Psychological Warfare
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Title: Psychological Warfare
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK PSYCHOLOGICAL WARFARE ***
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 c
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