosevelt sentiment left in the United
States, but they were hopelessly wrong in using the isolationist
language of mid-1941 as late as mid-1942. Pearl Harbor had dated all
that and the isolationist-interventionist argument had shifted to other
ground. When the Nazis went on using the old language, they were as
conspicuous as last year's hat at a women's club. Instead of making
friends and influencing people, they made themselves sound ignorant and
look silly. They lacked the element of timeliness. They could have
gotten it by procuring representative American publications in Lisbon
and studying them.
Propaganda is like a newspaper; it has to be timeless or brand-new. In
between, it has no value.
[Illustration: _Figure 34: Obscene Black._ One of the wildest adventures
of World War II concerns this now rare "Chinese Federal Reserve Bank"
one-dollar bill. The bank was a Japanese puppet outfit in Peiping. The
Japanese had banknotes engraved by Chinese artists, and only after the
new pro-Japanese banknotes had been issued all over the city did they
notice what the "ancient scholar" was doing with his hands. The engraver
had disappeared and the Chinese enjoyed a rare, morale-stimulating
laugh. Propaganda gestures such as this--spontaneous, saucy,
silly--achieve effects which planned operations rarely attain.]
=Opinion Analysis.= In a favorable intelligence situation, espionage can
succeed in running a Gallup poll along the enemy's Main Street. When
this is done, the active propaganda operator has some very definite
issues at hand on which he can begin work. When it is not possible to
send the cloak-and-dagger boys walking up and down the Boulevard of the
Martyrs of the Eleventh of July, propanal, properly handled, can produce
almost the same result. The opinion of the enemy can be figured out in
terms of what enemy propaganda is trying to do.
To be useful, opinion analysis must be systematic. For a while the
author had the interesting job of interviewing all the latest arrivals
from Tokyo at a certain headquarters. The travelers would usually be
pumped up with a sense of their own smartness in having evaded the
Japanese and arrived at Allied territory. You could almost hear them
thinking, "Oh, boy, if Gendarmerie Chief Bakayama could only see me
now!" They were ready, in Army parlance, to spill their guts. The only
item on which most of them maintained one-man security was the question,
"Why, chum, did you yourself go to Tokyo in the first place?" Outside of
that, they were eager to talk. (Some of them had frightfully good
reasons to be eager; the adverb is literal.) With such sources of
information, the author thought that he could find out in short order
what the Japanese were thinking.
He found out, all right. He found out every single time. The refugee
engineer said the Japanese were so depressed that there was a bull
market in butcher knives. The absconding dairyman said the Japanese
were ready to die with gloom. The eloping wife said she never saw happy
Japanese any more. The military school deserter said the Japanese lay
awake all night every night listening for American air raids. The
reformed puppet said the Japanese had just gone to pieces. Then each of
them grinned (the interviews were individual, of course), and expected
to be patted on the head for bringing such good news.
[Illustration: _Figure 35: Informational Sheet._ This British leaflet
combines a message for Arabs with instructions for British pilots forced
down in the desert. The propaganda content is closely associated with
the practical mission of the leaflet.]
Their comments were worthless. What the enemy thinks _in general_ is
worth nothing unless your troops are already in his suburbs. What an
informant thinks the enemy thinks is worth even less. What do you,
reader, think right now? What do you think you think? See? the question
is nonsensical. To work, it has to be specific: What do you think about
the price of new suits? What do you think about Senator O'May and
Congressman MacNaples? Do you think that we will ever have to fight
Laputa? Are you satisfied with your present rate of pay? Why?
What a person thinks--his opinion--is workable in relation to what he
does. In practical life his opinion takes effect only when it is part of
the opinion of a group. Some groups are formed by the common opinion and
have nothing else in common: at a spiritualist meeting you may see the
banker sitting next to his own charwoman. Most groups are groups because
of things which the people _are_ (Negroes, descendants of Francis Bacon,
the hard-of-hearing); or things they _do_ (electrical workers, lawyers,
farmer, stamp collectors), or things they _have_ (factory owners,
nothing but wages, apartment houses) in common. The community of
something practical makes the group have a community of opinion which
arises from the problems they think they face with respect to their
common interests. Such groups are not only opinion groups, they are
interest groups. It is these groups that do things _as groups_. It is
these groups that propaganda tries to stir up, move, set against each
other, and use in any handy way. (Few individuals belong to just one
group at a time; the groups are almost illimitable in number.)
The propagandist should not get the idea that just because a group
exists it is a potential source of weakness or cleavage. Workers are not
always against employers, nor the aged against the young, nor women
against men, nor shippers against railwaymen. In a well run society,
groups have interest only for limited purposes. Railwaymen are not
permanently hostile to truckers, shippers, fliers, canal operators. At
the moment they may be maddest of all at the insurance companies because
of some quarrel about insurance premiums and risks.
The poor propagandist tries to butt in on every fight, even when there
is none. Often his propaganda is received the way an intervenor is
received in most family quarrels, with the bland question, "_What_
fight? We ain't mad." Sound propaganda picks only those group issues
which are acute enough to stand a little help from outside. If outside
help would be a kiss-of-death to the group that is helped, then black
propaganda instead of white is indicated. In any case, sound operating
intelligence is the first precondition to the attempted psychological
manipulation of enemy groups.
[Illustration: _Figure 36: Counterpropaganda Instructions._ The
Wehrmacht in the West had a unit bearing the code designation Skorpion.
This unit combined the functions of offensive and defensive propaganda,
which remained separate throughout the war in the U.S. Army. The
information service sheet shown provides clear, simple leads for
counterpropaganda by selecting usable (usable for the Germans, that is)
items from Allied sources. From this raw material, morale officers could
make up their own leaflets, lectures, or broadcasts.]
=Profile of Opinion.= Opinion analysis can present a _profile of enemy
opinion_. To make a profile, proceed as though assembling a photo-strip
map taken by an aerial camera. Take the whole enemy country and divide
it into major groups by percentages. Select, particularly, those groups
you are interested in addressing. If you have _kamikaze_-minded
collaborators, send them in to the enemy country to ask a thousand
enemies the same question, selecting the thousand the same way that the
total population is made up. If the country is 32% Catholic, the
thousand interviewees should include 320 Catholics. If the country is
36% urban and 61% rural (3% unexplained), get 610 of your interviewees
from the country. The questions do not have to be asked in precisely the
same form, but they should bear on precisely the same issues. When your
agents come back you have a poll. If you do not have agents, then use
the percentages from reference books, and try to estimate how many
definite groups have what specific grievances. You are then in a
position to proceed.
=Interrogation.= When processing prisoners of war, it is an excellent
idea to deal with them for morale intelligence as well as for general
and assorted military information. Questions should not aim at what the
prisoner thinks he thinks about God, his leader, his country, and so on,
but should concern themselves with those things which most interest the
prisoner himself. Does his wife write that the babies have enough
diapers? How is the mail service? Is he worried about war workers
getting his prewar job? How much money is he saving? How is the food?
How were the non-coms--did they treat him right? Did he get enough
furloughs? Does he think that anybody is making too much money at home?
Most men carry over into military services the occupational interests
which they had as civilians. A carpenter in uniform, even though he may
be a good infantry top sergeant, is still a carpenter, and information
can be obtained from him as to the problems of skilled labor, of union
members, of the poorer city dwellers, and so on.
The profile obtained from civilian polls or from propanal can then be
paralleled in the field. Set up a graph showing the entire enemy army.
Use several graphs if the army splits along racial, national or plainly
sectional lines. On each graph, enter the component groups. From the
poll or from the interrogations, list the dissatisfaction in terms of
seriousness with which the dissatisfyee attributes to it; it is not what
you think he should worry about that is important. It's what actually he
does worry about. His weighting counts. Make up a scale, quantitative
on the actual count of mentions of particular gripes. (For example, out
of 699 prisoners, of whom 167 were union members in civil life, there
were 234 separate voluntary mentions of dissatisfaction with the enemy
government's labor union policy). When that quantitative count changes
up or down, you have a definite guide with which to control your own
propaganda policy.
[Illustration: _Figure 37: Defensive Counterpropaganda._ The "National
Socialist Leadership Staff of the Wehrmacht" got out this Communications
for the Troops as a guidance sheet for company talks. The content
includes "Thoughts About the Volkssturm," "The Celebrated American
Freedoms," and "Small Requests, but Important." This issue is dated from
January 1945.]
Or you can proceed qualitatively. List enemy dissatisfaction under terms
such as these for any one issue (shoe rationing, health facilities,
minority rights, esteem for government leaders, etc.): Prisoner--
(1) is completely satisfied and has no complaints.
(2) has a few complaints but is generally satisfied.
(3) has many complaints and does not expect improvement.
(4) is despondent about the whole situation.
(5) is definitely antagonistic to home authorities in this matter.
Rate each prisoner or captured civilian according to your best judgment.
Then make up percentage lists of the grounds for dissatisfaction of each
component group in the enemy society. (This latter figure will be
impressive in documents but will not mean as much for practical purposes
as will the more specific percentages under each separate head.)
If you feel like showing off, average everything into everything else
and call it the Gross Index of Total Enemy Morale. This won't fool
anyone who knows the propaganda business, and you won't be able to _do_
anything with or about it, but you can hang it on a month-by-month chart
in the front office, where visitors can be impressed at getting in on a
military secret. (Incidentally, if some smart enemy agent sees it and
reports it back, enemy intelligence experts will go mad trying to figure
out just how you got that figure. It's like the old joke that the
_average_ American is ten-elevenths White, 52% female, and always
slightly pregnant.)
=Specificity.= Good propaganda intelligence provides:
(a) news;
(b) military intelligence which can be released as news;
(c) military intelligence which cannot be released as news, but
knowledge of which will prevent the propaganda operator from making
mistakes or miscalculations in reporting the news;
(d) enemy news;
(e) up-to-the-minute enemy slang, hobbies, fads, grievances, and other
matters of current public attention;
(f) specific grievances of specific groups and of the nation as a
whole, should these arise;
(g) information about probable inter-group conflicts;
(h) types and forms of discontent with enemy authority;
(i) identification of unpopular or popular enemy personalities;
(j) all other information that will enable the psychological warfare
operator to act promptly and sympathetically in taking the side of
specific enemy individuals against their authorities or other enemy
groups.
[Illustration: _Figure 38: Black "Counterpropaganda."_ Seeing that the
Germans had a good counter propaganda medium, the Allies decided to use
it themselves. They issued this "counterpropaganda" sheet, shown in
original and facsimile in English. The "blackness" is not very black,
since few Germans would consider this to be German in origin, once they
had read it.]
Enemy opinion cannot be manipulated in general. It must be met on its
own ground--the current everyday thoughts of enemy citizens and
soldiers. These thoughts do not usually concern grandiose problems of
political ethics. They are practical like your own.[34] They must be
appealed to in a way which makes the listener really listen, makes the
reader stop and reread, makes them both think it over later. Getting the
attention of the enemy is not enough. Most enemies will pay plenty of
attention to you--too much, at times. Getting sympathetic attention is
what counts.
This can be done only with specific grounds. With the news, you and he
have a genuine common interest. Using his real troubles as a link, you
must create that common interest. The force, the effectiveness of your
argument may make him forget that it is the enemy who has brought his
attention to this issue. You must leave him with the feeling, "By golly,
that fellow is right!"
But to talk about his troubles, effectively, you must know what they
really are. You must see it his way before you start showing him that
his way is your way, that you think that he is really on your side, and
that his bosses' side is wrong, incorrect and doomed to get whipped,
anyhow. Propaganda can operate only on the basis of _specificity_. Real
persuasion can be sought only on the basis of real sympathy with real
troubles. Old, incorrectly guessed, or poorly described issues are worse
than none at all.
CHAPTER 9
Estimate of the Situation
In physical warfare, the inherent instability of every situation is
concealed by the apparent definiteness of the operation. Panic, revolt
or dissolution of regiments is not normally figured into the situation.
The assumption is made--and for professional military purposes must be
made--that all identical units are of equal quality unless proved
otherwise, that all men in a unit will respond with psychological
uniformity unless they are reported out physically by medical reports,
that the unit will be capable of doing tomorrow what it did yesterday.
The terrain comes in as a constant factor and even such variables as
weather can be calculated in terms of a predictable risk. Nevertheless,
every experienced soldier knows that things do not always work out the
way they should, that unexplained or unforeseen factors sooner or later
complicate or frustrate the best plans, and that warfare is a huge
gamble with a superficial but very necessary coating of exactitude.
In psychological warfare, these considerations apply even more sharply.
Combat at least has terrain, order of battle, logistics, estimated
capabilities and other concrete factors with which to figure. There is a
known degree of difference between one enemy division and five enemy
divisions. There is the possibility of computing the time which the
enemy will need to fulfill this capability or that, and the equally good
possibility of computing time on our side for countermeasures. Even in
such very long-range operations as strategic bombing, economic factors
can be figured out to give the operation at least the coloration of
precision. With propaganda, none of this is possible.
The propagandist never knows the terrain, because his terrain is the
enemy mind in its entirety--a factor beyond the understanding of any
man. The enemy can have strongholds of faith to be shaken but the
propagandist can never say, "This factor is finished. Therefore we
proceed to the next." There is neither victory nor defeat, only the
endless seesaw of probable accomplishments or probable blunders. The
honest psychological warfare operative will admit that he does not know
where he is at any given moment, how far from his start, how near to his
goal. Even with surrender of the enemy, propaganda cannot be judged to
have met with complete failure or complete success, because propaganda
is an interminable stream going on into international affairs and
carrying over to the next war. Psychological warfare can be given
apparent certainty only by the creation of assumptions on the part of
the planner. The assumptions will not stand up if questioned by a clever
philosopher, any more than did the basic assumptions of the German
General Staff when questioned by the sardonic Trotzky at Brest-Litovsk.
Nevertheless, the assumptions can work for planning purposes.
=Definiteness of the Goal.= The first assumption to make is this: goals
can be sought with some hope of success. The propaganda planner uses the
intelligence available to him. He consults with knowledgeable persons.
He defines (1) specific kinds of demoralization and discord he wishes to
create, (2) the particular enemy audiences in which he wishes to create
them, (3) the types of argument he proposes to use, and (4) the media
through which he intends to project his propaganda. He assumes that the
kind of discord, depression or surrender which he seeks will hasten the
end of the war. In so doing, he is on ground only a little less sure
than that of the strategic bombing planner, who also seeks results
indirectly.
For field operations, the goal of the propagandist is to sap the
resistance of enemy troops. If the troops are moving forward and are not
likely to be in a mood to surrender, then other goals, such as conflict
between officers and men, encouraging desertion, informing enemy troops
of bad news elsewhere in the war, or morale-depression may be sought. In
each case, the propaganda must be aimed at a goal, and a goal is as
essential to the operation of psychological warfare as is definition of
a target for artillery or bombing. No one ever accomplishes anything
shooting "somewhere or other"; no one propagandizes successfully unless
he seeks the attainment of a state of mind or series of actions which
may actually happen. Most times, it is thus impossible to aim at the
total surrender of the enemy armies or state. One can aim for concrete
operational purposes only at specific enemy troubles or effects. For the
field, troop surrenders; for the home front, interference with the enemy
war effort--these are about as general as goals can be made.
They can be made very specific indeed. A situation reported by
intelligence may provide an almost perfect opening for psychological
warfare. If the enemy press reports that twenty-three embezzlers have
been detected in food supply and have been shot, it is a perfect opening
for the black propaganda goal, "to conduce to enemy mistrust of food
control, to increase food spoilage, to lower efficiency of enemy food
consumption through enhancing misuse of food supply." Some of the means
might be these. An alleged enemy leaflet could be prepared warning
quartermasters to destroy canned foods that have lost labels; another
leaflet describing diseases that come from partly spoiled food; an
"enemy" allegation (from your side or, better, from neutral territory)
that the political chiefs of the enemy country are the biggest food
embezzlers of all; getting a black-radio and rumor campaign under way
describing the seven hundred and eighty-three people who died last
month as a result of eating musty food (even though your own doctors say
the mustiness may not interfere with the wholesomeness of that
particular food); describing common diseases that actually occur in the
enemy country, such as arthritis, stomach ulcers, sinus headaches or
infectious jaundice, and blaming them all on the foods the enemy
government distributes to the enemy people. On white radio, features
could be put on describing the unhappy plight of your own side, where
people may get their rashers of bacon for breakfast only every other
day, and where nobody can have more than three eggs at a time; point out
that the government is worried that food prices have risen 5.3%, without
mentioning at that time the fact that enemy prices have gone up 45% or
more. The definite goal gives the propaganda boys something to work on.
Propaganda to the allies or satellites of the enemy can point out that
the enemy government is apt to dump the spoiled food onto the foreign
market, that food spoiling in territory of the big enemy will make him
requisition more food from his little allies, et cetera.
When the topic has been worked for a while, stop; keep it up only if
actual news from the enemy country shows that they are having enough
real trouble with food to make your _improvements_ on the fact
thoroughly credible.
Propaganda cannot function in a vacuum framed by moral generalities. The
goal must be defined in the light of authentic news or intelligence. The
operation can be sustained only if there is enough factual reality
behind it to make the propaganda fit the case known or credited by the
majority of the listeners, counted one by one.
Since no trouble-free, wartime country has been known to exist, the
goals should be tailored to the troubles of the particular enemy, and
should aim at increasing real difficulties, building up pre-existing
doubts, stimulating genuine internal hostilities. Propaganda which
invents pure novelty gets nowhere. The Russians did not hesitate to
appeal to Bismarck in order to show the professional German soldiers
what a rotter Hitler was, and how stupid the Nazi strategy. But if
Bismarck had actually said nothing on the subject of the army in general
or an Eastern war in particular, they would have been wise to leave him
alone. If the Japanese had tried to make the ex-Confederate States
secede all over again, they would not have gotten anywhere because they
would not have started with a real grievance. But if they had alleged
that the Negro units were used for stevedoring because Whites regarded
Negroes as unworthy of carrying weapons, they might have hit on a real
grievance. The goal must be deeply bedded in reality.
=The Propaganda Man.= It has been pointed out that the true terrain of
psychological warfare--the private thoughts of the enemy people, one by
one--is known only to God. There is, however, a way of finding
approximate terrain. That consists of setting up a hypothetical enemy
listener or reader, and then trying to figure things out from _his_
angle.
The first thing to do with the hypothetical man is to make him fit the
kind of person who does get propaganda. In dealing with China, for
example, it would be no use to take a statistically true Chinese, who
lived on a farm 1.3 acres in size, went to town 5.8 times a year, had
3.6 children, and never read newspapers. The man to be set up would be
the _reachable_ man, the city, town or village dweller who had an income
2.1 times greater than that of the average in his county, who owned 1.7
long coats, and who shared one newspaper with 6.8 neighbors. Take this
lowest-common-denominator of a man who can be reached by enemy
propaganda and by yours. Name him the Propaganda Man. (Realistically
speaking, modal and not arithmetical classes should be set up.)
Make up the prewar life of the Propaganda Man. Use your regional experts
as informants. What kinds of things did he like? What prejudices was he
apt to have? What kind of gossip did he receive and pass along? What
kind of words disgusted him? What kind of patriotic appeal made him do
things? What did he think of your country before the war? What things
did he dislike you and your people for? What myths did he believe about
America--that all Americans drove sports convertibles while drinking
liquor? that all had blonde sweethearts? that all exchanged gunfire
periodically? Of what American things did he think well--food, shoes,
autos, personal freedom, others? What is he apt to be thinking now?
To this add what the enemy propaganda is trying to do to its Propaganda
Man. That is, size up the domestic propaganda of the enemy in terms of
the concrete individuals at whom it is aimed. This may reveal the
enemy's vital necessities and his concealed weaknesses. What _are_ the
leaders trying to do? Are they trying to make the Propaganda Man get to
work on time? Are they trying to make him give up holidays willingly?
Are they trying to make him think that your side will kill him if you
win? Are they trying to keep him from being worried about his city going
up in an incandescent haze? Are they trying to make him believe that the
concrete shelters are good? Why are they harping so on the safety of the
shelters? Has the Propaganda Man been muttering back about the
flimsiness of the shelters? Does he want to be evacuated from target
cities? Are the police being praised for their fairness and speed in
issuing leave-the-city permits? Are illegal évacués being treated as
scum and traitors and cowards?
Then go after the Propaganda Man yourself. He is your friend. You are
his friend. The only enemy is the enemy Leader (or generals, or emperor,
or capitalists, or "They"). How is the Propaganda Man going to hear from
you? Leaflets? Short-wave--and if so, why is he listening to the enemy
in the first place? Standard-wave? Speaker planes? Rumors? Get things to
him that you know he will repeat, things which will interest him. Make
up a list of the things he worries about each month, a list of the
things which the enemy propaganda is trying to do to him currently, a
list of the things your propaganda is trying to do. Do the three lists
fit? Would they work on an actual living breathing thinking human being,
with the prejudices, frailty, nobility, greed, lubricity, and other
motives of the ordinary human being? If your list fits his real life, if
your list spoils the enemy propaganda list, if your list builds up a
psychological effect of confusion, gloom, willingness-to-surrender which
accumulates month after month, the terrain is favorable. It is in your
Propaganda Man's head.
There are no maps of the human mind, but in certain special cases
sociology and psychology can provide leads which even the most acute
untrained observation would otherwise overlook. During World War II, for
example, Mr. Geoffrey Gorer, a British anthropologist, was able to
provide character analyses of the Japanese that stood up under the
rigorous analysis of experts long resident in Japan. Gorer took as base
data the experience of the Japanese infant in the first forty-odd months
of life. How was the baby given toilet training? how was it weaned? how
was it disciplined into the family life? how did the small child learn
what it was? Gorer found that Japanese domestic life started the child
out with a mixture of uncertainty and defiance--that the infant soon
learned he was in a definite position in the human queue, where all
above him had to be respected on the threat of immediate and condign
reprisal, while all below him could be mistreated almost with
impunity--that the Japanese had sad dirty little private thoughts about
himself to a degree unknown to ourselves or the Chinese--that the
Japanese was in adult life the inevitable fulfillment of what he had
been made in infancy: arrogant, timid, insanely brave, deferential,
fearful of foreigners and overtly cruel to them.
Furthermore, the Japanese identified persons, nations, or institutions
as Female (peaceful, possessing enjoyments, subject to bullying) or as
Male (fierce, counteraggressive, superordinate). The U.S.A. of Admiral
Perry seemed Male; that of Cordell Hull, Female. These findings, applied
to propaganda, gave British-American operations an audience unlike the
Japanese whom missionaries, soldiers, diplomats, businessmen, and
journalists had portrayed in such varied and inconsistent terms. This
Japanese Propaganda Man (analyzed at a distance, since Gorer had never
been nearer Japan than Indo-China) became a believable person. It was
uncanny to see Japanese propaganda movies after reading the Gorer
analyses, and to find the Japanese government propagandists, by hunch
and instinct, appealing to the same Propaganda Man whom Gorer, by bold
but permissible extrapolations, had revealed to Allied propaganda
planners.
=The Attribution of Motive.= One of the least factual elements in human
life is motive. Motive is hard to discern, even in one's own life, and
it is difficult if not impossible to prove. It must frequently be
attributed. Motive is therefore easily interpreted; "falsification" is
almost impossible because no matter how much probable motive is twisted,
it still might fit the case. Motive is therefore excellent material for
psychological warfare. (Those propaganda veterans, the Communists, have
a formula for showing that the motive of every person opposed to them is
unprogressive, illiberal, and greedy, even if the person himself does
not know it. Their own motives are always pure because they are
"objectively" and "historically correct" according to _science_, that
is, according to the historical rigmaroles of Karl Marx. The formula is
a poor science, but a superb propaganda weapon.)
War eases the motive-switching operation because the leaders and people
on each side derive moral exhilaration from the common effort.
Ostensibly, politicians become statesmen; all higher-ranking officers
become strategists; ordinary men become heroes, martyrs, adventurers.
The lofty process of war is one which psychologists will not explain in
our time; it transposes ordinary persons and events to a frame of
reference in which individuals are less self-conscious and also less
critical. Among European and American peoples, particularly, there
arises the assumption that because of war men should be brave and
unselfish, women kind and chaste, yet alluring, officials
self-sacrificing, and so on, even though the facts of the case in the
particular country involved may be very much to the contrary. The cruel
futility inherent in war is so plain to all civilized men that when war
does come men overcompensate for it. They set up illusions.
This need not be taken as a criticism of war or of mankind. The world
would be a more inspiring place in which to dwell if people generally
lived up to the wartime standards they impose on themselves. That these
standards are felt to be real is attested by the distinct drop of the
suicide rate in wartime, and the increase in suicide, murder, and crimes
of delinquency after every war; that the change of role is largely
illusory is attested by the fact that no nation appears to have
undergone permanent sociological change as a result of improvement
during war. Many wartime changes carry on, of course; but they rarely
comprise, by the standards of the people concerned, improvements. The
upswing is genuine, when it occurs, but it is rarely permanent, and it
seldom affects all levels of the entire population with the same degree
of exhilaration.
The propagandist thus has an ideal situation. In the enemy country
everyone is trying to be more noble, more unselfish, more hard-working.
Everyone applies a higher standard of ethics and performance than in
peacetime. Businessmen are not supposed to make too much money,
politicians are supposed to work around the clock, officials are
supposed to cooperate, housewives to save, children to scavenge, and so
on. Yet a certain percentage of the enemy population is not taken into
this. Sometimes minorities feel themselves emotionally excluded; at
other times private temperamental differences make some persons skeptic
while others remain believers. The ground is ready for rumor, for
tearing down inflated personages, for breaking the illusion by the
simple process of attributing normally selfish motives in wartime.
It is easier to attribute bad motives to civilian leaders than to
military. The ceremonialized discipline of modern warfare makes the
military figure a little mysterious; his normal peacetime obscurity
shielded him and his family from exposure, cheap publicity, gossip. The
civilian leader does not have this protection. The very process of
becoming prominent has involved his seeking publicity, for the one part,
and his pretense of avoiding it, for the other. Furthermore, the man who
serves his nation serves himself. It is not possible for a man to lead a
large country without benefiting himself, since the act of leadership is
itself intensely pleasurable. Also, prominence possesses a
characteristic of vice; even when it loses its value for positive
enjoyment it retains withdrawal pains. The once-prominent individual
hates to leave prominence though he may be genuinely weary of it. He is
willing to be tired of the country, but not willing for the country to
be tired of him. In wartime old leaders remain and new ones come in.
Fame and obscurity shift with even greater rapidity than before. The
personality-politics condition of the country is highly mobile.
Personalities are tense with interpersonal conflict.
Then comes the propagandist.
First, he attributes normal human motives to the leaders who so
obviously possess them. In this job, he is doing what the famous little
boy in the Hans Christian Andersen story did when he said of the
Emperor, "Mamma, he hasn't any clothes on!" The propagandist need only
say what everyone knows: that this man is notoriously fond of money;
that another one has been a poor sportsman; that a third has betrayed
some old friends; that a fourth has sought power in a selfish,
vindictive way. The response which the propagandist seeks is a simple
"That's so."
The next step in propaganda is to show that these persons do not measure
up to the tragic, heroic, historic roles war has imposed on them. That
too is not difficult, especially if the war is not going decisively one
way or the other. Defeat or victory serves equally well to make leaders
into heroes; Churchill and MacArthur were never more splendid than when
they were whipped, the one after Dunkirk, the other after Bataan.
The final approach is the total discrediting of leaders. If the internal
politics of the country have been bitter enough, some of the leaders may
even come over voluntarily to the enemy. Quisling in Norway; Wang in
China; Doriot and Laval in France; Vlassov in the U.S.S.R.; Laurel from
the Philippines--such men all possessed a certain amount of standing in
their own countries but through capture, impatience, or seduction
decided to continue their careers with enemy backing. The propagandist
can now pretend to be tolerant. It is he who believes in peace, in
reconciliation, in easygoing live-and-let-live attitudes. He describes
his protegés, the quislings, in warm complimentary terms; he lightens
the tenor of his attack on the non-quisling enemy leaders. He takes the
attitude that war continues because of private stupidity, vengefulness,
greed, unreasonableness on the other. For his part, he is willing to let
the politicians, both quisling and patriot, "settle it between
themselves." Let them form a coalition government.
Personal smearing is effective. If the war situation runs in the enemy's
favor, the easing of the enemy position permits the population the
privilege of backbiting, and even within the leader-group some leaders
may feel more free to destroy the positions or reputations of the
others. The impossible and foolishly heroic stances which the leaders
have taken in time of strain now make most of them look a little silly.
Conversely, in a downgrade situation, the leaders may gain stature in
the first tragic weeks of defeat, but soon the ignobility of defeat
sweeps over them all. The propagandist need only be a good reporter, and
the leaders of the defeated country will provide him with good
propaganda material.
In estimating the propaganda situation, the vulnerability of the leaders
to personal attack is one of the major elements. Properly handled, it
can be of real value. In the American Revolution, the personal character
of George Washington was a very substantial asset. A. very rich man, he
could scarcely be accused of a gutter revolution. A slave owner, he
could not be accused of wanting the overthrow of the social order. An
experienced soldier, he could not be attacked as a military amateur. A
man of patience, correct manners, and genuine modesty, he was not easily
described as a bloody empire-builder, an immoral sycophant, or a
power-drunk madman. British propaganda accordingly went after the
Continental Congress, of which there was a great deal to be said. On the
other side, the Americans had duck soup when it came to George III and
most of his Cabinet--personalities which included boors, fuddy-duddies,
too-little-and-too-laters, and conspicuous nincompoops.
=A Written Estimate of the Situation.= If, as indicated above, the
terrain of Psychological Warfare consists of the private thoughts and
feelings of each member of the audience reached; if the mission of
Psychological Warfare is the accomplishment of anything from entirely
unknowable results (such as an imperceptible change of mood) all the way
through to complete success (such as organized mass surrender); if the
capabilities of the enemy have virtually nothing to do with one's own
Psychological Warfare commitments; and if the decision consists of
choices of means and theme--if these peculiarities all apply, the usual
"estimate of the situation" has almost nothing to do with military
propaganda.
Roughly speaking, this is the case. An attempt to apply the outline
given in FM 101-5, Appendix I, would produce only a lamentable parody of
a military document.
The _situation_ of the military unit possessing Psychological Warfare
facilities has relatively little to do with the _capabilities_ of the
Psychological Warfare unit. The morale of one's own men should have no
effect whatever on the output of the radio script writers and the
leaflet writers.
In combat operations, military forces _meet_. In Psychological Warfare,
they do not. In combat operations, it is impossible for two hostile
units to occupy the _same_ territory for any length of time without both
of them degenerating into a chaos of armed mobs. In Psychological
Warfare operations, both sets of operations can be conducted in the same
media, can address themselves to the same basic human appeals, can use
the same music, the same general kind of news account, and so on.
Furthermore, no modern army ever went into operation with certain units
designated as wholly and exclusively defensive, and certain others as
wholly and exclusively offensive. (The Great Wall of China is the
world's most celebrated example of purely defensive planning, yet it
protected Chinese offensive bases for twenty-one hundred years.) But in
Psychological Warfare, the Japanese-language short-wave broadcasts from
San Francisco had no imaginable effect on the American forces in the
Pacific. The only people who could understand them were the
Japanese-language officers in G-2 and ONI offices; their personal
vexation did not matter.
The offensive operations of combat troops are predicated upon finding
the enemy, effecting contact, and either destroying the enemy or making
him yield terrain. The defensive operations of combat troops,
contrariwise, are planned with a view to resisting an enemy who has been
met.
In Psychological Warfare, operators and enemy do not effect contact. The
audience cannot strike back through a radio set; the enemy reader cannot
throw a leaflet back at the bomber which has dropped it on him. When
American planes bombed German radio stations, they did not do so because
the flight commander was trying to get German propaganda off the air;
they did so because the Americans were trying to break up the entire
German communications network. It is almost impossible to pinpoint radio
transmitters and printing presses with such accuracy as to deny the
enemy all chance of talking back. In a purely physical sense, there are
only two sets of measures whereby an actual defense can be set up
against Psychological Warfare. Each is a measure of desperation; neither
is considered effective; the Americans did not bother with either in
World War II.
The first physical defense consists of radio jamming and of the planned
interception of enemy leaflet raids. Radio jamming is ineffectual except
in the case of an enemy possessing hopelessly inferior signal equipment.
(The Japanese tried to jam our radio at Saipan, just as the Germans
tried to jam BBC. They impeded reception, but they never succeeded in
blocking it out altogether.)
The second physical defense consists of destroying reception facilities.
It is possible to sweep an occupied territory and to sequester _almost_
all the radio sets in use. It is possible to issue a military order that
any soldier or civilian found in possession of enemy printed matter will
be court-martialed and punished. These measures are useful to dictators
having secret police, and among armies having the Prussian level of
discipline, with the enlisted men regarded as robots. It is not to be
expected that they would work against Americans.
Therefore, propaganda does not meet propaganda. Combat forces _meet_;
Psychological Warfare forces pass one another in opposite directions.
In American practice, the forces which countered enemy propaganda were
those pertaining to troop information and education--morale or special
services. These did not concern themselves with propaganda to the
Germans and Japanese. In the German and Russian armies of World War II,
but not in the American, British, French or Japanese, there were
_political officers_ attached to the units under a variety of titles;
these often took charge of propaganda to the enemy (offensive) as well
as indoctrination of their own troops (defensive), but the unrelatedness
of these two functions let them split apart.
Even here, the parallel between combat operations and propaganda
operations breaks down. Rarely does it occur that there is a simple
juxtaposition of forces, thus:
_Enemy Propagandist_ ----> _Audience_ <---- _Own Propagandist_
(_Troops_)
The issue is more commonly one in which the propagandist on each side
attacks those troops which are retreating, cut off, suffering heavy
losses, politically disaffected, or otherwise psychologically promising
material for him. Of the factors which can affect troop or enemy morale,
the presence of friendly propaganda is a minor one. The result then
becomes complicated:
_Enemy Propagandist_ ----> _Exposed or Demoralized Units_
_Well Supplied and Well Informed Units_ <---- _Own Propagandist_
Troops who are starving or are subjected to inordinate losses will not
have their propaganda-resistance heightened by pep talks. A chopped-up
unit has no means of enjoying USO facilities.
Propaganda vulnerability depends most commonly on the objective
situation of the audience. If the objective situation is good or
neutral, one's own propaganda can supplement the good morale conditions,
but even here, it does not and should not meet enemy propaganda
frontally.
In so far as it can be tabulated, the visualizable propaganda situation
at any given time would be something like this.
----------------------
Own Propaganda | _Own Audience_ |<---- Friendly
To Enemy Audience | Actual Surroundings| Propaganda
\ ----------------------_ To Home Audience
\ |\
\ \
_\| \
---------------------
Enemy Propaganda ----> | _Enemy Audience_ | Enemy
To Enemy Audience |Actual Surroundings| Propaganda To
--------------------- One's Own Side
In each of these instances, the propaganda operators are themselves
members of an audience. Furthermore, propaganda leaks, as it were, out
of the channels into which it is directed. Additionally, propaganda in
all countries has to compete with the normal day-to-day preoccupations
of the listener--his food, his health, his hour-by-hour activities, his
tangible interpersonal relationships. Save for rare moments of intense
crisis, propaganda can expect to occupy only a small fraction of the
audience's attention. In dictatorships, the range of propaganda can be
widened by polluting all news, all theater presentations, all churches,
etc., with the "Party line," but visitors to totalitarian capitals--of
both the Fascist and Communist varieties--report that most of the common
people have become calloused with apathy, over-all disbelief, or
skepticism as a result of overexposure to official indoctrination.
Hence a written estimate of the situation follows _not_ from some
special Psychological Warfare situation, but from the practical measures
available. If desired, it can summarize the following points:
1. DEFINITION OF THE AUDIENCE
_a._ Medium through which reached
_b._ Anticipated attention (including means of getting attention)
_c._ Pertinent characteristics (from propaganda intelligence report)
2. PSYCHOLOGICAL GOALS TO BE SOUGHT
_a._ Attention of the enemy
_b._ Present-goal (if strategic, opinion or sentiment; if tactical,
action)
_c._ Ultimate goal (applicable to strategic only)
3. LIMITATIONS OF POLICY
_a._ National political limitations
_b._ Limitation by adverse factual situation
_c._ Limitations arising from one's own security
4. MEDIA AVAILABLE
_a._ Kind and quality of media to be used
5. THE PROPAGANDA MAN
_a._ Descriptive appreciation of a typical audience member
6. COMPETITIVE FACTORS
_a._ Listener's non-propaganda preoccupations
_b._ Continuation of adverse indoctrination
_c._ Effect of news available both to one's self and to listener
_d._ Competitive effect of hostile propaganda
7. RELATION TO GENERAL (MILITARY) ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION
_a._ Timing relationships
_1._ Contingency plans
_2._ Contingency prohibitions
_b._ Contribution of Psychological Warfare to operations planning
_1._ Combat operations psychologically advisable
_2._ Combat operations subject to propaganda exploitation
_3._ Operations providing adverse propaganda with opportunity
_c._ Correlation of Psychological Warfare with
_1._ Public relations programming
_2._ Information and education plans
_3._ Medical plans and reporting
_4._ Countersubversive functions
Such papers might be of use, gathering together in a single document all
pertinent facts. In most tactical situations, the situation would have
obsolesced before the author of the estimate had finished his document.
In strategic situations, it could not normally be made specific enough
to be practical--at the operational level--without becoming hopelessly
unwieldy. Each skill represented in the estimate does prepare other
reports, and the practice of most modern armies indicates that it is
better to conduct routine propaganda planning, supervision, and
appreciation through liaison than to prepare elaborate documents
gathering together the multifarious factors which actually affect
Psychological Warfare.
In most American Psychological Warfare facilities--especially in the
theaters--the estimate of the situation consisted of a brief résumé of
home propaganda by the enemy (taken directly from propaganda analysis),
comment on the audience by appropriate representatives from the State
Department or other Federal agencies, and discussion of the audience by
some kind of Psychological Warfare operations-planning and intelligence
board. Some of the most valuable suggestions came from persons not
concerned with propaganda--such as target-intelligence people who could
anticipate enemy civilian or military shortages, or economic-warfare
people who suggested vexations which the enemy listener was probably
experiencing.
=The Question of Choice.= An estimate of a combat situation is something
like a diagnosis and prognosis in medicine. The estimate sets forth the
situation, presenting the difficulties to be faced and the general range
of pertinent fact, all in orderly array, like a systematic diagnosis.
The plans are then drawn up in the light of the estimate; they are
limited by the harsh, immediate facts of the situation; they resemble a
doctor's prognosis, which may have room for several choices, but which
does not open the way to speculative, creative action. Psychological
Warfare situations are usually fluid, save at times of specific tactical
emergency (the appeal to an enemy unit, when it is surrounded, to
surrender; pre-invasion propaganda for specific points).
Therefore the psychological estimate should not be presented as a
propaganda-_versus_-propaganda analysis; if it does, it will end as an
unproductive and meaningless duel between the propagandists on the two
sides. Nor should the estimate pretend to present choices with the
pretense that these choices are definitely prescribed by the situation
itself. In any field, an expert can hoax or befuddle a layman. A
Psychological Warfare officer should present choices for what they
really are--options open to him and his staff as creative writers.
Policy issues, in specific cases, can be answered _yes_ or _no_. This is
not true of propaganda as a whole. The task of the propagandist is to
create something which will arouse attention, will induce attitudes, and
will eventually lead to action. It is a task of permanent offense. Its
variations are as infinitely diverse as the imaginations of mankind can
make them.
Choice is perpetually before the Psychological Warfare propagandist. But
it is the wide choice of what he can think up, not the narrow choice
dictated by fixed terrain, by specific enemy capabilities, by concrete
physical necessities. Adolf Hitler himself, in the near-delirium of his
last days of life, recognized this. He told his followers to hold out;
German propaganda might still provoke the "inevitable" American-Soviet
clash which would save Germany. He said he would choose one side or the
other--he didn't much care which. Thus, at the end, the range of
propaganda possibilities deceived even the arch propagandist, despite
the bold shrewdness he had shown in the past. He knew, as his generals
did not, that in the realm of the psychological, the "factor of the
unexpected" is always a large one, and hoped to the last to turn it to
his ends. His premises were right, even though his conclusion was fatal
for him.
=Allied Operations.= Estimates become more complex when several nations
fight on the same side.
In a particular type of instance, estimates of the antagonist's
propaganda capacity form a part of normal military operations. This
occurs in the instance of allied operation: when the outside ally fears
that the local ally may be subverted. Such was the state of France in
relation to Britain in 1940, of Central China in relation to the
Americans in 1944, of the Balkan states in relation to the Third Reich
in 1945. In such instances, estimate of the enemy propaganda becomes a
vital part of the total military estimate. The principles stated below
can be applied by changing the direction of their application.
Propaganda analysis can, in situations like this, provide cues for
effective action and correct timing. In this type of situation, the
outside ally cannot afford to sit by and hope for the best. By black
operations he too must prepare to re-subvert the local ally if the local
ally goes over to the enemy. In Rumania, Bulgaria and puppet Serbia the
Germans were not successful; in Italy they created the Fascist Italian
Social Republic and brought a large part of Northern Italy back into the
war. In China, Allied pro-Communist sympathizers hoped that the
Japanese would subvert the Generalissimo so badly that America would
build up Yenan as a precautionary measure; but the Generalissimo stood
firm, and the Yenan maneuver lingered on as an unpleasant memory between
certain Americans and certain Nationalist Chinese. This type of
situation mixes politics, economics, propaganda and warfare to such a
degree that no sound estimate can appraise one factor without including
the others.
=Estimate of One's Own Capacity.= In preparing a routine estimate of
one's own capacity, militarily speaking, the measurable factors of space
and time provide guides for projecting plans into the future. It is
possible to plan, "At 1830 hours, D day plus 8, the Smithforce will have
arrived at Tenallytown," meaning that 8 days after the start, this
result can be expected. Psychological warfare can be estimated in a
loosely comparable way, provided the terms of reference are different.
Naturally, no sane Theater commander would rely on psychological warfare
alone for the accomplishment of a military result. It is possible,
nevertheless, to allow for planned good luck--good luck which one has
created with many months of hard work. When psychological warfare is
used in conjunction with invasion, its planned use (to judge by the
results found in World War II) might often justify commanders in using
minimum rather than maximum allocations of troops for the protection of
lines of communications against guerrilla or civilian attack. If the
Nazis had chased the Soviet peasants through the woods with soup
kitchens, free movies, and mittens for the babies, they would not have
had so many furious partisans sniping at them.
Psychological warfare can be relied upon to a considerable degree to
step up enemy panic in the application of a rapid forward movement. The
Japanese in China panicked whole regiments of local volunteers plumb out
of existence by the use of fast-marching Chinese-speaking plainclothes
troops, some of whom may have been air-dropped. In the Nazi
establishment of the first salient through to Abbeville, the
psychological aspects of the blitzkrieg helped prevent the British and
French from re-forming a continuous line and led eventually to the
pocketing of the British at Dunkirk.
Psychological warfare can also be counted on, tactically, to speed up
the reduction of isolated enemy positions when these positions are
clearly beyond hope of rescue. All the psychological warfare people need
to do is to go in with map leaflets, surrender leaflets, loudspeakers
and a near-by radio. The unit may not give in instantly, but the unit
would be superhuman if it fought as well in the face of persuasion as it
would have fought without psychological attack. In the mopping-up of
Japanese in the Pacific island fighting, psychological warfare teams and
techniques undoubtedly eased and speeded the process.
These references are to tactical estimates. Strategic propaganda is
beyond estimate. All it can do is to weight the probabilities a little
more favorably than would be the case without it. If the United States
had not dropped the Japanese surrender proposal in Japanese all over
Japan, the Japanese government leaders might have been more inclined to
resist surrendering. If the Germans had not softened up the French
before the Great Western Blitz of 1940, they might have needed more
time, days or weeks more to reduce France, and thus might have faced a
united French overseas Empire even after France-in-Europe fell. The
success of a strategic propaganda operation cannot be guaranteed in any
plan. It would be foolhardy optimism to think that psychology can assume
a major portion of responsibility for direct military results. It would
appear that the Soviet Red Army, despite its propaganda-conscious
Communist background, never passed the whole buck to psychological
warfare. The Russians never appeared to leave the artillery at home in
order to take the loudspeakers or leaflet mortars along. They made
brilliant, almost terrifying use of pre-belligerent propaganda; they
used propaganda tactically with immense success in the taking of
prisoners; they used psychological warfare, with a heavy infusion of
political warfare, more drastically for consolidation and occupation
purposes than did any of the other United Nations. But like everyone
else, they seem to have used strategic propaganda for whatever it might
bring in--immediate generalized effect, and the ultimate production of
windfalls.
Tactical psychological warfare can be estimated, though to a limited
extent, as part of a tactical potential of either the enemy or one's own
side. Strategic propaganda can be planned and evaluated only in terms of
the diffuse general situation, with the reasonable and fair expectation
that if properly employed it will better the position of the user. It
sometimes achieves results which astound even the originators, but these
results cannot be calculated (except by hunch) in advance. Nevertheless,
the operation is well worth trying since it has incalculable
possibilities and is quite inexpensive in relation to the gross cost of
war.
PART THREE
PLANNING AND OPERATIONS
CHAPTER 10
Organization for Psychological Warfare
Big jobs require big organizations. Eight _billion_ leaflets were
dropped in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operations alone
under General Eisenhower's command. That is enough to have given every
man, woman and child on earth four leaflets, and this figure, large as
it is, does not include leaflets dropped in all the other theaters of
war by ourselves, our allies, and our enemies. It does not include the
B-29 leaflet raids on Japan, in which hundreds of tons of thin paper
leaflets were dropped. Huge American newspapers were developed, edited,
printed and delivered to our Allies and to enemy troops. One of these,
_Parachute News_ (_Rakkasan_), attained a circulation of two million
copies per run; this was in the Southwest Pacific. In parts of the upper
Burmese jungle and the Tibetan borderland where no newspaper was ever
distributed before, the Fourteenth Air Force distributed a Japanese
newspaper, _Jisei_, along with picture sheets for illiterate tribesmen.
In getting at the enemy, the United States printed leaflets, cartoons,
pamphlets, newspapers, posters, books, magazines. In black operations
enough fabrications were perpetrated to keep the FBI busy for a thousand
years. Movies in all forms (commercial, amateur, all known widths, sound
and silent, even lantern slides) went out all over the world. Radio
talked on all waves in almost every language and code; loudspeakers,
souvenirs, candy, matches, nylon stockings, pistols you could hide in
your mouth, sewing thread, salt, phonograph records and baby pictures
streamed out over the world. Much of this was necessarily waste. In the
larger waste of war it appears almost frugal when taken in relation to
the results thought to have been achieved.
Every American theater commander, given the choice of using
psychological warfare or not, as he chose, did choose to use it. Every
major government engaged in the war used psychological warfare, along
with a number of assorted private characters, some of whom later founded
governments. (The sacred government of the Dalai Lama, in forbidden
Lhasa, undertook a neat little maneuver in limited overt propaganda when
it printed a brand-new set of stamps for presentation to President
Roosevelt; the Inner Mongols were propagandized by the Outer Mongols;
the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg broadcast against the Reich.)
Psychological warfare proliferated so much as to change the tone if not
the character of war. General Eisenhower wrote, at the end of the
European operations, that psychological warfare had developed as a
specific and effective weapon of war.
The organization of psychological warfare was as much a problem as the
operation. It overlapped military, naval, diplomatic, press,
entertainment, public relations, police power, espionage, commercial,
educational and subversive operations. Almost every nation involved had
extreme difficulty in fitting these new powers and unknown processes
into the accepted frame of government, and almost every national
solution was different. The British and the Japanese achieved a
considerable degree of unification. The Americans, Nazis and Russians
were hampered by the number of competing agencies. The French were
burdened through most of the war by an excess of governments. The
Chinese did things in their own formal but offhand manner; the
Nationalist party carried on information functions for the Chinese
government, while the Communist guerrilla authorities carried on
functions for the Communist party.
[Illustration: _Figure 39: Leaflet Production: Military Presses._ The
machines shown are Davidson presses, widely used by the Americans in all
theaters of war. The unit shown is Psychological Warfare Branch during
the Leyte operations. The leaflet being run off is addressed to both
Filipino guerrillas and Japanese troops, facilitating a difficult
three-way operations whereby Japanese are told to surrender to
Filipinos, Filipinos told not to kill surrendering Japanese, and
Americans instructed to receive prisoners from Filipinos.]
[Illustration: _Figure 40: Leaflet Production: Rolling._ When round
bombs were used, the leaflets had to be rolled into round packages to
fit. Forty thousand leaflets could be packed into one bomb, and a
Mitchell bomber could carry seventeen such bombs. (Photo by Ninth Air
Force Combat Camera Unit.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 41: Leaflet Distribution: Attaching Fuzes._
Packaged leaflets must spread out. Bundles of paper which fall intact
make little impact on the enemy unless they hit him on the head. Their
subsequent employment is rarely related to propaganda. To be effective,
leaflets must scatter. World War II saw the adaptation of various
scattering devices, of which the most effective was the barometric fuze,
shown here. The others included self-timing packages, slip-strings which
unwrapped the package in the air, and a belly-tank which fed leaflets
out at any desired speed, either in a continuous stream or in bursts.]
The lower down the echelon, the nearer the armies of the world came to
standardizing psychological warfare organization. They did this for the
same reason that they all organize into regiments instead of centuries,
cohorts, or tribes. Modern war is a self-standardizing process if the
enemy experience is to be copied, enemy techniques improved, allied
assistance accepted, and military practice kept up to world standards.
Psychological warfare units needed printing and radio sections; to
service these sections they all needed intelligence and analysis
offices; to distribute their materials they all needed agents and
liaison. Black propaganda organization varied more than did white, but
it was amazing to Americans, uncovering Japanese subversive-operations
units, to see how much the Japanese organization resembled their own.
[Illustration: _Figure 42: Leaflet Distribution: Packing the Boxes._
Sometimes boxes were used instead of bombs. These, being square,
facilitated the packing process, since the rectangular packages could be
used just as they came out of the printshop. The fuze is attached to the
package, not to the box.]
[Illustration: _Figure 43: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Boxes._
Boxes were built to fit the bomb bays. Boxes were opened, one after the
other, by a trip lever, shown above at left. Each box can be emptied in
turn, giving the pilot the opportunity to select more than one target.]
[Illustration: _Figure 44: Leaflet Distribution: Bombs at the Airfield._
Leaflet bombs, filled with rolls such as those shown in figure 40, are
delivered to the bomber. The scene shown is somewhere in England.
Officers and men picked up British slang for leaflet operations, and
called such missions "nickelling."]
[Illustration: _Figure 45: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Bombs._ The
bombs were loaded as shown. The entire bomb dropped out of the plane and
was disintegrated in the air by a small explosive charge. No
illustration can do justice to the sight of such a bomb in the actual
dropping, since the leaflets tend to look scattered or to disappear
under normal flight conditions. Army motion picture films preserve the
process for the official record, however.]
[Illustration: _Figure 46: Leaflet Distribution: The Final Result._
Search of prisoners provided a fair, accurate test of how the leaflets
took effect. Sometimes surrender leaflets actually came to have black
market value. Enemy officers prohibited the carrying of Allied surrender
leaflets, since they knew that a soldier who had one in his pocket or
hidden in his clothes was halfway or more through the psychological
process of surrendering. Here a German hands in a leaflet to his
American captor.]
=National Propaganda Organizations.= At the national level, the
psychological warfare facilities were parts of their national
governments. Neither the Axis nor the United Nations developed
super-national psychological facilities. The closest thing to
international agencies were the American-British coordination facilities
under authority of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, along with that
mysterious force which in the latter part of the war impelled
Russian-occupied countries to sound amazingly much like Moscow. Short of
preparing a textbook for political science study, explaining each of the
governments and the location of its intelligence and informational
functions, it would be impossible to explain in any detail how each of
the systems worked. Even between governments having the same general
political orientation, the improvised war agencies were different, and
in the same government, the practices of World War I were not carried
over into World War II. Some description of the American psychological
warfare may be warranted, chiefly as a means of showing how a simple
task can be accomplished even with intricate and confused organizations,
and the Japanese system (on paper, the best of them all, though weak in
field operations and control) may be outlined for the sake of contrast.
[Illustration: _Figure 47: Consolidation Propaganda: The Movie Van._
Consolidation of friendly, neutral or hostile civilians in an area of
operations can become a vitally important function. During the North
African operations, this movie van showed newsreels and documentary
films to the local people. Similar vans were used in Italy, France,
Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and other areas.]
=American Psychological Warfare Agencies.= The American Army failed to
establish its authority and leadership in the field of psychological
warfare despite its creation of the Psychological Warfare Branch under
G-2. In large part this was a matter of practical politics and of
personalities. The United States government as a whole, in the
successive administrations of President Roosevelt, acquired tremendous
administrative vitality but at the same time permitted the older
"constitutional" agencies to lose ground to their newly founded rivals.
Had an administrative purist and traditionalist been in the White House,
instead of a bold governmental experimenter, the logical creation of a
psychological warfare facility would have paralleled the later creation
of SWNCC (State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee).
From the purely theoretical standpoint, it would have been far sounder
to put national policy formulation (White House and Congress), foreign
policy formulation (State), strategic propaganda (State, War, Navy) into
a single administrative entity than to create a new federal agency with
improvised procedures, improvised security, and an improvised staff.
However, the State, War and Navy Departments (at the very opening of our
war) were overworked and understaffed. Many of the senior personnel
regarded psychological warfare with downright suspicion and propaganda
was regarded as a dirty name for a dirty and ineffectual job. Hence the
old-line agencies let pass the opportunity for establishing initial
control.
[Illustration: _Figure 48: Consolidation Propaganda: Posters._ An
American soldier pastes American posters over Nazi ones while a French
crowd looks on. (The crowd is pretty typical as to size and content, but
a thousand such crowds will cover an entire town.) The poster operation
shown was conducted by Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF. (OWI-PWD
photo.)]
Subsequent experience suggests that the use of existing facilities and
existing agencies wherever possible instead of new ones imparts
stability, discipline, and morale, and lowers the organizational
friction common to all new political agencies, especially to
instrumentalities in so controversial a field as propaganda. On the
chart shown, for instance, it would not have mattered whether the
Psychological Warfare Facility (whatever its name) were put for
housekeeping purposes under the State, War, Navy Department, or the
Office for Emergency Management. The essential requirement would have
been to use State Department men for jobs that involved determining
foreign policy, military men for tasks of a military nature and naval
for navy work, and to recruit only after cadres had been established.
The sponsorship of psychological warfare by one--any one--of the
old-line departments might have slowed down the feverish tempo of
reorganizations, quarrels, cabals, internal struggles for power and
clashes with other Federal agencies which were so characteristic of OWI
and its colleague organizations.
[Illustration: _Figure 49: Consolidation Propaganda: Photo Exhibit._
When newsprint is short, a photo exhibit has great appeal to civilians.
In backward countries, people sometimes waited their turn to get a
chance to see the American pictures. Even in Cherbourg, the French city
shown, these passersby are showing a very real interest in the picture
display.]
The actual conduct of psychological warfare was shown in Chart I. (No
official authority exists for such a chart; the author bases it on his
own observation and experience.) Only agencies themselves originating
psychological warfare materials are shown. Relationships between State,
War and Navy were stable, but were frequently by-passed; for example,
the Zacharias broadcasts, which were our biggest political warfare
experiment, did not go to the State Department until after they had
started. Relationships between OSS and other agencies were erratic and
cloaked in extraordinary but irregular security. The OWI ran for most
purposes as an autonomous group, with occasional reference to State,
Navy, and War Departments. The President in his individually official
capacity was apt to improvise psychological warfare operations of high
importance, without warning his subordinates of what was coming (paper
knife made of human Japanese bone; the "unconditional surrender"
formula). The White House staff sometimes worked through channels,
sometimes not; the Harvard professor who advised on inflation was
simultaneously involved with psychological warfare on continental Asia.
The Secretary of the Treasury openly discussed what _he_ would like to
do with Germany in terms which the Nazi radio naturally conveyed to its
own people. Within the OWI itself, the overseas operation was separated
from the domestic, the broadcasters from the planners, the outposts
from everybody else, during much of the war.
But the job was done!
Success was not due to the formal structure of the Office of War
Information (see charts V, VI). No administrative formula could have
transcended such governmental confusion. It was owing to the fact that
all the people just described--who went around, with the best will in
the world most of the time, minding one another's business--did in the
end achieve effective results. The common denominator behind them was
not the authority of the President, the discipline of the Democratic
Party, or the casually designed, casually overlooked formal lines of
authority. The common denominator was American civilization itself. Had
we been deeply disunited, this ramshackle structure would have collapsed
into chaos. But there was broad concurrence, a sense of cooperativeness,
good will and good temper. A German, Russian or Japanese bureaucrat
would have gone mad in the wartime mazes of the Federal system; a
Chinese would probably have felt very much at home, but would have
polished up the titles and honorifics a little.
The difference between our governmental organization and that of our
enemies lay in the fact that to us the T/O were something that could be
used when convenient, and could (without breach of faith or law) be
short-circuited when convenient. Word was passed around, material
exchanged, coordination effected in ways which could not be shown on any
imaginable chart. It was neither a merit nor a defect, but simply an
American way of doing things.
This characteristic has the effect, however, of making after-the-fact
studies quite unrealistic. There is not much from the formal records and
the formal charts which conveys the actual tone of governmental
operations in terms of propaganda. Study of World War II organization
for the sake of research and planning against possible future war would
not be very profitable unless it delved into the concrete experience of
individuals. The formal outlines mean nothing; they are positively
deceptive unless the actual controls and operations are known. (Mr.
Warburg makes it plain in his book that he thinks little of Mr. Elmer
Davis' conception of his job; but he does not mention that Mr. Sherwood,
theoretically Mr. Davis' subordinate, ran foreign operations without
much reference to Mr. Davis or to any other part of the Federal
government. Since Mr. Sherwood was closer to the White House than was
Mr. Davis, this important consideration escapes being recorded on the
chart: foreign operations were actually autonomous.[35]) Examples of how
things really worked--as opposed to how they looked as though they
worked--could be multiplied forever; but the soundest way of finding out
sober, judicious opinion will necessarily await the writing of
autobiographies and memoirs by the people concerned.
With these sweeping reservations in mind, it is worth noting the
organization of OWI (internal). The Domestic Operations Branch can be
dismissed with brief mention. It proved to be the object of profound
suspicion on the part of many members of Congress, and its function was
to stimulate and assist inward media of public information in support of
the war effort. The Domestic Operations Branch never superseded other U.
S. government informational services (State, Agriculture, Treasury, War,
and so on), so that it was the wartime supplement to the governmental
supplement to the regular news and information system, which remained
private. This precluded intimate coordination of domestic and overseas
propaganda and rendered illusory any hope that domestic propaganda, as
eavesdropped by our enemies, could be used as an instrument of war.
The Overseas Operations Branch had two basic missions. Within the United
States it was the operating and controlling agency for government-owned
or government-leased world-wide short-wave. For actual overseas
purposes, it was the rear echelon of both the Navy and Army theater
facilities and of its own OWI Outposts. The Outposts were themselves
under OWI for certain purposes; for other purposes they were subject to
the chief of mission (ambassador, minister or chargé) of the U. S. in
the foreign country, and still other purposes under the American
military commander having local jurisdiction. (OWI-Delhi, for example,
was under the office of the American High Commissioner in India; also
under the Rear Echelon Headquarters of the Commanding General, United
States Army Forces, China-Burma-India Theater; also under OWI-New York
for supply of its printed materials, most personnel and needed presses;
under OWI-San Francisco for supply of its wirelessed news; and under
OWI-Washington for general policy, hiring and firing, and everything
else.)
In terms of its own global radio, OWI prepared planning and control
materials in Washington and relayed these to New York and San Francisco.
The radio facilities in these cities then transmitted the material
overseas. Through the first three years of the war, the precise nature
of the Washington controls was in question, enforcement remained a
perplexing problem, and coordination between planning and execution
remained unsolved in part. By the spring and summer of 1945, OWI had
solved most of these problems, chiefly by means of circulating the Area
I, II, and III chiefs to the operating offices. When personal relations
were satisfactory (as in the instance of Mr. Owen Lattimore, chief in
OWI San Francisco, Mr. George Taylor, chief of Far East in Washington,
and Mr. F. M. Fisher, chief of China Outpost in Chungking, all of them
China experts) coordination might be difficult but was never
exasperating.
[Illustration: _Chart V_
+----------------------+
| DOMESTIC BRANCH |
+--------------------+ +- - - - - - - - - - - + +-----------------+
| ASSISTANT TO THE +---+ DIRECTOR +----+ SPECIAL |
| DIRECTOR | + - - - - - - - - - - -+ | ASSISTANT |
+--------------------+ | EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR | +-----------------+
+----------+-----------+
|
+---------------------+------------------------+
| | |
+----------+-----------+ | +- - - - + +----------+---------+
| ASSISTANT | | |PROGRAM | | DIRECTOR |
| DIRECTOR | | PLANNING | OF WAR PROGRAMS |
+----------------------+ | | AND | +--------------------+
| Speech Clearance Unit| | REVIEW | Industry |
| | | | BOARD | | Liaison Officer |
| Inter-Agency | | + - - - -+ | |
| Publications | | | Scheduling and |
| Committee Unit | | | Allocation Officer |
+- - - - - - - - - - - + | | |
| Advisory Committee | | | Copy Editor |
+----------------------+ | +--------------------+
|
|
+-----------+-----------+------+------+----------+-----------+
| | | | | | |
+----+----+ +----+----+ +----+----+ | +----+---+ +----+-----+ +---+----+
| DEPUTY | | DEPUTY | | DEPUTY | | | DEPUTY | | DEPUTY | | DEPUTY |
| DIRECTOR| | DIRECTOR| | DIRECTOR| | |DIRECTOR| | DIRECTOR | |DIRECTOR|
| ----- | | ----- | | ----- | | | ----- | | ------ | | ---- |
| ECONOMIC| | | | | | | | | | | |
| STABIL- | | | | LABOR | | | | |PRODUCTION| | |
| IZATION | | FOREIGN | | AND | | |MILITARY| | AND | | WAR |
| FINANCE | |RELATIONS| | CIVILIAN| | | | | MANPOWER | | FOOD |
| AND | | | | WELFARE | | | | | | | |
| TAXATION| | | | | | | | | | | |
| ----- | | ----- | | ----- | | | ----- | | ------ | | ---- |
| PROGRAM | | PROGRAM | | PROGRAM | | |PROGRAM | | PROGRAM | |PROGRAM |
| MANAGERS| | MANAGERS| | MANAGERS| | |MANAGERS| | MANAGERS | |MANAGERS|
+---------+ +---------+ +---------+ | +--------+ +----------+ +--------+
|
+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+---------+
| | | | | | |
+---+----+ +---+---+ +---+----+ +---+---+ +--+---+ +--+---+ +---+---+
|BOOK AND| |FOREIGN| | | |MOTION | | | | | |SPECIAL|
|MAGAZINE| | NEWS | |GRAPHICS| |PICTURE| | NEWS | |RADIO | |SERVICE|
| BUREAU | |BUREAU | | BUREAU | |BUREAU | |BUREAU| |BUREAU| |BUREAU |
+--------+ +-------+ +--------+ +-------+ +------+ +------+ +-------+
(Source: OWI administrative memorandum. Courtesy of Dr. E. P. Lilly.)]
[Illustration: _Chart VI_
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Organization and Membership of the Review Board |
| |
| +-----------------------+ |
| | WASHINGTON | |
| +-----------------------+ |
| | Overseas Director | |
| | Executive Director | |
| | Deputy Directors | |
| | (Reg. Specialists) | |
| | Liaison Chief | |
| | Spec. Advisor Pol. | |
| | OWI Director (Ex.| |
| | Assoc. Director (Off.| |
| +------------+----------+ |
| | |
| +---------------+----------------+ |
| | | |
| +--------------+-------------+ +--------------+-------------+ |
| | NEW YORK | | SAN FRANCISCO | |
| +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ |
| | Assistant Chief for Policy | | | |
| | Regional Specialists | | Regional Specialists | |
| | Media Specialists | | | |
| | Outpost Representatives | | | |
| +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
+----------+ +-------------+
| Spec. | | DIRECTOR'S |
| Advisor | | OFFICE |
| on Policy| +-------------+
+----------+ | DIRECTOR +-------+-------------+-------------+
| Spec. | | EXECUTIVE | | | |
| Advisor +-+-+ DIRECTOR | +-----+-----+ +-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| on | | | ASST. | | AREA ONE | | AREA TWO | | AREA THREE|
| Long | | | EXECUTIVE | +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| Range | | | DIRECTOR | | Deputy | | Deputy | | Deputy |
|Operations| | |LIAISON CHIEF| | Director | | Director | | Director |
+----------+ | +----------+--+ | Regional | | Regional | | Regional |
| | |Specialists| |Specialists| |Specialists|
| | | (Wash. | | (Wash., | | (Wash., |
| | | & N.Y.) | | N.Y., | | N.Y., |
+------------+-+ | | | |San Fran.) | |San Fran.) |
| Bureau of | | +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| Intelligence | |
+--------------+ |
|
+---------------+------------------------+
| | |
+---------+---------+ | +----------+----------+
| Outpost | | | Communications |
| Services Bureau | | | Facilities Bureau |
+-------------------+ | +---------------------+
|
+------+-----------+-------------------+
| | |
+--------+----------+ +-----+-----+ +-----------+-----------+
| NEW YORK OFFICE | | OUTPOSTS | | SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE |
+-------+ +-------------------+ +-----------+ +-----------------------+
| Short | | Chief of | | |
| Range +-+ New York Office | | Chief of |
|Control| | Assistant Chief | | San Francisco Office |
| Staff | | for Policy | | |
+-------+ +---------+---------+ +-----------------------+
|
|
+------------+--+---------------+---------------+
| | | |
+------+-----+ +------+-----+ +------+-----+ +------+-----+
| MOTION | | RADIO | |PUBLICATIONS| | NEWS AND |
| PICTURE | | PROGRAM | | BUREAU | | FEATURES |
| BUREAU | | BUREAU | | | | BUREAU |
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+
(Source: OWI administrative memorandum. Courtesy of Dr. E. P. Lilly.)]
In terms of supply, the materials gathered by the other agencies went to
the Outpost Service Bureau, which ran a virtual informational Sears
Roebuck for the outposts. Foreign demands for American materials were
unpredictable. The OWI learned rapidly and effectively, and the material
going out of the outposts to foreign audiences very soon reached a high
level of quality.
Other psychological warfare agencies at the national level were the CIAA
(Coordinator of [later the Office of] Inter-American Affairs) which
conducted propaganda exclusively to Latin America and the Caribbean, and
the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), which serviced the Joint Chiefs
of Staff with intelligence and policy materials, and served as a home
base for its own units which operated abroad under Theater authority. No
U.S.-based black propaganda operations were reported to the public.[36]
Reduced to the concrete terms of definite policy execution (as opposed
to the making of policies that might or might not ever reach their
supposed executors) and the routine working of operations, the national
level was not important except for the two functions stated above,
global shortwave, and source of supply. The decisive choices were made
in the theaters or at the outposts, half the time in ignorance of what
Washington policy-makers had decided in conclave on that particular
topic. (When the author was in China, he found that the OWI China
outpost decoded its week-to-week propaganda instructions only after they
were hopelessly obsolete; they were then filed.) The theaters were able
to use psychological warfare as and when they pleased. Between the ETO
and Washington close politico-military coordination was possible.
Between Washington and the others it was impracticable.
The War Department participation in the control and planning of
psychological warfare is shown by Chart VII, which represents the
situation as of 1945. The Propaganda Branch, attached to G-2 as a staff
agency and not to Military Intelligence Service as an operating agency,
served to carry out the psychological warfare functions of the War
Department.[37] The Chief of the Branch represented the Joint Chiefs of
Staff at OWI meetings, along with his Navy confrère; he took care of
official messages to the Theaters pertaining to psychological warfare
matters, and his office itself performed a few limited functions. (One
of these functions required the author to get up at four-thirty mornings
in order to digest the overnight intake of enemy propaganda. He was
joined in this by Teheran-born, Columbia-trained Edward K. Merat. It was
with real relief that he saw the Nazi stations go off the air. He was
then able to pass the early-bird business to his Persian colleague.) The
Branch also made up propanal studies whenever these were warrantable at
the General Staff level. The Deputy Chief (Air) was the vestigial
remnant of a short-lived Army Air Forces propaganda establishment; he
had direct access to the air staff, and took care of things having a
peculiarly air character. (The abbreviations under Theaters are
explained below, on page 187, since Theater nomenclature for
psychological warfare was never standardized.)
[Illustration: _Chart VII_
+--------------+ +----------------+
| JOINT CHIEFS +------------------------------------+ CHIEF OF STAFF |
| OF STAFF | +--------+-------+
+------+-------+ |
| +-----------+ |
| | CG 20TH | |
+- - - - -+ AIR FORCE +- - - - + +-----------------+
| +-----------+ | | |
| | |
| | | |
+------+-----+ +-------+----+----+ +----+--------+
| JOINT STAFF| | HEADQUARTERS | | A. C. OF S. |
| PLANNERS | | ARMY AIR FORCES | | G-2 |
+------+-----+ +---------+-------+ +----+--------+
| | |
+------+--------------------------------+--------------------+---------+
| PROPAGANDA BRANCH |
| ARMY MEMBER OF |
| JCS LIAISON WITH DEPUTY CHIEF OF BRANCH |
| OWI, CIAA (CHIEF CHIEF (USING OPD AND |
| OF BRANCH) (AIR) OTHER WD CHANNELS)|
| |
+-------+---------------------------+--------------------+-------------+
| | |
+---+-----+---------+ | |
| | | | |
+---+--+ +---+--+ +---+--+ | +----+-----+
| OWI | | CIAA | | OSS | | | THEATERS |
+------+ +------+ +------+ | +----+-----+
| |
| +-------+-----+-+-------+
| | | | |
| +--+--+ +--+--+ +--+--+ +--+---+
| | PWD | | PWB | | TPWO| | PWB |
| |SHAEF| | AFHQ| |CHINA| |OTHERS|
| +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +------+
+-----------+-----------------------+
| |
+-----+------+ +-----+-----+
| OPERATIONS | | RESEARCH |
+-----+------+ +-----------+
|
+----------+------+------+-------+ +-----+-----+
| | | | | | | |
+-----+--------+ | +----+----+ | +-----+------+ +----+---+ | +---+----+
|ADMINISTRATION| | | MILITARY| | |LIAISON WITH| | MORNING| | | DAILY |
+--------------+ | | GUIDANCE| | | OWI, OSS, | | FLASH | | | REPORT |
| | FOR OWI | | |NAVY, STATE,| +--------+ | +--------+
| +---------+ | | ETC | |
| | +------------+ |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+------------+----+ +------+------+ +-----+------+
| SPEECH AND | | SPECIAL | | SPECIAL |
| PUBLICATIONS | | STUDIES | | PROJECTS |
| CLEARANCE | +-------------+ +------------+
+-----------------+
(Source: Chart prepared for Colonel John Stanley in Propaganda Branch,
G-2.)]
With the termination of hostilities, though it was not the juridical
finish of the war, both OSS and OWI were swept out of existence. By
executive order of 20 September 1945, effective ten days later, OSS was
broken up; the scholastic portions were dismembered and reassembled into
the Department of State, where they presumably helped collate material
for the new interdepartmental Central Intelligence Group (CIG). The
operational parts were handed over to the War Department. For all the
author knows, some distressed colonel may have a desk full of
fountain-pens which explode, transmit radio messages, or can be used for
invisible tattooing, along with an edible blotter, a desk telephone
which is really a hand grenade and a typewriter which is a demountable
motor scooter; such speculations are delightful topics on which to
dwell, but the day of black propaganda is over. Obsolescence reduces all
things, even OSS, to absurdity.
The OWI perished a more lingering administrative death. It was
transferred to the Department of State as an operating unit under the
name Interim International Information Service (IIIS) and a new
Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. William Benton, took over its
sponsorship. Later, under the abbreviation OIC (Office of International
Information and Cultural Affairs), it was coordinated on January 1,
1946, with preexisting State department offices and with certain
leftovers from the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA). It retained
the global broadcasts on a limited budget; it still served the surviving
outposts, which were being integrated with diplomatic and consular
offices overseas; and for Korea, Japan, Germany, Austria, and Venezia
Giulia, it acted as the supplying service for the Military Government
information programs in those areas. The Bureau of the Budget took over
limited domestic functions when the OWI passed out of independent
existence on 31 August 1945.
=The _Joho Kyoku_.= Comparison of this United States system with the
Japanese Board of Information (_Joho Kyoku_), as outlined in chart VIII,
shows the difference between integrated and disparate systems. The
Japanese developed a close-knit system which combined public relations
of both army and navy, all domestic government publishing, complete
control of book-publishing, magazines, press, radio, and film,
propaganda intelligence and over-all psychological warfare. The progress
of an item through the Japanese psychological warfare system may look
intricate when followed on the chart, but it was in fact much less
intricate than the comparable American processing of an item.
[Illustration: _Chart VIII_
+----------------------------------+ +----------------------+
| SECRETARIAT | | BOARD OF INFORMATION |
| SOSAI-KAMBO | | JOHO KYOKU |
| | | |
|INVESTIGATION OFFICE SHINGISHITSU +---------+ PRESIDENT |
| PLANS INFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA | | VICE PRESIDENT |
| SECRETARIAL SECTION - HISHO-KA | | COUNCIL MEMBERS |
| DIRECTOR | +-----------+----------+
| PROTOCOL SECTION - BUSHO-KA | |
| DIRECTOR | |
| ACCOUNTS SECTION - KAIKEI-KA | |
| | |
|WARTIME DATA OFFICE - | |
| SENJI SHIRYOSHITSU | |
| 1st SECTION - DOMESTIC AFFAIRS | |
| 2nd SECTION - FOREIGN AFFAIRS | |
+----------------------------------+ |
|
+-------------------------+-------------------+-----+
| | |
+----------+--------+ +-------------+-------------+ +---------+---------+
| FIRST DIVISION | | SECOND DIVISION | | THIRD DIVISION |
| DAIICHI-BU | | DAINI-BU | | DAISAN-BU |
| | | | | |
| DIRECTOR | | DIRECTOR | | DIRECTOR |
| VICE DIRECTOR | | | | |
| | |1st SECTION - DIRECTOR | |1st SECTION - |
|1st SECTION - | | GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS,| | DIRECTOR |
| DIRECTOR | | NEWSPAPER COMMUNICATIONS,| | REPORTS FOREIGN |
| WAR GUIDANCE AND | | EXPOSITIONS, EXHIBITIONS | | DEVELOPMENTS; |
| PROPAGANDA | | | | NEWS FROM FOREIGN|
| PLANNING | |2nd SECTION - DIRECTOR | | NEWSPAPERS, |
| | | RADIO BRODCASTS, MOTION | | DIRECTS OVERSEAS |
|2nd SECTION - CHIEF| | PICTURES, DRAMA, MUSIC, | | BROADCASTS |
| ENFORCEMENT OF | | ETC. | | |
| PLANNING AND | | | |2nd SECTION - |
| PUBLIC RELATIONS | |3rd SECTION - DIRECTOR | | DIRECTOR |
| CONTROL | | MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS, | | OVERSEAS CULTURAL|
+-------------------+ | ART WORK, PHOTOGRAPHS | | WORK AND |
| | | PROPAGANDA |
| EDITORIAL OFFICE - CHIEF | +-------------------+
| PUBLISH WEEKLY NEWS |
| AND PICTORIAL REVIEWS. |
| |
|4th SECTION - DIRECTOR |
| CENSORSHIP |
+-------------+-------------+
|
|
+------+------+
| OUTPUT |
+-------------+
(Source: Chart prepared before VJ-day in Propaganda Branch, G-2.)]
The only aspect of psychological warfare that does not show on the chart
is the Japanese political warfare system--by the test of success, the
best developed by any belligerent during World War II. The Japanese very
early learned the simple rule: _Political warfare cannot convert a
sub-subsistence economy and government into a satisfactory system, but
political warfare can convert a subsisting area into one that has the
illusions of prosperity and national freedom._ To succeed in the face of
economic difficulty, political warfare must be shrewd, simple,
insistent, and backed up with a touch of terror. The Japanese moved into
the Western colonial areas of the Far East between 1940 and 1942
(Indo-China, Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, parts of China, Burma,
and areas inhabited by substantial Indian minorities). They organized
the following "independent" governments:
The Imperial Government of Manchukuo;
Federated Autonomous Inner Mongolia;
The Reorganized National Government of China, superseding earlier
puppets;
Malai (under Japanese military control but promised ultimate
independence);
The Republic of the Philippines;
The Empire of Vietnam (later the Vietnam Republic);
A dictatorship in Burma of the Adipadi;
Republic Indonesia;
Azad Hind (Free Indian government-in-exile) and the Azad Hind Fauj
(quisling Indian National Army, which put large forces into the field
against British-controlled Indian troops and helped to neutralize the
entire military potential of India);
The independent Kingdom of Cambodia (made independent by telling the
helpless King that he need not let the French come back).
These Japanese-sponsored governments flew their own flags, had enough
troops to help Japan police their home areas, developed psychological
warfare facilities with intensive Japanese assistance, and went through
all the motions of independence. In 1944, some of them even held an
international conference at Tokyo, thanking Japan for liberating all the
non-White States and adopting high-sounding resolutions. (The Siamese
puppet ambassador to this meeting had the unforgettable name of His
Excellency, the Honorable Witchit Witchit Watakan!)
Behind the pageantries of Japanese political warfare, economic and
social realities were horrid. The Japanese printed money which had far
less backing than cigar store coupons. They bankrupted all non-Japanese
business so that Japanese carpetbaggers could buy their way in cheap;
businesses owned by white foreigners were expropriated out of hand. They
cut off communications, spread terror, raised the price of food, put
hospitals out of business, degraded schools--and received the devoted
loyalty of large parts of the cheated populations. It did not matter to
millions of Burmese whether they had lived well under British rule or
not; the British did not let them have their own flag, did not let them
send ministers and ambassadors, did not let them run a scow up and down
the river with a mortar on it, calling it a navy. The _miranda_, the
pageantry of politics, was what mattered--not law-and-order, democracy,
security, education, health.[38]
The same story might have been repeated on a larger scale throughout the
Far East, perhaps ultimately leading to something like Lothrop
Stoddard's old nightmare, _The Rising Tide of Color_. Countervening
factors included the presence of Chinese agitation both Kuomintang and
Communist in leadership, guerrilla operations throughout Southeast Asia,
and the ruinous economic effects of American submarine and Fourteenth
Air Force anti-shipping operations. Shipping losses drove the Greater
East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere below subsistence level and created a
condition where even the most fanatic patriot realized the disadvantages
of the situation.
The Japanese put all the captured radios to work. They had traitors of
all kinds on their side--including, it is shameful to admit, Americans,
Russians, British, Australians, and French. (Despite the fact they
occupied all of Guam, they never used a single Guamanian
traitor--testimony to the simple loyalty to the U.S. of the Chamorro
people and to the popularity of the long-established U.S. naval
government on the island.)
Japanese psychological warfare failed because the real warfare behind it
failed. The Japanese could not whip their over-docile troops into a
fighting frenzy without allowing those troops to behave in a way which
made deadly enemies for Japan among the peoples she came to "liberate."
The Japanese did not have sense enough to be satisfied with 100% return
per year on their money, but wrecked the conquered economic systems with
inflation, poor management, and excess exploitation. Even the quislings
became restless under the poor occupation policies of the Japanese, and
before the war was over a considerable number of the Japanese quislings
re-quislinged back to the United Nations side.
=Theater Psychological Warfare.= The Japanese had superlative close-knit
psychological warfare staff organization within metropolitan Japan. They
possessed many first-class field operators, first among them the
true-life master-mind Major General K. Doihara, whose dinner guests
often woke up the next morning with bad hangovers and high treason on
their consciences. But the Japanese did not have adequate channels of
communication, supply, and control between their smooth system at the
top, and the working propagandists at the bottom. The _Kempeitai_
(military-political gendarmerie) structure got in the way; Japanese
propaganda lines lost touch with the strategic realities of their slow
defeat. They did, instead, what any propaganda system does on the
downgrade; they turned to repression instead of counterpropaganda with
the inevitable result.
In contrast, the American psychological warfare structure included
Theater operating units, usually called PWB (Psychological Warfare
Branch), although it became PWD (Psychological Warfare Division) in
SHAEF and did not grow beyond TPWO (Theater Psychological Warfare
Officer) in China Theater. The supreme authority was, of course, the
Theater Commander, on whose responsibility the operation had to be
carried out. When propaganda bungled and got into the field of political
trouble, it was the Theater Commander and not the subordinates who took
the blame. Every theater was under the command of a general, except for
Central Pacific (under Admiral Nimitz, and he used an Army colonel as
his propaganda chief). In most theaters, the Political Adviser was the
buffer between psychological warfare and the commander himself; in
Southwest Pacific and later the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander
for the Allied Powers, Japan, General MacArthur instituted the office of
Military Secretary and made this officer responsible for reporting to
him personally the developments in the propaganda field.
Subject to local variation, the Theater agencies faced similar problems.
They had to serve in turn as a rear echelon to service the needs of
combat propaganda, while working as the actual operating agencies for
the bigger radio programs and the preparation of strategic leaflets. As
the areas behind them became more consolidated, displays and films took
their place beside news and leaflets as chores that had to be performed.
Communications facilities were a problem. Purely military facilities
could not, of course, be overloaded by the lightly coded transmission of
hundreds of thousands of words of political and other news and guidance;
the psychological warfare establishments had to jerry-build
communications facilities out of what they could borrow from Army, or
obtain from OWI supplies in the United States, or buy locally.
In most Theater organizations, the chief was a military man and the
staff was partly military and partly civilian. Under General Eisenhower,
PWD was not only Army and OWI but included OSS, on the American side,
along with British partnership, French participation, and other Allied
personnel as well. Under General MacArthur, OWI participated under
strict Army control. Under General Stilwell, no Theater organization as
such was set up; the G-2, the Political Adviser or the General himself
handled propaganda matters when they turned up. Under General Wedemeyer,
there was a Theater officer. Under General Sultan, the OWI ran itself;
the Outpost serviced the Theater. Under General Clay, Information
Control Service, OMGUS, became an integral part of military control. The
same thing happened in General MacArthur's reorganized PWB--an
organization termed CIES (Civil Information and Education Section) had
the organization and personnel not only of the American structure, but
the usable purged parts of the _Joho Kyoku_ obedient to its command and
liaison. Other Theaters had comparable arrangements, each suited to the
Theater.
[Illustration: _Figure 50: Consolidation Propaganda: Door Gods._ One of
the most unusual consolidation propaganda operations was the
distribution of "door gods." These were small good-looking posters which
traditionally displayed figures from the Chinese Pantheon. During the
war, farm families who had been accustomed to putting up new door gods
each lunar New Year found that they could not afford them. China
Division, OWI, then run by F. M. Fisher, Richard Watts, Jr., Graham
Peck, and James Stewart, made up new door gods which showed American
aviators, thus familiarizing the Chinese peasantry with our insignia and
preaching the cause of inter-Allied cooperation.]
[Illustration: _Chart IX_
PRODUCTION
of a
TACTICAL LEAFLET
(Army Level)
INTELLIGENCE
+----------+ +----------+
| RECORDING| | CIVILIAN |
| UNIT | | INTERROG.|
| | | OFFICERS |
+-----+----+ +-----+----+
| |
v v
+------+-------+
|
v PRODUCTION
+-----------+----------+ +------------+
| INTELLIGENCE | | LEAFLET |
| OFFICER +==============++ ++===+ WRITER |
| AND STAFF | || || | |
+-----------+----------+ || || +------+-----+
^ || || |
| || || |
+------+-------+ || || |
^ | ^ || || |
| | | || || v
+-----+----+ | +-----+----+ || || +------+-----+
| POW | | | CORPS | || || | LAYOUT |
| INTERROG.| | | LIAISON | || ++===+ ARTIST |
| OFFICERS | | | OFFICERS | || || | |
+----------+ | +----------+ || || +------+-----+
| || || |
+------+-------+ || || |
^ ^ || || |
| | || || V
+-----+----+ +------+----+ +--------++-------+ || +------+-----+
|MONITORING| |PSYCH. WAR.| | FW COMBAT TEAM | || | PRINTING |
| UNIT | | AT OTHER | |OPERATIONS CHIEF +====++===+ UNIT |
| | | LEVELS | | | | (MOBILE) |
+----------+ +-----------+ +--------++-------+ +------+-----+
|| |
|| V
+-------------------------------------][------------------------+------+
| || |
| || |
| || |
| || |
| || |
| +---------------+ || +---------------+ |
| | AIR CORPS | || | ARTILLARY | |
| | LIAISON +==================++============+ LIAISON | |
| | OFFICER | | OFFICER | |
| +------++-------+ +------++-------+ |
| || || |
| || ++=======++ |
| || || || |
| +------++-------+ || +---++----+ |
| | AIR BOMB | || | LEAFLET | |
| | DEPOT OFFICER | DISSEMINATION ++===+ ROLLERS +<----+
| | | || | |
| +------++-------+ || +----+----+
| || || |
| || || |
| || || V
| +---++----+ || +----+----+
| | BOMB | || | SHELL |
+---->+ LOADERS | ++===+ LOADERS |
| | | |
+----+----+ +----+----+
| |
| |
V V
FIGHTER ARTILLARY
BOMBER INSTALLATIONS
FIELDS
(ASP'S BATTERY POSITIONS,
DIVISION ARTILLARY, DAQ'S)
LEGEND
|
---- | FLOW OF MATERIAL AND IDEAS
||
==== || OPERATIONAL CONTROL
(_Source: History of 2d Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company._)]
The common features of all Theater establishments were:
(1) Liaison or control from Army, State, and OWI, sometimes including
OSS.
(2) Responsibility to the Theater Commander.
(3) Direct operation of strategic radio.
(4) Preparation of strategic leaflets, and sometimes of tactical
leaflets as well.
(5) Use of local, native, or allied personnel.
Within the Theater staffs, the psychological warfare facilities were to
a great extent assimilated for control and movement of personnel,
supply, and so on. The G-3's and G-4's of the Theaters normally serviced
the PWB's along with the rest of their work. The OWI and other civilian
persons were put into uniform and given simulated rank, sometimes wildly
disproportionate to their Army counterparts. The Army G-2's naturally
worked with the PWB intelligence facilities; in some Theaters the G-2
was _ex officio_ the chief of psychological warfare, as was the
Assistant Chief of Staff G-2, War Department General Staff, himself at
home. G-1's usually kept out of the way of psychological warfare and the
housekeeping of the units was in most cases autonomous.
Responsibility for financing psychological warfare was never established
as doctrine. The State Department kept most of it off its budget,
leaving the actual payments up to the War Department and the OWI to
figure out. Oftentimes this resulted in a curious sort of neo-capitalism
within the U.S.-owned socialism of the Army. The two agencies would hold
on to property as though it were private property, on the basis of
immediate title, without reference to the plain fact that all of it was
paid for in the end by the United States Treasurer. (OWI once murmured
threateningly about bringing its radio material home from Manila rather
than let General MacArthur's people highjack it. Such talk ended when
the material was declared surplus or stolen.)
=Field Operations.= Field operations were most highly developed in the
Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operation. Combat propaganda
units came into being, carrying fully equipped mobile radio stations,
and high-volume printing presses, along with them. Later, under SHAEF,
these units developed further and Army-level organizations were set up
which duplicated the Theater organizations on a reduced scale. (See
Chart IX for chart of an Army unit.)
The tactical leaflet (page 211) came into its own with such units. It
was possible to develop high-speed routines for using intelligence
swiftly. Maps were dropped on the enemy in unfavorable situations. Order
of Battle became highly important for psychological warfare purposes
when enemy units could be addressed by their proper unit designation or
by the name of their commanders. Intelligence was brought into play: bad
food, bad supply, poor command, or mishandling of enemy forces in any
way brought prompt propaganda comment.
Radio was the least useful for tactical operations simply because enemy
troops do not carry private portable radio sets around with them. Radio
was of high value in consolidation operations, passing along
instructions to liberated populations, and telling civilians in the line
of approach about measures which they could take for the common benefit
of themselves and of the Allies.
A constant problem, never completely ironed out, was the use of
airplanes for dropping purposes. The leaflet producers had, in all
Theaters, a tendency to prepare excellent leaflets, bale them, and send
them along to the airfields in the expectation that an overworked,
unindoctrinated air force staff would automatically pick up the
leaflets, develop dropping mechanisms, pack the leaflets into planes,
take them out and drop them to the right language-groups at the right
time in the right place. This was of course as absurd from the aviators'
side as it was, to the civilians, to let their brain-children accumulate
in hangars or warehouses. For strategic droppings, systematic
arrangements could be made through proper official channels, and a
regular air operation detailed to do the job. Tactical dropping did not
allow enough time for elaborate staff work in each instance, and
recourse was had to psychological warfare liaison officers (either Army
officers or civilians with the approximate status of Tech-rep, technical
representative, a familiar sight on World War II airfields) to get in
touch with the units, help them install dropping facilities, explain the
leaflets to the actual pilots and bombardiers, and thus obtain a high
degree of cooperation. In almost every theater, this policy succeeded,
and a wide variety of leaflet bombs, leaflet dispensers, and other
leaflet-circulating gadgets was developed.
Artillery distribution also played a significant part. For front-line
situations artillery could do the job better than planes, without
risking aircraft in a quasi-combat operation. Leaflet bombs of
considerable scope appeared, and could be made to fit almost any
appropriate weapon. Circulation was also effected by means of
clandestine operations to friendly civilians, frequently combined with
air-drop of weapons, medicine, and other essentials.
The organization of all these new functions has changed military
organization. A whole new series of units were attached in echelon, each
fitted to the appropriate level for its work. The rear-area functions
and strategic propaganda work always required a considerable proportion
of civilian aid, since some of the best workers in this line were
persons who either did not wish to join the Army or whom the Army did
not wish to have join it. These psychological warfare organizations were
unbelievably cheap, even if measured by the most conservative estimates
of their success. It is impossible that the army of the future, whether
American or foreign, will overlook this source of assistance.
Psychological warfare nowhere replaced combat, but it made the impact of
combat on the enemy more effective.
CHAPTER 11
Plans and Planning
With most military planning, it is feasible to work from the top down,
define the strategic objective and then work out the actual requirements
of the operation in advance. This is not true of psychological
warfare.[39] The objectives may be defined, and in the process of
definition the general needs of a propaganda agency may be clarified. If
a plan calls for a press or a radio, somebody can requisition a Davidson
Press or a Hallicrafter radio and get ready to use it. But the plan
cannot define goals, set time limits for the achievement of the goals,
relate the goals to one another in a scheduled pre-fixed program of
success, establish terms whereby psychological victory can be told from
psychological defeat.
Psychological victory exists only in terms of the military victory which
it is designed to assist. Psychological defeat, no matter how much
critics or the enemy propagandist may allege it, can be proved to exist
only when an actual defeat makes it real. Psychological plans are always
contingency plans for the assistance of military operations. They are
dependent on the military operation and they cannot be checked against
fact except in terms of the military operations they ostensibly support.
Unfortunately, they were not always written with these reservations in
mind.
=Needs of the Operator: Materials and Guidance.= American officers,
assisting foreign troops, could not plan logistics until they found out
what the foreign troops actually required. How much did they eat, and
what? How much could they carry, and for how long? How much tonnage had
to be sent them, and how often? Such questions had to be asked about the
needs of the individual men before unit planning, not to mention
national planning, became possible at all.
Similarly, in psychological warfare, planning can be made realistic if
it starts with the individual operation for the control of which the
planning is done. Define the operator as anyone having a task in the
actual preparation, production or transmission of propaganda materials,
whether through electric communications or by print. The operator is not
usually a person with a high security classification, yet he plays his
indispensable part in fulfilling the highest and most secret strategy
of the war. How can a plan be written that will be useful in carrying
out the actual (and highly secret) strategy of the war while meeting the
needs of an inexpert individual way down at the bottom of the control
system? The answer is, of course, that no such plan can be prepared.
Different plans are needed for successive phases.
The operator needs simple but basic materials. If he is a producer of
some kind--such as a creative writer, an artist, a singer, a program
arranger, a newscaster who does his own scripts and so on--he is likely
to be a person with ideas of his own. Individual creativeness cannot
usually be turned on and off like a faucet. Low-ranking and disciplined
though the hired writer may be, he is still subject to the inward
frailties of authors if he is any good. (This particular author
sympathized deeply with some poor American Japanese who were given
unbelievably dull outlines and told, "Turn this into exciting Japanese
material! Give it pep! Make it rock them off their _tatami_! But don't
get away from that outline one damn inch!" The _nisei_ rolled their
eyes; they did a poor job, as they knew that they would.)
The person who has to be told day in and day out how to operate is no
operator at all. Psychological warfare is no place for unsuccessful
short-story writers or would-be radio commentators. It demands
professional standards, and it has more than professional difficulties.
Therefore what the operator needs is not technical instruction but
general guidance.
He must be told what he can say, what he cannot say. He should whenever
possible be given some reason for perplexing or cryptic instructions. He
should be helped to become familiar with what we are trying to tell the
enemy. There is nothing classified about that, since the enemy is to be
told it as soon as possible. The guidance given the operator should be:
(1) Plain.
(2) Feasible. (This sounds superfluous, but was not so during World
War II when operators were sometimes told to attack such-and-such an
enemy institution without referring to it directly or indirectly.)
(3) Organized. (The material at OWI was not organized until the last
several months of the war, with the result that hundreds of thousands
of words of propaganda commands remained in force, technically, but
un-indexed and arranged only by weekly form.)
(4) Specific in showing timing. (General controls should not be issued
at the beginning of operations; when revised, the revision should
supersede the revised section, and not be placed beside it. Other
provisions should be given expiration dates, after which they pass out
of effect.)
(5) Mandatory. (Control should be expressed in _do_ or _don't_;
personal advice is better conveyed through informal channels.)
(6) Non-security or low-classified. (This material, for the operators,
should be accessible to the operators. Often the most important
operator--the best newsman, the most effective leaflet artist--may be
a rather doubtful citizen, an alien, or even an enemy volunteer. He
cannot follow guidances unless he knows them, and it makes a farce of
security for his superior to be able to tell him the guidance, so that
he can memorize it, but not able to give him the document itself.)
These rules, though simple, are not always easy to follow. Here is an
example of a bad guidance:
CLASSIFIED
Without superseding instructions concerning religion, we may use the
occasion of the Sacred Banyan Tree Festival to needle the Provisional
President. Make a dramatic story of the President's life. Undermine
his use of religion to bolster the dictatorship.
Caution: do not mention religion. Do not indulge in scurrilous
personal attacks. Material concerning our information of the
President's biography is highly classified and must not be used.
The exaggeration may seem apparent, but it is a fair sample of the worst
directives as actually issued and many, though not quite so bad, were
near it. The same guidance in more acceptable form would read:
UNRESTRICTED
(Expires 24 September, week following Festival.) Standing instructions
make Banyan Tree Festival difficult topic with which to deal. If
operators can suggest means of referring to Festival without violating
prohibitions against religious offense, encourage them to try.
Monitoring and diplomatic sources show that Provisional President is
utilizing Festival to consolidate his position. If he can be attacked,
do so.
The other need of the actual operator is material. The script writer
needs actual texts of everyday enemy speech in order to keep his slang
and idiom up to date. The artist needs correct photographs of enemy
cities in wartimes so that the leaflet picture he makes will not look as
outmoded as a crinoline or a Model T. All of them need all the
information they can get about their own country--good handbooks,
dictionaries, elementary histories, textbooks in fields which they may
not know. It is amazing how hard it is to explain America to foreigners;
the American soon finds out how little he knows his own country, and
needs information about his own background along with current materials
concerning the enemy.
Where radio propaganda is in question, the script-writers and
broadcasters will read the enemy radio propaganda if they do not get
enough fresh non-propaganda material concerning their audience. Sooner
or later this will degenerate into alternate soliloquies of the radio
men on each side, each watching the other to see if he got a rise out of
him last time. OWI people frequently expressed idiot glee at having made
Radio Tokyo frantic. The OWI men were the first to admit that their glee
was pointless, since it was the Japanese broadcaster and not the
Japanese audience who responded. But for lack of current information
about the enemy the propagandist will refer to his own professional
opponent. There is, of course, a very substantial difference between a
change in enemy propaganda occasioned by a real inroad which one's own
propaganda had made in enemy opinion, and a change that consists simply
in angry or smart backtalk. Finding that difference is the
responsibility of propanal, not of the operator.
=Pre-Belligerent Planning.= Pre-belligerent planning differs from
regular planning in that it does not have the substantial context of
actual military operations to make it realistic and urgent. Like all
plans, the pre-belligerent plan should enumerate the facilities
available, the basic course of action to be followed, and the limits
within which offensive propaganda will be permitted. In fairness to the
planners themselves, as well as to the authorities who will fit this
plan into related military, economic, or political plans, the plan
should define the proper scope of propaganda as applied to the
contemplated situation.
One of the most useful functions of the pre-belligerent plan lies in the
periodic exercise which it gives in propaganda discipline. Information
and intelligence agencies frequently see their jobs so technically that
they lose sight of the need for coordination within the mechanism of an
entire government. Press relations people try to get stories in the
papers. Radio people try to maintain listener interest. Educational
officers are concerned with the teachability of their materials.
Spokesmen of the different agencies in related fields (such as shipping,
air transport, currency control, social welfare) are apt to comment on a
particular situation without reference to the needs of an inclusive
national policy. How much advice was handed out on the occasion of the
ultimatum to Tito? The Jugoslav authorities plainly risked
politico-psychological pressure from us; they came prepared for the
consequences; but both American official and private opinion expressed a
wild medley of recommendations, suggestions, and analysis. Federal
officials showed no better discipline than did the private citizens.
Pre-belligerent planning may be forced on the United States by eventual
international crises, but before that stage is reached, private and
governmental persons working in the informational field might do well to
consider how readily they could offer or enforce cooperation in the
event of a real emergency.
[Illustration: _Figure 51: Basic Types: Start of War._ This leaflet
embodies almost all possible mistakes in psychological warfare. It was
prepared to explain why war came between America and Japan, but was not
even begun until many months after Pearl Harbor. The heading and style
are official and formal. The message is no more than a footnote to
history. Its last fault redeemed it; no arrangements were made for
dropping it.]
=Psychological Warfare Plans.= A general plan for psychological warfare
expresses the aims of the portion of the war (either in point of time,
or with respect to a stated area) to which it refers. It states the
maximum goals which psychological warfare can, with honest realism, be
counted on to accomplish if all goes well. It indicates the minimum
effect, which (unlike combat operations) can fall precisely at zero.
The general plan then goes on to state the conditions which will govern
the operating agencies. The important part of this section lies in
guessing where the operating agencies are likely to need coordination
and where not. If the plan is to reveal highly important and therefore
secret strategy, it should merely sketch the broad outlines of the
processes intended, leaving to experts the responsibility of determining
specific _do's_ and _don'ts_. In such a case, however, the plan should
not leave room for inter-agency or inter-personal doubt as to where the
interpretive function lies. Too often, highly formal agreements are
interpreted out of existence by propagandists who are interested in
adding their own proposals to those set forth and agreed upon in the
plan. When definition of the plan in operational terms[40] is needed,
the location of the sub-definer should be made very plain unless the
propaganda establishment itself happens to be remarkably well organized
and in no further need of definite prescriptions of function.
The inclusion of actual political and military goals in a propaganda
plan is an exceedingly ambitious undertaking. The goal, "To foster a
spirit of nationalism and independence among the Eastern Arachosian
people to the end that they may revolt and set up their own pro-Allied
government," is a commitment beyond the reach of normal propaganda. It
comes closer to requiring all the facilities of the operating state,
financial, diplomatic, covert, and paramilitary, to put it into effect.
The goal, "To give sympathetic circulation to Eastern Arachosian
autonomist sentiments so as to promote interference with the occupying
power," is much more nearly attainable. Military goals are often
described by propagandists as attainable by means of propaganda alone,
but there is no known example of psychological warfare having attained a
strictly military goal without assistance by other means of warfare.
Goals such as "the defeat of ----," "the surrender of ----," or the
"destruction of ----," have no place in practical propaganda planning,
since they are pretentious or deceptive. More legitimate are the goals
actually obtained by propaganda, such as "encouragement of a spirit of
factionalism which may assist defeat ...," "promotion of war-weariness
that will make the process of surrender more easily accomplished ...,"
and "appeals for the destruction of ----." Such points may appear minor,
but it is the overstatement of the propaganda case that has many times
goaded disinterested outsiders into becoming skeptics or opponents.
Political and military goals can be described only in terms of hopes;
effective psychological goals--goals resting in the form of opinion
which it is desired to create--are very concrete. If enemy surrender is
desired, propaganda leaves to the operator no further scope for revenge
themes which will frighten the enemy away from surrender. If the enemy
leader is to be discredited on the basis of having poor military
judgment, the contrasting good judgment of the enemy general is a
necessary ingredient. The psychological goals have to be framed in terms
of how much the enemy listener, the Propaganda Man, can stand and can
believe. (See page 153.) Since he listens irregularly, furtively, and
half-antagonistically, propaganda will defeat itself if it shifts from
goal to goal with logical but finespun dexterity. Psychological goals
are attained only by sustained, consistent patterns of propaganda; they
have to be plain, repetitive, and insistent. Political and military
goals can be anything the planners feel like including as a pious wish.
They might as well consist of a current re-statement of political and
military aims for the subject or area at the time of planning. They are
beyond the reach of practical psychological warfare.
National-level and general staff level plans have to be made up in much
the same way. If the plan is good it will provide for its own
circulation to all government instrumentalities which do in fact conduct
propaganda in the particular field involved. It does no good to adopt a
plan for the encouragement of the Filipinos and the inducement of
cooperation among the Filipino officials of the Japanese-sponsored
Republic (which means a tone of conciliation toward Filipino leaders or
officials who hold puppet titles) if a cabinet member keeps calling
publicly for the immediate execution of any Filipino who ever had dinner
with a Japanese. It is useless to try to cooperate with Communist
guerrillas in West K'tai on the argument, "We all oppose the Axis
together! Ideologies don't matter when brave men fight side by side"--if
at the same time the guerrillas know we have a strong domestic campaign
on against Communism. Telling a Communist that ideologies don't matter
is like saying to a Jesuit, "Let's skip the superstitions, Father, and
leave religion out of it. Get down to business." To some kinds of
people, ideology _is_ business. The broad propaganda plan should make
choices that reflect the judgment of the reviewing officers. If they are
made in a vacuum, without taking into consideration the actual opinion
of the audience group, they might as well not be made at all.
Propaganda plans must be circulated to non-propaganda agencies in order
to make sure that routine public relations or announcements of current
or contemplated action, and statements of basic policy do not contradict
or neutralize the plan once it is put into effect. Frequently months of
propaganda work can be undone by a tactless speech from somebody in the
same government but in an unrelated agency. Authoritative circulation of
the plan--which means that the plan must be neither long nor
over-secret--can help forestall such mistakes. Speech clearance,
requiring review of all official and policy-making speeches in advance
of delivery, is the surest safeguard against overt collision between
different spokesmen. In World War II it was applied with some success,
but the exceptions were so conspicuous that the effective coordination
passed almost unnoticed.
=Strategic and Consolidation Plans.= Advance psychological warfare plans
for concrete military operations not only require a statement of the
propaganda operation to be performed with facilities and personnel who
are expected to remain static, but demand that the psychological warfare
personnel, together with the needful gear, be moved right along with the
advancing forces. This makes planning more definite, and those parts of
the plans that do not require psychological or political prescription of
content can be written in standard military form.
Wise consolidation plans give urgent priority to the restoration of the
home-grown informational media and recreational facilities of the
occupied territory. Definite anticipation of shortages in radio
facilities, newsprint, ink, paper, and other supplies can ensure prompt
reopening of consolidated facilities under way. The propaganda operators
may tell higher echelons that the local people are not competent, cannot
be trusted, and so on, but General MacArthur's experience in Japan would
seem to indicate that no army can carry on consolidation propaganda as
efficiently as the conquered civilians themselves can, provided the
civilians have:
(1) Reasonable though restricted freedom of utterance, so that they
can know what they may or may not say;
(2) Prompt liaison for security and policy clearance, so that they can
get an authoritative yes-or-no answer on proposed projects, enabling
them to maintain operation without intolerable delays;
(3) Friendly professional assistance in meeting material and staff
shortages;
(4) A series of phases, marking off the forms and methods of control
so that the controlling staff can plan for a first phase of doing its
own publishing and broadcasting, a second phase of letting the local
people work under license with close supervision and technical help,
and a third phase of permitting them freedom within the normal
censorship limits of military government. The American DISCC's
(District Information Services Control Commands) in the American Zone
of Germany did an excellent job in moving rapidly from phase one to
phase two in 1945 and 1946.
=Contingency Plans.= Frequently the chiefs of government and services
know of an operation or danger that may arise, which will change the
character of the war. Such were the North African landings, the Italian
surrender, D-day itself, the joining of the American and Russian forces
in Germany, Hitler's death. For such contingencies, it is desirable to
have plans ready stating the reaction of the government to the event.
Such plans can be prepared and distributed to select personnel, and
downgraded or released, together with any needed last-minute change,
when the first word comes through that the event is officially to be
recognized. Profoundly secret contingencies--such as Hiroshima day--do
not lend themselves to such treatment.
It must be repeated that plans are effective only when transposed into
plain, simple, usable guidances for the actual operatives. When a plan
is so secret or so involved that the only people who could carry it out
are not allowed to know anything about it, it becomes a sad
self-defeating effort.
CHAPTER 12
Operations for Civilians
Plainly, psychological warfare operates against civilians with as much
effect as it does against troops. Indeed, under the rather high
standards set for modern warfare by The Hague and Geneva conventions,
psychological warfare is left as one of the few completely legitimate
weapons which can on occasion be directed against an exclusively
civilian and noncombatant target. Even though World War II erased most
of the distinctions between military and civilian, leaving civilians in
the vertical front line of all air war, psychological warfare gained. It
became a more useful instrument for bettering war. Civilian interest in
propaganda became no mere matter of emotional loyalty or philosophical
preference, but a life-and-death matter to its recipients. After fire
raids it would be a madman who would disregard an enemy bomb-warning
leaflet without trying to figure out its application to himself and his
children.
=Short-wave Radio.= Short-wave radio is the chief burden-bearer of
long-distance psychological warfare. It is more useful as a means of
connecting originating offices with standard-wave relay stations than as
a direct means of communication. Even in free countries, short-wave sets
are not often plentiful. The conditions of reception, from a purely
technical point of view, are often undesirable; recreational material
does not go through since a short-wave listener will put up with the
static when he is receiving vital, vividly presented news, but often
will not try to make out soap opera or music over the squawks of the
ether, and the use of short-wave reception in wartime implies a
deliberate willingness on the part of the listener to do something which
he knows to be disloyal or dangerous.
Short-wave does make it possible for advanced standard-wave propaganda
stations to pass along material which has been prepared in the homeland.
Large staffs can do the work. The news can be put through a large,
alert, well organized office. Features can be prepared by real
professionals, acted out by a number of actors, put on records,
reviewed, and then relayed to the standard-wave station whenever needed.
The Americans at Radio Saipan thus broadcast right into Japan, and were
able to transmit materials which could not possibly have been put on the
air with the staff working on the island. The people at Saipan were
mostly telecommunications technicians, engaged in picking up the
short-wave from Hawaii or San Francisco and in passing it on into the
enemy country on the standard wave length. Millions of Japanese heard
our Saipan standard-wave broadcasts, in contrast to the dozens or
hundreds who had heard our short-wave previously.
The use of homeland facilities makes possible the advance preparation of
a large collection of material ready for broadcast. In security-sensitive
or otherwise dubious situations, four or five alternate programs can be
worked out for the same amount of program time. On wire recorders or
disc records, the proposed material can be passed around in finished
form, reviewed, selected, censored, and approved. This would not be true
of a hurried station working far forward in the zone of operations.
Short-wave has its own advantages, however, apart from its utility as a
means of getting program material to the relay stations. Short-wave can
and will be picked up by the enemy monitors and enemy intelligence
systems. It will also be heard by persons of power, wealth, and
influence, irrespective of the economic or political system of the
enemy. The big shots of any system know how to transcend limitations
that awe or defeat the ordinary man. The short-wave transmitter speaks
therefore to the enemy government, to the groups which compose the enemy
government, and to the individuals in or out of the enemy government who
are leaders in their own country. We found that the _Joho Kyoku_ and the
_Gaimusho_ (Foreign Office) in Tokyo were mimeographing a daily summary
of our San Francisco broadcasts, and we thus knew that anything we said
over San Francisco would be heard by the most influential men in Japan.
Captain Ellis Zacharias, U.S.N., spoke Japanese and had known most of
the Japanese leaders personally before the war; with government
monitoring known to exist he felt free to address the Japanese leaders
personally and directly with assurance his words would reach them, and
his broadcasts are confessed by the Japanese themselves to have played a
contributory part in bringing about the Japanese decision to surrender.
=Standard-wave.= The most effective use of radio is that which falls
within the receiving capacity of the ordinary receiving sets owned or
used by the enemy population. This means the establishment of
transmitting facilities close enough to the enemy territory for the
programs to get through. As between the United States and Japan from
1941 through 1944, this was very difficult. No Americans ever dared join
the Shantung guerrillas, whether Kuomintang or Communist, with
transmitters; and as long as we broadcast from the safety of our side of
the ocean, we could only hope that occasional freak conditions would
echo programs into Japan two or three times a month. With the British
and the Germans, it was altogether different; the two countries were
virtually touching, and each could cover the entire enemy territory.
With short-distance standard-wave broadcasting to an enemy known to have
millions of radio receivers, strategic radio becomes effective. The
chance is provided for building up a consistent group of listeners, for
influencing their morale and opinions, and for circulating rumors that
will reach almost every single person in the enemy population. The
temptation to perform tricks, to lapse back to peacetime standards of
radio-as-entertainment or radio-as-advertising, is a constant one. The
propagandist knows that he is being heard, and he fears that his
audience will lose interest if he does not stimulate them with a
brilliantly variegated series of programs.
Black radio comes into its own on standard wave. The British could put
the mysterious anti-British, anti-Hitler broadcaster _Gustav Siegfried
Eins_ on the air, with his rousing obscenities, his coarse but
believable gossip, his wild diatribes against the Allies and against the
Nazi scum who got in the way of the glorious German army. He was so good
that for a while even American propanal thought he might be a spokesman
for the saucier members of the _Wehrmacht_ general staff. The Germans
could broadcast proletarian propaganda on the _Lenin Old Guard_ station,
foaming at the mouth whenever they mentioned the crazy vile Fascist
swine Hitler, and then going into tantrums because the Communist party
needed all the brave glorious leaders who had been murdered by the fat
bureaucrat Stalin. Ed and Joe could talk out of Bremen and pretend to be
scooting around the American mid-west, one jump ahead of the G-men with
their trailer and concealed transmitter, telling the rest of the
Americans the low-down about "that goof Roosevelt and his Jewish war,"
but Ed and Joe were not good enough to fool anybody. Black radio is
great fun for the operators, but its use is often limited to a twisted
kind of entertainment designed to affect the morale of dubious groups.
It leaps to sudden importance only in times of critical panic when it
can add the last catalyst to national confusion, precipitating chaos.
The beginning and end of standard-wave transmission is news. News (see
page 135) uses standard appeals. It should be factual but selectively
factual. Repetition of basic themes is much more important than the
constant invention of new ones. The propaganda chief has nothing to do,
day in and day out, but to think of his own programs. He becomes
familiar with them and bored by them. He visualizes his Propaganda Man
as a person who hears all transmissions and is understandably bored by
them, overlooking the interruptions that listeners face, the long gaps
between the programs they hear, the weather interference, the static,
the police measures.
Even with peacetime facilities tremendous simplicity and repetition are
needed to convey advertising on the radio. In wartime repetition is
even more necessary. It serves the double function of driving the theme
home to listeners who have heard it before, while broadening the circle
of listeners with each transmission. A point of diminishing returns is
soon reached but even diminished returns are often rewarding. The
hardest-to-reach people are sometimes the ones it is most important to
reach with a simple, basic, persuasive item. Repetition thus ensures
depth of response in the core audience, while adding to the marginal
audience with each additional application. What is deadly monotonous to
the propagandist himself may, on the thousandth repetition, merely have
become pleasantly familiar to the Propaganda Man on the other end. The
author has talked to any number of clandestine listeners to our
propaganda who have almost wept with rage as they told of listening to
jokes, novelties, political speeches and other funny stuff when they
hoped to get a clean-cut announcement of the latest military news.
=Communication Through the Mails.= In World War II, propaganda was not
able to make use of the mails the way that the propagandists of World
War I succeeded in doing. The mails were much more intermittent. The
channels into Germany through Scandinavia were not kept open except for
Sweden, which was reachable, rather perilously, by air alone; Iberia was
an inhospitable base. German counterintelligence was more than ruthless;
it was effectively savage and made the Germany of Kaiser Wilhelm seem
rustic by contrast. With Japan, anything would have had to go through
Soviet censorship to get there in the first place, and then meet the
traditional intricacies of Japanese red tape. Mail propaganda was
therefore not heavily developed.
Something was accomplished, however, by use of the Portuguese, Spanish,
Swiss and Chinese press. Enemy officials and private persons were known
to read these, and it was possible to do a great deal toward influencing
editorial content.
Major mail-propaganda operations were conducted against us, however. The
Nazis, as part of their prebelligerent planning and operations, sent
enormous quantities of propaganda through the United States
mail--sometimes postage-free under the frank of Congressmen. The
Japanese, down to the time of Pearl Harbor, kept large public-relations
staffs running at full speed in New York, Washington, and other American
cities. They helped their American friends with money and by heavy
purchase of copyright material friendly to Japan--thus making it
unnecessary for any author to report himself as a Japanese paid agent,
and they offered Japanese "cultural and educational" information to
interested persons. It really was cultural and well done. By talking
about Japanese poetry, religion and cherry blossoms, and omitting all
war propaganda, the handsome little booklets kept alive the memory of a
hospitable, quaint, charming Japan. Some of this material was mailed
directly from Japan to the United States.
Since mail propaganda depends on the freedom of the mails, it is much
more apt to be used by a dictatorship against us than by us against a
dictatorship.
=Leaflets.= The types of leaflets are described in the next chapter
(page 211), in the course of discussing leaflets addressed to troops.
Each leaflet designed for a military group has its civilian equivalents.
In addition to the military types, overt propaganda leaflets for
civilians should include:
(1) Communications from the legitimate authorities (whether
government-in-exile, underground, or friendly quisling) of the
civilians addressed.
(2) Newspapers in air format, reduced in scale, but with a heavy
proportion of the normal peacetime features of the audience's own
press.
(3) Novelty materials appealing to children, who are apt to be among
the most industrious collectors of leaflets, disseminating them far
and wide with less danger of reprisal from the occupying power or the
police than adults might face. (Good adult leaflets are as interesting
to children as are leaflets especially designed for them. The use of
color printing, vivid illustrations, pictures of air battles,
how-it-works diagrams of weapons, and so forth, may reach the teen-age
audience best if it gives no indication of being aimed at them.)
(4) Gifts--soap, salt, needles, matches, chocolate and similar
articles dropped to civilian populations. (This demonstrates the
wealth and benevolence of the giver. Countermeasures to enemy use of
this type of propaganda consist of dropping a few duplicates of his
gifts, containing poison-ivy soap, nauseating salt, infected-looking
needles, explosive chocolate, etc. The Germans are reported to have
followed this procedure against the American air gifts dropped to
Italy and France. With the avoidance or the spoilage of gifts, the
propaganda effect becomes so confused that both sides find it worth
desisting for a while.)
(5) Appeals to women. (Women, statistically, are around 50% of the
population of any country. With the diversion of men to fighting
operations the percentage of women in the home population rises and in
wartime it may become 60% or 70%. They face social and economic
problems much more immediately than do men because the responsibility
for maintaining homes and children normally falls on them. Evidence
of humane intentions, of reluctance to wage the most cruel forms of
war, of attempts to help civilians escape unnecessary danger, can
bring women into the participating enemy group for relaying
propaganda.)
=Pamphlets.= Where air-dropping facilities are plentiful, leaflets can
be supplemented by pamphlets. Pamphlets have the advantage of giving the
propagandist more space for texts or pictures, enabling him to tackle
enemy arguments in detail or in depth. Pamphlets can present sustained
arguments, and thus come closer to meeting the domestic propaganda
facilities of the enemy on even ground. They are especially useful in
countering or neutralizing those enemy arguments which depend either on
formal argument or on misapplied statistics, and which therefore require
point-by-point confutation.
The pamphlet shown in figure 6 is an excellent example of the medium.
Though it carries a complex message, it can be read by persons at the
lowest educational level. It meets enemy propaganda over a whole range
of themes. It is apt to be disseminated farther, whether initial
distribution be by ground or by air.
Unlike the leaflet, the pamphlet is sometimes hard to conceal. For well
policed areas, it must be supplied with a protective disguise if it is
to be passed along. One ingenious pamphlet made up by Dennis McEvoy and
Don Brown at OWI for dropping on the Japanese, started out with a
warning: "_Enemy!_ Warning! This is an Enemy Publication, issued by the
United States Government. Finder is Commanded to take this to the
Nearest Police Station Immediately! _Enemy!_" The pamphlet gave a
general statement of Japan's bad war position, _and was addressed to
Japanese policemen and police officials_. The cover urged the policemen
not to keep the pamphlet, nor to destroy it, but to pass it on up
through channels to their superiors as an instance of enemy propaganda.
(We never found out what the Japanese police actually did when they got
these.)
One Japanese black leaflet assumed the proportions of a book, and was
made up in the familiar format of the pocket-sized twenty-five-cent
volumes. With a New York dateline, a copyright notice, and even a
printers' union label all neatly falsified, the book expressed
opposition to Roosevelt's war. It was circulated by the Japanese as a
captured enemy book, presumably, in order to convince their own people
and their Asiatic associates that opposition to World War II existed
within the United States itself.
Almost all belligerents issued malingerer's handbooks during the war.
These started out with statements that the medical control system was
inadequate, that each man had to look out for himself, and that feigned
sickness was often the only alternative to real sickness. Disguised as
entertainment booklets, "instructions" accompanying medicine, or even as
official handbooks (of the enemy government) for this and that purpose,
the leaflets gave detailed instructions on how to fake tuberculosis,
heart trouble, and other diseases.
=Subversive Operations.= Propaganda to friendly civilians whose country
has been overrun by the enemy can be effectively promoted by
collaboration with local patriots--unless political considerations
prevent such collaboration. This type of operation requires careful
cooperation between propaganda (overt), subversive facilities, and
intelligence personnel. World War II saw the type used on all fronts.
The Japanese made especially bold use of it during the conquest of
Malaya, the occupation of Burma, and the Chinese Railway Campaigns of
1944. Natives on the enemy side were regarded by us as quislings; the
Japanese honored them as patriots and duped them effectively.
Bold black propaganda operations can often embarrass the enemy. The
dropping of a few hundred tons of well counterfeited currency would tend
to foul up any fiscal system. Peacetime counterfeiters operate with poor
materials, secretly, and in small shops. When instructed, a government
agency can do an astoundingly good job of counterfeiting. The United
States is on the vulnerable side of this operation, because our money
happens to be the most trusted and most widely hoarded in the world.
Various governments are believed to have run off substantial numbers of
United States twenty and fifty dollar bills. A less offensive operation
consists of giving the enemy populace sets of ration cards, along with
simple suggestions on how to finish the forging job so as to make it
convincing. The Nazis were especially subject to this kind of attack,
since German methodical bookkeeping required a large number of documents
to be in the possession of each citizen. Falsification of any of these
made the German officials go mad with confusion.
To a country suffering from too much policing, the transmission by black
propaganda of facsimile personal-identity cards in large numbers would
be welcomed by many common citizens and would keep the enemy police
procedure at a high pitch of futile haste. The essence of this, as of
all good black propaganda, is to confuse the enemy authorities while
winning the thankfulness of the enemy people--preferably while building
up the myth within the enemy country that large, well-organized groups
of revolutionists are ready to end the war when their time comes.
If white propaganda is to be compared to incendiary bombing, in that it
ultimately affects the enemy armed services by disorganizing the
homeland behind them, black propaganda may be compared to the tinfoil
strips used in anti-radar. Black propaganda strikes directly at enemy
security. It gives him too much to do, and thus increases the chances
for agents down on the ground to succeed in their lonely, dangerous
work.
=Motion Pictures.= In consolidated areas, allied or neutral territory,
and the home jurisdiction, motion pictures for civilians can be employed
as a major propaganda instrument. The combination of visual and auditory
appeal ensures a concentration of attention not commanded by other
media. In both World Wars, the U.S. made extensive use of film.
Procurement can be either through direct governmental manufacture of the
finished product, or by subcontracting to nongovernmental agencies.
Propaganda films normally make a point of displaying the military
prowess and civic virtue of the distributor.
Officially distributed films are, however, almost always overshadowed by
pure entertainment films. The wartime official movie can penetrate no
deeper than can the unofficial picture. Financial and commercial
control, plus censorship, limits the periphery into which motion-picture
showings can be extended. Often the private film will be shown when a
public one would be suppressed. And in time of peace, the propaganda
movie has ever sharper competition from its private competitors. Few
propaganda movies have ever achieved the spectacular impact of some
private films in portraying the American way of life. Tahitians, Kansu
men, Hindus and Portuguese would probably agree unanimously in
preferring the USA of Laurel and Hardy to the USA of strong-faced men
building dams and teaching better chicken-raising.
Only rarely does the cinema penetrate enemy territory or reach
clandestine audiences. Its direct contribution to critical-zone
psychological warfare is therefore slight. Perhaps television may in
course of time combine attention-holding with transmissibility.
CHAPTER 13
Operations Against Troops
In every instance of systematic American use of psychological warfare
against enemy troops during World War II, affirmative results were
discerned after the operation had been in effect for a short while.
Figure 46 shows the consummation of the troop propaganda program; these
Germans are surrendering and they carry the Allied leaflets with them.
By the latter phases of the liberation of France, 90 per cent of the
enemy prisoners reported that they had seen or possessed Allied leaflets
and the most famous leaflet of them all, the celebrated _Passierschein_
(see figure 4) came to be as familiar to the Germans as their own paper
money.[41] Since every enemy who surrenders is one less man to root out
or destroy at a cost of life to one's own side, the sharp upswing of
enemy surrenders was a decided military gain.
Two separate types of psychological reaction are to be sought in the
enemy soldier's mind. The first consists of a general lowering of his
morale or efficiency even when he is not in a position to perform any
overt act, such as surrendering, which would hurt his side and help
ours. This may be called MO, or morale operations. The second type of
action is overt action (surrendering, deserting his post of duty,
mutinying) which can be induced only if the appeal is expertly timed.
Operations against troops must be based on the objective military
situation. Suffering and exertion increase realism; plain soldiers are
not apt to be talked over by propaganda unless the propaganda is
carefully cued to their actual situation. All propaganda should be based
on fact; propaganda to troops must be based not merely on fact, but must
show shrewd appreciative touches of understanding the troops' personal
conditions. Propaganda is not much use to a nation undergoing abject
defeat, for the troops on the victorious side will be buoyed up by the
affirmation of victory from their own eyes.
Troop propaganda must therefore aim at eventual willing _capture_ of the
individual--not at surrender by his individual initiative. It must
implant the notion that he may eventually be trapped, and that _if_ that
happens he should give up. The propaganda must not meet the soldier's
loyalty in a head-on collision but must instead give the enemy soldier
the opportunity of rationalizing himself out of the obligations of
loyalty ("true loyalty requires survival and therefore surrender"). The
steps, therefore, needed for good propaganda to actual combat troops
include the following:
first, the notion that the enemy soldier may have to surrender as his
side loses or retreats ("other [named] units have surrendered, with
so-and-so many men; you will have to, too");
second, themes which make the enemy soldier believe that an all-out
effort is wasted or misapplied;
third, the idea that he or his unit may find themselves in a hopeless
situation soon;
fourth, identifying the next authentically bad situation with the
"hopeless" situation;
fifth, concrete instructions for the actual surrender.[42]
[Illustration: _Figure 52: Basic Types: Troop Morale._ Leaflets may be
aimed at (1) morale, (2) news, (3) action. Morale leaflets neither
communicate news nor call for specific action. Rather, they pave the way
for action. Many of the previous illustrations have been of this type.
This one is a troop morale leaflet used by the puppet Free India Army on
their own men, who were discouraged by the self-evident lack of matériel
and numbers. (Singapore, about 1944.)]
=Morale Operations.= Morale operations in the black field are, for the
American record, still a closed book. German black operations against
the French included such enterprises as sending French soldiers letters
from their home towns telling them that their wives were committing
adultery or were infected with venereal diseases, or calling out names
and unit designations to French troops facing them in the Maginot Line,
or giving away mourning dresses to women who would wear them on the
streets of Paris, or intercepting telephone communications in the field
and giving confusing or improper orders.
[Illustration: _Figure 53: Paired Morale Leaflets._ The Christmas card
showing the Nativity was dropped by General MacArthur's psychological
warfare people on the Filipinos. The Christmas cards with bells were
prepared by the Japanese for the U.S. Army. The former were designed to
cheer on the Filipinos; the latter, to depress the Americans with the
defeatist messages inside the cards.]
Morale operations on the white side included such items as the
following:
Sending mournful poetry leaflets to Japanese units which were known to
be demoralized for lack of home furlough (China Theater);
Dropping beautiful colored pictures of luscious Japanese victuals on
starving troops (North Burma);
Showing the Japanese Sad Sack in a cartoon, fighting everywhere while
his officers get all the liquor, all the food, all the girls, and all
the glory, while the common soldier ends up cremated (Southwest
Pacific);
Demonstrating that the Nazi pets on the German High Command have
disrupted the splendid German military tradition and have thrown out
the really competent professional generals (Soviet-German front);
Pinning the nickname, _Der Sterber_ (roughly, "Old
Let's-go-get-killed!"), on a German general who had boasted of his
willingness to expend personnel (Anglo-American and Soviet radio);
Telling the German troops they were dying for a cause already lost
(Italy);
Reporting back to the Germans the statements made by prisoners, to the
effect they were damned glad that they were out of the fighting
(France);
Telling the Japanese on Attu and Kiska that just as surely as the
_kiri_ leaf, symbol of death, would fall in the autumn, they too would
fall (North Pacific);
Telling the Japanese homeland and troops that the Japanese Emperor had
loved peace but that the militarists had dragged the Sacred Empire
into war ("Peaceful is Morning in the Shrine Garden" leaflet; designed
for Aleutians, used over Japan);
Telling the Chinese in China that the Americans would soon cut the
Japanese conquered empire in two with Asiatic landings, and then
dropping the leaflet, written in simple Chinese which could be figured
out by Japanese, on the Japanese troops (China);
Congratulating imaginary agents in ostensible code over the voice
radio for the excellent work they have allegedly done in the enemy
home country (all theaters).
[Illustration: _Figure 54: Troop Morale Leaflet, Grey._ This German
leaflet from the Italian front attempts to remind American troops of the
bonus troubles of 1932--a year in which most of the American soldiers
were still in school. Only to older men could the appeal carry much
weight. The drawing and typography are distinctively German. In terms of
source, this leaflet is grey.]
[Illustration: _Figure 55: Chinese Communist Civilian Morale Leaflet._
This leaflet attempts to raise peasant morale while calling in general
terms for economic action. It shows a peasant family welcoming home the
father, who has been made a Hero of Labor. (Given the author by
Political Department, Border Area Government, at Yenan in September
1944.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 56: General Morale: Matched Themes._ The American
leaflet and Japanese one both show the same map with the same
event--cutting of the enemy lifeline. In each case, the event is alleged
to be news. However, the purpose of the leaflet is to depress the morale
of all enemies who see it and to raise the morale of all friends.]
[Illustration: _Figure 57: The Unlucky Japanese Sad Sack._ This morale
pamphlet was used on the Japanese in South and Southwest Pacific. While
it never produced any startling results on them, it did no harm. The
pictures are done by a qualified Japanese artist. The pamphlet tells the
story of the Japanese common soldier whose officers get everything and
give him nothing except a cremation box and memorial tablet.]
The category "morale leaflets" covers all leaflets which neither call
for immediate action, nor are designed primarily to convey news as such.
=News Leaflets.= Figures 1, 7, 59, 60 and 65 are news leaflets. The
propaganda purpose is evident, even to the enemy. But in the best of
these leaflets there is a tendency to let the facts speak for
themselves, and to show the enemy just what the actual situation is.
=Tactical Defensive Psychological Warfare.= Morale operations are
designed, therefore, to obtain responses other than immediate action.
Several possible goals can be sought, singly or jointly. The commonest
is preparation of the enemy soldier's mind for the actual physical act
of surrender, the moral act of doing no more for his own side. Whenever
surrender requires nothing more than passivity, morale leaflets are even
more promising; in such cases all that is asked of the enemy is that he
sit tight, fight inefficiently, and put up his hands when he is told to
do so. Other purposes of morale operations include the irritation of
enemy groups against each other, the general depression of enemy morale,
the discouragement of enemy troops, officers or commanders.
Morale operations, to be effective, must be aimed at the actual,
specific morale with which they are concerned. Well fed troops cannot be
frightened by the remote prospect of starvation. Well officered troops
cannot be induced to mutiny. Troops with good mail service cannot be
made homesick. However, weak points in the enemy organization can and do
provide targets for morale operations. The defeat situation imposes
tremendous strain on both the individual soldier and on officers in
positions of responsibility. At such times, disunity rises to the
surface, rumors spread more readily, and propaganda operations against
morale can have devastating effect. (Allied psychological warfare
against Germans in 1944-45 was aimed both at general officers and at the
mass of the German troops--operations against the officers being founded
on the common-sense premise that if large-scale German surrenders were
sought, they could best be obtained by influencing those Germans who had
the authority to surrender.)
[Illustration: _Figure 58: Civilian Personal Mail._ A common stunt in
black or grey morale propaganda is the printing of facsimile personal
letters. The letter shown at left is given in the original German form,
along with its English twin which was--as usual--prepared for
administrative clearance, records, and information. (Europe, Allied,
1944-45.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 59: Basic Types: Newspapers._ Newspapers were
prepared by almost every belligerent for almost every other. The
examples shown above are Luftpost (SHAEF for Germans) and Rakkasan News
(USAFPA for Japanese). Each newspaper copies the form of enemy civilian
newspapers. The gross circulation of these airborne papers reached in
some cases up into the millions.]
A curious point developed. German morale in the higher grades was worse
than in the lower. In the very last year of the war, despite the
terrible air raids on their homeland behind them, the German troops on
the Western front underwent only slight morale deterioration--in
comparison with what they should have undergone had their morale borne a
direct relationship to the strategic position of Germany as a whole. On
the other hand, the morale among general officers and staff officers
became wretched. The _putsch_ of the generals the previous summer was
merely a foretaste of the demoralization of the German higher command.
This unusual situation arose from the fact that the National Socialist
propaganda machinery was still working on the masses of the troops. The
political officers still made speeches. The troops were given pep talks,
information about the war (hopelessly distorted information, but
information none the less), and promises of privileges and comforts
which--while they rarely materialized--were cheering. Simultaneously,
German army discipline in the Prussian tradition, never known to be
wishy-washy or weak, was sharply stiffened. Furthermore, the plain
soldiers carried over to the months of defeat those propaganda attitudes
which they had been taught in the prewar and war years by Hitler's
incessant domestic propaganda.
[Illustration: _Figure 60: Basic Types: Spot News Leaflets._ Spot news
often makes better propaganda if handled while still fresh than if
carried in newspapers or morale leaflets later on. The examples above
were used against the Germans. News is given on one side of the leaflet,
and is dropped while the news is still news; the other side has a
propaganda appeal reading, in effect, "You must choose for yourself. Die
for the Party or live for yourself!"]
In contrast with common troops, the officers had the professional skill
to understand the advantages possessed by the Allied armies. The
officers knew enough about global and continental strategy, about the
immediate strategy of the Western front, about economic factors and so
on, to see that the situation was genuinely bad. Furthermore, the
officer class had been less indoctrinated in the first place--many of
them having personally despised the Nazis while welcoming Naziism as a
means of getting the "cattle," the common people, into line behind the
Wehrmacht--and those of them concerned with propaganda naturally became
critical of all propaganda, including their own government's, and
communicated their criticisms to their brother officers.
[Illustration: _Figure 61: Basic Types: Civilian Action._ Desired
civilian action can often be obtained by the use of clear instructions
transmitted in leaflet form. This leaflet calls on the people of Alsace,
Lorraine and Luxembourg to stay away from German communication lines,
not to work for the Germans, and to make careful notes of atrocities
which the Germans may commit.]
German defenses against Allied psychological warfare worked. The German
troops fought on when they had no business fighting, when their own
generals thought it was time to quit and held out only because the S.S.
and Gestapo promised ready death to any high officer who even whispered
the word, "Defeat!"
This German defensive success was based on two factors:
(1) The good condition of the German troops in terms of food, supply,
communications, and weapons;
(2) The coordination of all morale services for the purpose of
defensive psychological warfare.
A common _Landser_, tough and ready in a whole division full of well
fed, well armed men, could not be expected to undergo despair because
freight-car loadings hundreds of miles away had dropped to zero. He
might see that the Luftwaffe was less in evidence; he might grumble
about mail, or about having to use horse transport, but as long as he
could see that his own unit was getting on all right, it was hard to
persuade him that defeat was around the corner. In World War I, the
German troops at the time of surrender _were_ much better off than most
of them thought they were; in World War II, they _thought_ they were
better off than they actually were. The Germans may not have been in
perfect shape, but they were incomparably better off than the starving
scarecrows with whom Generalissimo Chiang was trying to hold back the
Japanese in West Hunan or the Americans who had fought despair, fever
and Japanese--all three at once--on Bataan.
Along with their relatively good immediate condition, which masked and
hid from them the strategic deterioration of the Reich to their rear,
the German troops had the services of morale officers who were actually
defensive psychological warfare operators.
In some units (more on the Eastern front than the Western) the Germans
had _PK_ units--_Propagandakompanie_, or propaganda companies. These
were organizationally very interesting. They combined the functions of a
combat propaganda company--printing, radio work, interrogation of
prisoners, etc.--with the job of morale builders. Their services were
available not only for use against the enemy, but for aid to the German
troops themselves. Since they were currently informed of Allied
propaganda lines, they were able to distribute counteracting propaganda
at short notice and were even capable, on occasion, of forestalling
Allied propaganda themes in advance.
Defensive psychological warfare in the Wehrmacht and, so far as it is
known from Russian articles and fiction, in the Red Army as well,
depended on unit-by-unit indoctrination with contempt of the enemy,
mistrust of his news facilities, fear of his political aims, and hatred
for the whole enemy mentality. Propaganda officers, countersubversive
operatives, public relations men, and information-education officers
were either in the same office or were in fact the same men. Combination
of functions made possible the use of flexible counteracting propaganda.
Most of this counteracting propaganda was not counterpropaganda,
technically speaking. It was not designed against _Allied_ propaganda,
but for _German_ morale. Morale-building was not left to occasional
recreational facilities, newspapers for troops, USO entertainment and
the like, but was compelled through the use of internal espionage,
affirmative presentation of the German case, and unified informational
operations. This German tactical defensive psychological warfare was
neither a total success nor a total failure; insofar as it helped the
Wehrmacht hold out, it aided the last-ditch Nazi war effort.
[Illustration: _Figure 62: Basic Types: Labor Recruitment._ On occasion,
civilian labor becomes a highly critical factor even in an area of
active operations. Leaflets can urge labor to strike against the enemy;
they can also induce labor to come over and get to work. This leaflet
was dropped on the Burmese, Shans, and Kachins, showing all the good
things of life, promising high wages and bonuses and adding that,
anyhow, it was patriotic. Come work for the Allies!]
The American army did not employ defensive psychological warfare in
World War II. Troop indoctrination was extremely spotty. American morale
remained good, not because it was _made_ good by professionals who knew
their job, but because Providence and the American people had brought up
a generation of young men who started out well and--since the situation
never approached hopelessness--kept on going with their spirits high.
For the future, the American and British armies face the problem of
devising arrangements whereby within the limits of a free society
soldiers can be affirmatively indoctrinated in the course of operations.
USO, Red Cross, public relations, information and education at home,
morale staffs in the theaters, Armed Forces Radio Service, OWI, the
American press and the overseas military papers--these went their
separate and uncorrelated ways without doing any harm, _last time_. If
the next war starts, as it may, with an initial interchange of
terrifying strategic bombardments, the morale situation may be
inherently less healthy. Wise planning would provide, perhaps, a single
chain of command for public relations, military propaganda and morale
services--extending this all the way down to the platoon, if
necessary--to make sure that the "national line" on any given topic is
explained, presented, repeated, and (if necessary) enforced.
Such defensive psychological warfare might work against sensational
enemy black operations, against attempted political division, and
against fabrication of the news--provided it was carried out in an
expert fashion. It could not change morale deterioration resulting from
practical deterioration within the troop unit itself, except to
decelerate the rate of decline. It would not make up for poor
leadership. Nothing makes up for poor leadership.
Defensive psychological warfare at higher levels remains a
self-contradiction. As pointed out above (page 159), good psychological
warfare is never directed merely against other psychological warfare. It
is directed at the mind of the target audience, at _creating_ attitudes
of belief or doubt which lead to the desired action. Getting and keeping
attention is one of its major missions, and psychological warfare which
starts by fixing attention on the enemy presentation is doomed from the
start. One of the most conspicuous examples of this was President
Roosevelt's sensational message of 15 April 1939, addressed personally
to the German Chancellor, Hitler, asking that Hitler promise not to
invade 31 countries which Roosevelt listed by name. Defensive in tone,
the message gave Hitler the chance to answer over the German world-wide
radio while his Reichstag laughed its derision and applause. President
Roosevelt's message was decent, sane, humane; it was inspiring to the
people who already agreed with him; but it created no attitude in the
Germans to whom it was addressed. A sharp, bullying, implicitly
threatening speech from President Roosevelt might have penetrated the
German mentality of the time, even Hitler's; reasonable reproach did not
work. It was not aimed at creating any specific emotional reaction in
the _German_ mind.
Finally, it must be mentioned that defensive psychological warfare must
include countersubversion and counterespionage. The Cheka--Soviet secret
police in its first form--once boasted that "capitalist trouble-makers
and saboteurs" could not long function in Russia because the
countersubversive police were over a hundred million strong. What they
meant was that they had trained and bullied the population into
reporting anyone and everyone who seemed out of line. An attitude of
popular cooperation with countersubversive agencies can be achieved only
when those agencies are efficient, respected, and properly presented to
the public. Psychological warfare can defend its homeland against enemy
operations in kind only if it creates an awareness of propaganda and
makes the public critical of attitudes or opinions adverse to national
policy. Inexpert official tactics, or the general denunciation of
dissent, makes the citizen believe, with Mr. Bumble in _Oliver Twist_,
that "... the law is a ass, a idiot."
=Role of Small-Unit Commanders.= Unless a small-unit commander happens
to command a unit which includes a Psychological Warfare team, he will
have no active Psychological Warfare role. Psychological Warfare
operations require the services of experts, and it would be easy for a
small-unit commander to jeopardize the propaganda effort of an entire
front by well meant but ill conceived interference in Psychological
Warfare operations.
Where the unit does include a Psychological Warfare team, a duality of
control arises. This requires good sense to keep in balance. The
commander possesses absolute command and responsibility for the
movement, protection, and operations timing of the team which happens to
be attached to his unit. He should not presume to interfere in the
special propaganda instructions flowing down to the team from superior
Psychological Warfare echelons. Because of the pressing needs of
propaganda operatives for news and for order-of-battle intelligence, it
is normally desirable that they have their own signal facilities and
that their routine operational communications short-circuit normal
military channels. Otherwise, the unit's signal facilities will be
overloaded with messages important to the Psychological Warfare team,
but useless to the unit as a whole. Such absurdities as the encipherment
and decipherment of routine enemy news digests should by all means be
avoided. On the other hand, the command and administrative messages
should go through normal military channels. In the Galahad operation
against the Japanese in North Burma, in which Merrill's Marauders
participated, such a double set of communications channels took a long
time to develop.
Where the small-unit commander does not possess professionally trained
and equipped Psychological Warfare facilities, he should no more expect
to engage in offensive Psychological Warfare than to undertake chemical
warfare with improvised materials. It becomes his responsibility to turn
to liaison.
=Field Liaison.= One of the new roles developed within the Army during
World War II was that of "Psychological Warfare Liaison Officer." Such
men were either commissioned officers, usually of company grade, who had
been given appropriate training, or were uniformed civilians detailed
from OWI or OSS. It is the job of the liaison officer to become
acquainted, as far down the echelon of command as may be necessary, with
the commanders whom he is to service. He must at the same time retain an
intimate knowledge of the personnel, procedures and facilities of the
Psychological Warfare unit from which he is detached. His position must
be compared to that of a salesman, who should know his product, his
company, his sales manager, and his customers, all equally well. The
liaison officer should be able to explain to small-unit commanders what
Psychological Warfare can do for them, and he should learn to
discriminate between high-priority and low-priority requests for PW
materials.
For example, a well trained liaison officer might receive a call from a
regimental or battalion commander. He would find that the commander
desired leaflets to be used in a particular tactical situation. He
should be able to explain what standard ready-prepared leaflets were
available, what delay would be involved in making up special leaflets,
and what quantities of leaflets would be advisable. Turning back to his
home headquarters, he should be able to present the commander's case to
the leaflet printers or the public-address team, and should help the
propaganda people in understanding the commander's problems.
=Mechanics of Liaison.= The mechanics of liaison depend in each case on
the Psychological Warfare unit. Some had extensive networks of liaison
officers; others had virtually none. In China during 1943-44, the most
minor tactical request for a leaflet had to be channeled all the way
back to Theater Forward Echelon Headquarters, because the political
situation was so touchy, the Chinese language so difficult, printing
facilities so scarce, and qualified personnel so rare that there was no
point in having channels cut across lower down. In France and Belgium,
during 1944-45, Psychological Warfare units were established on a
considerable scale at the army level, and liaison officers were widely
scattered; it was possible for regimental or battalion commanders to
make direct requests of liaison officers.
=Radio Support.= On rare occasions, it becomes possible for radio
support to be given a specific unit. The American standard-wave
broadcasting station was set up in the vicinity of Lorient while that
French port, still held by the Nazis, was under American siege. The
_History of the 2d Mobile Broadcasting Company_[43] describes the
operation as being
... the first attempt to coordinate artillery, leaflet and radio
propaganda. The station had learned the location of the billets of
various [Nazi] units in the town, together with the names of their key
personnel. With this information, a "game" was arranged with the
artillery. One day, at a certain time, these units were addressed by
name and their members were told to go outside their buildings and
five minutes later they would receive a message. Precisely, five
minutes later, leaflet shells released the messages advising
surrender. The ability of the Americans to do things like that
impressed the German soldiers with their hopeless position more than
words.
Obviously, such an operation required close contact with the enemy, plus
known possession of standard-wave radio receivers by enemy personnel.
=Air Support.= Normal communications channels, such as might be used for
air-ground combat liaison, form one of the most valuable aids to the
small unit. From time to time it is possible either for the unit to make
up the leaflets (if it has a PW team) and to request their dropping by
the associated air unit, or else to make a direct request to the
appropriate higher Psychological Warfare headquarters, asking that the
headquarters not only make up the leaflet but arrange for its dropping
at a stated time.
=Leaflet-Discharging Weapons.= The airplane was far and away the most
important leaflet-distributing device. In the CBI Theater, there was
developed a leaflet belly-tank of local design for use on pursuit
planes. The belly-tank was converted to a leaflet-throwing machine.
Adjustment of the controls could regulate the speed at which leaflets
were discharged, so that the pilot could give enemy units or
installations bursts of leaflets in precisely the same way that he would
strafe them with machine guns. This, however, was exceptional, owing to
the tremendous dispersion of the Japanese in the jungle and the need to
conserve leaflets. In most instances, the leaflet bomb or leaflet box
was the standard Air Force method of distributing leaflets.
Among the ground weapons used for discharge of leaflets, there are the
following:
chemical warfare shells converted to leaflet use, especially smoke
shells;
almost every variety of available artillery shell (howitzers having
proved especially useful);
rifle grenades converted for leaflets;
leaflet bundles with a small quantity of explosive, attached to a
quick fuze, packed so as to be thrown in a manner similar to the
manual throwing of a grenade.
Mortars were probably the chief leaflet-throwing device on both the
European and Asiatic fronts; the Germans went so far as to develop a
special propaganda mortar. Smoke shells proved particularly easy to
adapt.
The firing of leaflet shells is a responsibility of the unit possessing
the guns. Psychological Warfare teams were not issued their own guns,
save for unit protection. The actual distribution of leaflet shells was
effected, taking the Fifth Army as an example, in the following manner:
The Army Combat Propaganda Team planned, cleared, printed and packed
leaflets suitable for the occasion.
The Team cleared with the Artillery Officer, Fifth Army, an agreement
for an order to use the leaflets.
The Team's own liaison officers transmit the order to the appropriate
divisions and lower echelons. The order itself prescribed the times
for picking up the leaflets from the ammunition dumps.
The Team procures the empty shells and packs them with leaflets.
The Army order allots 150 leaflet shells per division.
The Team specifies, in the order, the time-limit within which the
shells are to be used.
Corps and/or division selects the specific targets, the general target
being all enemy concentrations within range.
In smaller units, the propaganda unit would often be placed in direct
communication with a specific artillery unit, which would be charged
with the responsibility for discharging the leaflet shells at opportune
times. When a requesting unit asks for leaflets, and itself possesses
the guns which could fire leaflet shells, it is entirely possible for
the supplier to send leaflets ready-packed in the shells. However, even
the most rapid shell-packing job takes considerably more time than the
readying of aircraft for leaflet distribution. When it is considered
that the plane not only discharges the leaflets, but delivers them from
the supply point, all in one operation, it will be seen that close
air-ground coordination will often do a quicker, bigger job of leaflet
saturation than could be achieved by the requesting, preparing,
transporting and firing of leaflet shells.
=Contingencies of the Future.= This text refers to known experience.
Short of turning to the field of futuristic fiction, it is impossible to
provide discussion of situations which have not been known in the
American Army. The experiences of the Nazis and the Japanese cannot be
taken by ourselves as wholly parallel, since those peoples, under
dictatorship and rabid indoctrination, produced a different kind of army
from the American. What should a small-unit commander do if his men
thought they had been contaminated by airborne disease germs distributed
by enemy bacteriological warfare planes? How should he act if his men
were told by an enemy broadcast that they would be exposed to radiation
which would cause anemia, cancer, or death--if they did not surrender
immediately? What should he do if he finds himself cut off from all
American supplies, operating a lonely unit in contaminated or dangerous
areas, and then discovers that his own men are the victims of enemy
black propaganda? How should he behave if his men get the idea that they
are never going to be replaced, and if they suspect (either
spontaneously or because of enemy action) that the unit has been
abandoned by the American government and people?
What could a commander do if a delegation called on him, right out in a
zone of operations, and demanded a right to be heard? Suppose that he
knew their complaints about food, rotation, danger, etc., to be
justified, and knew at the same time that the enemy had subverted some
of his men into being either dupes or traitors. Suppose his men
protested a lack of deep lead-lined shelters the day after enemy
leaflets instructed the American soldiers to ask for such shelters.
Should he treat all such enlisted men as traitors? Suppose he is faced
with the specter of political treason, subversion, and revolution?
American officers have not faced such problems since the days in which
George Washington was Commander in Chief. War after war, we have gone
into the fight with a profound confidence in our ability to win. Future
war may hold forth no such assurance. If America is injured, her troops
decimated, their homes exploded or poisoned by foreign atomic attack,
brand-new questions of psychological warfare will be posed. No living
American has ever had to face such problems. This is no assurance that
they will never occur. Upon the manhood, the fairness, the sheer
intelligence of small-unit commanders there may fall the unexpected task
of holding their units together in the face of disastrous psychological
attack.
=Surrender Leaflets.= Surrender leaflets are the infantry of the
propaganda war. They go in and finish the job to which the preceding
years of radio broadcasts, the demoralization of the home front, the
campaigns of news and morale materials to troops, and the actual air,
ground, and sea attacks have led up.
Sudden use of surrender leaflets on a victorious or unprepared enemy is
not likely to take effect. The Japanese surrender leaflets dropped on
the Americans in Southwest Pacific were issued without previous
materials readying the Americans. Furthermore, they were dropped when
the American situation was plainly improving, and when American soldiers
were not likely to be thinking about surrender in order to get
individual escape from the war.
The preparation of surrender leaflets calls for the tactical use of
printing facilities. This is the job of the combat propaganda unit, with
its high-speed press, its liaison with both ground and air forces, its
up-to-the-minute intelligence on enemy movements, situation, and order
of battle. The enemy should be given leaflets showing him how clearly he
is pinned down, identifying him, generally stripping him of the sense of
secrecy and the trust in his commanders that make it possible for him to
go on fighting. When surrender can be effected, he should be given the
simplest, plainest command the circumstances allow. In the case of the
Japanese, there were difficulties on the American side about letting the
Japanese come over to surrender; too many of them were suspected of
having tucked hand grenades into their _fundoshi_. Many a Japanese
started out for the Allied lines and failed to make his peaceful
intentions plain enough. The result was a strong deterrent to other
Japanese who may have been trying to decide whether they wanted to
surrender or not.
[Illustration: _Figure 63: Action Type: Air-Rescue Facilities._ These
leaflets from China Theater were designed to help the work of the
Fourteenth Air Force. Action called for from the civilians included the
assistance of hurt flyers, the identification of Americans as allies and
not as Japanese when they parachuted to the ground, the avoidance of
bridges and other bomb targets.]
It was found that the bright white leaflet with the identifying stripes
on it (figure 69) would be shown to our troops, who could be taught to
hold their fire when they saw Japanese carrying that type of leaflet.
To the Japanese, the plainness of the surrender formula was a
considerable help in coming over.
[Illustration: _Figure 64: Pre-Action News._ Psychological warfare
facilities can be extremely helpful in favorable situations. One of the
most important ways of developing a favorable situation is to predispose
enemy soldiers toward the idea of surrendering. News of surrender,
emphasis on the comforts and relief of prisoners of war, and above all,
emphasis on their numerousness can contribute to the actual act of
surrender. This newspaper looks like a newspaper, but its chief emphasis
is on the extent of surrenders.]
Variations on the surrender leaflet include the following devices:
Letters, with signatures blacked out, of prisoners of war who have
found conditions decent and who are enjoying rest, good care, and good
food;
Photographs, with the faces blocked out when security procedures or
the rules of war so require, showing enemy prisoners actually enjoying
the benefits of being out of the war;
Political arguments to the effect that the highest duty of the soldier
is to his country (or Emperor) and that if he dies for the sake of
some general in a foolish war, he will be denying his country a fine
postwar citizen like himself, needed for reconstruction and progress;
A list of the foods available to surrenderees (see figure 13, from
World War I);
A statement of the conditions of military imprisonment, reaffirming
the rules of the Geneva convention;
The promise that the potential prisoner will be allowed mail
communication with home;
Anger-motif, showing scum and profiteers at home, and attempting to
induce surrender by telling the soldier that he is being made a
sucker;
Obscene pictures, showing naked women, designed to make the
involuntary celibate so desirous of women that he surrenders out of
bad nerves. (Japanese idea, and did not work; the troops naturally
kept the pornography but merely despised the Japanese as queer little
people for having sent it. This type cannot be illustrated; the
Library of Congress has copies in a locked file.)
[Illustration: _Figure 65: Direct Commands to Enemy Forces._ As the
situation develops against the enemy, it becomes possible to use
leaflets to force the surrender of enemy troops by direct command. This
kind of appeal is lost when enemy morale remains irrationally high
because of a beloved commander or some other unpredictable factor, but
in normal situations it either forces the enemy commander's hand or
leaves him with a deteriorating force.]
[Illustration: _Figure 66: Basic Types: Contingency Commands._ Leaflets
can be made up in advance to govern typical situations which may arise.
This "Command to the Scattered German Troop Units" orders all isolated
German remnants to surrender to the nearest Allied force.]
[Illustration: _Figure 67: Tactical Surrender Leaflets._ Enemy troops
often fail to understand why they should surrender. Under such
circumstances, it is useful to send them a map, showing them plainly
what their situation is. If misrepresentation is done at this point, it
will be at the cost of loss of credence later on. These leaflets were
prepared to prevent Japanese units in the Philippines from staging
last-ditch fights after surrender of Japan. Similar maps had been used
for tactical purposes earlier.]
The effective surrender leaflet frequently turns language difficulties
into an asset. Whole series of leaflets will teach the enemy soldier how
to say, "I surrender," in the language of the propagandist. The words,
"Ei sörrender," were made familiar to every German soldier; it is simply
the phonetic spelling of English for Germans to pronounce. Surrender is
not merely a case of transferring loyalties; it is a highly dangerous
operation for most infantrymen. It takes nerve if done deliberately. The
voluntary surrenderee risks being shot by some exasperated officer or
comrade on his own side; he risks court-martial for treason if his
surrender is wilful and his side wins the war; he may run into a
trigger-happy enemy who will shoot him; he may fail to make himself
understood to the enemy. Therefore surrender leaflets try to catch some
simple procedure, to indoctrinate the enemy soldier with routine things
which he can do when the opportunity arises. Of all leaflets, those most
effective (most closely tied in with unconscious preparation for
eventual conscious choice) are the ones dealing specifically with
concrete treatment of prisoners of war. The surrender leaflet itself can
be used as an authorization to surrender. The enemy soldier who carries
a leaflet around with him, just in case he may need it, is already
partially subverted from enemy service.
[Illustration: _Figure 68: Basic Types: Surrender Leaflet._ The
surrender leaflet shown was not welcomed by the Japanese because it
indicated that the Japanese soldier using it wished to surrender. This
was very vulgar and depressing indeed, and few Japanese soldiers would
accept such a humiliation. Except for its wording, the leaflet is good.
As large as a big magazine cover, it is white with red and blue trim and
can be identified readily.]
=Other Action Leaflets.= In World War II there were ample opportunities
to surrender on most fronts. In subsequent conflicts, however, it is
quite possible that surrendering will be physically unfeasible, because
the surrenderee will have no one at hand to whom to surrender (see
below, pages 248-250). Recourse may then be had to a type of leaflet
only occasionally used in World War II--the leaflet which calls on enemy
troops to perform some action other than surrender. The commonest of
these is desertion--when it is known that enemy forces are being held in
a dangerous spot by their own command, and when there is a fair
probability that heavy artillery or air attack can be concentrated on
the area which has been strewn with leaflets. (A bluff normally fails,
and moreover discredits later operations of the same kind, whereas a
successful and fulfilled threat builds up cumulative credibility among
the enemy audience.) When long range weapons are used, it may be
possible to address troops by leaflet before the attack, suggesting that
they remove themselves, as individuals, to places of safety; such an
operation would assist enemy disorganization. The author knows of no
case where the Germans did this with their V-l or V-2 bombs, but figure
3 applied to both civilians and troops in the cities marked for
destruction by incendiary B-29 raids.
Black action appeals may teach the enemy troops how to malinger, may
present political or ethnic arguments to troops known to be members of
minorities or satellite nationalities (for example, Poles in Nazi
service), with the intent that these mutiny, or may--at the very end of
a war--call upon enemy troops as units to cease resistance and to await
a later opportunity for organized surrender.
=Loudspeaker Units.= The use of the amplified human voice developed
slowly in World War II. Improvised units were set up in North Africa,
in the Italian landings, at Anzio, and in the Normandy operations. At
times these talked over valuable groups of enemy prisoners, but their
range did not go beyond two hundred yards, which sharply limited their
utility. The Navy was simultaneously experimenting with Polly Planes in
the Pacific, which flew at considerable altitudes over islands and
talked to the Japanese troops on the ground.
[Illustration: _Figure 69: Improved Surrender Leaflet._ The new leaflet
which did bring the Japanese in was better phrased. It did not mention
the nasty word, _surrender_, but said, "I Cease Resistance." It also
showed the Japanese how to carry the leaflet so as to persuade the
triggery Americans that he was not holding a hand grenade behind it. The
back of the leaflet, instead of being left blank, showed happy Japanese
prisoners enjoying American captivity, their faces left identifiable as
Japanese but blanked out enough to head off individual identification.
Compare this with figure 4, the Passierschein we used on the Germans.]
Ultimate success came with the development of loudspeakers on tank
mounts. These developed a range of two miles with the result that they
had real value in combat operations. In April, 1945, a loudspeaker tank
with the XIX Corps made an average of twenty broadcasts a day during
action. Short talks were given to the enemy troops just before attack.
Attacks were then withheld long enough to permit prisoners to come in.
The attacks were then launched, lifted after a pause to permit more
prisoners to come in, and finally pushed through. This tactic worked
particularly well at road blocks where enemy troops were flanked. In the
Teutoburger Wald a whole platoon was persuaded to surrender. At
Hildesheim two hundred and fifty prisoners came over together. Elsewhere
in the drive into Germany, the Germans came over in even greater
numbers, but the situation was then so obviously at its best for us that
they probably would have responded similarly to command banners, black
words on white background, such as the ancient Chinese imperial forces
used to carry around for tactical communication with bandits and rebels.
On Okinawa tank-mounted loudspeakers were ingeniously hooked up. The
American tank officers and crews obviously could not speak good
colloquial Japanese. The Japanese troops were dug in like rodents, and
in a condition of desperation that made them fight cruelly and
suicidally. Even if the Americans shelled the openings of their cave
mouths or ran armored bulldozers over the holes, burying Japanese alive,
there was the chance that the Japanese would run through long
underground passages and pop up later, possibly at night, to cause more
damage before they were killed. With Americans and Japanese unable to
talk to one another, this condition might have led to a severe loss of
American life in mopping up hundreds upon hundreds of such minute
Japanese strongholds. The American tanks had loudspeakers mounted on
many of them; they had radio telephone communication, that could be used
between the different tanks on a tank team, or--it was an alternative,
and could not be used simultaneously--could be employed for the
commanding tank to communicate back to headquarters.
At headquarters, American Japanese, whose American accents had been
trained out of their voices in special public-speaking classes, sat
ready and waiting.
The tank team would come into the valley, and the American commander
would look the situation over. He would cut his radio telephone into
communication with headquarters, and would then say:
"Hillside ahead of me. No characterizing features. Five or six holes,
but I can't tell which ones have Japanese in them. I can get up the
hill. There are two trees at the crest of the hill, and a bunch of these
native graves over on the left."
The American-Japanese at headquarters would say: "Regular announcement,
sir? Do you want them to assemble by the graves or at the trees?"
"Tell them to stand in front of the graves. That way they'll be coming
down hill. Want to be cut in?"
"Yes, sir," says the headquarters man.
The tank commander would then cut his radiophone into a relay, and the
tanks which had loudspeakers would automatically connect the loudspeaker
units direct with the radio telephone. A voice, loud as the voice of a
god, would fill the entire valley, coming from everywhere at once and
speaking good clear Japanese:
"Attention, Japanese troops, attention! This is the American tank
commander calling. I am going to destroy all resistance in this valley.
Attention! I have flame-throwers. These will be used on all dugouts and
caves. Attention! Flame-throwers will be employed. Gunfire will close
the cave mouths. No Japanese personnel can expect to escape. Japanese
personnel commanded to cease resistance. Japanese personnel commanded to
cease resistance. Japanese personnel must assemble in front of native
burial place, to American left flank, Japanese right flank."
The tank commander would watch, while the loudspeakers blared. First one
Japanese, then more would come in small knots to the assembly place as
directed. The commander would then cut the American-Japanese back in and
say,
"I think they're holding out on the hill crest. Try that. Just a minute
or two. If they don't start coming, I'll go after them and cut you in
just when I reach the top...."
"Yes, sir. Which part of the hill crest, sir?"
"I can't tell. Anywhere."
[Illustration: _Figure 70: End of War._ This leaflet helped the war to
end, just as did the great leaflet which submitted the Japanese
surrender terms back to the Japanese people. On one side the leaflet
carries news from the Wehrmacht's last defeats; on the other it takes up
the future of Germany as determined by the Crimea Conference.]
The speakers would be cut back in: "Attention, Japanese forces remaining
on hill crest. Japanese forces just behind us under command of Colonel
Musashi surrendered last night and are now well taken care of. You are
being given the same chance. Attention, I will soon come up the
hill...."
A few more Japanese figures, small as ants on a sand dune, would come
into sight on the hill and begin clambering down to the point of
surrender.[44]
PART FOUR
PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE AFTER WORLD WAR II
CHAPTER 14
The "Cold War" and Seven Small Wars
The period after 1945 has turned out to be considerably more turbulent
than most Americans expected. Though the victory over Fascism and
Japanese militarism has proved to be psychologically and historically
complete, the struggles between the victors have developed such mistrust
and bitterness as to create a present-day equivalent of the Thirty
Years' War, rather than a period of peace as it was understood by
educated men of the nineteenth century.
Along with many other military and political phenomena, psychological
warfare has been thrust into a period of "no war and no peace" which has
proved to be extraordinarily difficult for Western men to deal with
either emotionally or intellectually.[45] Such phrases as Churchill's
term, "the Iron Curtain," and Walter Lippmann's coinage, "the Cold War,"
have become a part of civilized speech throughout the world. They have
obscured almost as much as they have explained. It is entirely
conceivable that an adequate description of the present historical
period will only be written after the forces now operating have ceased
to be significant; at that future time it may be possible for serious
and reflective men to determine what happened in the middle of the
twentieth century.
=Recognition and Delay.= One of the preeminent factors in the
psychological and opinion aspect of the turmoil in the mid-twentieth
century has been the very sharp contrast between the _time_ on which a
given event occurred, the _delay_ between the occurrence of the event
and the final understanding of that event in their own terms by the
strategic policy-makers affected, and the successful _recognition_ of
the event in policy papers looking toward a further future. The
political and strategic character of much recent military history has
therefore been a grotesque comedy of errors--ridiculous if it were not
so deadly serious--involving the lives of the major urban populations
of the world.
An event such as the liberation of Indochina from Japanese military
occupation in 1945, met competently and reasonably by the standards of
an anticipated "world of 1946," which unfortunately never materialized,
led to the frustrations, bloodshed, deceit, and warfare of the late
1940s, and by 1954 became partially intelligible as a facet of the free
world's struggle against Communism.
=New Interpretations of Policy and Propaganda.= Polemic writing has been
done concerning the role of propaganda, psychological warfare,
psychological strategy, and comparable operations. In many instances the
polemics have involved the presentation of two sides, each of which was
right--one side maintaining that the old-fashioned world of free,
sovereign nations, meeting in a parliament of man as constituted in the
United Nations, could and should use the "realities" of traditional
power politics as a guide to the present and the future, and should
avoid the hopelessness, terrorism, and fanaticism of chronic ideological
war; the other side with equal merits has often argued that the
ideological war is here, that its deniers are the witting or unwitting
sympathizers or appeasers of Communism, that their "realities" are
outmoded, and that the United States must face up to a crusade which
will end in annihilation or death for either the Communist system or the
constitutional democratic group of states.
What such polemics overlook is the terrifying probability that events
may happen so rapidly that no one on either the Communist or
anti-Communist side is capable of assimilating a new datum, such as the
development of the hydrogen bomb, the death of Stalin, or the appearance
of Israel among the nations, _until well after the event has occurred_.
The occurrence of public events in all past civilizations has involved a
considerable number of public agreements on the major hypotheses
concerned; as pointed out earlier in this book, the antagonists in older
wars usually, though not always, knew what the war was about. Today the
spiritual, psychological, logical, and scientific inconsistencies and
paradoxes within each system are so deep as to make the definition of
long-range goals almost impossible. Any one goal, such as the
establishment of peace, the appreciation of an international system of
alliances against aggression, the maintenance of national sovereignty,
the protection of a free-enterprise economy, the assurance of
self-determination to non-self-governing peoples, or the like, may, _if
emphasized_, contradict the concomitant goals which support it.
=Communist and Anti-Communist Psychological Events.= Each of the two
major systems has strengths of its own. The Communist strengths are
sometimes too apparent to Americans, so much so that Americans
exaggerate Communist power and overlook serious deficiencies in the
economies and the political character of the Communist group of nations.
The Communists can suppress dissidence with a fanatical party line: the
price they pay is the abrupt shifting of that line as international
situations change. The Communists can appeal to youth by their dogmatic
faith that they are the masters of the probable future of the world:
they risk much if this faith does not pay off and if the world's youth
sometimes turns against them because they promise too much and deliver
too little. The Communists operating from an allegedly material basis
offer psychological and spiritual values of a perverted kind, but have
very considerable propaganda value; they give people a chance to
sacrifice themselves, to work for causes greater than their individual
personalities, "something to die for," and an apparent understanding of
history: yet the Communists also risk psychological exhaustion and
cynicism among their élite cadres as well as among their mass
followings.
In the next chapter, concerning strategic information operations of the
United States Government in the foreign field, there will be further
discussion of the psychological strengths of the free world; we will say
at this point that in the light of the strategic and military contexts
of the postwar period the free world has had the advantages of modesty,
relaxation, and elasticity. Among Americans, even among intelligent
Americans, it is frequent to find the assumption being made that the
chief strength of the free world consists of its legal rights and its
democratic political processes, rather than in its actual (not merely
formal) toleration of many points of view and its actual relaxation of
the populations under its control.
Since the free world is not committed to victory as much as is the
Communist world, it can afford more defeats without a corresponding loss
of morale. Since the free world has not promised a Utopian future, it
can go from the reality of the 1950s to whatever realities the 1960s or
the 1970s may bring without a sharp letdown in morale or widespread
heartbreak among its most gifted advocates. In Cold War terms the free
world is committed to fighting, but not to victory, while the Communists
are committed to the actual though remote promise of triumph for their
system throughout the world. The citizens of the United States can
therefore contemplate the survival of the USSR or its annihilation and
replacement by a democratic Russia with equanimity; their Soviet
opposite numbers, group for group and class for class, cannot be as
detached from the struggle.
Over all of us there hangs the entirely uncertain future raised by
possible use of atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, and other novel weapons--a
future about which former Governor Adlai Stevenson felt so gloomy that
he said another war would end civilization. (The rejoinder can, of
course, be made that if another war would end civilization anyhow, win,
lose, or draw, the United States might as well disband its defense
forces now and enjoy life for the few short years that remain.)
=The Cold War.= In some respects the Cold War is not novel. It resembles
the intercivilizational wars of the past in which competing
civilizations with definite moral and political foundations fought one
another for final survival. This kind of warfare is very different
indeed from struggles waged between nations which have a common
civilization and which have a common interest in the preservation of
that civilization. The Americans of the 1950s are waging a struggle much
more like that between the Protestants and Catholics in the years
1618-48 than they are to the Civil War of 1861-65 or the Revolutionary
War of 1775-81. In some respects we Americans are back all the way to
the fight between the Aztecs and Cortez or the struggle between Chinese
and Chams in ancient Annam. What Mr. Lippmann calls merely a Cold War is
something deeper, bigger, and worse than any war Americans have ever
known before. The only parallel to it was the struggle between settlers
and Indians on our own frontier: our battles with the Indians at least
had the advantage of never leaving us with the hideous dread that the
American Indians might sweep a White and Christian civilization from
this continent.
=Nature of the Cold War.= The Cold War is therefore a struggle, the
beginnings of which can be found at any one of several dates (1848, 1917
and 1943 are some of those given) which is now being waged between
non-Communist states and a Communist group of nations. No one now living
can speak with assurance of the outcome. Only the most foolhardy of
optimists could visualize a world in which the better aspects of each
system would be developed and the factors common to each would be
underscored and strengthened as supports for a peace-seeking
international system under the UN. The struggle is larger than a war
because it comprises pre-belligerent, belligerent, and post-belligerent
activities both in global wars and in a possible general war. On the
Communist side the techniques include sabotage, revolution, conspiracy,
and fanatical organization. On the anti-Communist side a family of
para-military weapons is gradually being developed and may or may not be
thrown into the struggle. No war was ever as bitter or uncertain as this
one because war, whatever its demerits, at least commits the nations to
combat and to victory. War has the supreme merit of _decision_. The Cold
War does not: people have to fight it without knowing what it is or what
they would get out of it if they could obtain the advantage.[46]
=Origins of the Cold War.= In retrospect it is easy to argue that the
Communist system has been fighting all non-Communist systems ever since
1848; that the Soviet system has been in a moral condition of war with
all other governments since 1917; that the democratic-Soviet alliance
against the Fascist powers during 1941-45 was a sham and a fraud
covering a three-cornered war; and that therefore attempts at a good
alliance between non-Communists and Communists were shams, mistakes, or
frauds. This is easy to say in the 1950s; it was not so apparent in the
1940s.
It can even be argued that Yalta, and everything for which Yalta stands,
was a tragic mistake and yet a blessed one. If the Western powers had
not attempted to deal amicably with the Soviet Union at Yalta the
Western peoples, already hypersensitized in matters of conscience, might
have attributed to themselves and to their posterity an unbearable
burden of guilt. We and our children might have gone down fighting while
wondering in our innermost hearts, "Why didn't we make a _real_ try to
avoid war with Soviet Russia?"
Though the Teheran and Yalta agreements have been violated by the USSR
almost from the moment they were concluded, it can be argued that the
Western world was wise in experimenting with appeasement because it
liberated our consciences for future struggle. No one can possibly argue
that we did not try to get along with the Communist system, that we
failed to offer the Communists a reasonable share in the world of power
politics, or that we threatened the Communists with aggression during
the course of our anti-fascist struggle. For better or for worse, we
_did_ try to get along with them. We have failed.
Why have we failed?
The failure seems to be much more on the side of the Communists than on
the side of the free nations. Though it is possible for Left-liberals or
hypercritical intellectuals to find fault with the U.S. and British
position in this respect or that, short of extreme nit-picking it must
be argued that the Communists jumped the gun on the Western powers in
almost every case. Tito, while still in agreement with Moscow, proved
implacable toward the constitutional Yugoslav government and the Church
as they had existed before 1941. While Roosevelt was still living the
Lublin Poles prepared a savage double-cross of the London Poles. Whether
Communist action arose from a lamentable fear of our own aggressiveness,
or a Machiavellian plan to conquer the world does not, at any time,
matter very much; what matters is the almost indisputable fact that in
many parts of the world the Communists undertook the initiative against
the anti-Communists.
(The first edition of this book, PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE, was written in
1946 and published in 1948; the second edition is being completed eight
years later, in 1954. Any reader who contrasts the two editions will see
at a glance that the author, although suspicious of Communism, had no
real anticipation of the fury or seriousness of the Communist attack
upon the non-Communist world, nor of the strategic arguments and
responsibilities which the free world would therewith be forced to
accept.)
=The Cold War and the Actual Fighting.= As late as 1948, when the
talented and bold-minded Lt. Gen. Albert C. Wedemeyer was Deputy Chief
of Staff, the U.S. Army's psychological warfare facilities at the
General Staff level consisted of a few paper assignments to colonels in
operations and in training together with your author as a part-time
consultant and one girl stenographer to keep the files. By 1953 these
numbers were multiplied by the hundreds. Each of the military services
has accepted its responsibility so that by 1953 there was not merely one
Army PsyWar system, but there were at least five separate organizations
in the U.S. Government in different places and at five levels directly
concerned with these problems.
[Illustration: _Figure 71: Official Chinese Letter._ This surrender pass
from Korea shows intelligent American use of materials from another
culture--The ancient format, in this case, of the traditional Chinese
bureaucratic letter.]
A curious division of responsibilities not anticipated by the Creel
Committee of World War I or the OWI of World War II arose in the
Washington of the Cold War period. While the military establishments
were given jurisdiction over propaganda activities connected with actual
combat, other propaganda activities were kept largely in civilian hands,
though simultaneously the direction of civilian policy at its very
highest level became para-military through the influence of the National
Security Council.
In other words, most of the national foreign-policy decisions at the
highest level have been dictated in recent years by strategic
considerations. They have been National Security Council decisions, not
Cabinet-type decisions of the kind which might have been made in the
years of William McKinley or Warren G. Harding. Yet, even though the
decisions have been strategic in type, the propaganda implementation of
these decisions has fallen for the greater part on the State Department
and on the economic aid program facilities, not on the military. The
military have been pretty strictly confined to those aspects of
propaganda which directly pertain to combat areas. By 1953 U.S. leaders
had begun to understand the situation with which they had been dealing
since 1947 and in light of that necessarily belated but correct
appreciation of their own position, the William Jackson Committee began
to recommend that propaganda policy be written not as something
self-contained, but be considered an integral part of every other U.S.
Government decision possessing world situation or news impact.
=The Cold War and the Home Front.= Among editors, professors, officers,
officials, and other experts concerned with foreign affairs, there has
been frequent lamentation that the American people did not take the
great struggle of our time more seriously. The contrary should be
argued, at least by way of contrast.
If it is true that the United States is engaged in a major struggle, if
it is further true that this struggle has no visible end, if this
struggle threatens all of us and our children as well with lifetimes of
tension and violent deaths under ultra-destructive weapons, one may
quite reasonably ask the question, _Which is the better reaction for the
bulk of the American population: normality, emotional health, mild
irresponsibility, and the stockpiling of nervous and physical strength
for a time of trial which may lie far ahead; or, alternatively, tension
now, worry now, responsibility now, fatigue now, all the way through
from the uncertain present across the bitter and perilous future to the
months of near-Armageddon which may lie fifteen, twenty, or thirty years
ahead?_
Sadly and seriously, with no attempt at cleverness or mockery, a staff
officer could argue today that the American people should leave their
worries to their leaders so as to be strong when the time of trouble
comes. In the field of civil defense, for instance, it is grotesque to
spend billions on offense and little on the saving of American lives. On
second glance, this may not be so grotesque after all. The technological
advance of fissionable and thermonuclear weapons is so rapid, the
development of guided missiles and other carrying instruments so swift
and so unpredictable, that a 1955 model civil-defense system might
become a fool's paradise by 1960. If this be true, it is better to live
as well as we can to maintain the profession of arms at an adequate
level, to hope (quite irrationally) for the best, and to let the dead of
the future bury their dead as best they may.[47]
=Alternatives to Victory and Defeat.= In a cold war, as opposed to a
war, the role of the armed services is to deter the enemy, not fight
the enemy, and the purpose of the government is to achieve an
accommodation (in the sense of an arrangement satisfactory to both
sides), not a victory. If this is correct, serious reappraisal must be
made of the U.S. PsyWar position as well as of our strategic thinking.
The alternatives to victory and defeat are forms of survival of the
competitors. The entire health of each competing civilization matters.
It is obvious enough to Americans that we must remain prosperous, free,
constitutional, democratic. It goes without saying that we must, as far
as our individual fortunes permit us, retain our belief in God and
derive from religious beliefs those spiritual strengths not available to
the Communists. What is not often raised is the equally important factor
of _the conquest of probability_.
Wars are much more often won by people who are sure they are going to
win than by people who know that they would _like_ to win, but who think
at the same time that they _will_ probably be defeated. The
over-confidence of a Cortez or a Mao Tse-tung may seem insane to many of
us. With the passion for security so prevalent in individual and
national lives, both the Western powers and the individuals comprising
them grotesquely exaggerate the margin of safety which they need in
which to survive.
Part of this springs from the fact that much of our civilization is not
forward-looking, that neither young Americans nor old Americans have a
clear-cut or hopeful picture of what the world should be, will be, and
must be, by A.D. 2055. On the Communist side it is frequent, but not
universal, to discover that the best Communist cadres are made up of men
who are dead sure that Communism will win, who are equally sure that
Communism does not have to be right in order to win, and who are sure
that "objectively and scientifically" (whatever that may mean), the
Communist system is almost certainly destined to succeed. If Communism
cannot get out of succeeding, the responsibility of the individual
Communist becomes bearable; he is still seriously and tragically
responsible for the expediting or the delaying of the inevitable, but he
does not take the mantle of God or Karl Marx and state that this is the
world as he wishes it to be and that the world of his desires will come
into existence if, and only if, he fulfills his personal
responsibilities to the utmost.
In Asia, perhaps more than in Europe, there are many persons who are
turning toward Communism, not because they think it is good or just, or
even because it is powerful, but simply because it is _likely_. Every
individual in his own life has known that he cannot undo the passage of
time, the aging of his body, the death of his loved ones, the loss of
opportunities which might have been seized, or even his own death; in
their individual lives men of all nations perform the feat,
characteristic of the human being and apparently shared by no other
species of life, of living from day to day in a constant reconciliation
of the past and present with their own estimate of the probable future.
At times in history, _that which should happen_ seems to be unleashed
like spiritual lightning and men rally in frenzy around causes which for
the year or the decade seem inspiring, terrifyingly beautiful, and
within human reach; through most of history, _that which is apt to
occur_ provides a more sober guide to the future and men prepare to live
in accordance with its standards.
In the battle of the probabilities the PsyWar of the Western powers has
been weak, high-pitched, and uncertain, while the insistence of the
Communist themes has been as monotonous and hypnotic as a jungle drum.
For better or for worse, the Communists have broken a path through to
what they think to be the future; we of other nations have not.
The chief element of anti-Communist victory--practical, sober
expectation of a certain and final downfall of the Soviet system--has
thus far been lacking on the anti-Communist side.
The Communists, on the contrary, have unreasonably, provocatively, and
untruthfully raved, screamed, shrieked, and lied to bring about that
better world which, curiously enough, their most effective cadres
considered to be an inevitable world. Thus the UN prisoners held by the
Communists during the Korean war were subjected to a constant
bombardment of Communist propaganda concerning their personal
responsibilities before history and the opportunities which they would
have to serve peace and mankind, as these noble concepts are set forth
on the Red side.
=The End of the Cold War.= If the hypothesis set forth above (page 251,
note 3), namely, that the Cold War may turn out to be unendable war
except in terms which no living man can visualize, it may be true that
appreciation of the role of psychological warfare (whatever it may later
be called) in this struggle may have to wait a few more years. One
factor often overlooked on the American side has been the _limitation of
the originators_. Propaganda, to be effective among foreign peoples or
foreign armies, cannot and should not outrun the strategic capabilities
or the political intentions of the issuing power.
It does no good for an American propaganda radio to pledge battle to the
death while the U.S. press services amiably discuss an accommodation
with the Communists. Comparably, an official propaganda plan to make
the people of France feel that the Americans love and admire them is not
very realistic if, in terms of column-inches of French press material,
unofficial American utterances are related to France to the effect that
the French are washed up, their cause in Indochina hopeless, their
economy unviable, and their political goals foolish. The years 1950-54,
during which the Korea struggle took place and in which NATO and the
European Defense Community (EDC) came to prominence, often showed a
proclivity on the part of U.S. official propagandists to go far beyond
that which their home public would support. Need it be said that the
effects on foreign public opinion were possibly deflationary?
An imaginable end to the Cold War may lie in neither victory nor defeat,
in neither accommodation nor reconciliation, but in the development of
more, newer, and different quarrels. Hostility of Protestant and
Catholic faded out in Europe when the hostility of French, Germans,
Spaniards, and other nationalities came to be more important. It is a
problem for the psychiatrist and sociologist to answer if they can. Is
it possible that semantics of war-causing quarrels can be superseded by
anything other than _different_ quarrels? A tension-free civilization is
imaginable; given the characteristics of most present-day cultures it is
scarcely more than merely _imaginable_.[48]
If within the limits of practical possibility one were to list the
hypothetical requirements for an end of the Cold War, the following
might stand forth:
(1) General war leading to destruction of either the Communist or
non-Communist systems; _or_
(2) Prolongation of the present Cold War atmosphere until new and more
interesting quarrels arise which make the present ones obsolete; _or_
(3) Reconciliation of the Communist and anti-Communist systems, by some
process not now imaginable, along the general lines of Franklin D.
Roosevelt's "Grand Design;" _or_
(4) Collapse of all major civilizations under impact of fissionable and
thermonuclear weapons; _or_
(5) Gradual erosion of the anti-Communist world and an eventual
Communist victory by sustained Communist successes short of war--or the
alternative of gradual erosion of the Communist world and the creation
of a constitutionalist and libertarian probability of victory, also
without the outbreak of general war.
It would be a brave and foolish man who would say which of these the
world should expect, but it would be a stupid staff officer who did not
anticipate at least one of them and who did not as a military officer or
government official do his best to bring about "victory" in a form which
his side could define, recognize, welcome, and achieve.[49]
=The Seven Small Wars.= The foregoing extensive discussion of the Cold
War has been included because it explains a great deal of the apparent
contradictoriness, irresoluteness, and uncertainty of the small wars
which have occurred since the end of World War II. The seven small wars
fall into a threefold pattern, if China is excluded (China is taken up
in the next section). This is the first pattern; five of the seven wars
were Asian struggles against the Western powers: Korea, Indochina, the
Philippines (in which Communist Filipinos regard the United States as
their ultimate enemy), Malaya, and Indonesia. In Korea and Indochina the
struggle came to be Communist-controlled. In Indonesia the struggle
ended in a nationalist victory. In the Philippines the struggle
degenerated into petty skirmishes between a native constitutional
government and Communist extremists. One war was an expression of
European nationalism on the soil of Asia, with the creation of the new
state of Israel. The third category is, of course, the special case
presented by the Indian-Pakistani fighting which is a struggle between
Asian nationalisms without much intervention from either European
colonialism or Communism.
The most important of these wars were the five in Korea, Indochina, the
Philippines, Malaya, and Indonesia. The Israeli struggle appears pretty
well settled as a fighting war and the India-Pakistan issue appears not
to be one which will lead to general war between those two countries.
The predominant group of wars shows variations of the same components in
different quantities.
Each was a reaction to the fall of Japan's short-lived East Asia
military empire. Each involved partial or complete resistance to
economic affiliation with the capitalist world. Each had an ingredient,
though these differed in stress and direction, of local Asian
nationalism. Except for Indonesia, each eventually became a part of the
world-wide front between Communism and anti-Communism. These wars
deserve consideration one at a time for their PsyWar content.
[Illustration: _Figure 72: Intimidation Pattern._ A Korean-language
leaflet maximizes the threat to enemy ground personnel of U. S. air
operations. The enemy dug in.]
=The Special Case of China.= None of the wars mentioned above was as
bloody or as tragic as the Chinese civil war between Communists and
Nationalists which ended with a Red victory in 1949. The China situation
is too complicated to be summed up in a single paragraph. The political,
economic, and propaganda components on each side of that war are as yet
not completely assessed.
For instance, one of the major factors in the defeat of the Nationalists
consisted of the withdrawal of the Japanese managers and technicians
from China as well as of those Japanese troops who had been maintaining
a degree of law and order in Manchuria and North China. This withdrawal
was not only sought by such "progressives" in the State Department as
John Stewart Service and Alger Hiss; it was also enthusiastically
endorsed by conservatives such as General Wedemeyer, who shipped the
Japanese out and General MacArthur, who received them. No American,
right-wing or left-wing, seriously proposed replacing the Japanese with
United States or United Nations personnel until the Nationalists had
enough trainees to manage a modern, capitalist China. By withdrawing the
Japanese the Nationalists and the Allies destroyed the political and
economic system under which the Nationalists proposed to operate and
were then astonished when the Nationalists met defeat.
In the China policy situation the contribution of Communist covert
propaganda within the United States in preventing aid to Chiang in the
crucial years of 1947, 1948 and 1949 should not be overlooked; neither
should it be overestimated nor considered the sole determinant of events
which took place within China.[50]
=PsyWar in the Indonesian-Dutch War.= A rapid and talented command of
propaganda was shown by the Indonesians in their retention of power in
the face of a Dutch landing in the islands in 1945-46. The Indonesians
were readily alert to the necessity for obtaining U.S., British,
Australian, and other foreign sympathizers. They opened propaganda
offices abroad and did an excellent job of presenting their own case.
While Indonesian combat propaganda against the Netherlands troops is not
recorded as having had much effect on Dutch morale, their use of global
strategic propaganda to support a local war was excellent. Netherlands
ships were refused docking and loading services by Australian
stevedores. American press and public sympathy ran very largely in the
Indonesian favor. Indonesian acceptance of the political concept,
"United States of Indonesia," which was dropped as soon as independence
was won, may have played a significant role in winning American
sympathy.
[Illustration: _Figure 73: Communist Wall Propaganda._ Wall messages
have been ubiquitous in China for many years, leading one wit to accuse
the Chinese of "mural turpitude." Here the ancient Chinese device has
been turned against English-reading personnel.]
Dutch military and strategic propaganda in their war with the
Indonesians suffered from uncertainty on the Dutch side as to the goals
of the war, the suspicion that a Netherlands victory would be nothing
more than a triumph of colonial capitalism, and the insistent
interference of United Nations and United States observers. The Dutch
were never able to put across the point that Indonesia derived its
nationhood from Imperial Japanese sponsorship and the Netherlands
withdrawal was dictated as much by the practical necessity of
reconciling world opinion and balancing the home budget as by the
militarily untenable nature of the Dutch enterprise.
=The Philippine War Against the Huks.= By contrast, the Republic of the
Philippines faced a very serious military situation in the challenge of
the Huk armies--tough Communist troops concentrated in central
Luzon--who waged a cruel and bitter war, rather like the struggle of the
Irish Republicans against the Black-and-Tans. By 1950 the Philippine
Government was in a serious position. There was at least the remote
possibility that if the Government continued to falter, the city of
Manila might have fallen to a Communist _coup_.
In this situation Ramón Magsaysay, as Secretary of Defense, developed
some of the most provocative and audacious anti-guerrilla operations of
the postwar period. To meet the Communist claim that the struggle was
one of the landless against the rich, he offered all surrendered Huks
resettlement in a new land project; he visited the project himself
frequently enough to make sure it remained a valuable demonstration
area. To allow the common people to help the Government, without their
suffering from Communist reprisals against themselves or their
families, he disseminated secret methods whereby the people could
communicate with the Government forces. He established a psychological
warfare office under Major José Crisol. This office was doing as good a
job of tactical PsyWar with leaflets, mimeographs, loudspeakers, light
planes, and other field and headquarters equipment as any army
installation which the author has seen. Most of the doctrine and
procedures for the operation of the office were American, but the
content of the materials was Filipino. Catholicism, Filipino patriotism,
Malayan nativism and peasant common sense were some of the factors used
to underscore the Philippine Army's appeals. In the following three
years the Huks shrank seriously although the danger could not be said to
have been eliminated altogether.
=Indochina and Political Warfare.= With devotion, often with heroism,
frequently with brilliance, the French military forces in Indochina
fought a Communist-captured nationalist movement known as the Viet Minh;
they fought despite the accompaniments of a wretched and vacillating
home policy, incredibly poor psychological relationships with the native
élite, and security situations which pass all American belief. (One
Vietnamese recently told the author that the pro-Communist Viet Minh
soldiers fought as long as they could against the French and then came
back to French territory to eat good food, visit their families, rest
and relax before returning to the field to murder more French sentries,
blow up more French patrols, or attack more French outposts.)
It ill becomes an American to criticize the French for their policy in
Indochina since it was by virtue of a U.S. strategic decision and a U.S.
logistical action that Indochina was turned first from Japanese hands
into the hands of the British in the south and the Chinese Nationalists
in the north. The British did not care much about the local situation.
The particular Chinese Nationalists in northern Indochina were mildly
sympathetic with local nationalism, but chiefly preoccupied with
stealing everything that could be put on a truck. After this ill-fated
liberation the Americans then assisted the French in transporting forces
back to Indochina. This was after much of the U.S. press and many U.S.
leaders had indicated their disapproval of French colonialism and had
given indirect but powerful encouragement to Viet Minh's rebellion
against the French. Having helped foul up the situation for the French
hopelessly, the United States then observed their return (a return which
was definitely, though indirectly, made possible only by U.S. aid to
France) with uncertainty and disquiet. It took the Americans four years
to decide that they were on the French side and even then they were not
very much on the French side.
Neither were the French.
The "French side" was an indefinable amalgam of old-fashioned French
colonialism, the membership of three small Asian states in a French
Union, and anti-Communism. The French made the mistake which the
Americans repeated when they invited the Chinese Communist general, Wang
Hsiu-ch'üan, to New York to defame the United States through the
courtesy of the United States Government, or when they tried dealing
with the Chinese Communists, fighting them, dealing with them, and
fighting with them again. When the French finally decided to seek an
all-out military victory against the Communists they set up local
governments which they themselves promptly dishonored, giving them
neither prestige nor authority enough to combat the Communist menace in
local Asian terms.
That the French should have held the Asian anti-Communist front under
these strange political circumstances is a credit to France. The
Indochinese war has been dirty, discouraging. It has often verged upon
the hopeless. The French have been criticized by the Americans in the
early period of the reoccupation of Indochina for not turning the
country over to Communist "nationalists" lock, stock and barrel; later
the Americans criticized the French because the French did not
annihilate the same "Communist nationalists" whom the Americans had
previously lauded. In the end, Dien Bien Phu and Geneva were the
inevitable concomitants of Panmunjom. Once we made "peace," the French
had to make an equally bad "peace" too.
The United States was adroit enough to obtain the immense psychological
leverage of getting the Korean war recognized as a UN war. The
Indochinese war was not made a UN war even though it was the same enemy
who was being fought--Asian Communists underwritten by Peking and
guaranteed by Moscow--in each case.
Amazing though it may seem, practical psychological warfare was almost
completely neglected by the French until the Americans supplied the
French with printing facilities for French Annamite leaflets in 1950. By
1952 the French had assigned staff officers to carry out psychological
warfare responsibilities and were making a serious effort to link up
with the other anti-Communist forces in East Asia for the purpose of
obtaining psychological warfare know-how. A considerable improvement in
tactical psychological warfare was made between 1950 and 1952. The
strategic psychological warfare position of the French in the area must
be referred back to the "battle of the probabilities," mentioned earlier
in this chapter. So long as French, Americans, and Annamites all feel
that a French defeat is quite probable and say so both publicly and
privately, it will be difficult for the French to make the Indochinese
believe that Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Laos are here to stay as
French-protected and anti-Communist nations.[51]
=Malaya and the MRLA.= The MRLA, or Malayan Races Liberation Army, is a
Chinese Communist guerrilla army operating in the jungles of Malaya.
Malaya (minus the island of Singapore, which is a separate Crown Colony
to itself) has been constituted in the postwar period as a federation of
Malay sultanates. The British have talked a great deal about the
self-government of Malaya, the eventual end of their own rule, and the
progress of the people. Everything, or almost everything, which the
British say is true--except for the fundamental fact that the Chinese in
Malaya can, under British rule, enjoy anything except life, purpose, and
honor.
What are "life, purpose, and honor" in basic human terms?
They are the rights to belong to something, to be a part of history, to
make one's own world move, to be a human being superior to other human
beings, to be vain, to be proud, to be self-sacrificing.
After years of war against the Chinese Communist guerrillas who have
small components of Malayans and Indians with them, the British have not
yet found a single British brigadier or major general of the Chinese
race. The world at large on the anti-Communist side has yet to hear of a
Chinese-Malayan hero who served mankind by falling martyr to the
Communist terror or by emerging as victor in valiant heroic combat.
The Chinese in Malaya, as the author has observed at first hand, are
probably more prosperous than any other Chinese have ever been anywhere
in the world. Under capitalism today the Chinese communities in Malaya
have achieved a degree of wealth, health, and education which Communist
China will be remarkable to have achieved if it survives and succeeds
for the next hundred years.
Does this not give the lie to the great Communist myth concerning
Asia--the myth accepted by many Western politicians, intellectuals, and
newspaper men--that the struggle between Communism and anti-Communism is
a struggle for living standards? that the issue is an issue of "who will
provide the best livelihood"?
On the pro-Communist side in Malaya, Chinese who are not religious and
who are known for their practicality and secularism, struggle for the
chance to go forth and suffer, to serve in an army with bad medical
service and no pensions, to face an almost certain death in the jungle,
to lose life and property (which they could keep on the British side) in
order to gain that other kind of life--life with honor and purpose, on
the Communist side.
The British meanwhile progress, no doubt. In many respects the British
administrations in Singapore and Malaya are more enlightened than some
of the local governments in the United States. But whatever the reason,
they do not seem to belong to the Chinese who live there or even to the
Malays. They are governments for the people, and not (so far as the
local people seem to judge) governments _of_ the people.
Is it reasonable to ask in the mid-1950s that decent British officers
and civil servants convert themselves into apocalyptic fanatics of a
weird composite Asian nationalism? Can the British make revolution in
Malaya when they are rather fatigued with their own Labor revolution at
home? Can we Americans, who have made nothing, absolutely nothing, out
of the heroism and romance and tradition that might have been
reconstituted as the ancient kingdom of Ryukyu (Okinawa), be in a
position to chide the British for not doing that which we ourselves do
not undertake?
The Communist magic is strong, bad magic. In North Korea it created
officers in an unreasonably short time, developed fanatics while we were
trying to develop gentlemen, and came close to defeating us in the
perilous weeks of the Pusan perimeter. In China soldiers of whom many
Americans despaired when they fought on the Nationalist side became
desperate assault infantry under Communist training. The timid and
quarrelsome Annamites who had given the French so little trouble before
Communism organized them, fought like leopards once they read Marx,
Lenin, Mao Tse-tung and Ho Chi-minh.
Was this why the Communists were able to continue in Malaya? No one has
ever accused the British Army of a lack of ingenuity. The forces who
developed desert raiders, coastal commandos, air-dropped _banditti_, and
a plethora of amusing, shocking, and audacious innovations cannot be
accused of a lack of imagination.
The British _did_ use psychological warfare in Malaya strategically,
tactically, in the field, in the cities, by radio, and by print. When
Carleton Greene was directing the British PsyWar effort from the
headquarters of that redoubtable gentleman, Malcolm MacDonald, British
Commissioner General for South East Asia, he even resorted to the device
of writing individual letters to known Communists and leaving these
letters scattered through the jungle. The British used white propaganda,
black propaganda, grey propaganda; if there had been a purple propaganda
they certainly would have tried it. Alex Josey came close to it when he
shocked the planters in Malaya by delivering socialist speeches over the
Malay radio in an attempt to pull the Left wing off the Communist bird.
Sir Henry Gurney, the High Commissioner of the Federation who was
murdered in 1952, was a veteran of irregular warfare. He had faced the
Zionist terrorists in Jerusalem and was a man without fear. His approach
to the problem of confronting Communism was _hopelessly sane_. The
Communists were offering young Chinese the intoxication of craziness, of
a mad and heroic righteousness to justify the misspending of their
lives. Sir Henry's answer was decency, goodness, security, prosperity,
authority, liberty under law. He offered everything except glamor,
terror, inspiration, and romance--
Everything except the chance to join the British side.
What kind of British side?
A British side which, like the Communist side, would welcome the makers
of the future, the builders of the next civilization, the arbiters of
history.
The Communists have presented a high bid against the U.S. and Britain as
well as the other Western powers. We have not yet overbid them. The high
bid is the opportunity to join, to belong, really to be equal, not just
legally equal, and, above everything, to share, to struggle, and to work
under conditions of heroism for a common goal.
=The Right to Join.= The West has lost a lot of the Cold War in Asia
because the Communist side could be joined and the Western side could
not be joined. There is no American party in India, but there is a
Communist party. There is no anti-Communist army to which cadres of men
from either Soviet-occupied or Soviet-free territories can be made
welcome. There is no command point for the anti-Communist struggle.
There is the promise of immense U.S. help, even the promise of British,
Colombian, Ethiopian, and other help, for Korea or other Koreas. Is
there much willingness _to be helped_? Is there any way that we can let
ordinary Asians in on our side?
The top levels of this problem are, of course, political. They must be
solved in the light of a U.S. home public which eschews crusades and
dreads adventures. At a lower level the problem becomes one for the
military staffs of the future. How can the United States, the United
Nations, or other anti-Communist forces recruit native leaders and
native followers under circumstances of dignity and honor? How can we
either learn to love the allies we have or to find allies whom we can
love? Until then much of the spiritual and organizational advantage in
Asia will fall to the Communists. We may have the better ideals, but if
people who are determined to illuminate their own lives with the
splendor of risky, heroic, or self-sacrificing action (and who insist on
doing something desperate somewhere somehow, so as to relieve the
ignominy, poverty, and monotony of their existences) cannot learn how to
join us, they will perforce join the other side.
A slight or even a substantial increase in economic welfare in the Asian
states seems to the author to favor a sharp increase in Communist
strength. When people are desperately poor or sick they cannot worry
about causes. When they become moderately well off--well enough off to
know that they are despised, poor by our standards, ignorant by our
standards--then the point of psychological frenzy comes in.
=Propaganda Techniques in the Seven Wars.= Neither in the Chinese civil
war nor in the seven other wars listed has there been much refinement of
propaganda techniques over World War II. As a matter of fact, it took
the Korean war two years to come up to the standards of Normandy. It is
amazing how many propaganda techniques had become lost arts between 1945
and 1950. The author himself flew _under_ the Chinese Communist forces
along the Han River in March 1951 when the voice plane in which he rode
as an observer had to hug the valley bottoms in order to get its message
to the Chinese ground forces past the sound of its own propellers;
instead of ingenious, up-to-the-minute gadgets to dispense leaflets the
author joined the young officers in the plane in throwing the leaflets
out of the plane door by hand. He thought ruefully about the leaflet
bombs and leaflet dispensers which had been used in Europe and in Burma,
and when he returned unharmed to Taegu he submitted one more red-hot
memorandum recommending the obvious.
[Illustration: _Figure 74: Divisive Propaganda, Korean Model._ In this
leaflet an attempt is made to show the Asians-die-for-the-Kremlin
theme.]
The strategic PsyWar self-limitations imposed by the United States on
the United States in the Korean war were also crippling. The United
States did not desire anything which a professional soldier would
recognize as victory. U.S. opinion was divided as to whether all of
Korea should be liberated by UN forces. At the policy-making
level--certainly among our allies--there was pretty general agreement to
remain at peace with the supply dumps and high command of the Chinese
Communist forces in Manchuria and China while fighting the forward
echelons of those forces in Korea. The United States would not accept
defeat nor would it seek a decisive victory because victory might have
involved the risk of war.
Under these conditions it must be pointed out that General MacArthur had
the first and only PsyWar establishment ready to operate the moment the
Korean war began. Col. J. Woodall Greene ably managed the Tokyo
headquarters for most of the period of the Korean war. The Department of
the Army showed great good judgment in bringing back Brig. Gen. Robert
McClure, who had been Eisenhower's PsyWar chief in Europe, to the new
Department of the Army's PsyWar establishment which was created on 15
January 1951 in the Pentagon as a part of Special Staff, United States
Army, with the title of Office of the Chief of Psychological Warfare
(OCPW). When General McClure departed for Teheran, he was succeeded at
OCPW by Brig. Gen. William Bullock. The last period of the Korean war
found Korean local PsyWar at the headquarters of Eighth U.S. Army in
Korea (EUSAK) under the command of Col. Donald Hall, who had probably
seen more continuous PsyWar service than any other officer in the U.S.
Army.
CHAPTER 15
Strategic International Information Operations
From 1776 to 1945 the U.S. system of government managed to survive in a
world comprising many types of government without setting up its own
propaganda and agitational forces. Propaganda through most of the
twentieth century was pretty clearly limited by the U.S. conception of
propaganda as a weapon auxiliary to war. "Psychological warfare" became
proper, in conventional American terms, only when there was a war to be
won. With the coming of peace in 1945 there was considerable uncertainty
as to whether the United States should have a propaganda establishment
at all.
Even at the time of writing (1954) there is still some doubt as to
whether the United States needs propaganda facilities. The William
Jackson report of July 1953 indicated that the terms _propaganda_ and
_psychological warfare_ were unsatisfactory. Of course they were. They
still are. The world itself is unsatisfactory--in terms of the
traditional, humane, rational U.S. point of view.
The story of U.S. "peacetime" propaganda since the end of World War II
is a very complicated one. Quantity, direction, purpose, and quality
have shifted with the various turns of the international situation. The
subject has become much more difficult to write about since the time the
first edition of this book was written in 1946.
In the first place, governmental secrecy has been very sharply restored.
Even very routine State Department operations for putting across the
U.S. point of view have been shrouded in masses of classified documents.
For reasons not always evident to the outside observer, the assumption
has become prevalent that the normal operations of the United States
Government should be kept confidential, secret, or even top secret.
Often it would seem that the attempt to maintain secrecy in
non-sensitive functions is not worth the security effort at all or,
contrariwise, may even reassure the antagonists of the United States by
not letting them realize how serious and how unfriendly our plans or
policies with respect to them may be. (This is not the time or place to
discuss the problem of secrecy as a protection against domestic
criticism--which secrecy, of course, has often become, to the detriment
of both the government and the citizens of the United States.)
In the second place, not only have information activities become more
hush-hush: they have also become more complicated. It is difficult to do
justice to an intricate moving panorama of activities, some of which may
not be mentioned or described under existing law.
=Demobilization and Remobilization.= The ending of the OWI and the
installation of the International Information Service, mentioned above
on page 184, in turn changed into the information activities of the
Department of State. These were headed from 1945 to 1953 by an Assistant
Secretary of State for Public Affairs. In 1953 a Director of the United
States Information Agency, _not_ under the Department of State but
mysteriously attached to the National Security Council, was inaugurated.
The overseas operating component of USIA remained the United States
Information Service (USIS), transferred from State Department control.
In other words, there were eight years in which the Department of State
had primary responsibility for the conduct of peacetime propaganda of
the United States. This was the first and only time that the United
States Government had in a period of relative peace undertaken a
sustained propaganda effort.
The effort had ups and downs because neither the citizenry nor the
officials knew whether the country was in a condition of peace or at war
and, if at war, at war with _whom_. To some the enemy was Communism, the
ideology; to others, Communism the movement; to still others, the USSR;
to others, the Korean Communists, but not the Chinese Communists; to
others, the Chinese Communists in Korea, but not the Chinese Communists
in China; and so on, _ad infinitum_.
The general history of these eight years was, by and large, a first
phase in which the United States demobilized or destroyed propaganda
facilities which had been built up with great skill and at great cost
during World War II, and a second phase in which those facilities were
partially rebuilt and the skills rediscovered. The low point in this
development was probably the winter of 1947-48.
For a while, the rumor went around Washington that the Secretary of
Defense, Louis Johnson, would not tolerate the utterance of the words
_propaganda_ or _psychological warfare_, and that the Secretary of the
Army, Kenneth C. Royall, refused to have the topic mentioned to him.
That may be the exaggeration characteristic of newspapermen, but it
epitomized the spirit of that time.
While "psychological warfare" almost disappeared from the Department of
Defense and the three services during this low point, the State
Department never quite demobilized. For one thing, the State Department
had inherited the OWI facilities and the Army facilities in the occupied
countries--Austria, Germany, Korea, and Japan. As the heir to
substantial informational facilities the State Department kept a
certain minimum activity going. Facilities such as American Broadcasting
Station in Europe (ABSIE), Radio in the American Sector--of
Berlin--(RIAS), the Information Control Commands in the American Sector
of Germany, Information and Education (I&E) Section of the General
Headquarters of the Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers (SCAP) in
Japan--these (though sometimes renamed) represented going propaganda
concerns which required a Washington command post.
Meanwhile, it became standing operating procedure in the U.S. diplomatic
establishment to attach some kind of an informational facility to every
diplomatic establishment and to most of the major consulates.
Since there were always advocates of complete propaganda dismantlement,
as well as enthusiasts for the maintenance of information programs, the
issue of remaining in the propaganda business or getting out was always
more or less in doubt. The economy and the demobilization phases of 1947
and 1948 were stimulated by evidence of Soviet bad faith in Europe
during 1949 and brought into sharp focus by the outbreak of the Korean
semi-war in 1950.
It is not possible to do justice to all these different systems in a
single phrase. Even as late as the present, it is sometimes difficult to
determine why the U.S. need have an information program operating in
such entirely friendly countries as Cuba, Haiti, Ireland, or Australia.
There is some point to the argument set forth by ultraconservatives that
what was good enough for Theodore Roosevelt ought to be good enough
today; that, in other words, the United States should be known for what
it is and not by what a few hired promoters can say about it.
As in so many other fields of activities, however, the past is
irrecoverable. The United States can no more return to the pre-atomic
age in propaganda matters than it can in defense matters. The world we
have built is with us and the only alternative to survival seems death.
With respect to the specific field of propaganda, this leads to
occasional curious political alliances. Sometimes the conservatives in
U.S. politics are so conservative they want no propaganda at all; at
other times these same conservatives are so anti-Communist that they
want more propaganda. On occasions the Left within the USA has viewed
U.S. propaganda with alarm and at other times has demanded that there be
more of it and that more of the content be Left.
=Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs.= The Assistant
Secretary of State for Public Affairs has been the principal officer of
government responsible for the conduct of U.S. propaganda during
1945-53. His successor, the Director of the United States Information
Agency, faces very closely related problems. Fortunately, one of these
Assistant Secretaries of State has written an excellent book relating
his experiences and the problems of his office in detail. Edward W.
Barrett in his _Truth is Our Weapon_ (New York, 1953), describes his own
experiences with two years in that position. The Assistant Secretary had
the help of an interdepartmental committee which, under various labels
and with various degrees of secrecy, attempted to coordinate the foreign
informational activities of the various departments of the United States
Government to common goals.
Later, as will be described, the Assistant Secretary of State for Public
Affairs was supplemented by a Psychological Strategy Board outside of
the Department of State and still later by a White House assistant in
charge of informational policies at the highest level.
What can be said of this first U.S. peacetime performance in the
propaganda field?
The Assistant Secretaries themselves have been men of varied capacities
and interests. Mr. Barrett was an OWI veteran and a journalist of high
standing. George Allen was a tough-minded career diplomat. Howland
Sargeant was a distinguished government official. William Benton was the
founder of the most successful "canned" music system for restaurants and
the most vigorous promoter which the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ ever had;
later he became a Senator. Men such as these can scarcely be called
tight-lipped fanatics emerging from the hidden recesses of a U.S.
"Politburo." They and their colleagues did a surprisingly good job.
American travelers overseas were often amazed to find that the U.S.
propaganda effort was far more polished and purposeful than an observer
within the United States could expect it to be. The activities of the
Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs consisted of supervising
the domestic origination of broadcasts directed to the Soviet Union, the
satellite countries, neutrals, and friends. The radio system was
generally known as the Voice of America. To this degree he had charge of
a propaganda system operated within the United States by Americans, but
speaking to foreigners, sometimes by transmitters located within the USA
and more often with relay transmitters which picked up programs
originating in the continental United States and rebroadcast overseas.
One echelon removed, there were installations attached to the
diplomatic and consular establishments of the United States which were
usually known as USIS although in some particular cases quasi-private
facilities were sponsored instead. In each foreign country there was at
the embassy or legation level a Public Affairs Officer (PAO) who was the
information specialist for the diplomatic mission and--in theory at
least--in charge of all U.S. propaganda or informational activities,
whichever one preferred to call them, in the country to which he was
accredited.
A complex hierarchy of officials routed, relayed, screened, and
coordinated programs from headquarters to the PAOs in the field and
proposals or requests from the PAOs back to headquarters.
=Other U.S. Facilities.= A complicated element in the State Department's
conduct of propaganda was the fact that at no time did the State
Department enjoy even a monopoly of the _governmental_ mass
communications of the United States abroad. (It goes without saying that
at no time did the State Department achieve or seek control of private
U.S. mass communications such as the international editions of _Time_
and _Newsweek_, the circulation of American books and magazines on a
commercial basis, commercial American-owned publications abroad, or the
like.) At the very least level of competition the State Department had
the Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS) broadcasting to most of the
countries in which the State Department was active--often broadcasting
in quite a different tone of voice and with very different content. In
many instances, foreigners who understood English preferred to listen to
the lively radio programs transmitted for the edification of U.S.
service personnel stationed abroad, rather than to listen to "canned"
programs made up for the benefit of themselves as a foreign target. (The
author has seen Chinese shopkeepers in Singapore listen very seriously
to a sergeant giving the news of the day at dictation speed from an
armed services transmitter somewhere in the Pacific Ocean area.) In 1948
there was virtually no coordination between the armed services and the
Department of State. As time went on, the two sets of U.S. broadcasts
took a certain amount of note of each other. Coordination was not as
easy as it might seem on paper.
After all, what is one to do? Is it valid to "propagandize" our
innocently cherubic service personnel abroad whom so many domestic
purity leagues and local pressure groups are anxious to defend? After
all, these service people possess fearful weapons. Each has a
Congressman to whom he might write. But if service personnel in a
foreign country are to be given nonpropaganda materials, how can the
same area be given propaganda materials for the benefit of the
indigenous personnel? The propaganda from the United States Government
must not be too much at variance with the "nonpropaganda" of the United
States Government. If the two extremes of communication were too far
apart, the United States Government might look like an ass. That would
be most unhappy.
Over and above the contradictions and difficulties involved in the
operation of at least two governmental systems and many private systems
of U.S. news communication and dissemination systems in foreign areas,
there is the further problem of additional U.S. facilities. Sources such
as _The Washington Post_, Joseph Alsop, James Reston, and other
well-informed Washington journalists often hinted gloomily and darkly
that U.S. cloak-and-dagger operations are still going on; Dorothy
Thompson was often troubled by what she regarded as the feckless
successors of the wartime OSS. Many times Americans resident in local
areas concerned seemed never to have heard of the hush-hush operations
in their own overseas homes, operations which were denounced with purple
prose in Washington; we can say that covert operations, when they have
been really uncovered, as in the case of the _Time_ story about
overzealous U.S. support of a German nationalist resistance group, turn
out to be much more pale than the lurid columnists or inside stories
from Washington would lead one to believe.
More serious have been the duplication, and triplication, and occasional
quadruplication of _official_ informational activities. The overseas
economic and military aid program, known successively as Economic
Cooperation Administration (ECA), Mutual Security Administration (MSA)
and Foreign Operations Administration (FOA) has not only supplemented
the existing leaflet, broadcast, and other informational activities of
the State Department and the armed forces with a third set of
information programs; it has itself had a fourth rival in the Point Four
administration, the Technical Cooperation Administration (TCA), which
was both a part of State and not a part of State, depending upon the
particular situation overseas.
=Radio Free Europe and Radio Free Asia.= Over and above the Government's
operations in this field there have been the quasi-private undertakings
of the Committee for a Free Europe and the Committee for a Free Asia.
These have been privately sponsored and privately financed by altruistic
organizations dedicated to broadcasting those things which the State
Department finds it impolitic to put on the air. The degree of
governmental contribution or participation is not known, although it is
often touched upon in the U.S. press; that the organizations are to a
definite extent private is evident in their ability to broadcast local
and controversial news to particular Iron Curtain countries and by the
fund drives which they have waged with little contribution boxes inside
the USA.
The advantage of the RFE and RFA type of operation is that by giving
voice to independent nongovernmental resistance to Communism it has
often been possible to go far beyond the limits which intergovernmental
protocol would impose upon U.S. official broadcasts. That is, the United
States can scarcely describe a deputy minister in the Rumanian
Government as a scoundrel, thief, pervert, or renegade; Rumanian exiles
allowed access to Radio Free Europe stations need have no such
limitations. On the other hand, there is the difficulty that Radio Free
Europe, because of its U.S.-based finance and management might lend an
unnecessary U.S. sponsorship to genuinely independent anti-Communist
undertakings. Here again, as in the case of the reconciliation of the
State Department and Defense broadcasts, it is impossible to draw a
doctrinal rule which would prescribe on one hand that all propaganda
broadcasts should be unofficial or that they should all be official. One
cannot even say that they should all be coordinated.
=The Psychological Strategy Board.= Coordination was nevertheless
attempted--at least for the governmental side. In 1951 President Truman
created the Psychological Strategy Board, bringing the versatile and
judicious Gordon Gray back to Washington for the purpose. The prescribed
role of the Board was to coordinate, plan, and phase all United States
information policies so as to achieve maximum effect from the
governmental effort; not once did the Board dare reach out for a penny's
worth of jurisdiction over private U.S. facilities. The Psychological
Strategy Board was only originally under the chairmanship of the
Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, then General Walter Bedell
Smith, with the members of the Board consisting of the Under Secretary
of State, the Under Secretary of Defense, and the Deputy Director of
what was at the time known as ECA, later MSA. The Board had a series of
able staff directors and small staffs detailed from other Government
departments on a permanent basis to serve as a working secretariat. The
precise operations of the Board were cloaked in extraordinary secrecy.
It cannot be said that U.S. propaganda worsened in the two years
following the establishment of the Board; neither can it be said that
U.S. PsyWar operations scored any coups so striking as to deserve a
position in the annals of international affairs.
=William Jackson Report.= After the Republicans came into office in
1953, President Dwight D. Eisenhower moved to overhaul the information
establishment. He appointed a committee under the chairmanship of
William Jackson, a former OSS official and investment banker, and under
the secretaryship of Abbott Washburn, who had headed the superlatively
successful advertising department of General Mills, Inc., which had
successfully given away millions of prizes for millions of box tops from
cereals consumed by American youth or flours relished by the American
housewife. Some of the liberal press commentators eyed the committee
gloomily as it went to work. Nevertheless, that portion of its report
which was made public turned out to be a document of remarkable finesse
and sophistication.
The report, released in July 1953, pointed out the Psychological
Strategy Board had erred in trying to plan informational activities in
its own light instead of considering the _informational aspects_ of
every single U.S. Government activity possessing international
significance. The report recommended the replacement of the
Psychological Strategy Board by a more realistic policy-coordinating
organization which would coordinate not merely propaganda policies, but
all policies and, having coordinated all policies, would then resolve
upon maximum psychological exploitation of the policies which had been
decided.
In a sense this is rather like saying that the United States should have
a President, since the powerful chief executive of this government has,
since 1789, been the final arbiter of executive matters, both foreign
and domestic. In another sense it can be interpreted to mean that the
responsibilities of the Presidency are so great that no one man could
perform in his head all the staff work necessary to see through the
opinion-reactions which might develop abroad to U.S. executive decisions
made here at home. If the latter supposition is true, it means that the
United States is saddled with one more intricate governmental process
made necessary by the closeness, dangerousness, and importance of
international affairs in the lives of Americans and their government.
=Operations Coordinating Board.= On 3 September 1953 President
Eisenhower, then at Denver, Colorado, issued an Executive Order
abolishing the Psychological Strategy Board and creating the Operations
Coordinating Board. According to informed press comment at the time, it
was the intention of the White House to carry out the recommendation to
this effect made by the President's Committee on International
Information Activities. The new Board was located immediately under the
National Security Council. C. D. Jackson was a significant member of the
Board, but not as chairman; the chairman was Walter Bedell Smith.
Besides General Smith, then Under Secretary of State, the Board included
Harold E. Stassen, Director of the Foreign Operations Administration;
Allen W. Dulles, Director of the Central Intelligence Agency; and Roger
M. Kyes, Deputy Secretary of Defense. The President also directed that
Theodore C. Streibert, Director of the U.S. Information Service, make
himself available.
In so far as this development represented an attempt to coordinate the
framing of U.S. Government policy in such a manner as to achieve maximum
impact on the rest of the world, it represented a major step forward.
The de-emphasis of "psychological warfare" or "psychological strategy"
as operations which could somehow or other be efficacious _without_ a
context of material support through the real-life behavior of the
Government issuing the propaganda was a healthy sign indeed.
_Psychological warfare_ is at best a cumbersome and pretentious label
for an important modern political and military weapon, the use of mass
communication. The definition of empirical "psychological warfare" given
in Chapter 3, and reproduced as it was originally written in 1946, makes
it perfectly plain that the term acquires specificity which is made
plain by the particular individualities involved undertaking the
operation at any given time: psychological warfare is not an ancient
term which is so well defined by the usage of centuries that modern men
would be ill advised to redefine it or to sweep it aside.[52]
Indeed, the basic weakness of the term _psychological warfare_ is its
pretentiousness within American civilization of the 1900s. No one now
knows whether the United States of the 1960s will turn out to be
dynamic, forward-looking, insistent upon its own view of the world. It
is difficult in the 1950s to see how the next decade or so could bring
forth anything as explosive or violent in the social and political field
as the atomic bomb has been in the field of fission. The United States
certainly does not seem to be on the threshold of a new Islam. For
better or for worse, the U.S. strengths are the strengths of sobriety,
calmness, health. They are the strengths of _living_ as opposed to the
strengths of _revolution_. Revolution may be strong; it may even be
pleasurable to some persons involved, but as Denis W. Brogan has pointed
out in his _The Price of Revolution_ (Boston, 1952), revolution has a
cost factor which must be weighed against the results expected from it.
In the context of mid-twentieth century affairs it is almost pitiable
and endearing to see us Americans of this time, who are so little given
to the drama of fanaticism or the salvation of the world through
cruelty, attempting to dramatize our own modest and reasonable
operations by giving them melodramatic and pretentious labels. If the
Communists torment us long enough they may make us into alert brutes;
this seems doubtful now. It seems probable that we will continue to be
brave without becoming fiendish in combat, strong without becoming
ferocious in peace.
Varying definitions of PsyWar are adopted by official agencies from time
to time. The current (1953) Joint Chiefs of Staff definition runs as
follows:
"Psychological warfare comprises the planned use of propaganda and
related informational measures designed to influence the opinions,
emotions, attitudes, and behavior of enemy or other foreign groups in
such a way as to support the accomplishment of national policies and
aims, or a military mission."
This definition differs from the one given in Chapter 3 in the following
important respects: it stresses the _planned_ character of PsyWar; it
restricts the pertinent measures to those of an _informational_
character; and it makes clear the operational goals. It is not clear why
it is necessary to stress the element of planning of PsyWar as
distinguished from other sorts of war, unless it is a homily to the
PsyWar operator to keep his functions in line with those of other
national activities. The question of restriction to informational
character is more serious; it excludes the interpretation that in
essence, psychological warfare depends upon warfare psychologically
waged. Thus, substantive operations of a noninformational character,
adopted and executed primarily for their psychological effect, could
properly be called PsyWar. Finally, the specification of goals is
chiefly important for the control of the function, and can largely be
taken for granted. Therefore, to preserve an inclusive view of the
function which will comprise the range of variation in official
definitions--including those of one's enemies--the author stands by the
definition stated in 1946.
=Limitations of the American Originators.= There are illusions about
psychological warfare--illusions spread, in many cases, by the
overenthusiastic friends of this kind of operation. Excessive claims
have been made for the efficacy of propaganda. Sometimes psychological
warfare has even been offered as a substitute for war or for diplomacy.
On other occasions Americans have asked that their government do "as
well as" this or that foreign government in the propaganda field,
forgetting that the United States is a republic and a democracy, and
therefore subject to the sharp limitations which republican, democratic
governments possess.[53]
A republic cannot impose a purpose upon mankind.
A democracy cannot enounce a policy and then stick to it for years and
decades.
Americans are not Messiahs. The limitations of American civilization
over and above our specific political institutions are such as to make
it impossible for Americans to lead a fanatical counter-crusade against
Communism, or to guarantee to the human race at large that Americans of
1955 promise that Americans of 1975 will perform this or that specific
action.[54]
_American_ propaganda is always limited precisely because it is
_American_. Even in an age of atomic weapons, to be _American_ means, to
some degree at least, to be _free_. The people of this country, or at
the very least an awful lot of them, _do_ have something to do with
operating the government. A new election and a hostile House of
Representatives can cut off the funds for any project no matter what its
merits may be in the eyes of the top-secret planners. The outside world
knows this even if Washington politicians and bureaucrats sometimes
forget. One can even contradict the title of Archibald MacLeish's famous
poem, _America Was Promises_, and state categorically that in the
propaganda field, America certainly is not promises. The promise of a
tsar or a dictator is usually good for his lifetime, whereas the promise
of the United States is good only within the letter of the law--a
specific treaty, a definite commercial agreement, a very sharp and very
narrow commitment.
There is an American strength in international affairs. This strength
does not lie in a propaganda capacity to promise, to threaten, or to
commit the United States Government to future courses of action. It
lies, rather, in the immense probabilities of American life, in the
virtual certainty that the American people will react in such and such a
fashion to a new aggression, that the American people will (if attacked)
in all probability destroy their attackers, whoever those attackers may
be, and that the American people, despite their occasional shortcomings
in matters of racial tolerance, political freedom, and economic
injustice, will in the long run be solidly ranged behind whatever
policies seem to promise equality, prosperity, and freedom for all
mankind.
The limitations of the United States as a source of propaganda are
sharp. There is no U.S. party line; it is virtually impossible to
imagine that within our civilization as we now know it there could be
one. There might be an official U.S. line, unanimous and binding upon
all federal departments, but the federal government itself is, after
all, only one among the forty-nine separate governments operating within
the continental USA. The state governments, the cities within them, and
the people at large are free to contradict what the federal government
may say at any given point.
American strength cannot be sought in unanimity. U.S. propaganda is
incapable of pulling the Sudeten rabbit out of a Munich hat. Short of an
intimate and extreme danger of war itself, the U.S. Government cannot
threaten a foreign government very successfully; too many U.S. citizens
would immediately shout at one another, at their own government, and to
the foreigners concerned: "Those Washington officials don't really mean
it! We don't want war. We're not going to go through with it." If the
USA moved against Spain, there are friends of Franco in Washington who
would tell him to sit tight; if the USA moved too rapidly against the
Communist world, there are plenty of Americans, both in and out of
government, who would say privately, through the press, or by letters
that the Indian Government or some other should assure Moscow and
Peip'ing that the U.S. would not dare carry through.
Exploitation of U.S. propaganda strength must therefore always be
developed from _the probable or apparent "center" of American opinion at
that moment_. It is impossible to find a U.S. policy which can be made
compulsory and unanimous upon all Americans both public and private. It
is not impossible through an adroit combination of the skills of
leadership, foresight, and a keen awareness of intra-U.S. politics to
devise foreign-policy programs which will command the decisive assent of
the American people.
=War and Unanimity.= The less peaceful the world is, the more effective
a peacetime information program can be. The attack of the Communist
aggressors in Korea, which involved the U.S. armed forces, pushed the
U.S. public into line behind the U.S. Government in a way which no
degree of propaganda manipulation from Washington could have contrived.
In times of danger the American people stick together. In times of
relaxation they scatter about. One should not plan a crusade for the
American people to carry out unless one is sure that someone on the
outside will goad the American people with repeated stings of danger or
trouble.
Once war breaks out, the American people have in the past shown a very
good capacity to unite in winning and finishing the war. There is no
reason to suppose that the situation will be different in the future.
What is perplexing, and for the present insoluble, is this: how can the
American people, short of getting involved in war, become so purposeful,
so decisive, so nearly unanimous, as to take actions which will prevent
a war? The situation in the early 1950s is on the Communist side a major
crusade against what the Reds regarded, or pretended to regard, as
"aggressive" U.S. capitalist power.
In other words, the Communists of the world had a crusade against the
USA. The USA had a crusade against no one. A prominent Washington
official long displayed the sign in his office: I Ain't Mad at Nobody.
In a very real sense this epitomized one of the very real moods of the
American people. How do we defend ourselves against a crusade,
especially if we have no desire to have part in a counter-crusade?
U.S. propagandists sometimes forget that they are not speaking for a
mere nation, but are the representatives of something which is far
bigger than any single nationality--they are the spokesmen, whether they
like it or not, for a way of life which is new in the world, for a kind
of freedom which, though coarse, is real. Characteristic American
strengths have been, are, and will be the strengths of patience,
endurance, versatility, and curiosity. It is foolish to ask Americans to
be strong in bitterness, strong in hatred, strong in a cruel or proud
self-righteousness. We are not Japanese, or Prussians, or Russians; we
are not Irish, or English, or French; we are mostly European and yet
un-European. Our propaganda will be effective only if it springs from
the simplest and strongest aspects of our life at home. Our material
prosperity is beyond doubt; what is not so evident to the outside world
is the frugality, the kindliness, and the humble foresight which drove
so much of that prosperity into being.
=The Propaganda of Friendship.= U.S. limitations are nowhere more
evident in peacetime propaganda than in the oft-repeated phrase of
"winning friends for America." The desire for having a friend is a deep
necessity amid the crowded loneliness of U.S. urban society. The
necessity to "be liked" leads to grotesquely exaggerated inferences as
to what "being liked" may involve. Americans in and out of government
often argue that America should "make friends" on the naïve assumption
that "friends" are useful to nations in time of trouble.
This is, of course, not true.
The Swedes were very good friends of the Norwegians. Nevertheless, the
Swedes saved their Swedish skins by sitting back when the Nazis overran
Norway.
Did Lithuania have an enemy? Did Latvia have an enemy? Did Estonia have
an enemy? These countries were the good friends of all the Western
powers. These countries have disappeared.
The United States was a friend of China, a friendship boastfully and
sentimentally proclaimed for more than a hundred years, from the days of
Daniel Webster to the finale of George C. Marshall. What use was it to
the Chinese to have the United States as a friend? When they fell upon
trouble, a U.S. Secretary of State denounced their government as corrupt
and told the Chinese how good the United States was.
Friendship does not usually lead to war or peace. War and peace depend
upon survival. Any veteran will remember men whom he disliked intensely
in his own wartime outfits: he never day-dreamed of turning them over to
the enemy just because he was personally antagonistic to them. _A common
danger from something_--more complicatedly, _a common interest in
something_--is a far more potent assurance of future strength and
strategic action than is friendship.
Friendship operates between individuals, not between the overgrown
corporate fictions which are called nations.
If you were a West German, and if you were absolutely positive that all
Americans were lovely people, you would be wise to join the Soviet side.
That way, if the Russians win, you will have appeased the enigmatic and
implacable Muscovites. On the other hand, if the Americans win and you
are sure they are lovely people as well as good friends of yours, they
will not _really_ mind your having joined the other side as a matter of
temporary factual necessity. If a man is your best friend he may jump
into the river to rescue you, should you fall in; unfortunately, he
might prefer to telephone a rescue squad. But if he is handcuffed to
you, you are reasonably sure that if you fall in he will be with you.
Call it propaganda, call it information, call it international
communication--under any name the major point remains: _Americans can
find trustworthy future allies through commitment to common interest or
common danger_. Friendship is pleasant, but not of the essence. In some
cases it might be desirable for leaders or key groups in important
foreign areas to realize that the United States could be a _worse enemy_
than the Soviet Union, rather than to realize that the U.S. is a friend.
If the French were sure of this--that is, that a Soviet-occupied France
would get sixty-five hydrogen bombs dropped on it while a U.S.-occupied
France would get only three--they might prefer the Americans whether
they liked them or not.
Is this kind of communication consistent with American ideals? Perhaps
not. Yet _honesty_ has always been one of the American ideals and
perhaps honesty may take us in the future to a stronger and a wiser
position than friendliness has taken us in the past.
CHAPTER 16
Research, Development, and the Future
Psychological warfare is part of civilization. Civilization, no matter
how one defines it, is not a static thing. It is an immense fermenting,
active, often turbulent composite of the _whys_ and _hows_ of the way
men and women think and behave. The short-run factors in a civilization
are often as important as the long-run ones. Though the United States
from 1860 to 1960 has been a steady part of the west European,
predominantly Christian civilization, the United States has undergone
immense changes of fashion, belief, appetite, preference, and behavior.
With any changing, developing civilization, "war" may seem like a very
static term, so that the Civil War and the war of the Western powers
against Germany of 1939-45 may to some degree seem comparable phenomena.
They are comparable, but only within sharp limits.
=The Meaning of War.= Nowhere is the transitoriness and changeability of
modern civilization more evident than in the significance which
intelligent men and women attach to the term _war_. War was "noble" in
1861-65, but in 1941-45 it was "noble" only for the most perfunctory and
most hollow oratory. Push the contrast farther: "psychological warfare"
was an unknown element in 1861-65; by 1941-45 it had become fashionable.
(One can seriously doubt that President Lincoln ever worried about
Northern citizens becoming "un-American" under that rubric, though he
had plenty of traitors to worry him.) The years 1945-53 were momentous.
A whole string of new ideas, new terms, and new behavior patterns
appeared within the USA in a mere eight years. What the next twenty
years will bring is deeply uncertain.
War is coming to mean the effectuation or prevention of revolution, not
the half-savage, half-courteous armed conflict of sovereign nations. War
is getting to be chronic again.[55] War between entirely comparable
states such as the United States and Canada, Mexico and Cuba, Indonesia
and India, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, or any similar combination, is getting
to be more and more unthinkable. War between ideologically dissimilar
states, such as North Korea and South Korea, Communist China and
Nationalist China, Viet Minh and Viet Nam, USSR and USA, is getting to
be virtual normality.
=Research into Tension.= It is true of all people that they solve
particular problems, in many cases, some time after the occasion for
solving the problem has passed. What is called "decision" in government,
politics, and in personal affairs is very often not the selection of one
very real course of action as against another equally real course of
action, but the confirmation of a commitment already made. If this is
true of every-day life, it is even more true of scholars and experts.
One of the disabilities of our time in the field of the social and
psychological sciences and the humanities lies in the fact that although
government officials recognize problems some months or years after they
have arisen and finally attempt to deal with them, scholars frequently
get around problems decades after any practical occasion for decision
has passed.[56]
Nowhere is this more evident than in the discussion of tensions as a
cause of war. Tension certainly contributed very much to the outbreak of
war in 1914. It is possible that the tensions and hostilities of Europe
in the 1930s which allowed Fascism and Communism to become threatening
and powerful also contributed in the end to the outbreak of war in 1939.
It is difficult, however, to suppose that the coming of war in September
1939 was itself the result of tension except as a very remote and
indirect cause. This author believes that tension leads to a
perpetuation of a kind of civilization in which wars are possible, but
cannot persuade himself that an additional factor of tension within
civilization as we know it can be an immediate cause of war.[57]
Research into tensions has been carried fairly far. It may be that the
wartime role of tension can be ascertained by scientific methods, so
that the psychological warfare of Power A can cause so much more tension
than Power B, either among the élite or among the general population,
that Power B cannot further continue the war. Alternatively, it is
imaginable that Power A may be able to relax tension so sharply among
the élite or broad population of Power B that Power B's potentiality for
war, or decision to wage war, can be postponed.
For purposes of research it seems worthwhile to suggest that tension
appears to be highly prevalent in the two most powerful military
civilizations on earth today: the USSR and its satellites, on the one
hand, and the cluster of Western powers, on the other. Tension appears
to be caused by the complexity of every-day life, the demands made upon
the psychophysiological organization of each individual human being, by
the technological facilities available, and through the relief offered
within each civilization by the opportunity to discharge hatred against
members of the other civilization instead of recognizing self-hatred for
the very real problem which it is.
In other terms, it is tough to be modern; the difficulty of being modern
makes it easy for individuals to be restless and anxious; restlessness
and anxiety lead to fear; fear converts freely into hate; hate very
easily takes on political form; political hate assists in the creation
of real threats such as the atomic bomb and guided missiles, which are
not imaginary threats at all; the reality of the threats seems to
confirm the reality of the hate which led to it, thus perpetuating a
cycle of insecurity, fear, hate, armament, insecurity, fear, and on
around the circle again and again.
=Revolutionary Possibilities in Psychology.= It is possible, but by no
means probable, that the rapid development of psychological and related
sciences in the Western world may provide whole new answers to the
threats which surround modern Americans, including the supreme answer of
peace as an alternative to war or the secondary answer of victory in the
event of war. Nothing in the existing academic literature on the subject
of psychology of war, the psychiatry of modern mass behavior, the
psychology or psychiatry of present-day power politics, justifies the
inference that an applicable solution to our "problems" is at all near.
The "problems" are almost all aspects of our entire lives and one cannot
solve life like a Delphic riddle or a single scientific experiment.
It would be unwise of U.S. military and political leaders to overlook
developing strengths within American every-day talk and thinking,
whether academic or popular. Too specific a concentration on the problem
of winning a war may cause a leader or his expert consultants to
concentrate on solutions derived from past experience, therewith leading
him to miss new and different solutions which might be offered by his
own time. Changes need not always be thought of as weaknesses, which
they are if past criteria are retained as absolute standards. Men born
in the period 1910-20 may have endowments which are not commonly found
among men born in the period 1930-40, yet it is entirely possible that
the generation born during 1930-40 may have capacities and resistances
which the older generation does not altogether appreciate.
Apply this concept to Communism. Communism loses strength every day that
it exists: each day deprives it of novelty, each day makes it a littler
more familiar, each day makes its leaders one day older. If Americans
can learn how to be flexible and imaginative and to understand
themselves as they really are, they might find that the real American
appeal to the youth of the world would be much greater than the
Communist appeal. It was unfortunately characteristic of the United
States in the early 1950s of the Cold War that U.S. propaganda was based
on ideals and standards _older_ than the ideals and standards
competitively presented by the Communists, and that therefore in many
parts of the world the struggle between Americans and Communists
appeared to be a struggle on our side of the old against the young.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United States army in Korea
in 1950-53 was one of the most revolutionary armies in history, an army
dedicated to non-victory, pledging allegiance to a shadowy world
government of the United Nations behind the practical reality of the
government of the United States. Perhaps never before in many centuries
have men fought so matter-of-factly, so calmly, so reasonably. They
fought well and did not need to be jazzed up with the hashish of "making
the world safe for Democracy" or "establishing the Four Freedoms."
The temper of the U.S. forces in Korea in 1951 was demonstrated by a
Reserve sergeant who scarcely knew he was in the Reserves until he was
on a boat bound for Pusan. He was a practical man, anxious to get home,
but willing to do his share in this war as long as he had to. He was
given the assignment of testing the voice plane of U.S. headquarters at
Taegu. The loudspeaker was not working quite right, and he was
instructed to test the plane at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 feet. The plane
flew low over U.S. headquarters. The roar of the engines almost deafened
everyone within the building, yet even above the roar of the engines
there could be heard the bone-chilling hum of the silent loudspeaker--an
immense magnification of the noise one hears from a radio set which is
turned on without being tuned to a station. Everyone expected the
sergeant to say, "This is the EUSAK voice plane testing; one-ah, two-ah,
three-ah!" Instead the immense voice came through clearly, through
brick, and plaster, and wood, through air and trees. It must have
reached four miles. The gigantic voice of the sergeant seemed to roar
over half of South Korea as he said, "Why--don't--you--imperialist--sons o'
bitches--go--back--to--Wall-Street--where--you--belong?" It was said
that fifty colonels grabbed for their phones simultaneously, but the
purely American gimmick to the whole story lay in the fact that the
sergeant was not punished. No damage was done. The Americans thought
their enemies were funny or silly. We had shown that we were not afraid
of Communist ideas. Several South Koreans told the author that they
regarded the Americans as inscrutable people indeed.
The development of modern civilization is certain to have developments
in war both as to the purpose of war and as to the modes of war. It
seems likely that in the face of the supreme danger of atomic and
thermonuclear weapons nations will resort more and more to small wars
and semi-war operations which will offer the opportunity of strategic
advantage without the cataclysmic danger of a world-wide showdown. In a
very hush-hush way the U.S. Army is looking into the possibilities of
small and irregular kinds of war; security regulations prohibit the
author from discussing some of the interesting new developments in this
field.
=National Research and Development Programs.= The United States
Government considered as a whole has developed a very adequate
scientific research program. Most of this is quite properly keyed to the
physical and mechanical sciences, in which the most tangible results are
obtained. Substantial strides are being made in the medical and allied
fields. Some research is, however, being carried out in fields
pertaining to psychological warfare. These are worth describing, but it
must be remembered that research on PsyWar may not affect PsyWar itself
as much as research in other fields which, by changing the character of
war, will change PsyWar too.
Within the general research field, two basic approaches have been
recognized by the U.S. Army as being distinct from one another:
developmental research and operations research. _Developmental research_
consists of that research which creates new weapons, new methods of war,
new devices or procedures, doing so by digging through modern science,
investigating its applicability to military problems, and then advancing
the frontier of science, when necessary, in the military interest. The
goals of _operations research_ are more modest and, in some respect,
more provocative. Operations research takes operations as they exist and
reexamines them from beginning to end to discover how much of each
operation is scientifically pertinent to its stated goal, what
economies, modifications, or changes might be introduced, and how the
operation might be improved.
=Developmental Research in PsyWar.= At the time of the close of the
1950-53 phase of Korean hostilities, the PsyWar being conducted by the
United States Army in Korea showed little sign of having been influenced
by developmental research into this field of activity. The leaflets were
not better than the leaflets of World War II, nor even very different.
Because of the peculiar political limitations of the war, the radio
program was not as good as the performance of ABSIE under Eisenhower.
The tactical use of loudspeakers had shown a very marked improvement
over World War II standards, but to a non-engineer such as the present
writer neither the Communist loudspeakers nor our own seemed strikingly
better or different.
Developmental research had a great deal to offer, but the gap between
initial scientific advance and practical military application appeared
to be too broad to warrant the assumption that the research had
transformed the U.S. PsyWar program.
=Operations Research in Korea.= Operations research--sometimes slangily
called _opsearch_--was applied to the Korean war with highly uneven
results.[58]
Among other things, Army officers in the PsyWar field showed, early in
the Korean war, that land forces possessed tactical opportunities which
combat propaganda could exploit very effectually. Various experiments
were tried, none of them so decisive as to affect the outcome of the
war, but some of them of real tactical value and others of great
importance in obtaining Chinese prisoners.
One of the points examined was surrender as a _process_. Surrendering
does not depend upon the disposition of the individual enemy soldier to
say _yes_ or _no_ to the war as a whole. He could say _no_ a thousand
times and still be on the other side shooting at us.
The actual physical _process_ of surrender is an elaborate one
consisting of the psychological processes of getting ready to give up on
the other side, the physical capacity to surrender when the opportunity
for getting captured presents itself, and the alternative, more
difficult process of deliberately leaving the other side and getting to
our side alive. In 1951 and 1952 there were considerable developments
along this line. Americans learned much about how to teach enemy
soldiers to surrender. Late in 1952 and early in 1953 the front had
become so static that it took extraordinary heroism for
soldiers--outside of a tiny minority engaged in reconnaissance
patrols--to get away from their own side and surrender to the enemy
without being killed by their friends as deserters or by the enemy as
sneak attackers.
The U.S. public did not realize that throughout the Korean war the
Communists--Russian, North Korean, and Chinese--enjoyed a distinct radio
advantage over the UN side both as to funds available for programs and
as to number of station-hours on the air. The language gap between the
Americans and Chinese was so extreme that it was hard for Americans to
realize that the Chinese broadcasts covered wider audiences and covered
them better than did our own. American restraint in this field may have
been dictated in part by the fact that the war was a limited war
consisting of combat only with those armed Chinese Communists on North
Korean territory, but not with armed Chinese Communists elsewhere in the
Far East.
=Philosophy and Propaganda Development.= In terms of specific literature
of PsyWar it is difficult to find many contributions of professional
philosophers to PsyWar since the end of World War II. This is curious,
in view of the Communist propagation of philosophy, no matter how
perverted its form, as a major weapon. The American philosopher, Dr.
George Morgan, who became a career diplomat, was simultaneously a
Soviet-area expert and a key figure in the Psychological Strategy Board.
There were not many others like him.
Philosophy offers an opportunity for the reexamination of cultural
values. The indoctrination of those professors who will teach the
teachers of the generation after next will influence the capacity of
future Americans to have a world-view which will give them the utmost
opportunities for action in the military field while retaining as far as
possible the blessings of U.S. civilian civilization. That U.S.
civilization is still civilian and not military is, of course, beyond
cavil.
The William Jackson committee was a voice crying in the wilderness when
it asked for new terms and new ideas against which to set U.S.
propaganda operations in the world of modern strategy. Philosophers may
have had the capacity for finding some of the answers, but philosophers,
of all people, do not like to be jostled or hurried. The author has
never heard of a philosopher employed on a confidential basis by the
United States Government to think through the historical and cultural
rationale of a U.S. military victory for the future. Writers such as F.
S. C. Northrop and Erich Fromm--to name only two sharply contrasting
personalities--have written books which possess high significance for
the international propaganda field. The connection appears, however, to
be tangential.
=Literary Contributions.= Almost all the best propagandists of almost
all modern powers have been, to a greater or less degree, literary
personalities. The artistic and cultural aspect of writing is readily
converted to propaganda usage. Elmer Davis is a novelist as well as a
commentator. Robert Sherwood is one of America's most distinguished
playwrights. Benito Mussolini wrote a bad novel. Mao Tse-tung is a poet
and philosopher, as well as a Communist party boss. Down among the
workers in the field, such American novelists as James Gould Cozzens,
Pat Frank, Jerome Weidman, and Murray Dyer, have worked on U.S.
psychological warfare.[59]
Though literary men have converted their writing to propaganda purposes,
few of them have gone on to define the characteristics of a specific
conversionary literature or to compile canons of literary style
applicable to the propaganda field. The contributions may lie in the
future.
=The Social Sciences.= The American Association of Public Opinion
Research (AAOPR) is the professional league of U.S. propagandists and
analysts of public opinion; its quarterly, _Public Opinion_, is the key
journal in the field. The members of this association are drawn both
from the social sciences and from the psychological sciences, ranging
from such practical operatives as Dr. George Gallup and Elmo Roper to
austere theorists like Professors Nathan Leites and Hadley Cantril.
A good argument can be presented to the effect that the skills brought
from the social-science into the propaganda field are more valuable once
they are employed full time in that field than an attempt to apply
political science, or sociology, or economics, each as an individual
compartment, to the field of propaganda. There is still no book
available with the title _The Politics of Knowledge_,[60] even though
the reception, control, prohibition, and dissemination of knowledge is a
major factor in all modern governmental processes both in and out of the
propaganda field.
=Psychology and Related Sciences.= There has been an immense amount of
work done by psychologists, much of it classified, on the field of
propaganda. Some of this work is refreshing in the extreme and should
provide nasty surprises for the Communists in a major war. Other parts
are restatements which if translated into operations might or might not
prove feasible with the kind of army we Americans have or are likely to
have.
One of the most conspicuous developments since World War II has been the
application by psychologists, sociologists, and persons in related field
of _quantifying techniques_. The introduction of rigorous scientific
requirements of _number_ into the attempted reportage of propaganda
behavior or propaganda results is having a significant effect.
Quantification may not obtain everything which its devotees claim for
it. There is a wide area of human behavior which is significant to the
ordinary person, or even to the expert in descriptive terms, and which
loses much of its significance if the descriptive and allusive terms are
replaced by measurements, tables, and graphs. There is, however, no
danger that quantification will replace description as the sole tool of
research in the propaganda field.
What quantification does do is develop a common area of discussion
between propagandists and nonpropagandists. In many instances
quantification can demonstrate results where allegations of failure or
of success would have nothing more than personal authority to support
them. Within our own particular kind of civilization quantification has
a special appeal because of the American trust in engineering and in
numbers. The conclusions of the Kinsey reports on men and on women seem
much more authoritative to the ordinary man because they are presented
with an ample garniture of numbers, even though Havelock Ellis's pioneer
works in the psychology and behavior patterns of Western sex life may
have been much more tangible and much more revolutionary in their time.
=Projection and Research.= All propaganda involves a certain degree of
projection--the propagandist attempts to identify himself with a
situation which he does not face in real life and to issue meaningful
communications to persons about situations which they themselves do not
face _yet_. Much of the psychological research on tactical PsyWar
remains yet to be done, although from the quantitative point of view
there have been significant U.S. achievements within the past four
years.
Another aspect of projection is left unexplored because of its immense
difficulty and its dangerously unscientific character. Consider the
problem this way: the United States one day before the outbreak of war
with a hypothetical enemy, such as the Soviet Union, will possess a
certain group of characteristics. Representative individual lives within
this country can be determined to possess certain habits concerning mass
communication, trust in mass communication, and response to symbols
which may come through press, radio, or other mass devices.
One day after the outbreak of war the United States will change
_because_ the war has broken out.
One month after the outbreak of war the United States will no longer be
the USA_{1} which existed on war-day. It may well have become USA_{25}
because of the rapidity and variety of change. Three Soviet hydrogen
bombs and twelve Soviet atomic bombs might change many of our national,
economic, political, and psychological characteristics, and no one, not
even an American, could predict this change in advance. The best he
could do would be to get ready to study the change as it occurred, to
understand the rate and direction of the change, and to assess the
meaning of the change in light of the conduct of war.
The same would be true of the USSR; that country, like any other major
country, would change under the impact of war. Who could have predicted
the renascence of Russian patriotism and traditionalism resulting from
the Nazi invasion of 1941? Even if we know where the Russians are as of
the outbreak of war, we won't know where they will head or how fast they
will head there, once war has broken out.
The scientific problem presented by attempted serious study of a
U.S.-Soviet war is therefore very difficult indeed. It is really a
problem involving three clusters of moving bodies. The first cluster
will be the American people, their behavior, and their institutions; the
second cluster, the Russians and allied peoples, their behavior and
their institutions; the third cluster, the changing methods of
communication existing between them.
It can be said even now, simply by referring to the character of the
American people and their past history, that if the Communist leaders of
the USSR start a general war, the end of that war is sure (under sets of
words and ideas which have yet to be developed in the future) to involve
the reconciliation of the inhabitants of the USA with the Russian
people. In other words, USA_{v} and USSR_{v} can and must have certain
relationships with each other, preeminent among which are attempts at
undoing war damage, at political and cultural reconciliation, and the
undertaking of the rebuilding of a world which both these great peoples
can support with enthusiasm and _hope_.[61]
USA_{v} and USSR_{v} are imaginable. USA_{1} and USSR_{1} for the day
preceding the outbreak of war, or, alternatively, the day on which the
war occurs, will be known elements. American science in many fields can
help U.S. mass communications and therewith help our armed forces if we
learn how to ascertain how the Soviet leadership changes, how Soviet
élite groups change, and how the Soviet population changes during the
course of the war. We must not only be able to guess what is happening
to them physically, but must try to appreciate and to understand what is
happening to them psychologically and semantically. This is an immense
task. It is by no means certain that our research and development
facilities can give us an adequate research program to handle the
problem.
This much can be said: if the Americans understand the Russians before
the war and during the war, it will be the first time that a nation has
kept its enemy in wide-awake sight.
The usual process in the past has been the acceptance of a few
exaggerated stereotypes of the national characteristics of the potential
enemy, the ascription of every possible kind of infamy and inhuman
characteristic to the enemy during the war, and the redefinition of the
enemy as a friend after the war. It would be strange and wonderful if
the U.S. Government and the U.S. propagandists (or conceivably as much
as a large minority of the U.S. population) could learn how to fight the
USSR in order to _help_ the Russians escape from a tyranny which has
already hurt them much more than it has hurt us.
The Germans suffered a tragic, overwhelming, and perhaps decisive
psychological defeat in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
and in the Ukraine, when they carried with their field forces such naïve
and tragic Nazi misconceptions of Russian and Ukrainian character as to
defeat every opportunity they may have had for a serious anti-Communist
alliance of Germany with the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. They
destroyed themselves not through ignorance, but through what they
_thought_ they knew. If they had been more calm, less assured, more
willing to learn from immediate experience, and less indoctrinated with
their own preposterous misconceptions of Russian and Ukrainian
character, they might have found Russian and Ukrainian allies who would
have joined them in the final extermination of the Soviet system.
The world Communist movement has already suffered very serious setbacks
because of its failure to project U.S. behavior successfully from the
summer of 1950 onward. If the Russian and Chinese Communists had
understood Americans well and had made a correct evaluation of the
American response to the invasion of South Korea, they would not have
driven the United States from lethargy to alertness, from weakness to
military strength, from vulnerability toward Communist and
crypto-Communist propaganda to sharp and angry recognition of Communist
manipulation of symbols such as "progressives," "people's governments,"
and "liberation."
=Communist Developments.= If the U.S. Government agencies know about the
scientific development of Soviet propaganda techniques in the last few
years, they have certainly not told this author. What is here presented
is therefore derived from first-hand interrogation of Communists, from
escapers in both Europe and Asia, and unclassified materials.
Sociologically it would seem that the Russian Communists attempted
definite improvements of the techniques of Communist revolution and that
these improvements have in large part failed in the European satellites.
The governments of Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
and East Germany have turned out to be poor governments--despite the
fact that from the Soviet point of view it was a sharp innovation to
leave them in pseudo-parliamentary form instead of creating outright
Soviet facsimilies.
At the Chinese end of the Moscow-Peking axis the sociology of
revolutionary propaganda and organization appears to have worked out
much more successfully than at the Russian end. The Chinese Communists,
perhaps because they were Chinese, perhaps because they were tougher and
more experienced Communists than the Russians, got their country under
rigid control and then undertook social and political experiments on a
very audacious scale. They have managed not to be un-Chinese while
creating in China the kind of pervasive dictatorship which Communist
control appears to require.
In the manipulation of satellites and in particularization of
propaganda, the North Korean Communist army, the Viet Minh army in
Indochina, and the Malayan Races Liberation Army on the Malay peninsula,
appear to have near-optimum localism and particularism without suffering
serious deviation from the main Communist world-wide pattern. In North
Korea, of course, Chinese intervention and Soviet support have sharply
modified the position of the North Korean People's Army, but the
Annamite and Malay Communist forces appear to be fighting with high
morale and considerable success, despite the duality of control from
Peking and Moscow, and despite the difficulties of reconciling Asian
nationalism with Marxian-world doctrine.
Another Communist technique is now known through Edward Hunter's
provocative pioneer book[62] by its correct name of "brain-washing."
This involves the transformation of a human personality. The author has
himself interrogated victims of brain-washing and can attest to the
terrifying depth to which this process is carried. The victim of
brain-washing is subject to very slight persuasion at the rational
level. He is not even given much propaganda as U.S. propagandists of
recent years might recognize the product. Instead, the process of
brain-washing consists of a frontal attack on all levels of the
personality, from the most conscious to the most hidden. The Communists
seek through fatigue and sustained interrogation to create a condition
similar to what is called "nervous breakdown" in popular parlance. Then
they rebuild the personality, healing their victim into Communist
normality.
One victim to whom the author talked had been so subject to Communist
brain-changing that he thought himself a real Communist even though he
had been reared a Catholic. He was completely convinced of the Communist
cause and of his own life and place in that cause after the
brain-washing had been completed. Unfortunately for Communism, the man
got into serious sexual difficulties, difficulties of a kind which any
American psychiatrist would recognize as potentially devastating.
As a result of his sexual frustrations he suffered a mild equivalent of
the medically recognized phenomenon of the schizophrenic break--that
terrible moment of false enlightenment in which the psychotic
personality cuts loose with a truth of his own and shuts off most or all
communication with normal people--with the consequence that he was
walking along Nanking Road in Shanghai, a normal Communist in one
instant of time and (as he put it to the author) in a millionth of a
second he suddenly realized he was a Catholic, an anti-Communist, the
enemy of every man, woman and child in sight--and at war with his entire
environment. As this writer understood it, the poor man, though adjusted
to the Communist environment after brain-washing, happened to go
crazy--crazy enough to come back to our side.
Who can say which is sane, which insane? When two social and cultural
systems are completely at odds with one another it may be impossible to
be "normal" in both of them.
Scientifically the Chinese process of personality transformation lacked
some of the pharmaceutical features apparent in the Western Communist
conversions for purposes of confession. It appears to be a combination
of audacious practical experimentation with well-known procedures from
textbooks of Pavlovian psychology. It is, of course, an interesting
scientific question to ask one's self: could Communist psychological
researchers do enough psychological research to understand their own
difficulties and to de-Communize themselves in the very act of seeking
better psychological weapons for Communism? If the people in charge of
Communist psychological techniques were scientists, as American
psychologists generally are, there might be a real point of discussion.
Unfortunately, most of them appear to be artists, believers, and
fanatics. The history of the fanatical religions which have inflamed and
ripped so much of mankind across the centuries is not such as to suggest
that Communism will de-Communize itself by becoming more Communistic or
more scientific.
Logically considered, the United States remains the largest extant
revolutionary experiment in the world--the first immense human community
which survives without profound dogma or profound hatred and which
attempts to make short-range, practical, and warm-hearted (though
ideologically superficial) concurrence the foundation for a political
and industrial civilization. If the United States wins a few more wars
it may be that the rest of mankind will be persuaded that our kind of
practicality is not only humanly preferable, but scientifically more
defensible than the philosophies of competing civilizations. It seems
unlikely that Communist research can outstrip us in the propaganda field
so far as the race is run in purely scientific terms; artistically and
gadget-wise the Communists are just as inventive as we are and often
more enthusiastic.
=Private PsyWar and Covert Techniques.= Another aspect in the
development of PsyWar was the inevitable possibility that skills
learned in wartime would not be forgotten in time of peace. Many of the
background studies made for OWI during World War II have been developed,
on the constructive side, into serious scientific contributions to
ethnology, anthropology, or psychology. The postwar studies of RAND
Corporation have in part been released in unclassified form and add to
our knowledge not only of propaganda but of mankind. The RADIR project
at Stanford University, the Russian research program at MIT and Harvard,
and other governmentally inspired or encouraged undertakings have borne
similar fruit for private scholarship and discussion.
On the other side of the coin, it is very hopeful to note that the many
and dangerous techniques developed by OSS for covert propaganda, some of
which were applied with considerable success in Europe, have not been
introduced into domestic U.S. politics, commercial competition, or other
forms of private life. After each war there is often a danger that the
coarsening of a culture by the war will lead to the application of
wartime skills to peacetime situations. This was emphatically not the
case in the Presidential campaigns of 1948 and 1952, even though persons
of rich PsyWar experience in World War II were on the staffs of both
Stevenson and Eisenhower.
It is often forgotten that some of the deadliest and most effective
revolutionary enterprises in the nineteenth century were undertaken
without the consent or assistance of the existing governments. Karl Marx
was certainly not an invention of Lord Palmerston. Bakunin did not
operate out of the French Foreign Office.
In the postwar discussion of USA-Communist rivalry, recommendations were
often made on the U.S. side that we should counter Soviet covert
operations with our own covert operations against the USSR. What has
been forgotten in this context is the fact that such operations have
been made illegal and dangerous under United States law. Under Federal
law as it exists today no Underground Railway could be developed to
assist Soviet escapers in the way that Negro slaves were relayed across
the Free States to Canada in the years before Emancipation. One of the
chief blocks to U.S. covert operations is the immense growth in all
directions of the power, authority, and responsibility of the Federal
Government; this growth makes it almost impossible to wage revolutionary
or conspiratorial operations from U.S. territory without the prior
approval of U.S. authorities--which the authorities, under traditional
international law, cannot give and cannot afford to give.
It would seem desirable, if the Cold War situation persists over a long
period of time, for Americans to reexamine the restraints which they
have placed upon their own citizens and to attempt a revision of the
laws which would permit pro-American secret activities to be launched
without permitting anti-American activities of the same kind to be
carried on. One immediately comes to the conundrum:[63]
How can the Government say _yes_ to the one and _no_ to the other
without being cognizant of what happens?
The answer would appear to lie in the older body of our law in that a
withdrawal of governmental authority from some fields would leave the
individual responsible and subject to indictment and trial if his
enterprises should prove deleterious to the United States Government,
but not subject to punishment if his enterprises hurt the known
antagonists of the USA.
Phrased in another way, this means that the USA might, in a long-range
Cold War situation, be required to make some domestic recognition of the
fact that the Communist states are the antagonists but not the military
enemies of the U.S. system of government and that as antagonists of this
system of government such states, their representatives, their property,
and their organizations, should not be afforded any more protection
under our laws than is given to the National City Bank of New York in
the laws applicable to the city of Moscow, or the American Telephone &
Telegraph Company in the laws which apply in Budapest. For a long time
the Communist states have treated even the most innocent business
enterprise and social club on our side as though they were attainted
with an inherent factor of criminal and subversive intent. The
withdrawal of U.S. legal protection from all things Communist might
allow the American people--or those among them who so chose--to develop
proclivities for adventure and trouble-making against the Communists.
These proclivities are now sternly repressed by Federal statute.
=The Future of Psychological Warfare.= PsyWar has become an existing
art. Where it had no practitioners at all in the United States between
1919 and 1940, it has had a long and distinguished roster of active and
reserve officers, civilian consultants, and demobilized veterans
interested in the field ever since 1945. A wide variety of military
establishments have had PsyWar responsibilities assigned them.
Substantial cadres of officers and skilled enlisted personnel have been
recruited and trained. Radio and leaflet facilities are ready to
accompany our land, sea, and air forces wherever they may have to go. A
U.S. strategic center for global propaganda, instantly convertible to
wartime use, exists in the Operations Coordinating Board under the
National Security Council.
This is not the end of the story.
One of the paradoxical but deeply true factors in the study and conduct
of propaganda is this: the more people know about propaganda, the better
they can resist it.
Propaganda was a tremendous bogey in the 1920s. It probably seems very
ugly and frightening to most people born before 1920. It does not seem
too frightening, so far as the author can judge, to Americans born after
1930. Those born in the period 1920-30 appear to be divided in their
emotional reactions to mass persuasion situations.
PsyWar is not magic. It is a valuable auxiliary to modern warfare and a
useful concomitant to modern strategy. If a particular strategic policy
is sanely and effectively devised as a feasible deterrent to war, the
PsyWar procedures supporting that strategy will contribute to the
prevention of war. Psychological warfare represents a recognition and
acceptance in the military and strategic field of skills which grow
about us every day.
In so far as ultra-destructive weapons may have increased the tenseness
and bad temper of people who must live under the perpetual but remote
threat of atomic bombing, one can say that physicists have upset the
nerves of mankind and that it is now up to the propagandists to reassure
and to reconcile the peoples.
Whatever PsyWar does, it certainly does not and should not increase the
bitterness of war. Fighting itself is the supreme bitterness. Radio
broadcasts and leaflets even in wartime only rarely should promote
hatred. The situation which the world faces is dangerous because of
technological development, not because of psychological knowledge.
PsyWar ranks as a weapon, but it is almost certainly the most humane of
all weapons.
Apart from PsyWar, what military weapon destroys the enemy soldier's
capacity to fight by saving his life? PsyWar tries to bring him over
alive and tries to send him home as our friend. No rival weapon can do
this.
PsyWar, no matter what it may be called in the future, cannot be omitted
from the arsenal of modern war. Neither can it outlast war. Its
improvement is a cheap, valuable, and humane way of increasing the
military potential of any country whether we think that country to be
politically right or politically wrong.
Since 1945 we Americans have written more, studied more, and talked more
about PsyWar than have any of the other free peoples. This is a hopeful
sign. It can be read as an indication that the American love of the
gadget, the American quest for a novelty, can be turned to the arena of
the soul. The Communists are better liars, better schemers, better
murderers than we shall ever be; they start off by being better
fanatics. Is it not in the American spirit that we should out-trick
them, out-talk them, and out-maneuver them? We have a very creative and
resourceful civilization at our backs. We have no Führer to guide us and
no party line to comfort us; we don't even want such things. Hard though
it may be, we can live with our own consciences and not seek for
keepers.
The Communists have started a fight with us. That fight may go on a long
time. If they want to stop fighting we shall certainly try to find peace
with them. But if they push the fight to its bitter end--
We shall not fail.
APPENDIX
Military PsyWar Operations, 1950-53
On 25 June 1950, when the invasion of the Republic of Korea began, no
real military PsyWar organization was tangibly evident. A planning staff
headed by Colonel J. Woodall Greene had been re-created in the Far East
Command's GHQ in 1947, but it was hardly prepared to direct full-scale
propaganda operations on such short notice, especially with a total lack
of field operating units. Yet the staff with hasty augmentation did go
into action--in effect, became its own operating unit--two days
following the invasion, using both leaflets and radio in a strategic
campaign that was continued without interruption for over three years.
At the same time that General MacArthur made provision for the PsyWar
planning staff in the Far East Command, the Department of the Army's G2
in 1947 directed the inauguration of a long-range program of extension
courses to be administered primarily to the specialists of the Military
Intelligence Reserve. One such specialty in the military intelligence
career program was psychological warfare.[64]
Parallel with the development of training literature based on World War
II experience, the Army experimented with the use of PsyWar in field
maneuvers. A special unit, called the Tactical Information
Detachment,[65] was formed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
=Organization of Field Operational Units.= Less than a month after the
1950 invasion, the Department of the Army announced the approval of a
new organizational concept for PsyWar field operational units. The new
concept, profiting by the organizational happenchance in all theaters of
operations during World War II, established two functional units: one
for _strategic_ propaganda support, the other for _tactical_ propaganda
support.
=Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group.= Although the concept for new
unit organization and function was not conceived overnight, FEC's
Psychological Warfare Section (PWS) with its dual planning and
operating responsibilities pointed up the urgent need for a unit
properly manned and equipped to support full-scale strategic operations
in any area. So the Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet (RB&L) Group was
born. Not only was it designed to conduct strategic propaganda in direct
support of military operations, but it likewise was created to support
the national world-wide propaganda effort when so directed. It was built
on a basic framework of three companies:
_Headquarters and Headquarters Company_, containing the command,
administrative, supervisory and creative personnel necessary for
propaganda operations.
_Reproduction Company_, containing intricate equipment and skilled
personnel capable of producing leaflets and newspapers of varying sizes
and multiple color.
_Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company_, designed to replace or augment
other means of broadcasting radio propaganda.
In 1953 a fourth type company was activated at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina--the _Consolidation Company_. This unit was very flexible and
had the job of creating and conducting PsyWar in support of
consolidation operations in areas under Military Government control.
[Illustration: _Figure 75: UN Propaganda._ In some leaflets used in
Korea, the United Nations emerged as a major point. Here UN lavishness
to South Korea is contrasted with Communist rapacity in the North. The
scene does not remind the reader of slums on our side.]
=Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company.= The Group's junior partner in the
conduct of PsyWar support operations was the Loudspeaker and Leaflet
(L&L) Company. This unit specifically supported an army in the field
with adequate _tactical_ propaganda support. Like the Group, it
supported the national propaganda objectives, but it interpreted the
directives that came from the theater commander in terms of more
immediate objectives. Its targets were smaller, lived under unusual
circumstances, and presented highly vulnerable, rapidly changing
propaganda opportunities--a real challenge for the L&L Company.
Organizationally it was a trimmed-down version of the Group. Its
_company headquarters_ and _propaganda platoon_ were the offspring of
Headquarters and Headquarters Company. The _publications platoon_ was a
smaller, more adaptable version of Reproduction Company. And the
_loudspeaker platoon_ was the tactical counterpart of the strategic
Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company.
[Illustration: _Figure 76: Korean Leaflet Bomb, Early Model._ An M16A1
cluster adapter being loaded at the FEC printing plant in Yokohama (1
November 1950). The bomb type adapter will contain 22,500 (5" by 8")
psychological warfare leaflets.]
The Tactical Information Detachment, moving from Fort Riley to Korea in
the fall of 1950, was reorganized as the _1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet
Company_ and, attached to EUSAK, served as Eighth Army's tactical
propaganda unit throughout the campaign. It adjusted its location,
equipment and propaganda tone to keep pace with the ups and downs of the
Korean war.
=Psychological Warfare Center.= Paralleling the creation of the Office
of the Chief of Psychological Warfare in the Department of the Army
PsyWar training was started in the spring of 1951. A faculty was
collected at the Army General School to start the world's first formal
school of military propaganda.
At the same time, reserve officers whose civilian specialties were in or
related to mass communications were recalled to PsyWar assignments.
Several RB&L groups and L&L companies were activated and trained at Fort
Riley. One of these, the _1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group_, was
deployed to Japan to become the strategic propaganda support unit in
FEC, thereby relieving the hard-pressed Psychological Warfare Section of
its operational functions. The Group left Fort Riley in July 1951 at the
height of the Missouri Valley floods, forcing the unit to take emergency
detours by bus and train in order to meet its scheduled port of
embarkation call. The 1st was the only group to have been used in active
operations. Other groups were employed in training missions. In
addition, Reserve groups and companies trained periodically at key
locations where sufficient specialized personnel were available to keep
the units on a ready, stand-by basis.
In April 1952, the PsyWar training activities at Fort Riley were moved
to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the new Psychological Warfare
Center was located. This Center not only provided unit training
supervision and facilities, but it fathered a new activity, the
Psychological Warfare Board, designed to evaluate and test new PsyWar
equipment and techniques. And the Psychological Warfare School, an
outgrowth of the classes conducted by the Army General School, was
formally recognized and established as one of the Army's specialist
schools. More than four hundred officers have received diplomas as
PsyWar officers at the time of this writing (1953). Most of the
graduates have been Army officers, although successfully completing the
course have been students from the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, U.S.
Information Agency, and from nine Allied nations.
=Psychological Warfare Staff, FEC.= For nearly two years, the
Psychological Warfare Section operated under the general staff
supervision of Intelligence (G2). Since World War I days G2 had been
given the responsibility for monitoring PsyWar activity, a practice that
was evident throughout World War II. In 1947 the Department of the Army
transferred the monitorship and supervision of PsyWar to Plans and
Operations (G3). The shift was effected in FEC in 1952.
[Illustration: _Figure 77: UN Themes._ This Korean-language leaflet
states: "No soldier would attempt to fight 54 men, yet Communist China
is attempting to fight 54 nations. Don't fight for Communist
enslavement--Join your comrades who have surrendered into safety."]
Early in 1953 PWS was transferred to the staff of the commander, Army
Forces Far East (AFFE), a paper transaction to put the staff in a closer
position to coordinate the plans and operations of the supporting army
PsyWar units.
Throughout the Korean conflict, PWS, like its area commander, wore two
hats: PWS was also the PsyWar operations coordinating agency for the
United Nations Command.
Broad objectives made possible throughout the war years the development
of literally thousands of appropriate themes. One theme so prominent in
World War II propaganda, that of _unconditional surrender_, was never
used. UN policy denied its use, and PWS enforced the prohibition.
=Psychological Warfare Staff, EUSAK.= Recognizing the need for PsyWar
officers on army and corps staffs, the Department of the Army hastened
to make an allocation for these officers to be integrated into
headquarters structures. The PsyWar officers finally came to rest in the
G3 staff section.
Eighth Army's PsyWar division of G3 had the 1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet
Company under its operational control. EUSAK's PsyWar officer kept a
tight control over the propaganda output of the L&L Company by
physically moving the propaganda platoon into his EUSAK staff office.
[Illustration: _Figure 78: Home-front Morale._ When South Korean
communications were interrupted, leaflets such as this provided on early
boost to Korean civilian morale.]
Each of the corps PsyWar officers had under his operational control one
loudspeaker section (with a varying number of teams) from the L&L
Company.
=Radio Operations.= Radio in the Korean conflict was used jointly as a
strategic and a consolidation medium. From the beginning of the war,
radio was the voice of our military policy. An ambitious network,
supervised in 1950-51 directly by PWS and thereafter by the 1st RB&L
Group, became known and recognized as the Voice of the United Nations
Command. The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and the Japan Broadcasting
System (JBS) transmitted on a cooperative basis, with the U.S.
Government buying air time. The 1st RB&L Group's radio unit furnished
programming assistance through key stations in Seoul (KBS), Taegu (KBS),
Pusan (KBS) and Tokyo (JBS). In addition, the Group furnished technical
assistance to KBS in order to keep as many as twelve network stations on
the air.
=Leaflet Operations.= As in World War II, leaflets were delivered
primarily by two means: aircraft and artillery. B-29s of the Far East
Air Force ferried leaflet bombs on night missions deep into strategic
areas. Light bombers and liaison craft in support of EUSAK dropped both
leaflet bombs and bundles on tactical targets. The leaflet bundle was a
Korean war development. It was wrapped, tied, and fuzed in such a manner
that it would open and release its leaflets in mid-air. The 105mm.
howitzer remained the principal artillery piece for placing
propaganda-loaded shells on pinpoint targets.
Tremendous quantities of leaflets were printed. The 1st RB&L Group on
many occasions averaged better than twenty million pieces of printed
propaganda every week. To this, the 1st L&L Company in Korea added an
average of three and a half million leaflets per week.
=Loudspeaker Operations.= The airborne loudspeaker was the object of
experimentation, but the bulk of loudspeaker broadcasts were made from
vehicle mounts, such as tanks, and from emplacements. During the static
battle situation of 1951-53, most of the broadcasts were of the latter
kind. Range of the voice casts was short, something like two thousand
yards under ideal conditions. Personnel and equipment were supplied by
the 1st L&L Company, and scripts were prepared by PsyWar Division, G3,
EUSAK.
=Results of Military PsyWar Operations.= When the question was asked,
"Just how effective was PsyWar?" the answer was vague. Clear-cut
immediate evaluation of the effects of each propaganda campaign was
often impossible to ascertain because of the many intangible conditions
that were prevalent in the target area--conditions that were constantly
changing.
Some critics of the PsyWar operations in the Far East Command charged
that there were exaggerated claims of prisoners of war who surrendered
as a result of propaganda. They pointed out that a head count of
prisoners is an inaccurate measure of _direct_ effects of PsyWar used in
support of military operations, because rarely is the taking of
prisoners the _sole_ goal of any major PsyWar campaign.
Other critics expressed the belief that emphasis had been placed on
_quantity_ rather than _quality_ of propaganda. By quantity they meant
propaganda measured by bookkeeping statistics. By quality they meant
propaganda that, planned with potent intelligence, was capable of
exploiting propaganda opportunities with maximum psychological impact.
Did PsyWar achieve its goal?
The effects of planned persuasion in a thousand days of radio
broadcasts, in tens of thousands of loudspeaker appeals, in billions of
leaflets, may be measured only in retrospect. The question may be
answered when reaction in the target area has reached (or fails to
reach) favorable proportion, provided that the tangible results of the
military operations can be clearly separated from those of concurrent
and subsequent strategic international information operations.
[Illustration: _Figure 79: The Famous Airplane Surrender Leaflet._ This
is the controversial Far East Command leaflet that in April 1953 offered
"the sum of 50,000 U.S. dollars to any pilot who delivers a modern,
operational, combat-type jet aircraft in flyable condition to South
Korea. The first pilot who delivers such a jet aircraft to the free
world will receive an additional 50,000 U.S. dollars bonus for his
bravery." The leaflet was printed in three languages--Russian, Chinese
and Korean. In this example of the Russian language leaflet, there are
added notations in both Korean and Chinese that "this is a message from
the Americans to any jet pilot who can read Russian. If you know such a
person, please give it to him. It tells him how to escape to the UN
Forces."]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Histories of warfare, of politics (though there are no good recent
ones, Edward Jenks' little book being half a century out of date), of
political theory (especially the excellent though dissimilar volumes by
G. H. Sabine and by G. E. C. Catlin), of particular countries, of
diplomacy, of religion, and even of literature all cast a certain amount
of light on the subject. No writer known to the author specializes in
the topic of historical propaganda; none takes up the long-established
historical role of non-violent persuasion in warfare. Some of the
sociologists and anthropologists, such as Karl Mannheim, Max Weber,
Talcott Parsons, Geoffrey Gorer, Ruth Benedict (to mention a few at
random) have presented approaches which would justify re-evaluations of
history in a way useful to propaganda students; but they have not yet
persuaded the historians to do the work.
[2] 7 Judges 22-23.
[3] Leon Wieger, S. J., _Textes Historiques_, Hsien-hsien, 1929, vol. 1,
pp. 628-633.
[4] The author's attention to this reference was drawn by an unpublished
undated typescript article in the War Department files by Lt. Col.
Samuel T. Mackall, Inf.
[5] Lo Kuan-chung, _San Kuo chih Yen-i_, translated by C. H.
Brewitt-Taylor as _San Kuo or Romance of the Three Kingdoms_, Shanghai,
1929, vol. 1, p. 46.
[6] Recent writers on Genghis, such as Lamb, Vladimirtsov, Fox and
Lattimore all credit the Mongols with a higher technological level of
warfare than has been the custom among most Western historians. H. G.
Wells' simple but compelling description of the Mongols in his _Outline
of History_ is worth re-reading in this connection.
[7] Petis de la Croix, _The History of Genghizcan the Great, First
Emperor of the Antient Moguls and Tartars_ ..., London, 1722, p. 154.
[8] Benedict Figken, _Historia Fanaticorum_, Danzig, 1664.
[9] Philip Davidson's _Propaganda and the American Revolution_, Chapel
Hill, 1941, is a careful scholarly study of this period. Comparable
studies have not yet been written concerning other American wars.
Military and civilian historians have a fascinating piece of research
awaiting them in the material concerning Confederate and Federal
psychological warfare. Each participant in the Civil War was vulnerable
to the propaganda of the other. Subversive and clandestine
pro-Confederate propaganda in the North is outlined in George Fort
Milton's engrossing _Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column_, New York and
Washington, D. C., 1942, but no comparable study covering all forms of
propaganda on either side is yet available.
[10] Various new editions of Paine's chief works are available in
popular and inexpensive form. They are worth study as good propaganda.
[11] In his _The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen_, Baltimore, 1937,
page 17 and following, this author attempted to present some of the
relationships of ideology to other methods of social control and, in
connection with that enterprise, was furnished by the philosopher, A.O.
Lovejoy, with a definition of "ideology" more systematic and more
elaborate than the one used here.
[12] For example, in the 1920's the Soviet press expressed resentment
and amusement over a ruse adopted by the British during the course of
operations along the Northwest Frontier. Plane-mounted loudspeakers had
told the tribesmen, in Pushtu, that God was mad at them for having
broken the pledged peace, with the result that they scattered and gave
up. This maneuver exasperated the Russians, who themselves were making
equally sweeping propaganda inroads on the other side of the Pamirs. The
Russians were attacking religion, and having heavy going; it struck them
as improper warfare to make use of local superstition.
[13] _Webster's New International Dictionary_, Second Edition,
Springfield, 1944.
[14] The late Huey Long is reported to have created a new word in the
language of rustic Louisiana, the word "damlyingnewspapers." By
instilling in his followers contempt for the "capitalist" press, he got
them to the point where they _disbelieved_ anything which they saw in
print, and _believed_ everything which "Ol' Huey, the Kingfish" himself
told them. This operation was technically competent, since one of the
most effective means of putting propaganda across is to draw alarmed
attention to unfriendly propaganda and then just "happening to mention"
the "truth" (that is, the promoted side). Long attributed to the
newspapers a large number of lies which they did not print, along with
the "lies" (which were in historical fact true) that they _did_ actually
print. Since most of his followers either boycotted the press or read it
in a hostile frame of mind, they never found out whether the newspapers
said what Huey said they said, or not. You can try this out on your
neighbors or friends by making up some idiotic "quotation" (such as,
"The Jewish _Vorwaerts_ says that pickled onions are a cause of
immorality" or "_Le Temps_ of Paris says that Alaska is preparing to
secede") and the listener will be so busy scoffing at _what_ the paper
allegedly said that he will take no time to find out whether the paper
_did_ say it or not. Such attributions occur in everyday life; the smart
propagandist attributes plenty of rich, ripe, silly quotations to his
opponent. How many people actually _know_ what the Communists have said
on any given topic? Or bother to check on the actual claims of the
Zionist organization? Or the statements of the Arabs in Palestine?
[15] The literature in this field is carefully described in two volumes
by a three-man team consisting of Harold D. Lasswell, Ralph D. Casey and
Bruce Lannes Smith, the first being _Propaganda and Promotional
Activities, An Annotated Bibliography_, Minneapolis, 1935, and the
sequel being _Propaganda, Communication and Public Opinion, A
Comprehensive Reference Guide_, Princeton, 1946. The booklists provide
material in plenty for any academic-minded inquirer. The essays in the
two volumes are well worth reading, although the authors have undergone
the professorial delight of inventing a private language of their own.
Parts of the latter book, especially, read like proceedings out of an
unfamiliar lodge meeting; but there is sound sense and acute observation
behind the vocabulary. It must, however, be parenthetically noted that
during World War II the key propaganda jobs were held by a radio
commentator, a dramatist, a newspaperman, a New York banker, and an
absolutely astonishing number of men from commercial radio--along, of
course, with a sprinkling of Army and Navy officers in Washington, and a
heavy majority of non-specialist officers in the field. The propaganda
experts were not, in most instances, called in to do the actual chore of
propaganda. Among the exceptions were Leonard W. Doob, author of
_Propaganda, Its Psychology and Technique_, New York, 1935, who served
in the War Department's Psychological Warfare Branch and in the
Washington propaganda center at OWI; C. A. H. Thomson, who served as a
propaganda staff officer both in Washington and overseas after being a
collaborator with the Lasswell group; and Drs. Edwin Guthrie and A. L.
Edwards, whose chapter "Psychological Warfare" in [E. G. Boring, editor]
_Psychology for the Fighting Man_, Washington, 1943, pp. 430-447, is a
lucid epitome of the topic.
[16] This means that if you want to get baptised, you've got to get
_all_ the way under the water or it doesn't count.
[17] See Doob's book, mentioned above, especially pages 71 through 89
and 413 through 417.
[18] See the bibliographies by Harold Lasswell and others, mentioned
above, for a wealth of literature giving more technical and scientific
breakdowns than this. The formula STASM represents what was actually
used in preparation of up-to-the-minute propaganda spot analysis for the
War Department General Staff by Propaganda Branch during World War II.
Some further aspects of this formula are presented in my article,
"Stasm: Psychological Warfare and Literary Criticism" in _The South
Atlantic Quarterly_, Vol. 46, No. 3, July 1947, pp. 344-348.
[19] See Harold Lasswell's _Propaganda Technique in the World War_, New
York, reissue 1938, Chapter II, "Propaganda Organization," for a
description of the attempts to coordinate policy and propaganda in World
War I.
[20] Chicago, 1946. The discussion of what censorship authorities
regarded as propaganda material possessing value for the enemy, of the
wartime OC-OWI relationship, and of censorship of short-wave broadcasts
are of particular interest to the student of psychological warfare.
[21] In a somewhat different context, it is interesting to note that
Chinese Protestant churches, made up of Chinese church members, like to
hire ministers who mouth their Chinese with a strong American accent.
The American missionaries established the American accent as part of the
liturgical paraphernalia of Protestantism, and the Chinese preachers
trained under them accepted the American mispronouncing of Chinese as a
part of the religion. It is odd to see a church full of Chinese using
absolutely unbelievable tones while singing hymns or making appropriate
individual responses. At that, they are no funnier than the Chinese
Buddhists, who memorize long Indian sutras without understanding a
single syllable.
[22] On World War I, see Harold Lasswell's _Propaganda Technique in the
World War_, previously cited; George Creel's _How We Advertised
America_, New York and London, 1920, the very title of which is an
indication of its chief shortcoming; Lt. Col. W. Nicolai,
_Nachrichtendienst, Presse und Volksstimmung im Weltkrieg_, Berlin,
1920, by the German general staff officer chiefly responsible for staff
work on propaganda and public opinion, a very thoughtful though
prejudiced book; Heber Blankenhorn's enjoyable little classic,
_Adventures in Propaganda_, Boston, 1919 (Blankenhorn was the only
American officer to see field service in propaganda in both wars, as a
Captain in I and a Lieutenant Colonel in II); and George G. Bruntz'
scholarly monograph _Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German
Empire_ in 1918, Stanford, 1938. Readers desiring further references
should consult the bibliographies by Lasswell, Casey and Smith, cited
above.
[23] Colonel Nicolai, book cited in footnote 1. pages 160-161.
[24] For a pro-Hitler view of the world, see Wyndham Lewis' _Hitler_,
London, 1931, if a copy is to be found. The author would probably prefer
for the book to disappear. It is an eloquent, very pro-Nazi book,
putting the Hitlerite terminology into the English language and--what is
more important--infusing into the clumsy German pattern of
thinking-and-feeling a lightness of touch which makes Naziism more
palatable. The book converted no one in its time, and is not apt to do
harm at this late date; but it will make the English-reading reader
understand some of the novelty, the revolutionary freshness, the bold
unorthodoxy which made millions of people turn to Hitlerism as an escape
from the humdrum heartbreak of Weimar Germany. Much of the book is
devoted to the problem of power--street-fighting, mass demonstrations,
slogans, symbolisms--which so fascinated the Nazis.
[25] See Carl J. Friedrich, _The New Belief in the Common Man_,
Brattleboro (Vermont), 1945, chapter III, "Independence of Thought and
Propaganda," pp. 81-120, for a cogent discussion of this mentality. The
present author, in _Government in Republican China_, New York, 1938, pp.
18-23, describes in epitome the method whereby the ancient Confucian
leadership of China, while propaganda-conscious, used ideology as an
economical, stable method of control and avoided its maleficent
features. In one of the few poorly argued passages of a great work,
Arnold J. Toynbee overlooks this peculiar characteristic of Confucianism
and merely equates the Confucian dogma with those of other "universal
churches" (_A Study of History_, London, 1939, vol. V, especially pages
654-5).
[26] People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., _Report of Court
Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotzkyite Centre ...,
Verbatim Report_, Moscow, 1937, page 111. These trials were themselves
propaganda; in this particular instance, propaganda of a rather poor
order, since they failed to convince the foreign public and presumably
persuaded only those portions of the Russian public who were so gullible
that they needed no further persuading. For a brilliant illumination of
them in terms of a readable novel, see Arthur Koestler, _Darkness at
Noon_, New York, 1941; the same author also has a book of essays on the
totalitarian mentality under the rather fancy title, _The Yogi and the
Commissar_, New York, 1945. On the same subject, see Louis Fischer's
_Men and Politics_, New York, 1942.
[27] This document establishing the COI, along with the other major
documents pertaining to American psychological warfare, may be found in
J. P. Warburg's book cited above, _Unwritten Treaty_.
[28] In the course of a routine day of work on overseas propaganda in
1942, the author, who was then in SSG of MIS, found it necessary to get
in touch with Military Intelligence proper, Naval Intelligence, the
State Department, the office of the Assistant to the President, the
Office of Facts and Figures, the British Political Warfare group (which
was vainly seeking its American opposite number), the Office of Civilian
Defense, the Research and Analysis Branch of the office of the
Coordinator of Information, the office of the Librarian of Congress, the
Foreign Information Service, and the Department of Agriculture. Each of
these either operated propaganda, or had policy or intelligence
contributions to make. The Board of Economic Warfare naturally came into
the field too. This was during a period of German and Japanese
victories, so that even if propaganda had been coordinated, it probably
would not have been much more effective than it was. From what could be
figured out later, no real harm was done at this time. Nor was much
achieved.
[29] The bibliographies are cited above, on page 38. The journal comes
out, as its title indicates, four times a year; it is published by the
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University,
Princeton, N. J. Every major library has it. The review section provides
a good survey of new writing in the field. Journals such as _The
American Political Science Review_, _The Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science_, _The Infantry Journal_, and _The
American Historical Review_ often have significant articles or book
reviews in this field. _International Affairs_ (Royal Institute for
International Affairs, London) has excellent reviews of books arranged
by geographic subheads. Opinion and propaganda topics are usually lumped
together in academic studies; material on the one is apt to lead to the
other.
[30] San Tzu Ching, translated and annotated by Herbert A. Giles,
Shanghai, 1910, pages 2 and 3. The translation quoted is not by Giles.
[31] On the transmitting side, nothing could be more ruinous than mere
translation, the more literal the worse, of a single basic broadcast for
all audiences irrespective of language or culture. For the text of war
communiqués or of official documents, this is permissible, but for news
or feature broadcasts, few things could be worse. It is not possible to
translate subtle psychological appeals embedded in news or commentary;
such materials by their nature must follow forms acceptable to the
audience, building up confidence with familiar allusions and creating a
sense of "we-ness" between the actual announcer and his listeners.
Equivalents can be worked out. The same basic policies can be
transposed. The same source of news and intelligence can be exploited.
But the actual program cannot be translated verbatim from one language
to another; it must be transposed not only from one language but from
one culture to another.
[32] Free advertisement.
[33] Bad news about his side is not necessarily the only kind of bad
news for the enemy to know. Gloomy news about our side can harm the
enemy listener if his government is running a propaganda campaign to
raise production, promote thrift, etc., by claiming things are worse on
_their_ side. In such a case, good news about us would be good for him.
News must be fitted to the propaganda plan and to the propaganda
situation.
[34] Walter Lippmann's book, _Public Opinion_, was first published in
New York in 1922 but it is still clean-cut as a basic statement of the
problems of public opinion. The author's own life as a commentator is
remarkable in fulfilling the mission which he implicitly set himself
when writing about public opinion: the job of lifting issues into
emotional and psychological contexts in which the resulting judgment
will be based on socially sound factors.
[35] The American newspapers between 1942 and 1945 carried intermittent
accounts of these personal and political problems, frequently in the
columns of commentators rather than in the regular news sections. (The
book by Warburg is of course _Unwritten Treaty_, mentioned above.)
[36] For popular histories of the OSS, see _Sub Rosa: The O.S.S. and
American Espionage_ by Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden (New York, 1946)
or Corey Ford and Alastair MacBain, _Cloak and Dagger_ (New York 1946).
An exciting thriller novel by Darwin Teilhet gives an oblique and
guarded description of black propaganda and clandestine polling: _The
Fear Makers_ (New York, 1945); Teilhet was himself in OSS. For an
interesting description of OSS field operations, see Nicol Smith's _Into
Siam_ (New York, 1946). OSS was picturesque from the very start, and it
is likely that other participants in OSS work will from time to time
bring out books on their adventures.
[37] Bureau of the Budget, _United states Government Manual, 1946, First
Edition_, Washington, 1946, says of the Military Intelligence Division,
"It has charge of propaganda and psychological warfare" (page 198). The
fiat may be a little more precise than circumstances warrant, but it at
least shows where, for the record, psychological warfare belonged.
[38] See Charles E. Merriam's study, _Political Power_, Chicago, 1933,
and his later works for suggestive approaches to the political setting
of propaganda problems. He developed the terms miranda and credenda for
modern political science usage.
[39] While this statement is plainly a matter of individual opinion, the
author considers that his own experience supports his opinion in this
instance. He wrote plans on almost every operating level in the
governmental and military hierarchy during World War II, all the way
from drafting plans for the Joint (American) and Combined
(British-American) Chiefs of Staff down to helping field agents in the
China Theater work out practical little propaganda plans for their own
missions, or planning the writing, use, and classification of leaflets
one by one, in collaboration with OWI operators. He found planning to be
fascinating at the top, and worthwhile at the bottom of the pyramid, but
he found no significant correlation between the top and the bottom, save
in the sense which he makes plain.
[40] In the pseudo-technical propaganda slang of the OWI people, this
was called "spelling out." The same people "stockpiled" "campaigns" to
"needle" the enemy.
[41] So far as he knows, the author was the first--about May of 1942--to
urge that a surrender pass be made to look like an official document,
with banknote-type engraving and with formal style. Unfortunately, it
was printed in green, instead of the old-fashioned orange-gold of the
U.S. Treasury yellowbacks, and was sent to the jungle areas of the South
and Southwest Pacific, where everything was green to start with.
[42] These suggestions are based on the comment of Major Martin Herz,
who prepared the leaflets at Anzio beachhead and subsequently was
leaflet expert at SHAEF.
[43] No author, publisher, place or date. Issued by the unit. The
reference is to page 55.
[44] The Department of the Army is understood to be preparing a Field
Manual and Technical Manual for Psychological Warfare which will
describe the doctrines and the equipment, respectively, to be used in
combat propaganda situations.
[45] In the postwar period a great many reflective publications began to
appraise what had happened in the PsyWar field. One of the best of these
is Daniel Lerner's _Sykewar: Psychological Warfare Against Germany,
D-Day to VE-Day_ (New York, 1949), which covers the European operation
in detail. This was followed by _Propaganda in War and Crisis_, edited
by Daniel Lerner (New York, 1951). A heavier work, covering many of the
same problems is _The Language of Politics_, by Harold D. Lasswell,
Nathan Leites and associates (New York, 1949). Leonard Doob's work on
propaganda, long the leading American text in the field, was issued in a
revised, postwar edition (New York, 1948); the postwar book does much to
put "psychological warfare" in perspective. A simpler text than Doob's,
useful for less advanced students, is Frederick C. Irion's _Public
Opinion and Propaganda_ (New York, 1950). A manual directly pertaining
to psychological warfare is _America's Weapons of Psychological Warfare_
edited by Robert E. Summers (New York, 1951); this also contains a
bibliography which is helpful to the layman. Three outstanding works
summarize the postwar propaganda position of the U.S. Government:
Charles A. H. Thomson's _Overseas Information Service of the United
States Government_ (Washington, 1950) shows the continuity of the
problem from war to peace; Wallace Carroll's _Persuade or Perish_
(Boston, 1948) argues the necessity of maintaining an opinion offensive;
and Edward Barrett's illuminating discussion, _Truth is Our Weapon_ (New
York, 1953), brings the story down to the Eisenhower Administration.
[46] New insights into the nature of the Soviet antagonist were
presented by three related monographs originally prepared inside RAND
Corporation, the research facility which often works with the U.S. Air
Force. Nathan Leites, _The Operational Code of the Politburo_ (New York,
1951), digests Soviet fundamentals of international behavior. Margaret
Mead's _Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority_ (New York, 1951) applies
anthropological and psychiatric methods of analysis; this book, to the
military or general reader, should be prefaced by reading her
distinguished work, _Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies_,
which is now available in an inexpensive, paper-bound reprint (Mentor
Books, New York, 1952). Philip Selznick makes the point that
organization is itself a Communist power-achieving instrument in his
_The Organizational Weapon_ (New York, 1952), the third of the RAND
group. Lt. Col. William R. Kintner, a Regular Army officer, prepared the
challenging study of the specific military content of Communist thinking
in _The Front is Everywhere_ (Norman, Oklahoma, 1950). Among the many
good recent books about the Communist challenge, R.N. Carew Hunt, _The
Theory and Practice of Communism_ (New York, 1951), is outstanding for
its dispassionateness while James Burnham's _The Coming Defeat of
Communism_ (New York, 1951) is a ringing appeal to our side to meet the
challenge. Stefan T. Possony, in _A Century of Conflict_ (Chicago,
1953), presents the most coldly damning and most far-ranging critique of
Communist operations which this writer has seen. Willmoore Kendall
rendered Americans a service with his careful translation, editing and
introduction of A. Rossi, _A Communist Party in Action_ (New Haven,
1949), while Bob Darke, in a British counterpart, gives a less
intellectual and much abbreviated description of the British Communist
set-up and operations in _The Communist Technique in Britain_ (London,
1952). Communist revelations of "capitalist" conspiracies which tell
more about the haunted, anxious, nasty minds of the Communists than
about our own operations are, among others, L. Natarajan, _American
Shadow Over India_ (Bombay, 1952), and Jean Cathala, _They are Betraying
Peace_ (Moscow, 1951).
[47] Paul M. A. Linebarger, "Communism as a Competing Civilization in
Southeast Asia," a contribution to _Southeast Asia in the Coming World_,
Philip W. Thayer, editor (Baltimore, 1952).
[48] For a contrary point of view, see the works by Harry Stack
Sullivan, Brock Chisholm, and others.
[49] Problematical in all such attempts of working officers to define
"victory" is the serious intellectual issue of avoiding means which by
themselves defeat the ends which are sought. If the means are
"dangerous" or "immoral" by the standards of the society which applies
them, their value becomes low indeed. For the covert side of U.S.
operations, see the breezy and popular volumes on OSS: Lt. Col. Corey
Ford and Major Alastair MacBain, _Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of
OSS_ (New York, 1946); Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden, _Sub Rosa: The
OSS and American Espionage_ (New York, 1946); and the most vividly
concrete narration of the group, Elizabeth P. MacDonald, _Undercover
Girl_ (New York, 1947). For an astonishing work which seems to violate
security on every page, see Commander Roy Olin Stratton, _SACO--The Rice
Paddy Navy_ (Pleasantville, N. Y., 1950); this is the description of a
Navy group in China which the author shows to be more covert than OSS
itself. A dry, German view of Anglo-American espionage in Holland is
given in that superb, true-life adventure story, H. J. Giskes, _London
Calling North Pole_ (London and New York, 1953).
[50] See the works of Freda Utley, Herbert Feis, the
Linebarger-Djang-Burks political science text (New York, 1954), and
others, not to mention the contributions by Mao, Liu Shao-ch'i, and
other Communist leaders.
[51] The author himself pleads guilty to having criticized the French
unduly without accepting a reasonable share of U.S. responsibility for
the situation in Indochina (Paul M. A. Linebarger, "Indochina: The
Bleeding War," _Combat Forces Journal_, March 1951), and was deservedly
rebuked from some French readers for his denigration of French
imperialism. The author cannot endorse as wise, shrewd, or kind the
French political decisions in Indochina, hut he can say that the
Americans who made (or failed to make) basic policy concerning that area
have been as irresponsible and foolish as the French. He trusts that, by
the time this note reaches print, a more effectual Franco-American
understanding will have replaced the previous difficulties.
[52] Psychological warfare is, of course, neither very psychological nor
is it necessarily warfare. Indeed, within the context of a rigidly
purist and scholastic definition, psychological warfare is not
psychological, in that most of its operations are very definitely _not_
a part of present-day scientific psychology. Neither is it _warfare_
because it can be operated before war, during war, after war, or
contemporaneously with and apart from war. As pointed out above, war
involves the inescapable content of public lawful _violence_. It is hard
to ascribe violence to a short-wave broadcast or to a leaflet. In Korea
in 1951 the author heard that a Chinese soldier was found dead--mashed
by a leaflet bomb which had failed to explode at the proper altitude. If
this story is true, that particular soldier was one of the few genuine
_war_ victims of military or strategic propaganda both so pretentiously
called "psychological warfare" by Americans of the mid-twentieth
century.
Anthony Leviero, who summarized American PsyWar in _The New York Times_
in a series of articles between 9 December and 14 December 1951, is both
an experienced general staff officer and a first-class newspaper man.
His comment in 1953 on the new Operations Coordinating Board was
encouraging or ominous. He stated in his _Times_ dispatch of 4 September
1953 that the William Jackson committee had found that "psychological
warfare did not exist as such." If this meant that the new OCB was to
sweep aside the limitations of top-secret pedantic definitions and move
toward a refreshingly concrete manipulation of the world scene, the news
was encouraging indeed. If the new Board was, however, to be dedicated
to the manufacture of new, complicated and secret definitions of its
own, the news was bad. Given the time-lag on the declassification of
Government materials, it may be twenty-five years, or 1978, before the
precise definitions of 1953 are available to the public. The tendency of
the Board to succeed or to fail will be evident by the time this
material is in print; given the personalities involved, the prognosis
appeared optimistic.
[53] This kind of issue has not been neglected in our public discussions
or our schools. Two sides of one famous case are given in Owen
Lattimore, _Ordeal by Slander_ (New York, 1951) and the bitterly
anti-Lattimore book by John T. Flynn, _The Lattimore Story_ (New York,
1953). A serious intelligent attempt to answer some of the problems
posed by PsyWar and the resulting loyalty issues within a democracy are
the works of Nathaniel Weyl, _Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and
Betrayal in American History_ (Washington, 1950), and _The Battle
Against Disloyalty_ (New York, 1951). A formidable presentation of what
the Communists are doing is offered in Ralph de Toledano, _Spies, Dupes,
and Diplomats_ (New York and Boston, 1952) and in Major General Charles
A. Willoughby, _Shanghai Conspiracy_ (New York, 1952). The kind of
round-table often intellectually conceived and executed within American
schools is well portrayed in the special issue of _Columbia Journal of
International Affairs_ (New York, spring, 1951), in which the entire
issue is given to a synthesis of international problems in the
propaganda field under the heading "Propaganda and World Politics."
Stefan Possony's magistral _A Century of Conflict_ (Chicago, 1953)
provides an excellent general framework.
[54] Nothing in previous U.S. experience prepared Americans for the
invasion of the individual personality which has long been accomplished
by the Communists but which was first publicized in adequate fashion
after the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950. The pioneer book in this
field, and still the best, is Edward Hunter's _Brain-Washing in Red
China_ (New York, 1951). This author has known Mr. Hunter for twenty-odd
years and can vouch for him as a man with a sober respect for fact,
though he does have a vivid taste in adjectives; he has seen not only
Mr. Hunter but has gone over some of the raw material which Hunter used
and can testify to the reality and sympathy with which Hunter portrays
this rather gruesome process. On a different scale, Wilbur Schramm has
given a description of what happens when _The Reds Take a City_ (New
Brunswick, 1951), in a book of that name written jointly with John W.
Riley.
[55] A sharp contrast between the old politics and the new is shown by
the unfortunate book prepared in the Department of State and now
hastily, even guiltily, allowed to go out of print by the United States
Government Printing Office because it showed that some Americans were
guilty or naïve enough to try to love and trust the Soviet state within
the same system as our own. One does not know whether to laugh or to
weep at the spectacle of men lamenting the fact that they were once
innocent and hopeful. The book, prepared by the late Harley Notter and
others, is Department of State Publication 3580, General Policy Series
15, _Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation_ (Washington, 1949). That not
all was innocence, even when things so seemed, is amply attested by
Freda Utley's controversial but brilliant summary, _The China Story_
(Chicago, 1951).
[56] The function of decision-making has been brilliantly though
solemnly explored in Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin,
_Decision-making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics_
(Princeton, N.J., 1954.)
[57] For a contrary point of view, see _Tensions That Lead to War_,
edited by Hadley Cantril (Princeton, 1950).
[58] The author had the opportunity of observing opsearch in the Korean
war on three different occasions: September 1950, March 1951, and
November and December 1952 and early January 1953. He visited Korea
itself twice and also spent a great deal of time, part of it in a public
capacity and part of it as a free-lance author, in the periphery of that
war--areas such as Hong Kong, Indochina, Thailand, the Philippines,
Malaya, Burma, Indonesia, and India.
[59] Several novels have touched on PsyWar problems. The most
hard-hitting of the lot is Jerome Weidman, _Too Early to Tell_ (New
York, 1946). Covert PsyWar whispering techniques are thinly disguised
and much improved, technically, in Darwin Teilhet, _The Fear Makers_
(New York, various dates). The covert side of some of these adventures
is portrayed, among others, by W. Stanley Moss, _A War of Shadows_ (New
York, 1952); Ray Franklin Kauffman, _The Coconut Wireless_ (New York,
1948); and Chin Kee Onn, _Silent Army_ (New York, 1953). As exciting as
fiction are Mark Gayn and John Caldwell, _American Agent_ (New York,
1947), describing the work of an enthusiastic amateur, and L. C.
Moyzisch, _Operation Cicero_ (New York reprint, 1952), portraying a
first-class professional. Alexander Foote, _Handbook for Spies_ (London,
1949), and J. V. Davidson-Houston, _Armed Pilgrimage_ (London 1949), are
interesting distillations of personal experience which touch on
espionage and PsyWar.
[60] The author professes he would like to write a preliminary work on
this subject himself some day, if no one else essays the task first.
[61] V = Victory day.
[62] Edward Hunter, _Brain-Washing in Red China_ (New York, 1951).
[63] If one good book can be mentioned without prejudice to the many
other good books in the same field, attention can be drawn to the
excellent undergraduate text which explores the present U.S. position on
the press, George I. Bird and Frederic E. Merwin, _The Press and
Society_ (New York, 1951). At the opposite end of the spectrum, see Oleg
Anesimov, _The Ultimate Weapon_ (New York, 1953). The first book takes
the U.S. as it is and does not envisage profound responses coming as the
inevitable accompaniment of frightful change; the second book states the
outside problem in shocking terms, but asks of Americans things which
neither they nor their press are ever apt to approve.
[64] The development of this activity was handed to the Chief of Army
Field Forces, in whose G2 section Colonel Donald Hall was the PsyWar
officer. The first of these courses with its supporting textbook was not
ready for release by the Army General School until 1949, just one year
before the Korean conflict began. In 1949 likewise appeared the first
officially approved Army field manual on the subject of psychological
warfare support of military operations.
[65] Teams from this detachment, armed with leaflets and loudspeakers,
were sent to and participated in major maneuvers in continental United
States, in the Caribbean area, and in Hawaii. These teams were attached
to the "enemy" forces, and exposed the maneuver troops to military
propaganda in action. The Tactical Information Detachment suddenly
suspended its planning of simulated propaganda operations for Exercise
Pluto in 1950. As the only PsyWar operational unit in the Army, the
Detachment was hustled off to Korea.
Index
Abbeville, 164
Adams, Samuel, 23
Adipadi, 185
Aggression, timing, 43
Aims, long-range, 126
Air dropping, 229
Air rescue, 142, 231
Air support, 228
Aircraft, World War I, 69
Allen, George, 271
Alsop, Joseph, 273
Alsop, Stewart, 182
American Association of Public Opinion Research, 290
American Broadcasting Station in Europe, 270, 288
American Expeditionary Forces, 67. _See also_ Pershing's headquarters
American operations, effects, 103
American policy in Indochina, 260-262
American Revolution, 21
black leaflet, 20
American-Russian meeting, 202
Andersen, Hans Christian, 156
Anger motif, 233
Annamites, 263
Announcers, radio, 58
Anti-Communist appeals, 246
Anti-Semitic propaganda, 138
Anzio, 82, 212, 239
Appeals, black action, 237
Armed Forces Radio Service, 272
Armed Forces Radio Stations, 34
Army Air Forces, 183
Army Forces, Far East, 305
Army General School, 304
Aryan myth, 78
Aryan racialism, 25
Asia, Communism in, 251
Athenians, 7
Atrocities, 46, 79
Attu, 214
Audience, 123
Austria, 184
_Azad Hind_, 185
_Azad Hind Fauj_, 8
Aztecs, 17
Bakunin, Mikhail, 297
Balkan states, 163
Balloons, 21, 69
Barrett, Edward W., 271
Bataan, 223
Beaverbrook, Lord, 64
Belgium, 13
Belly tank, 170
Benedict, Ruth, 3
Bengal, 8
Benton, William, 184, 271
Black counterpropaganda, 148
Black, Lt. Col. Percy, 91
Black propaganda, 44, 88
Blaine, James G., 49
Blankenhorn, Heber, 64, 67
Boers, 24
_Bolshevik_, 71
Bombs
leaflet bombs, 172, 192
V-l, 130, 237
V-2, 237
Bonus troubles, 214
"Book that won the war," 23
Bose, Subhas Chandra, 8
Boxes, packing, 171
Braden, Thomas, 182
Brain-washing, 295_ff_
Breakdown of propaganda items, 122
Brest-Litovsk, 71
Brewitt-Taylor, C. H., 8
Britain in 1940, 163
British, 81
British Admiralty, 87
British Broadcasting Company, 45, 82, 87
British Foreign Office, 64, 87
British in Indochina, 260
British psychological warfare, 263-264
British War Office, 87
Brogan, Denis W., 277
Brown, Don, 208
Broz-Tito, Josip, 87, 89
Bruntz, George G., 64
Buchan, John, 64
Bulgaria, 132
Bullock, Gen. William, 266
Burden, Capt. J. A., 37
Burma, 23, 24, 168, 185, 209, 224. _See also_ North Burma
Buttles, Lt. Col. Bruce, 97
Byelorussia, 13
Cambodia, 186, 262
Canton, 96
Cantril, Hadley, 290
Capabilities, psychological, 158
Capacity, own, 164
Caribbean pirates, 17
Casablanca, 47
Casey, Ralph D., 38
Catholicism, 260
Catlin, G. E. C., 3
Censorship, Russian, 105
Central Intelligence Agency, 274, 276
Central Intelligence Group, 115, 184
Central Pacific, 187
Chandler, Douglas, 83
Changes of nations in wartime, 292-293
Cheka, 225
Chiang Kai-shek, 52, 75, 223
China, 5, 15, 185, 227, 255-257
Central China, 1944, 163
Communist China, 47, 52, 106, 204
Japanese garrisons in, 58
organization, 170
reorganized National Government, 185
OWI in, 57
Protestant churches in, 59
revolution of 1927, 75
Chungking Government, 106
China-Burma-India Theater, 10, 98
Forward Echelon headquarters, 57
China Theater, 187, 213
Chinese Communists, 262-263, 265, 289, 294
"Chinese Federal Reserve Bank," 141
Chinese prisoners, 288
Chinese railway campaigns, 209
Christmas cards, 213
Churchill, Winston, 24, 87, 157
Cinema, 210
Civil defense, 251
Civil Information and Education Section, 189
Civilians, friendly, 209
Clandestine stations, 45
Classification, 54
Clausewitz, Carl von, 28, 30
Clay, Gen. Lucius D., 189
Cleavage, 143
Cleveland, Grover, 49
Cold War, 244, 286, 298
description, 247
in Asia, 264
nature, 248
origins, 248-249
outcome, 254
termination, 253
warfare within, 249
Combined Chiefs of Staff, 174, 194
Command function, 98
Commanders, American theaters, 168
_Commando_, 24
Commands, contingency, 234
Commands, to enemy forces, 233
Commissioner General for South-East Asia, 264
Committee for a Free Asia, 273_ff_
Committee for a Free Europe, 273_ff_
Common causes, 282
Communist appeals, 246
Communist goal, 262-263
Communist-dominated governments, 294
Communist Manifesto, 74
Communism, 71, 78
Communist Party, 126
Communists, 155, 186
Confederate States, 24, 29
Confucianism, 78
"Conquest of probability," 251, 253
Consolidation company, 302
Consolidation plans, 201
Consolidation propaganda, 46
Continental Congress, 158
Contingency plans, 202
Conversion, process of, 13
Conversionary propaganda, 46
Coordination, 201
Coordination of U.S. facilities, 272
Coordinator of Information, 90
Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, 182
Cortéz, Hernán, 17, 252
Counterespionage, 85, 225
Counterfeiting, 209
Countermeasures to black, 60
Counterpropaganda, 46
defensive, 146
instructions, 144
initiative, 60
Countersubversion, 225
Covert operations, 255
in peacetime, 297
Covert propaganda, 44
_Credenda_, 186
Creel Committee, 67
Creel, George, 64
Crisol, José, 259
Cromwell, Oliver, 16
Crow, Carl, 103
Czechoslovakia, 41, 64, 81
Dalai Lama, 168
Davidson, Philip, 21
Davis, Elmer, 93, 178
Davis, Jefferson, 30
D-day, 202
Decision-making, factors of, 284
Defeat, psychological, 194
"Democratic," 74
Desertion, 211, 237
Developmental research, 287_ff_
in PsyWar, 288
Dien Bien Phu, 261
Diplomacy, 36
dramatic intimidation, 41
Directives, 97
Distribution, artillery, 192
District Information Services Control Commands, 202
Doenitz, Adm. Karl, 30, 88
Doihara, Gen. Kenji, 187
Domei Agency, 105
Domestic Operations Branch, 179
Donovan, Gen. William J., 90
Doob, Leonard W., 38, 39, 97
Doolittle flyers, 99
Door gods, 188
Doriot, Jacques, 157
Dunkirk, 164
Dutch in Indonesia, 257-259
East India Company, 17
Economic Cooperation Administration, 273
Ed and Joe, 205
Education, 32
Edwards, A. L., 39
_Ei Sörrender_, 235
Eighth Army in Korea, 266-267, 303, 305
Eisenhower, Gen. Dwight D., 168, 189
Ellis, Havelock, 291
Enemy
definition, 50
lifeline, 215
propaganda situation, 127
England, 68
Environmental stimuli, 110
Espionage, 15
Estimate of the situation, 150
Estimates, written, 161
European Defense Community, 253
European Theater, 191
Ezekiel, Mordecai, 139
Fact, slanting, 117
Falsification, radio, 84
Farago, Ladislas, 41
_Fascismo_, 32
Fascist Italian Social Republic, 163
Fascists, 78
Federal Communications Commission, 115
Feis, Herbert, 257
_Feldpostkarte_, 70
Field maneuvers using PsyWar, 301
Field Manual, 241
Field operations, 151
Fifth Army, 228
Files, propaganda, 115
Films, 210
First Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company, 303, 305-306
First Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group
assisting stations, 306
work in Far East Command, 304
Fischer, Louis, 79
Fisher, F. M., 182, 189
Flensburg, 88
Flexibility in PsyWar, 285-286
Food appeals, 232
Food propaganda, 152
Force short of war, 1
Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service, 115
Foreign Information Service, 91
Foreign Operations Administration, 273, 276
"Four-Minute Men," 68
Fourteen Points, 62
Fourteenth Air Force, 168, 186, 231
Fox, Ralph, 15
France, 68
as a future ally, 282
Frederick the Great, 28
Free India, 185
Free India Army, 8, 212
French Foreign Office, 297
French in Indochina, 260-262
French Revolution, 23
French revolutionaries, 20
Freud, Sigmund, 26
Friedrich, Carl J., 78
Friendship in PsyWar, 281_ff_
Fromm, Erich, 290
_Führer_, 78
Future of PsyWar, 298_ff_
Fuzes, 170
_Gaimusho_, 204
Galahad Operation, 226
Gallup, Dr. George, 290
Gallup poll, 141
General Staff, 183
Geneva, 261
Geneva Convention, 203
Genghis Khan, 14
George III, 158
German failure in Ukraine, 293-294
_German Psychological Warfare_, 41
Germany, 184
black operations, 212
Imperial Government, 67
naval radio, 88
pastoralization of, 103
U.S. zone, 202
World War II accomplishments, 81
Gideon, 3
Gifts, 207
Giles, Herbert A., 110
Goals of PsyWar, 299
definition, 151
enemy goals, 127
specific propaganda goals, 151
Göbbels, Paul Josef, 90
Gorer, Geoffrey, 3, 154
Gray, Gordon, 274
Great Patriotic War, 104
Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, 186
Greene, Carleton, 264
Greene, Col. J. Woodall, 266, 301
Grenades, rifle, 228
Grew, Joseph C., 42
Guam, 187
Guerrilla warfare, 262
Guidance, 194
examples, 196
Gurney, Sir Henry, 264
_Gustav Siegfried Eins_, 205
Guthrie, Edwin, 39, 91
Hague Convention, 203
Hall, Col. Donald, 267
Han, 7
Han Military Emperor, 5
Han River, 265
Harvard College, 297
Haushofer, Gen. Karl, 31
Haw Haw, Lord, 59, 83
Hawaii, 203
Headquarters and Headquarters Company, 302
Hegelian philosophy, 25
Henry, George W., 27
Herodotus, 7
Herz, Major Martin, 212
Hindustani, 11
Hiroshima, 202
Historical materialism, 32
Hitler, Adolf, 77, 202, 225
_Hitlerjugend_, 57
_Hitlermädel_, 57
Ho Chi-minh, 263
Holland, 13, 52, 68
Holy Roman Empire, 15
Homeland facilities, 204
Honesty as basis of U.S. policy, 282
Howitzers, 228
Huks (Hukbong Mapagpalaya Bayan), 259-260
Huns, 63
Hunter, Edward, 295
Hymn of Hate, 63
Identification of propaganda, 116
Identity cards, 209
Ideology, 8, 31, 79
and plans, 201
India, 264
Indian-Pakistani fighting, 255
Indochina, 185, 245
Indochinese war, 255
Indonesia, 47, 52, 185
Indonesia, fighting in, 255, 257-259
Indonesia, Republic of, 185
Information activities of State Department, 269
Information agencies, chart, 95
Information Control Commands, 270
Information Control Service, 189
Information, Department of, 64
Information and Education Section, 270
Inner Mongolia, 168, 185
Inquisition, 20
Insanity as a Communist technique, 295-296
Intelligence
Director of, 64
propanal in, 129
propaganda intelligence, 132, 197
Inter-Allied cooperation, 163
Interest, enemy, 48
Interim Intelligence Information Service, 184
International Information Service, 269
International propaganda, 46
International "realities," 245
_Internationale_, 104
Interpretation vs. truth, 117
Interrogation, 145
of prisoners, 147
Iron Curtain, 244
Irregular warfare, 287
Islam, 10
Isolationism, 140
Israel, 255
Italy, 68, 214
landings in, 239
surrender, 202
Jackson, C. D., 276
Jackson Report, 268, 275, 289
Jackson, William, 275
Jacobite broadcast, 18
Japan, 184
Board of Information, 184-185
black book, 208
black propaganda, 105
cultural propaganda, 206
Emperor, 49, 214
Foreign Office, 204
nostalgic white, 135
peso note, 23
PsyWar in World War II, 105
Sad Sack, 213, 216
surrender, 104
Japan's East Asia, 255
Jenks, Edward, 3
_Jisei_, 168
Johnson, Louis, 269
Johnston, Col. Dana W., 97
_Joho Kyoku_, 34, 184, 204
Joint Chiefs of Staff, 93, 194, 277
Joint Psychological Warfare Committee, 93
Josey, Alex, 264
Joyce, James, 119
Joyce, William. _See_ Haw Haw, Lord
Kachins, 224
Kafka, Franz, 119
Kaiserist propaganda, 66
Kaltenbach, Fred, 83
_Kempeitai_, 187
Kinsey reports, 291
Kiska, 214
Kjellen, Rudolf, 31
Koestler, Arthur, 79
Koop, Theodore, 53
Korea, 184
Korean conflict, 255, 263, 265-266, 269, 280, 286, 294, 301, 303
leaflet deliveries, 306-307
loudspeaker sections, 306
opsearch, 288
propaganda policies, 305
PsyWar in, 301
PsyWar officers, 305
radio operations, 306
radio propaganda, 289
Krum, 132
Kublai Khan, 14, 106
_Kultur_, 63
Kuomintang, 75, 186, 204
Kyes, Roger M., 276
Labor recruitment, 224
Lamb, Harold, 15
Laos, 262
Larson, Cedric, 103
Lasswell, Harold, 38, 97
Latin-America, 68
Lattimore, Owen, 15, 183
Laurel, José P., 157
Laval, Pierre, 157
Leadership, defamation of, 155
Leaflets
action leaflets, 231
anti-exhibit leaflet, 96
anti-radio leaflet, 86
artillery, delivery by, 307
B-29 raids, 168
on Berlin, 57
bombs, 307
bundles, 228
Bunker Hill leaflet, 21
civilian-action leaflets, 222
civilian-morale leaflet, 215
for civilians, 207
direct-reply leaflet, 120
dispensers, 265
distribution, 170, 171
dropping procedures, 192
field procedure, 228
French Communist leaflet, 121
ground-distributed leaflets, 86
informational leaflet, 142
loading, 172
map leaflets, 235
morale leaflets, 213
news leaflets, 216
packaged leaflets, 170
Philippine leaflet, 2
production, 190
radio-program leaflet, 82
rolling, 169
spot-news leaflets, 221
start-of-war leaflet, 198
surrender leaflets, 230, 236
surrender leaflet, AEF, 70
surrender leaflet, improved, 239
surrender form, radio, 83
surrender, tactical, leaflets, 235
troop-morale leaflet, 212
troop-morale leaflet, gray, 214
troop-morale leaflet, Nazi, 4
World War I leaflets, 68
Legion of St. George, 84
Leighton, Lt. Com. Alexander, 97
Leites, Nathan, 290
Lenin, Nikolai (Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov), 71, 263
Lenin Old Guard, 205
Leninism, 71
Letters, prisoner, 232
Lewis, Wyndham, 77
Leyte campaign, 123, 169
Lhasa, 168
Liaison
field liaison, 226
mechanics of, 227
Liaison officers, PsyWar, 192, 226
Library of Congress, 137
Lienta University, 35
Limitations on American PsyWar, 278_ff_
Lippmann, Walter, 38, 103, 149
Listening, prevention of, 159
Literary personalities in propaganda, 290
Lo Kuan-chung, 8
"Localism," 295
Long, Huey, 38
Lorient, 227
Loudspeaker units, 237, 302-303
Loudspeakers
airborne, 307
emplacement, 307
vehicle-mounted, 239, 307
_Luftpost_, 220
Luxembourg, 168
MacArthur, Gen. Douglas, 157, 189, 257, 266, 301
MacDonald, Malcolm, 264
Mackall, Lt. Col. Samuel T., 7
MacLeish, Archibald, 279
Maginot Line, 213
Magsaysay, Ramón, 259
Mails, 206
civilian personal, 219
Malai, 185
Malaya, 185, 209, 262
Chinese in, 262_ff_
government of, 263
High Commissioner of, 264
war in, 255
Malayan Races Liberation Army, 262, 295
Malingerer's black, 125
Manchukuo, 185
Manchus in China, 20
Mannheim, Karl, 3
Mao Tse-tung, 252, 263
Marx, Karl, 263, 297
Marxism, 70-71
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 297
Materials, 194
basic materials, 195
enemy information materials, 122-123
McClure, Gen. Robert B., 266
McEvoy, Dennis, 208
Media, 56
limitations, 48, 55
prescription of, 27
Medical conditions, 36
Mediterranean Theater, 191
_Mein Kampf_, 65, 101
Merat, Edward K., 183
Merriam, Charles E., 186
Merrill's Marauders, 226
Mexican War, 23
Mexico, 68
Midianites, 3
Mikhailovich, Draja, 87, 89
Military goals, 199
Military Intelligence Division, 91
Military Intelligence Reserve, 301
Military Intelligence Service, 182
Military Propaganda School, 304
Military PsyWar since World War II, 299_ff_
Military Secretary, 189
Milton, George Fort, 21
Milton, John, 16
Ministry of Information, 64, 87
_Miranda_, 186
Mission, 125
sense of, 26
Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company, 302
Mock, James R., 103
Mockery, 118
Money, 23, 209
Mongol secret weapons, 14
Monitor, submarine, 97
Monitoring, 111
Morale
analysis chart, 70
enemy situation, 127
general morale, 215
German morale, 220
index, 147
operations, 211
services, 34
wartime morale, 156
Morgan, Dr. George, 289
Mortars, 69, 228
Moscow, 71
Moscow-Peking Axis, 294
Moscow trials, 79
Motion pictures, 210
American, 90
propaganda movies, 68, 81
Motive, 155
attribution of, 155
Movie van, 175
Mutiny, 211
Mutual Security Administration, 273
Nagasaki, 106
National-level plans, 200
National Security Council, 269, 276
National Socialist German Workers' Party. _See_ Naziism
National War Aims Commission, 64
Nationalism and Communism, 295
Nationalists, Chinese, 75, 106
Naziism, 77
and Communism, 77
fifth column, 81
Nazi-Soviet struggle, 293-294
Netherlands and Indonesia, 257-259
"New British Broadcasting Company," 83
"New Democracy," 32
New York, radio facilities, 179
News
as intelligence, 135
bad news, 136
classified news, 136
commercial facilities, 136
good news, 136
palatability, 136
planted news, 84
pre-action news, 232
private facilities, 136
procurement of, 137
sources, 136
Newspapers, 220
air-format newspapers, 207
airborne newspapers, 13
in American Revolution, 21
Nicolai, Col. Walther, 64
Nimitz, Adm. Chester W., 187
XIX Corps, 239
Normalcy, effects, 73
Normandy, 239
North Africa, 47, 202
North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 254
North Burma, 213, 226
North Korea, 263
Communist army of, 295
Northrop, F. S. C., 290
Norway, 13
Nostalgic black, 133
Nostalgic white, 134
Novelty materials, 207
_Oberkommando der Wehrmacht_, 82
Obscene black, 141
Oestrous black, 137
Oestrous gray, 138
Offensive propaganda, 46
Office of Censorship, 53
Office of Chief of PsyWar, 266, 304
Office of Facts and Figures, 91
Office of Intelligence, Information, and Cultural Affairs, 184
Office of Inter-American Affairs, 184
Office of Strategic Services, 93, 273, 297
in SWPA, 98
Office of War Information, 93, 269, 271, 297
organization, 178
outposts, 179
quarrels with OSS, 94
Okinawa, 239, 263
Operations, clandestine, 192
Operations Coordination Board, 275_ff_
functions and members, 276
Operations Division, GS, 94
Operations Research, 287ff
Operators
needs, 194
qualifications of, 99
Opinion
analysis, 110, 141
enemy opinion, 26
enemy opinion profile, 145
generalized opinion, 143
opinion groups, 143
sampling, 141
Order of battle, 192
Outer Mongolia, 168
Outpost Service Bureau, 182
Overclassification, 268
Overseas offices, 97
Overseas Operations Branch, 179
Overt act, 211
Overt propaganda, 44
Paine, Thomas, 23
Palestine, 38
Palmerston, Lord (Henry John Temple, 3d
Viscount), 297
Pamphlets, 208
Panmunjom, 261
Parachute News. See Rakkasan
Pareto, Vilfredo, 13
Parsons, Talcott, 3
Passierschein, 6
Pavlovian psychology, 26, 296
Pearl Harbor, 42
Peasant revolts, 20
Peck, Graham, 189
Percentage analyses, 145
Pershing's headquarters, 67-68
Persians, 8
Personnel limitations, 48
Persuasion, 25
Phase planning, 202
Philippines, 137, 185
Communist war in, 255
Philosophy in propaganda development, 289
Photo exhibit, 176
Pictures, prisoners, 238
PK units, 223
Plain-clothes troops, 164
Planning, 194
enemy plans and situations, 126
failure of West, 264
general plans, 199
in research and development, 287_ff_
pre-belligerent planning, 197
Point Four administration, 273
Poland, 13
Policy meetings, 97
Political Adviser, 187
Political background, 43
Political goals, 199
Political limitations, 48
Political officers, 159
Political warfare, 47
in Indochina, 260
Political Warfare Executive, 87
Politics, home-front, 49
Polly planes, 239
Polo, Marco, 14
Postal propaganda, 206
Poster propaganda, 111, 176
Pre-belligerent stages, 80
President's Committee on International Information Activities, 276
Press analysis, 112
Presses, military, 169
Price, Byron, 53
Printing, 111, 230
Prisoners of war, 36
propaganda value, 105
Private use of PsyWar techniques, 296-297
Problems, future tactical, 229
Projection in propaganda, 292
Promises, 52
Propaganda
analysis, 110, 128
analysis procedure, 126
choice in, 162
commitment, 50
conditions for effectiveness, 280
defensive propaganda, 46, 101
divisive propaganda, 46
history of, 3
organizations, national, 174
propaganda addict, 78
propaganda against propaganda, 100
purposefulness in, 40
re-use of, 102
in seven small wars, 265
Propaganda Branch, 182
Propaganda Man, 153, 200, 205-206
Propaganda Platoon, 303
Propaganda Section, AEF, 67
_Propagandakompanie_, 223
Propagandists as spokesmen, 281
Propanal. See Propaganda analysis
Proust, Marcel, 119
Prussia, 15
Psychological research in PsyWar, 292
Psychological Strategy Board, 271, 274, 276, 289
Psychological warfare
American agencies, 175
definitions, 37, 276-277
defensive, 216
in Intelligence (G2), 304
limitations, 48, 266
in Military Government, 302
Nazi PsyWar, 41
new establishment in Army, 266
organization for, 168
personnel, 99
in Plans and Operations (G3), 304
policy, dissension over, 270
tactical planning, 164
training, 304_ff_
Psychological Warfare Board, 304
Psychological Warfare Branch, 93, 187
Psychological Warfare Center, 304
Psychological Warfare Division, SHAEF, 187
Psychological Warfare Facility, 177
Psychological Warfare School, 304
Psychological Warfare Section, 301, 304-305
Psychological Warfare Staff in FEC, 304
Psychologist, role of, 26
Psychology, 25
new developments, 285
relation to propaganda, 291
Psychology Section, AEF, 67
Public Affairs, Assistant Secretary of State for, 269-270
Public Affairs Officer, 272
_Public Opinion Quarterly_, 110
Public relations, 33
Publications Platoon, 303
Pushtu, 37
Quakers, 17
Quality as opposed to quantity in PsyWar, 307
Quantification, 291
Quasi-private operations, 273_ff_
Quisling, Vidkun, 32, 157
Quislings, 88, 157
Quotations, falsified, 84
Radek, Karl, 79
Radio
American operations, 91
jamming, 159
materials, 113
short-wave, 203
standard wave relay, 203
support, 227
suppression, 114
tactical radio, 192
wired radio, 113
Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group, 301-302
Radio Free Asia, 273_ff_
Radio Free Europe, 273_ff_
Radio in the American Sector, 270
Radio Luxembourg, 56
Radio Malaya, 264
Radio Saipan, 45, 203
Radio Tokyo, 113
Radio war, 81
Raids, B-29, 237
_Rakkasan News_, 168, 220
RAND Corporation, 297
Ration cards, 209
_Reader's Digest_, 90
Readiness, national, 251
Rearrangements in U.S. Government, 269
Recognition and delay, 244_ff_
Recruiting of Anti-Communist forces, 265
Red Army, 113
Red scare, 72
Reformation, Wars of the, 10
Religious black, 124
Reproduction Company, 302
Requirements, guidance, 195
Research and Analysis Branch, 90
Reserve groups, use in PsyWar, 304
Responsibility of propagandists, 135
Reston, James, 273
Results of PsyWar, 307
Revision of U.S. laws, 298
Revolution and Development of International Relations Project, 297
Revolution as opposed to living, 277
Revolutionary propaganda, 46
"Rockefeller Office," 91
Rockets, 21
Roosevelt, Franklin D., 4, 168, 175, 225
Roper, Elmo, 290
Rowe, David, 111
Royall, Kenneth C., 269
"Rum, Romanism and Rebellion," 49
Rumors, Mongol, 15
Russian Army of Liberation, 88
Russian combat propaganda, 105, 165
Russian Revolution, 71
Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic, 273
Ryukyus. _See_ Okinawa
Sabine, G. H., 3
Saipan, 98
Salesmanship, 32
Samuel, Czar, 132
San Francisco, 203
OWI in, 55
radio facilities, 179
_San Kuo_, 8
Sargeant, Howland, 271
Saumaise, Claude de, 16
Scandinavia, 68
Schenke, Wolf, 81
Secret weapons, 129
Security
excessive security, 54
security liaison, 55
limitations, 48, 53
security officers, 53
procedures, 54
supervision, 55
unit security, 54
Selling, Lowell S., 27
Sex propaganda, 137
SHAEF, 176, 187, 212
Shans, 224
Shantung guerrillas, 204
Shells
artillery, 228
chemical warfare, 228
leaflet shells, 228
smoke shells, 228
Sherwood, Robert, 93, 178
Shonan, 8
Siam, 47, 186
_Sicherheitsdienst_, 85
Singapore, 8
Small wars, seven, 255
Smearing, 157
Smith, Bruce Lannes, 38
Smith, Nicol, 182
Smith, Walter Bedell, 274, 276
Social groups, 143
Social sciences in PsyWar, 290
Socialists, Russian, 70
Solbert, Gen. Oscar N., 94
Source, 44, 122
South-East Asia, 186
Southwest Pacific, 187, 213
Soviet-German front, 214
Soviet propaganda, 1941-45, 51
development of techniques, 294
Soviet PsyWar, 104
Soviet Union, 80
policies, 282
Spain, 31, 68, 280
Spanish Empire, 20
Special Study Group, 91
Specificity in propaganda, 147
"Stab in the back," 65
Staff functions, 191
Stalin, Joseph, 51
Stanford University, 297
Stanley, Lt. Col. John B., 97
STASM, formula, 43-44, 120
Stassen, Harold E., 276
State Department, 184
State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee, 175
Statistical propanal, 131
Stein, Gertrude, 119
_Sterber, Der_, 214
Stewart, James, 189
Stilwell, Gen. Joseph W., 189
Stoddard, Lothrop, 186
_Strafe_, 63
Strategic operations in international information, 268
Strategic plans, 201
Strategic propaganda, 45
Strategic propaganda unit, 301
Streibert, Theodore C., 276
Strengths of U.S. propaganda, 279_ff_
Subject, 124
Submarine operations, 186
Subversive material, black, 121
Subversive operations, 88, 209
Subversive operations units, 173
Sultan, Gen. Daniel I., 189
Sung Dynasty, 15
Sun-Tzu, 28
Sunyatsenism, 75
Supreme Commander for Allied Powers, 189, 270
Surprise attacks, 129
Surrender, 211
goal of PsyWar, 288-289
procedure, 230
surrender passes, 7
psychology of, 212
Switzerland, 68
Symeon, 132
Tactical Information Detachment, 301, 303
Tactical propaganda, 45
Tactical propaganda unit, 301
"Target" leaflet, 256
Tartars, 15
Tatars, 14
Taylor, Edmond, 17, 41
Taylor, George, 182
Technical Cooperation Administration, 273
Technical Manual, 241
Teilhet, Darwin, 182
_Temps, Le_, 38
Tension
causes, 285
in decision-making, 284
in war, 284_ff_
research on, 284_ff_
Terrain of propaganda, 150
Terror, strategy of, 41
Teutoburger Wald, 239
Theater Psychological Warfare, 187
Theater Psychological Warfare Officer, 187
Thompson, Dorothy, 273
Thomson, Col. Charles A. H., 39
Tibet, 168
Time, 123
_Time-Life-Fortune_, 90
Timeliness, 140
Timing, 1
Tito. _See_ Broz-Tito
Toilet training, 154
Tokugawa shoguns, 17
Total war and constitutional law, 42
Totalitarian parties, 78
Toynbee, Arnold J., 78
Traitors, 59
Troop indoctrination, 224
Trotzky, Leon, 71
Truth, 116
Turkish PsyWar, 17
Ukraine, 13, 88, 293_ff_
"Unconditional surrender" doctrine, 47, 103, 305
Unconscious mind, 26
Undercover organizations, 173
Underground Railway, 297
Understanding of the enemy, 292-294
Union of Socialist Soviet Republics, 292-293
United Nations Command in Korea, 305
United Service Organizations, 224
United States Information Agency, 269
Director of, 269, 271
United States Information Service, 269, 276
Use of all government activities in PsyWar, 275
Uses of PsyWar, 299
Utley, Freda, 257
Vegetius, 28
Venezia-Giulia, 184
Victory and defeat, alternatives to, 252
Victory, psychological, 194
Viereck, George S., 66
Viet Minh, 295
Viet Minh vs. Viet Nam, 260_ff_
Viet Nam, 185, 262
Vladimirtsov, B., 15
Vlassov, Gen. Andrei A., 88, 157
Voice of America, 271
Voice of the United Nations Command, 306
Voices, ghost, 84
Voices, amplified, 237
_Volk_, 32
_Vorwärts_, 38
_Vozhd_, 11
Vyshinsky, Andrei, 79
Wallace, Henry A., 87
Wang An-shih, 7
Wang Ching-wei, 157
Wang Mang, 5
War
as chronic state, 283
concepts of, 1
definition, 28
between dissimilar states, 283-284
force short of war, 1
between similar states, 283
War College, 77
War Department participation, 182
War Propaganda Bureau, 64
Warburg, James P., 52
"Warfare psychologically waged," 40-41, 79
Wartime skills, use of in peace, 297
Washburn, Abbott, 275
Washington, George, 157
Washington-theater liaison, 182
Watts, Richard, Jr., 189
Weapons
leaflet-discharging, 228
Mongol secret weapons, 14
Weber, Max, 3
Wedemeyer, Gen. Albert C., 257
West Germany, 282
White House assistant in charge of informational policies, 271
White propaganda, 44
Wieger, Leon, 7
William Jackson Report, 268, 275, 289
William of Orange, 18
Witchit Witchit Watakan, 186
Women, 207
Working-class revolution, 71
World revolution, 23
World War I, 62
_Yamato-damashii_, 32
Yenan, 106, 215
Yüan Shih-k'ai, 63
Zacharias, Adm. Ellis, 177, 204
Zilboorg, Gregory, 27
Zionist Organization, 38
ALSO BY PAUL M. A. LINEBARGER:
_The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen_
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1937)
_Government in Republican China_
(New York: McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1938)
_The China of Chiang Kai-shek_
(Boston: World Peace Foundation, 1941)
_A Syllabus of Psychological Warfare_
(Washington: War Department General Staff, 1946)
_Psychological Warfare in ROTC Senior Manual_
(Harrisburg: Military Service Publishing Company, 1948)
_Far Eastern Governments and Politics_
(with Djang Chu and Ardath Burks;
New York: D. Van Nostrand Company, 1954)
Transcriber's notes:
In the context of "the unprofessional guttersnipe Hitler was ruining the
wonderful German Army in amateurish campaigns" stood "raining" instead
of "ruining".
In the index, the reference for the entry "Indonesia, fighting in," was
changed from 257-258 to 257-259, and reference for the entry "Results of
PsyWar," from 327 to 307.
Markup in diagrams was not rendered in the transcription where it did not carry any meaning and
would have made reading difficult.
The list of other books by Paul M. A. Linebarger was moved from the
beginning of the book to its end.
End of Project Gutenberg's Psychological Warfare, by Paul M. A. Linebarger
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