Psychological Warfare in World War II
Bolshevik accomplishments in psychological warfare were often regarded
as part of the peculiar mischief of Marxism, not as techniques which
could be learned and used by other people. Similarly, the history-making
sweep of the Chinese Nationalist armies northward in 1922-1927 was
considered to be specially and incomprehensibly Chinese; possible
lessons which might have been learned from Chinese Communist
psychological warfare were left unheeded by officials and students in
the West. Meanwhile Germany, the greatest power of Europe, had been
fighting bitter internal psychological warfare battles[24] which looked
like heated internal politics. Not until Adolf Hitler assumed the
Reich's Chancellorship and began using his Brown-shirt methods for
foreign affairs did other people wake up to the existence and
application of the new weapon.
(The War College files, for example, show that not one single officer
was assigned full-time to study of these problems during 1925-1935. For
the entire period 1919-1929, there are listed only two War College
research papers on the subject. Yet the American Army was far from
negligent. It was an excellent army, though crippled by outright poverty
of personnel and materials. The Army was simply American, and like the
rest of America for a while took the world for granted.)
The National Socialist German Workers' Party, as Hitler called his
movement, was a conglomerate built up around a few determined fanatics.
The Nazis do not appear to have believed their own doctrines to anything
like the degree to which the Communists believed theirs. From the first,
the Nazis regarded propaganda very consciously as a new, fierce
instrument which led to the accomplishment of _modern_ power. The
Communists had proclaimed that democracy was a fake; the Nazis agreed.
The Communists had shown that a minority with a sacred mission of its
own invention could get mass support for a government that claimed to be
_for_ the people, even though it was obviously not by the people nor
_of_ them. The Nazis took this as a model. The Communists had shown that
a modern man-god could be set up and worshipped in a twentieth-century
state, and called leader (_Vozhd_ in Russian). The Nazis elevated the
Soviet practice all the way into a principle, the principle of the
leader (_Führer_ in German).
The Communists had shown that an organization calling itself a _party_,
actually a quasi-religious hierarchy with strong internal discipline,
definite membership, and active organizational components, could control
fifty times its own membership. The Nazis organized the same general
sort of party, copying the Italian Fascists in part, but copying more
from the direct example of the German Communists right in front of them.
The Communists had shown that such a movement needed to have youth
branches, women's organizations, labor sections, clubs of its own, and
so on, calling this "mass organization." The Nazis copied this too.
The machinery of Naziism was in many ways a copy of Communism, applied
to allegedly different ends, (the Nazis had an Aryan myth; the
Communists had their pseudo-economics). But the important thing about
them both was the destruction of the _end_ by the _means_; the problem
of getting and keeping power despite the people was so obsessive that
propaganda became all-important. Theoretically, the _end_ (to the Nazi,
German world rule; to the Communist, the fulfillment of history in
universal communism) was the most important thing. But since any means
at any time which led to that end was good, and since the Party bosses
were the sole ones who could determine whether a particular action led
to the very remote end or not, the outcome in both Russia and Germany
became the conscienceless seeking of power for its own sake.
The new psychological warfare, a cause as well as a means of World War
II, arose from the subjection of other considerations to _propaganda_.
The propaganda addict takes everything with a ton of salt; what he does
believe is lost in what he doesn't believe. The ordinary controls of
civilized life--regard for truth, regard for law, respect for neighbors,
obedience to good manners, love of God--cease to operate effectively,
because the propaganda-dizzy man sees in everything its propaganda
content and nothing else. Everything, from a girl dancing on a stage to
an ecclesiastic officiating in a cathedral, is either _for_ him or
_against_ him. Nothing is innocent; nothing is pleasurable; everything
is connected with his diseased apprehension of power. Before he gets
power, he hates the people who have power; he does not trust their
intelligence, esteem their personalities, believe in their good will, or
credit their motives.[25] They must be scum, because they hold power
when _he_, the propaganda-infatuated man, is a member of the group that
_should_ hold it. Yet when such a man comes to power he hates his
colleagues and comrades. Remembering the cold cynical way in which he
himself sought power, knowing that his brother fanatics have the same
ruthless arrogance, the propaganda-using Party man cannot trust anyone.
Blood purges, mass trials, liquidations, removal of families,
concealment of crimes--all these result from the establishment of
propaganda in an overdeveloped role.
It is against such people that we--ordinary folk, Americans--dared wage
psychological warfare during World War II. Propaganda had grown into
ideology; the world was convulsed with monstrous new religions. For
instance: the greatest journalist of the Soviet Union, Karl Radek, was
placed on trial for treason. He was asked by the prosecutor, Vyshinsky,
"These actions of yours were deliberate?"
Radek answered: "Apart from sleeping, I have never in my life committed
any undeliberate actions."[26]
This answer sums up the mood of the totalitarian who is obsessed by
propaganda. He comes to believe that all activity, whether his own or of
other people, has meaning. He had developed the sense of responsibility
that made him violate tenets which Americans, in a free society, regard
as fundamental to human nature: things like self-respect, kindliness,
love of family, pity for the unfortunate.
This kind of mentality was found chiefly in the National Socialist and
Communist states, and to a lesser degree in dictatorships such as Italy;
by contrast, reactionary Japan was almost democratic. This mentality
makes it possible for the ruler to control his own people enough to
undertake "warfare psychologically waged." Without domestic fanaticism
and domestic terror, governments have to fall back on "psychological
warfare"--that is, the mere supplementing of politics and military
operations by propaganda. It is vain to expect a free people in a free
country to submit to such humiliating control, even for the purpose of
winning a war. What made the psychological warfare of World War II
peculiar was the fact that our enemies fought one kind of war ("warfare
psychologically waged," or total war) and we fought them back with
another. Theoretically, it is possible to argue that we had no business
succeeding.
But we did succeed.
=The Pre-Belligerent Stages.= The propaganda-conscious Axis states had
first to control their own people enough to wage aggressive war. They
then had to split their possible enemies, to make piecemeal victory
possible. They had to stay on good terms with the Soviet Union (Hitler
till 1941; Japan till the last week of war). They had to frighten their
immediate enemies while assuring their eventual enemies. This called for
a great deal of propaganda.
Pre-belligerent operations required extensive use of "black" propaganda.
Since their political systems aroused hostility and anger in audiences
which they wished to address, the aggressors sought to disguise their
propaganda. They used pacifist groups to keep the democracies from
rearming. Militarist groups were encouraged to keep the democracies from
undertaking domestic reforms or discussing military matters with Russia.
Financial groups were contacted to preserve the fiction of normal
international relations. Cultural groups were employed to preserve
friendliness for their respective nationalities as such. The Japanese
did a little global propaganda and for a while subsidized several
magazines in this country, but in general they concentrated their main
effort in the immediate area of their military operations.
It was the Germans who developed world-wide pre-belligerent propaganda
to a fine art. They exploited every possible disunity which could
contribute to the weakness of an enemy. They were not choosy about
collaborators. If the Communist Party of the United States lent a hand
(as it did between September, 1939 and June, 1941, terming the war "an
imperialist war"; after Russia got in, the war was called "the
democratic anti-fascist war"), the Nazis did not object. They willingly
listened to men who had fantastic schemes for world peace and later used
such men as aids in getting appeasement. They tried to rouse Catholics
against Communists, Communists against democrats, Gentiles against Jews,
whites against negroes, the poor against the rich, the rich against the
poor, British against Americans, Americans against British--anyone
against anyone, as long as it delayed action against Germany and
weakened the enemy potential. They went to special pains to organize
German-speaking minorities in non-German countries, but they never
neglected using people who had no open connection with Naziism at all.
This work was performed, so far as the open propaganda itself was
concerned, through the instrumentalities of the Reich's Ministry for
Propaganda and Popular Enlightenment under control of that malignant
intelligence, Paul Josef Göbbels. The broader program was not solely a
publicity matter, and was operated chiefly through Party channels. The
German capacity to learn was demonstrated by the contrast between World
War I and World War II. In World War I the Germans lacked political
motifs, professionalism, and coordination; in World War II they had all
of these.
=German Accomplishments.= Three basic propaganda accomplishments were
achieved by the Germans. First, in the political warfare field, they
succeeded in making large sections of world opinion believe that the
world's future was a choice between Communism and Fascism. Since they
and the Communists agreed on this the point seemed well taken. Actually,
there is no historical or economic justification for supposing that
those two forms of dictatorship constitute a real choice in the first
place, or that the civilized and truly free countries need ever depart
from their ancient freedoms in the second place.
Second, in the strategic field, they made each victim seem the last.
There was still hope that war would not arise, even while the Spanish
Republic was being strangled before the eyes of the world. The British
hoped that they could stay out even after Czechoslovakia fell. Astute
though the Russians were, they hoped to stay out even after Britain and
France fought. And as late as December 6, 1941 many Americans still
believed that the United States would avoid war. This suited the Nazis'
book; take them on one at a time.
Thirdly, in the purely psychological field the Germans used outright
fright. They made their own people afraid of Communist liquidations.
They brazenly showed movies of their blitzkriegs to the governing groups
of prospective victims, just to lower morale. When one nation is really
ready to fight, and the other knows it, the nation that doesn't want to
fight can be reduced to something resembling a nervous breakdown by
constant uncertainty. (The author was in Chungking during the summer of
1940, when the German propaganda agent, Wolf Schenke, showed these
German movies to the Chinese leaders. The author asked for an invitation
and did not get it; it was for Chinese only, said Schenke. But the
Chinese were not awed, or made fearful of the power of Japan's ally.
They simply said, "Nice movie ... that's the kind of thing we used to do
in the Ch'in dynasty," and let it go at that.)
=The British-German Radio War.= With the outbreak of war the British and
Germans found radio at hand. Neither had to change broadcasting policies
a great deal. Each could reach almost all of Europe on standard-wave;
each could jam the other's wave lengths, never with complete success,
and the struggle centered around a contest for attention. Who could get
the most attention? Who could get the most credence? Who could affect
the beliefs, emotions, loyalties of friendly, neutral, and enemy
listeners the most?
[Illustration: _Figure 14: Radio Program Leaflet, Anzio, 1944._ These
leaflets were dropped by the Germans on American troops at Anzio in
April 1944. They show an interesting tie-in between two forms of
propaganda. The counterpropaganda to the British Broadcasting
Corporation is slight; chief emphasis is on entertainment value of the
German radio programs. (From photograph taken by Signal Corps and
released through War Department Bureau of Public Relations.)]
The Germans showed evidence of real planning. Their public relations
facilities were perfectly geared to their propaganda facilities. When
the Germans wanted to build the British up for a let-down, they withheld
military news favorable to themselves. During the fight for Norway, they
even spread rumors of British successes, knowing that if British morale
went up for a day or two, it would come down all the harder when
authentic bad news came through the War Office. When the Germans wanted
to turn on a war of nerves, their controlled press screamed against the
victim; when they turned it off their press was silent. The Germans thus
had the advantage of not needing to make much distinction between news,
publicity, and propaganda. All three served the same purpose, the
immediate needs of the Reich.
[Illustration: _Figure 15: Radio Leaflet Surrender Form, Anzio, 1944._
Willingness of prisoners to surrender sometimes involves speedy
communication of their names to their families, as in the preceding
illustrations. At other times, prisoners are very unwilling to be
identified and want their faces masked. This leaflet combines radio
program announcements with the standard surrender pass.]
The Germans put on the following types of news propaganda:
(1) Official OKW (_Oberkommando der Wehrmacht_, or _Wehrmacht_ HQ)
communiqués. (These rarely departed from the truth, though they
naturally gave favorable situations in detail and unfavorable ones
scantily.)
(2) Official government releases, marked by considerable dignity,
possessing more political content than the military communiqués.
(3) News of the world, part of it repeated from the British radio,
part plain non-controversial news (for stuffing), and part (the most
important part) news of genuine curiosity value to the listeners but
which, at the same time, had the propaganda effect of damaging belief
in the Allied cause.
(4) Feature items, comparable to feature articles in newspapers, which
tried to concentrate on a single topic or theme.
(5) Recognized commentators, speaking openly and officially.
(6) Pseudonymous commentators, pretending to speak from a viewpoint
different from that of the German Government, but who were announced
as being broadcast over the official German radio system. (Of these
the British traitor William Joyce, since hanged, known as "Lord Haw
Haw," was the most notorious. His colleagues were the American
traitors Fred Kaltenbach and Douglas Chandler. At the end of the war
Chandler was tried in Boston and sentenced to life imprisonment but
Kaltenbach fell into Soviet custody and died.)
(7) Falsified stations, which pretended to have nothing at all to do
with Germany. (The "New British Broadcasting Company" transmitted
defeatist propaganda with a superficial anti-German tone. Others took
a strong Communist line and sought to build up opposition to the
British government within England.)
(8) Falsified quotations on the official German radio. (Sometimes it
was easier to make up an imaginary foreign source, ostensibly quoted
in the German program, rather than to set up a special fake program
for the purpose.)
(9) "Planted" news sources quoted on the German radio. (A great deal
of the German news was culled out of Swedish, Spanish and other papers
which were either secretly German-controlled or which--as in the case
of the United States papers involved--were so sympathetic to Germany
that they voluntarily printed German-inspired news which the Nazis
could then quote from a "neutral" or "enemy" source.)
(10) Open falsification of BBC (British Broadcasting Company, the
official British agency) materials--at which the Germans were not
necessarily caught by their ordinary listeners, but at which BBC
caught them.
(11) Ghost voices and ghost programs, transmitted on legitimate Allied
wave lengths when the Allied transmitters went off the air, or else
interrupting the Allied broadcasts by transmitting simultaneously.
[Illustration: _Figure 16: Invitation to Treason._ Another German
leaflet, also from Anzio, combines the radio surrender-notice form with
a political invitation to Britishers to commit treason. The Germans had
a few British traitors in their "Legion of St. George," and a few
American civilian renegades, but in general this line of appeal was
useless. The last paragraph of the appeal is such naïve trickery that it
probably aroused suspicion in the minds of the men it was supposed to
persuade.]
Of all these, it was soon found that the communiqués and government
releases were the most important, although the bulk of the station time
had to be diversified with other types of program. The Germans and
British both found that radio was important as a starting point for
news. It was more valuable to have the press (as in England) or rumor
(as in Germany) pass along an item than it was to rely on the direct
listeners. Each side sought to make opinion analyses of the enemy; some
of the British studies were clever in technique. The radio propagandists
had to ask themselves _why_ they made propaganda. It is simple to make
mischief, spreading rumors or putting practical jokes into circulation.
Such antics do not necessarily advance a military-political cause.
Sustained psychological warfare required--as both British and German
radio soon found out--a deliberate calculation of the particular enemy
frame of mind to be cultivated over a long period of time. When radio
stations had to broadcast day after day whether anything happened or
not, it became difficult to continue to circulate news without faking it
and losing the confidence of enemy listeners.
On the German side, the German radio had the forced attention of the
entire world. As long as the Germans had the strategic initiative for
field warfare, they were in a position to make news scoops whenever it
suited them. The security policies of the Allies often gave the Germans
a monopoly of news on a given operation. There was never any danger that
the Germans were not listened in on; the danger the Nazi operators had
to worry about was disbelief. Hence the Germans tried to keep a moderate
tone in their news, tried to prepare between crises for the news that
would become sensational during crises.
The Germans soon learned a basic principle of war radio. They learned
not to permit radio to run ahead of their military capacities. At first,
when their spokesmen promised attainment of a given goal by a given
time, and the army failed to live up to the schedule, the British radio
picked up the unfulfilled promise and dangled it before the world as
proof that the Germans were weakening. The Germans thereupon effected
Army-radio liaison so that the radio people could promise only those
things which the army was reasonably sure of delivering. (When Allied
propaganda analysis woke up to this fact, it added one more source of
corroboratory intelligence to be checked. (See page 126.))
The British had their hands full getting news out in the languages of
the occupied countries. It was immensely difficult for them to follow
the politics of the underground. German counterespionage, under the
deadly _Sicherheitsdienst_, made it difficult to keep track of opinion
in the occupied countries. Work against Naziism depended on the temper
of the people; propaganda against collaborators had to distinguish
between outright evil collaborators and those public officials who
stayed on out of a sense of mistaken or necessary duty. The British did
not necessarily announce themselves at any time as anti-Communist, and
collaborated for short-range purposes with Communists all over the
Continent. Mr. Churchill himself shifted his North Balkan political
support from Mikhailovich to Broz-Tito. But it was vitally necessary to
know just how and when to change support from one group to the other.
Since the undergrounds had very few radio transmitters, and none of
these was reliable during most of the war, the British faced the task of
providing radio facilities for all of the occupied countries. The
consequence was to make their radio warfare highly sensitive to
politics; they had to address the right people with the right language
at the right time, on penalty of failure.
[Illustration: _Figure 17: Anti-Radio Leaflet._ Sometimes
ground-distributed leaflets were used in an attempt to counteract enemy
radio propaganda. This leaflet, circulated in France by the Nazis, uses
the form of an Allied leaflet and accuses the Armed SS of wanting such
things as a decent Europe, and end to atrocious killings every
twenty-five years, and a worthy life. Allied broadcasters are identified
as Jews.]
To effect this end, the British set up an agency which never had an
American counterpart, the Political Warfare Executive (known by its
initials, PWE). This agency had representation from the War Office, the
Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the Ministry of Information. The PWE
was the policy-servicing and coordinating agency for all British
external propaganda, and left the execution of its operations to the
Ministry of Information (MOI) and to the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). British radio propaganda maintained a high level of
effectiveness. American officials and propagandists often complained
that the British were running the entire war in their own national
interest. The charge was unjust. The British had facilities for knowing
exactly what they wished to do and when they wished to do it. If the
Americans came along without clear policies or propaganda purposes, it
was natural that the British should take the lead and let the Americans
string along if they wished. Furthermore, the British were usually
scrupulous in yielding to America's primary interest in areas they felt
to be American problems--Japan, China, the Philippines. They were least
cooperative when the OWI tried to spread the ideals of Mr. Henry Wallace
in Burma or to explain the CIO-PAC to the Hindus.
No clear victor emerged from the Anglo-German radio war; the victory of
the United Nations gave the British the last say. In the opinion of
many, the British were one war ahead of the United States. They had
profited by their World War I experience, and by their two years'
operational lead which they had on the Americans. But side-by-side with
the Germans, it is harder to appraise their net achievements. The
British had immense political advantages; the resentment of a conquered
continent worked for them. But they had disadvantages too. The enemy
worked from the starting point of a fanatical and revolutionary
philosophy; the British had the tedious old world to offer. The postwar
interrogations of civilians in Germany showed that an amazingly high
proportion of them had heard BBC broadcasts, and that many of the ideas
and attitudes which the British propagandized were actually transmitted
to the enemy. On the British side, it is almost impossible to find any
surviving traces of the effect of Nazi propaganda. Had the war been
purely a radio war this test might be conclusive. But if psychological
warfare supplements combat, combat certainly supplements propaganda. The
great British and American air raids over Europe unquestionably created
an intense interest in British and American plans and purposes.
It is historically interesting to note that the Germans went on fighting
psychological warfare even after the death of Hitler and the surrender
of the jury-rigged government of Grossadmiral Karl Doenitz, which
functioned 6-23 May 1945 at Flensburg under Allied toleration. This
resulted from the inability of the 21st Army Group swiftly to initiate
information control. The Flensburg radio, still under Nazi direction,
emphasized Anglo-American differences with the Soviet Union in every
possible way short of direct appeals. German naval radio also carried on
propaganda for a while, using topics such as the sportsmanship of the
German surrender, the hatred of the German Navy for atrocities committed
by the Nazis, and the usefulness of the phantom government to the
Western Allies.
=Black Propaganda.= Subversive operations formed a major part of the
Nazi pre-belligerent effort. The Germans planted or converted quislings
wherever they could, and when they failed to have time to prearrange
stooges they converted them rapidly after arrival. (A major cause of the
German defeat is to be found in the fantastic political policies
followed in the Ukraine and neighboring Soviet Socialist Republics. In
these areas, despite the Soviet boast that Russia had no fifth
columnists within her borders, the Germans found thousands of helpers.
The Nazis organized a large army (General Vlassov's Russian Army of
Liberation) out of Soviet prisoners, and these troops were usable and
docile. But in the political warfare field the Germans were too
cocksure. They let their men go wild in orgies of cruelty against the
local population; the economic system went entirely to pieces. The
natives then became convinced that the worst possible conditions of
Sovietism were infinitely better than the best that Naziism could
offer.)
These subversive groups were formed by political means. Propaganda aid
was offered to such an extent that it was often difficult to tell how
much of the quisling movement was spontaneously native, and how much
mere cover for a purely German operation.
In the latter phase of the European war, the Russian Communists followed
the German Nazi example of having tame natives ready to take over the
government of occupied areas. In Poland, the so-called Lublin Committee
took over the government from the constitutional Polish
Government-in-exile at London. In Jugoslavia, the Russian-trained
propagandist, Tito, seized the leadership from the recognized Minister
of War, Draja Mikhailovich, after the British and American governments
had shifted their support to him; later Mikhailovich was put to death.
The Russian army brought along to Germany a considerable number of
German Communists. In Czechoslovakia the strength of the constitutional
regime was such as to compel the pro-Russians to allow the prewar
leadership a precarious toehold in the new government. The same cadres
of sympathetic persons who had been useful as propaganda sources for
psychological warfare during the period of hostilities became useful
instruments of domination after hostilities ended. The British and
Americans, with their belief that government should spring from the
liberated and defeated peoples, did not prepare and equip comparable
groups to rival the Communist candidates; only in Italy and Greece did
the friends of the Western Allies stay in power, and then only because
they were the nearest equivalent of _de jure_ authorities. In the
Scandinavian and Low Countries the national leadership reemerged without
prodding or interference by the Western Allies; they passed from the
sphere of psychological warfare (that is, of being someone's cover) to
that of world politics.
Specific black propaganda operations were of considerable value.
However, black propaganda is more difficult to appraise than overt
propaganda. Analytical and historical studies, gauging the results
obtained by Black operations in relation to their cost, are not yet
available. (Certain particular operations are described later in this
book, pages 208 and 237.)
=American Operations: OWI and OSS.= Long after the outbreak of war in
the Far East, and even after the coming of full war in Europe, neither
the civilian nor military portions of the American government possessed
propaganda facilities. This is not as serious as it may sound, for the
United States is lucky in possessing a people well agreed on most
fundamentals. The commercial press, radio, magazine, and book publishing
facilities of the country for the most part expressed a national point
of view without being prodded. (The isolationist issue never brought in
the question of America's basic character.) Before the war, and even
after the government entered the field, private American news and
publishing continued to engage in operations which had the effect if
not the intention of propaganda. OWI at its most vigorous could scarcely
have reached the audience that had been built up by the
_Time-Life-Fortune_ group, not to mention the _Reader's Digest_, both of
which became truly global in coverage during the war years. American
movies already had a world-wide audience. The propaganda turned out
unwittingly by such agencies may not have had the gloss and political
smoothness of Dr. Paul Josef Göbbels best productions, but it had
something no government propaganda had--the possession of a readership
all of which was unmistakably voluntary, obtained by the appeal of
authentic interest and entertainment--and proved by an ability to charm
money out of people's pockets.
The American problem of propaganda was thus not a simple one. Total
psychological warfare was out of reach if we were to remain a free
people. Otherwise the simple-seeming thing to have done would have been
to put a government supervisor in every newspaper, radio station and
magazine in the country, and coordinate the whole bunch of them together
in the national interest. Simple-seeming. Actually, such an attempt
would have been utter madness, touching off a furious political fight
within the country and meeting legal obstacles which would have remained
insurmountable as long as there was a Constitution with courts to
enforce it. The simplest official action which the United States could
take was therefore hedged about by the presence of private competitors
who would watch it enviously, jealous of their established rights and
privileges, and by the operational interference which vigorous private
media would have on public media.
The then Mr. or Colonel, later General, William Donovan had tasted the
delights of political warfare when President Roosevelt sent him to
Belgrade to talk the Serbs into fighting instead of surrendering. He was
successful; the Serbs fought. He came back to the United States with a
practical knowledge of what political warfare could do if qualified
personnel operated on the spot. The outbreak of the Russo-German war
lent urgency to American action in the political-intelligence field as
well as in the propaganda field. On 11 July, 1941 President Roosevelt
issued an order appointing Colonel Donovan as Coordinator of
Information. The agency became known by the initials COI.[27]
The primary mission of COI was the collection of information and its
processing for immediate use. Large numbers of experts were brought into
its Research and Analysis Branch, designed to do for the United States
in weeks what the research facilities of the Germans and Japanese had
done for them over a matter of years. The inflow of material was
tremendous and the gearing of scholarship to the war effort produced
large quantities of political, sociological, geographic, economic and
other monographs, most of them carefully classified SECRET, even when
they were copied out of books in the Library of Congress. However, it
was not the research wing of the COI that entered the broadcasting
field.
Radio work was first done by an agency within COI called FIS--Foreign
Information Service. In the few months before Pearl Harbor the group
became organized in New York under the leadership of Robert Sherwood,
the dramatist, and got a start in supplying the radio companies with
material. The radio scripts were poorly checked; there was chaos in the
matter of policy; little policing was possible, and the output reflected
the enthusiasm of whatever individual happened to be near the
microphone. Colonel Donovan had moved into this work without written and
exclusive authorization from the White House; hence there followed a
lamentable interval of almost two years' internal struggle between
American agencies--a struggle not really settled until the summer of
1943, well into the second year of war. The occasion for struggle arose
from lack of uniform day-to-day propaganda policy and from an unclear
division of authority between the operating agencies. But the work was
done.
Radio operations had to be coordinated with strategy on the one hand and
foreign policy on the other, and we sought to develop methods for doing
this. It is significant that all the major difficulties of American
psychological warfare were administrative and not operational. There was
never any serious trouble about getting the facilities, the writers, the
translators, the telecommunications technicians. What caused trouble
were problems of personality and personal power, resulting chiefly from
the lack of any consensus on the method or organization of propaganda
administration.
Military Intelligence Division had created an extremely secret
psychological warfare office at about the time that the COI was
established; this had broad intelligence and policy functions, but no
operational facilities. It was headed by Lieutenant Colonel Percy Black,
who began auspiciously by putting Dr. Edwin Guthrie in office as his
senior psychological adviser. This ultra-quiet office was called Special
Study Group; it and the COI developed very loose cooperative relations,
consisting chiefly of SSG making suggestions to COI which COI might or
might not use as it saw fit. Meanwhile, the Rockefeller Office was
conducting independent broadcasts to Latin America; the Office of Facts
and Figures was dispensing domestic information; and at the height of
the psychological warfare campaigning, there were at least nine
unrelated agencies in Washington, all directly connected with
psychological warfare, and none actually subject to the control of any
of the others.[28]
[Illustration: _Chart I_
STATE-------WAR---------PRESIDENT--WHITE--OFFICE OF-NAVY--------OFFICE OF
DEPARTMENT DEPARTMENT | +--HOUSE ECONOMIC DEPARTMENT STRATEGIC
| | | | STAFF WARFARE | SERVICES
| | | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
| G2 I&E BPR | | |-------++---------+-+----------++
| +---+-----+ | | | | | |
| | | | | | | |
OFFICE OF EACH THEATER OFFICE OF----OTHER-----OTHER----INTER-ALLIED
COORDINATOR--------+| |+----WAR CABINET WAR FACILITIES
OF INTER- INFORMATION AGENCIES AGENCIES
AMERICAN--------+ +-----+ | +--+
AFFAIRS | | | |
| | | | |
SEMIOFFICIAL | | | +-----+
PRIVATE UNOFFICIAL COMMERCIAL COMMERCIAL ^ ^
AGENCIES---------AGENCIES RADIO (PRIVATE) | |
PUBLISHERS | |
| |
| |
ANYBODY
<--- WHO FELT
LIKE TRYING
(Source: The author's observations.)]
A year of wrangling produced the solution, after a Joint Psychological
Warfare Committee had been set up under the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and
had failed to fulfill an effective policy-supervising function. On 13
June, 1942 the President created the Office of War Information. This
agency was given control directly or indirectly over all domestic
propaganda, and over white propaganda abroad, except for the Western
Hemisphere, which remained under the Rockefeller Committee in the State
Department. The FIS was taken from the COI, and the COI took on the new
name of OSS--Office of Strategic Services--under which it retained three
major functions:
(1) continuation of scholastic and informal intelligence;
(2) black propaganda operations (given _explicit_ authority only in
March, 1943);
(3) subversive operations, in collaboration with regular military
authority.
The OWI was placed under Mr. Elmer Davis, a Rhodes scholar and novelist
who had become one of the nation's most popular radio commentators. The
FIS was perpetuated under the control of Mr. Robert Sherwood, who had a
most extraordinary coterie of odd personalities assisting him: Socialist
refugees, advertising men, psychologists, psychoanalysts (of both the
licensed and lay varieties), professional promoters, theatrical types,
German professors, a commercial attaché, young men just out of college,
oil executives, and popular authors (novelists, slick writers, Pulitzer
winners, pulp writers, humorists, poets and a professional pro-Japanese
writer, fresh off the Imperial Japanese Embassy payroll).
The War Department agency, under the Military Intelligence Service of
G-2, had been renamed Psychological Warfare Branch and had executed
within the G-2 structure the equivalent of a knight's move in chess,
ending up at a new place on the TO with no observable change in function
or authority; it had passed under the authority of Colonel (later
Brigadier General) Oscar Solbert, a West Pointer with wide international
and business experience; he had been out of the Army as a top official
with Eastman Kodak, after a cosmopolitan army career which sent him all
over Europe and gave him one tour of duty as a White House aide. With
the establishment of OWI, Colonel Solbert's office fissiparated like an
amoeba; the civilian half of Psychological Warfare Branch, with a few
officers, went over to OWI to be a brain-trust for the foreign broadcast
experts, who failed to welcome this accession of talent; the military
half remained as an MIS agency until 31 December, 1943, when OWI
abolished its half and MIS cooperated by wiping out the other, leaving
the War Department in the middle of a war with no official psychological
warfare agency whatever, merely some liaison officers. Psychological
warfare became the responsibility of designated individual officers in
OPD--(the Operations Division of the General Staff), an outfit
celebrated for conscientious overwork, as well as in MIS and the War
Department got along very nicely. Meanwhile OWI and OSS fought one of
the many battles of Washington, each seeking control of foreign
propaganda. The D.C. and Manhattan newspapers ran columns on this fight,
along with news of the fighting in Russia, Libya, and the Pacific. For
one glorious moment of OSS, it seemed that the President had signed over
all foreign propaganda functions conducted outside the United States to
OSS, cutting the OWI out of everything except its New York and San
Francisco transmitters; the OWI was stricken with gloom and collective
indigestion. The next day, the mistake was rectified, and OWI
triumphantly planned raids on the jurisdiction of OSS. Meanwhile, the
following things were happening:
Highly classified plans for psychological warfare were being drafted for
both the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff. These were discussed at
various meetings and then classified a little higher, whereupon they
were locked up, lest the propaganda writers and broadcasters see them
and break security on them by obeying and applying them.
Broadcasts--thousands of words in dozens of languages--were transmitted
to everyone on earth. They were written by persons who had little if any
contact with Federal policy, and none with the military establishment,
except for formal security. The plans at the top bore no observable
relation to the operations at the bottom.
[Illustration: _Chart II_
PRE-O.W.I. ORGANIZATION O.W.I. ORGANIZATION
+------------+ +------------+
| | | |
| PRESIDENT | | PRESIDENT |
| | | |
+----+-------+ +--------+---+
| |
| +------------+ |
| | OFFICE OF |\ |
+--+ FACTS AND | |
| | FIGURES | \ |
| +------------+ |
| \ |
| +------------+ +-------------+ |
| | OFFICE OF | \_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ >| OFFICE OF +--+
+--+ GOVERNMENT |- - - - - - - - - - - - - ->| WAR | |
| | REPORTS | _ _ _ _ _ >| INFORMATION |<x+-x-+
| +------------+ / +-------------+ | |
| ^ | x
| +------------+ / _ _ | | |
| | COORDINATOR| / | x
+--+ OF | / | |
| | INFORMATION| / | x
| +----------+-+ / | |
| | / | x
| +----+-------+ / | |
| | FOREIGN | / COORDINATION} | x
| | INFORMATION|/ REVIEW }----+-->|
| | ACTIVITIES | / CLEARANCE } | x
| +------------+ | |
| / | x
| +-------------+ | |
| | DIVISION OF | / | x
| | INFORMATION | | |
+--+ OF OFFICE | / | x
| |FOR EMERGENCY| | |
| | MANAGEMENT | / | x
| +-+---------+-+ | |
| | | / +-------------+ | x
| | +-----+-----+ | CONSTITUENT +--+ |
| | | GENERAL |_/ | AGENCIES OF | | x
| | |INFORMATION| | O.E.M. |x-+x--+
| | | ACTIVITIES| +--+----------+ | x
| | +-----------+ | | |
| | | | x
| | +-----------+ +-----+-------+ | |
| | |INFORMATION| | INFORMATION | | x
| +---+ SERVICES +- - - - - - - - - ->| DIVISIONS | | |
| | FOR O.E.M.| +-------------+ | x
| | AGENCIES | | |
| +-----------+ | x
| | |
| +--------------+ +--------------+ | x
| |COORDINATOR OF| |COORDINATOR OF| | |
+--+INTER-AMERICAN| |INTER-AMERICAN+--+ x
| | AFFAIRS | | AFFAIRS | | |
| +-----------+--+ +--+-----------+ | x
| | | | |
| +-----+------+ +-----+------+ | x
| | INFORMATION| | INFORMATION| | |
| | ACTIVITIES | | ACTIVITIES | | x
| +------------+ +------------+ | |
| | x
| +--------------+ +--------------+ | |
+--+ DEPARTMENTS | | DEPARTMENTS +--+ x
| AND AGENCIES | | AND AGENCIES +x--x--+
+-----------+--+ +---+----------+
| |
+-----+------+ +------+-----+
| INFORMATION| | INFORMATION|
| DIVISIONS | | DIVISIONS |
+------------+ +------------+
Does not include the functions of voluntary censorship of mass media and
of censorship of international communications between civilians which
were performed by the Office of Censorship after December 1941.
(Source: Bureau of the Budget: _The United States at War_, Washington,
1947, p. 225.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 18: Anti-Exhibit Leaflet._ In the China Theater,
we heard that the Japanese had organized a big exhibit in Canton,
showing the starved and apathetic population some pieces of shot-down
planes as demonstration of defeat of American air power. We made up this
leaflet quickly, and dropped it on the city while the exhibit was still
in progress. (China, 1944.)]
When Washington agencies wanted to find out what the broadcasts really
were saying, the actual working offices at New York and San Francisco,
their feelings hurt at not having been consulted by the Joint Chiefs,
refused (on _their_ security ground) to let anyone see a word of what
they were sending out. This baffled other Washington agencies a great
deal. (The author, who was then detailed from the War Department to OWI,
outflanked this move in one instance by getting a report on a San
Francisco Japanese Broadcast from the Navy Department. It had been
monitored by an American submarine out in the Pacific.)
Large overseas offices were set up at various foreign locations. Some of
these went down to work quickly, efficiently, smoothly, and did a
first-class job of presenting wartime America to foreign peoples;
others, with the frailties of jerry-built government agencies, lapsed
into inefficiency, wild goose chases, or internal quarrels.
Lastly, the poor British officials continued to wander around
Washington, looking for their American opposite numbers in the
propaganda field--looking for one and always finding a dozen.
That was in 1942-1943.
By 1945, this had all become transformed into a large, well run, well
integrated organization. Three weeks before Japan fell, the OWI finally
prepared an official index of its propaganda "Directives"--that, is, of
the official statement of what kinds of propaganda to make, what kinds
not to make. The overseas units had been associated with the
metropolitan short-wave. Personnel had been disciplined. Techniques had
become more precise. Under the command of Lieutenant Commander Alexander
Leighton, an M.D. who was also a psychiatrist and anthropologist,
careful techniques were devised for the analysis of Japanese and German
morale. Comparable though dissimilar work on Europe had been done by a
staff associated with Harold Lasswell. The propaganda expert Leonard W.
Doob had been appointed controlling and certifying officer for every
single order of importance.
The military relationship had been clarified. The War Department, acting
through G-2, had reestablished a psychological warfare office under the
new name of Propaganda Branch, under the successive commands of
Lieutenant Colonel John B. Stanley, Lieutenant Colonel Bruce Buttles,
and Colonel Dana W. Johnston. The new branch undertook no operations
whatever, but connected War Department with OWI and OSS for policy and
liaison, and represented one-half of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (an
appropriate naval officer from a comparable office representing the
other half) at the weekly policy meetings of OWI. Military needs in
psychological warfare had been settled by regarding the Theaters in this
respect as autonomous, and leaving to the respective Theater Commanders
the definition of their relationships with OWI and OSS, and their use of
each. OSS and OWI had passed the stage of rival growth, and consulted
one another enough to prevent operational interference. Each had
sufficient military or naval supervision to prevent interference with
cryptographic security, communication and deception operations.
=The Lessons.= The major job of psychological warfare passed to the
Theaters. In some theaters this was kept by the commander directly under
his own immediate supervision, and OWI was used simply as a propaganda
service of supply. In others, OWI was an almost independent agent. In
some places, OWI worked with OSS as in the European Theater, in others
independently, as in the China-Burma-India Theater. In one, it worked
completely without OSS (SWPA), since General MacArthur did not let OSS
into his Theater at all. (OSS got in the general area anyhow; with Navy
permission, it turned up blithely, highly nautical on Saipan.) These
Theater establishments were the ones that set up local standard-wave
programs which the enemy could hear in volume. They provided the
loudspeaker units which were taken right into combat. They serviced the
ground and air combat echelons with leaflets as needed. They moved along
behind the advances, opening up information booths and explaining to
liberated natives why each did not get the four freedoms, the three
meals a day, and the new pair of shoes he thought he had been promised
by the American radio.
These military establishments are better described under operations,
since it was their functioning which defined--down to the limit of
present-day experience--American military doctrine concerning the
conduct of psychological warfare in theaters of war. In concluding the
historical summary of psychological warfare, it is interesting to look
at three major points which emerge plainly from the experience of World
War II--points which either were not discovered in World War I, or else
failed to make an impact on the minds of the responsible officials and
informed citizens.
The first of these is simple. It became almost a litany with Colonel
Oscar Solbert, when he sought to indoctrinate civilian geniuses with
military proprieties: _Psychological warfare is a function of command._
If command chooses to exercise it, it will succeed. If command neglects
it, or if it is operated independently of military command, it will
either interfere with the conduct of war proper, or it will be wasted.
It took us two bitter years to learn this lesson. Political warfare
cannot be waged without direct access to the White House and the
Department of State; field operations cannot be conducted unless they
meet at some common staff point with field command. No one can succeed
in improvising alleged policy and presenting that policy as United
States policy, and get away with it. Sooner or later actual policy
catches up with him. In the field, no civilian can write leaflets for
air or ground distribution unless he has some idea of when, where, why,
and how they will be used.
The second lesson of World War II, set forth by Colonel Solbert and Dr.
Edwin Guthrie was simply this: _Atrocity propaganda begets atrocity._
Everyone knows that war is cruel, sad, shameful to the soul of man;
everyone knows that it hurts, degrades, injures the human body; everyone
knows that it is not pleasant to undergo, nor even to look at. If any
particular war is worth fighting, it is worth fighting for some reason
other than the crazily obvious one--the fact that it is already war. It
is a poor statesman or general who cannot give his troops and people an
inspiring statement of their own side in war. Atrocity propaganda reacts
against war in general; meanwhile, it goads the enemy into committing
more atrocities. The anti-atrocity rule was not lifted in World War II
(save for one or two notable exceptions, such as President Roosevelt's
delayed announcement of the Japanese having executed the Doolittle
flyers) except for the specific purpose of preventing some atrocity that
seemed about to occur in a known situation from actually occurring.
Atrocity propaganda heats up the imagination of troops, makes them more
liable to nervous or psychoneurotic strain. It increases the chances of
one's own side committing atrocities in revenge for the ones alleged or
reported. Furthermore, atrocity propaganda scares the enemy out of
surrendering, and gives the enemy command an easier responsibility in
persuading their troops to fight with last-ditch desperation.
The third lesson was equally simple: _America does not normally produce
psychological warfare personnel in peacetime, and if such personnel are
to be needed again, they will have to be trained especially and in
advance._
=Qualifications for Psychological Warfare.= Effective psychological
warfare requires the combination of four skills in a single individual:
(1) An effective working knowledge of U.S. government administration
and policy, so that the purposes and plans of the government may be
correctly interpreted.
(2) An effective knowledge of correct military and naval procedure and
of staff operations, together with enough understanding of the arts of
warfare, whether naval or military, to adjust propaganda utterance to
military situations and to practical propaganda operations in forms
which will dovetail.
(3) Professional knowledge of the media of information, or of at
least one of them (book-publishing, magazines, newspapers, radio,
advertising in its various branches), or of some closely related field
(practical political canvassing, visual or adult education, etc.).
(4) Intimate, professional-level understanding of a given area (Italy,
Japan, New Guinea, Kwangtung, Algeria), based on first-hand
acquaintance, knowledge of the language, traditions, history,
practical politics, and customs.
On top of these, there may be a possible fifth skill to make the
individual perfect:
(5) Professional scientific understanding of psychology, anthropology,
sociology, history, political science, or a comparable field.
The man who steps up and says that he meets all five of these
qualifications is a liar, a genius, or both.
There is no perfect psychological warrior.
However--and the qualification is important--each psychological warfare
team represents a composite of these skills. Some members have two or
three to start with, the others virtually none. But all of the
personnel, except for men with peculiarly specialized jobs (ordnance
experts; cryptographers; translators; calligraphers), end up with a
professionalism that blends these together. They may not meet
professional standards as
officials-officers-journalists-Japanologists-psychoanalysts when they
return from psychological warfare operations against the Japanese, but
they have met men who are one or more of these, and have picked up the
rudiments of each skill--enough, at least, to suspect what they do not
know.
The advertising man or newspaperman (skill 3) who goes into
psychological warfare must learn something of the enemy, neutral or
friendly groups whom he addresses (skill 4), something of United States
civilian government procedures (skill 1), something of military or naval
organization and operations (skill 2) and ideally something of
psychology or sociology or economics, depending on the topic of his work
(skill 5).
[Illustration: _Figure 19: Propaganda Against Propaganda._ As an
occasional stunt, propaganda is directed against propaganda. Hitler did
so in his book, _Mein Kampf_. The leaflet, shown in the original and in
facsimile, was used by the Allies on the Germans in the West. A German
leaflet, addressed to their own troops ("defensive propaganda"), was
picked up, X'd out, copied, and refuted.]
The psychological soldier deals with enemy troops in their _civilian_
capacity; he addresses them as _men_, he appeals to their non-military
characteristics in most instances, and he does not follow sportsmanship,
as men did in other wars, by helping the enemy command maintain
discipline. Furthermore, the soldier works with writers, illustrators,
translators, script-writers, announcers and others whose skills are
primarily civilian, and he takes his policy cues from the civilian
authority at the top of the war effort. An infantry colonel does not
have to worry about what the Secretary of State is saying, if the
colonel is on the field of battle. But an officer detailed to
psychological warfare must remain attuned to civilian life even if he
has seen no one out of khaki for two months straight.
Personnel was probably the biggest field problem of the entire war.
Should psychological warfare be needed again, it will take careful
culling of personnel to obtain the necessary staff and operators. The
continuation of psychological warfare techniques, in part at least, by
both civilian and military agencies in time of peace will, it may be
hoped, provide the U.S. with a cadre for the next time. Very little of
the living experience of the Creel Committee was carried over into OWI.
Walter Lippmann, who had worked with both Creel and Blankenhorn, was not
a participant. Carl Crow, the advertising man and writer from Shanghai,
worked on China for the Creel Committee in World War I and on China
again for OWI in World War II. He was exceptional, and took no major
part in setting up indoctrination. One of the OWI executives in 1946,
shortly after his return to civilian life, read James Mock and Cedric
Larson's account of the Creel Committee, _Words That Won the War_
(Princeton, 1939); his interest was avid. When he finished, he said,
"Good Lord, those people made the same mistakes we made!"
He had forgotten that the Creel Committee record had been available all
the way through.
=Effects of American Operations.= The net effects of the work of
civilian-operated propaganda are hard to appraise because the radio
broadcasts and leaflets for civilians were designed to have a long-range
effect on the enemy. Statistical computations come to nothing. It would
appear likely that some parts of our psychological warfare actually
lengthened the war and made it more difficult to win. The "unconditional
surrender" formula, the publicity given to proposals for the
pastoralization of Germany, the emphasis on Japanese savagery with its
implied threat of counter-savagery were not overlooked by the enemy
authorities. It is certain that other parts of our psychological warfare
speeded up the end of the war, saved lives, increased the war effort
which was enormous when measured in terms of the expenditure of
manpower, matériel and time involved.
[Illustration: _Figure 20: Re-Use of Enemy Propaganda._ Leaflets
sometimes develop an enemy pictorial or slogan theme and use it
effectively against the original disseminators. Employing the colors and
insignia of the U.S. Air Force, this Nazi leaflet for Frenchmen makes no
attempt to minimize American bombing to the French. Instead, it uses the
Allied heading, "The hour of liberation will ring...." Then it adds the
grim point, "Make your will, make your will."]
One operation alone probably repaid the entire cost of OWI throughout
the war. The Japanese offered to surrender, but with conditions. We
responded, rejecting the conditions. The Japanese government pondered
its reply, but while it pondered, B-29s carried leaflets to all parts of
Japan, giving the text of the Japanese official offer to surrender. This
act alone would have made it almost impossibly difficult for the
Japanese government to whip its people back into frenzy for suicidal
prolongation of war. The Japanese texts were checked between Washington
and Hawaii by radiophotograph and cryptotelephone; the plates were put
into the presses at Saipan; the big planes took off, leaflets properly
loaded in the right kind of leaflet bombs. It took Americans three and a
half years to reach that point, but we reached it. Nowhere else in
history can there be found an instance of so many people being given so
decisive a message, all at the same time, at the very dead-point between
war and peace.
The Japanese had done their best against us, but their best was not
enough. We got in the last word, and made sure it was the last.
=Soviet Experience.= Soviet psychological warfare used Communist party
facilities during World War II, turning them on and off as needed. But
Soviet psychological war efforts were not characterized by blind
reliance on past experience. They showed a very real inventiveness, and
the political policies behind them were both far-sighted and
far-reaching.
The Soviet government was the one government in the world which could be
even more totalitarian than Nazi Germany. Many Americans may consider
this a moral disadvantage, but in psychological warfare it has very
heavy compensating advantages. The Soviet people were propaganda-conscious
to an intense degree, but the authorities took no chances. Revolutionary
Communist themes were brilliantly intermingled with patriotic Russian
items. Army officers were given extraordinary privileges. Everyone was
given epaulettes. The Communist revolutionary song, the famous
_Internationale_, was discarded in favor of a new Soviet hymn. History
was rewritten. The Czars were honored again. The Church was asked to
pray for victory. The Soviet officials were able to tailor their social
system to fit the propaganda. They did so, even to the name of the war.
They call it the Great Patriotic War. Outsiders may murmur, "What war
is not?" But the Russian people liked it, and the regime used
traditionalism and nationalism to cinch Communism in the Soviet Union.
In their combat propaganda the Russians were equally ruthless and
realistic. They appealed to the memory of Frederick the Great of
Prussia, they reminded the Germans of Bismarck's warning not to commit
their forces in the East, they appealed to the German Junker caste
against the unprofessional Nazi scum who were ruining the German army,
and they used every propaganda trick that had ever been heard of. They
turned prisoners into a real military asset by employing them in
propaganda, and talked a whole staff of Nazi generals into the Free
Germany movement.
Only in radio did the Russians retain some of their old revolutionary
fire with its irritating qualities for non-Communist peoples. This was
explicable in terms of the audience. The Russians could keep their
domestic propaganda half-secret by imposing a censorship ban on those
parts of it, or those comments on it, which they did not wish known to
Communists abroad. The censorship was a permanent institution, in war
and out, and therefore did not impose special difficulty. They could
keep their front-line propaganda quiet, since they did not allow their
Allies to send military observers up front, and the Nazis could be
counted on not to tell the world about effective anti-Nazi propaganda.
But their radio propaganda had to be audible to everyone. Hence the
radio propaganda was the least ingenious in using reactionary themes
effectively. The Russians and Germans both used black radio, but since
each policed the home audience rigorously against the other, it is
possible that the efforts cancelled out.
=Japanese Developments.= The Japanese invented little in psychological
warfare. They made excellent and judicious use of news to the American
audience. They actually got much more official Japanese news into the
American press during the war years than they had succeeded in placing
during peacetime, when they had offices in American cities. They did so
by maintaining the regular Domei news service in English-language Morse
wireless for the American press, ready-edited for the newspaper offices.
They put by-lines on the stories and it is said they sometimes even told
the American newspapers: "Please hold until nine AM Eastern War Time.
Thank You. Domei." In dealing with Asiatic audiences, special Japanese
_butai_ did a great deal of black propaganda along with subversive
operations, but they displayed little initiative as to the use of basic
techniques. Their chief merits were industry, patience, and the delivery
of a first-class news service.
=Chinese Uses.= The Chinese Communist forces broke all records for
certain specialized aspects of combat propaganda. Japanese prisoners
were given cordial welcome, better food than they had in the Army, the
company of maidens, rich gifts, and political indoctrination about the
freedom of Japan. These soldiers then went with the Chinese Communists
back to the front lines and talked Japanese sentries out of their
strong-points. The Yenan forces went to great pains with this
propaganda, and even "elected" a Japanese prisoner to the City Council
of Yenan. The author talked with the Political Director of the Chinese
Communist authority at Yenan, and with some of the Japanese in Communist
China. There was evidence of a real understanding of the problems of the
Japanese common soldier, and of real sympathy with him, which the
Japanese enlisted men were quick to feel. The Communists went so far as
to throw gift packages into the Japanese lines--not booby-traps, just
nice gifts with the polite request for a reply. They learned the names
of Japanese field telephone operators, and then spliced into the line
and argued politics with them in a rough and jolly way. When they had
enough prisoners they kept the most promising converts for political
training. They fed the ordinary prisoners well, entertained them
royally, and sent them back to their own lines with the suggestion that
the Chinese Communists would appreciate it if their good Japanese
brethren would in combat please shoot their rifles in the air, thus
making sure of not hitting Communists while at the same time avoiding
unnecessary trouble with the Japanese officers.
Under "Chiang the Chairman," the Chinese national government waged a
dignified, humane kind of psychological warfare against Japan. Few
people remember an odd chapter out of modern history, the Chinese
bombardment of Nagasaki, although it is possible that Asiatic historians
of the future will make a substantial contrast between the Chinese who
struck the first blow at that city and the Americans who struck the
last. Shortly after the outbreak of the full quasi-war between China and
Japan in 1937, the Generalissimo ordered his bombers to attack Japan.
American-built Chinese bombers appeared over Kyushu, the first invaders
to show up since the shoguns repelled Kublai Khan 656 years earlier. But
instead of dropping bombs, they dropped leaflets denouncing aggression
and inferentially pointing out that while the Japanese were uncivilized
enough to bomb their fellow-Asiatics, the Chinese were too civilized to
undertake reprisals in kind.
The Generalissimo's troops also had fraternization and front-line
propaganda, but not to the extent to which the Chinese Communists did.
The Generalissimo himself followed a very liberal (not in the Leftist
but the true sense) political line toward Japan. He uttered no threat
of vengeance. He was the first leader of a great nation to say that the
Japanese Emperor question was to be settled by letting the Japanese
themselves choose their own form of government after the war was all
over. He had Japanese on his political staffs--democratic persons whom
his officials encouraged--and regular Japanese broadcasts were kept up
throughout the war on the Chungking radio.
PART TWO
ANALYSIS, INTELLIGENCE, AND ESTIMATE OF THE SITUATION