Propaganda Analysis
Opinion analysis pertains to what people think; propaganda analysis
deals with what somebody is trying to make them think. Each form of
analysis is a new and flourishing field in civilian social research; the
bibliographies of Smith, Lasswell and Casey, and the current reviews in
the _Public Opinion Quarterly_[29] demonstrate the existence of a large
and growing literature on the subject. Each year, new textbooks in the
field or current revisions of old ones can be counted on to bring
scholastic and scientific findings up to date.
Technical writings on visual education, religious conversion, labor
organization, practical politics, revolutionary agitation, and on
commercial advertising have frequent bearing on propaganda analysis.
Propaganda cannot be analyzed in a logical vacuum. Every step in the
operation is intensely practical. There is nothing timeless about it,
other than that common sense which is based on the nature of man. The
ancient Chinese three-character classic, from which several billion
Chinese have tried to learn to read, says:
_Jên chih ch'u
Hsing pên shan;
Hsing hsiang chin,
Hsi hsiang yüan._
Freely translated, this means, "When people are born, they all start
_good_, but even though they all start out about the same, you ought to
see them after they have had time to become different from one another
by picking up habits here and there!"[30] The common nature of man may
be at the basis of all propaganda and politics, but incentives to action
are found in the stimuli of varied everyday environments. Certain very
elementary appeals can be made _almost_ without reference to the
personal everyday background ("cultural-historical milieu") of the
person addressed. Yet in a matter as simple as staying alive or not
staying alive--in which it might be supposed that all human beings would
have the same basic response--the difference between Japanese and
Americans was found to be basic when it came to surrender. To Japanese
soldiers, the verbal distinction between _surrender_ and _cease
honorable resistance_ was as important as the difference between life
and death. The Japanese would not survive at the cost of their honor,
but if their honor were satisfied, they willingly gave up.
Propaganda is directed to the subtle niceties of thought by which people
maintain their personal orientation in an unstable interpersonal world.
Propaganda must use the language of the mother, the schoolteacher, the
lover, the bully, the policeman, the actor, the ecclesiastic, the buddy,
the newspaperman, all of them in turn. And propaganda analysis, in
weighing and evaluating propaganda, must be even more discriminating in
determining whether the propaganda is apt to hit its mark or not.
=Monitoring.= The first requisite of propaganda analysis is materials to
be analyzed. In time of peace, it is usually enough to send a
subscription to the newspaper, magazine, or pamphlet series, and to buy
the books as they come out. Poster propaganda is more difficult to
obtain, and frequently requires on-the-spot contacts. Dr. David Rowe
brought back from Occupied China, in the early days of the Sino-Japanese
war, a spectacularly well done and interesting series of Japanese and
quisling posters. They were not hard to come by, once he was there, but
he had to go about twenty thousand miles to get them and return.
In obtaining printed propaganda, better results will be achieved if the
same sources are followed consistently over a period of time than if one
triumphant raid is carried through. The choice may look like this (_see
Chart III_). If, in this instance the propaganda analysis is to be a
one-man enterprise in a small country or area in time of peace, the one
man can collect all the different kinds of samples in March and can then
spend several months trying to see how they add up. By the time his
analysis is ready, it will be badly dated and will necessarily be less
interesting to the recipients than would a report which was
up-to-the-week. Furthermore, unless the analyst knows the area very well
indeed, he will risk mistaking transient issues for basic ones. If the
Old Agrarians happen to be accused of Right Wing Deviationism during the
week of 3-10 March, the analyst may falsely conclude that the Old
Agrarian issue is tempestuous or profound.
Unless he has a large staff, faces a special crisis or pursues a
scholarly purpose, the analyst does well to pick the alternative
illustrated in the vertical column. He should pick his media carefully,
accepting the advice of people who know the area intimately. In an
opinion-controlled area, it is wise to take both a direct government
propaganda paper and an opposition of semi-independent paper, if such
exist. Local papers are often better guides to domestic propaganda than
are big metropolitan papers. The propagandists of the country know that
foreigners may watch the big papers, and they will reserve their most
vicious, naïve, or bigoted appeals for the local press.
[Illustration: _Chart III._
JANUARY I
FEBRUARY H I
MARCH B C D E G H I J K L
APRIL A B C D E F G H I J K L
MAY A B C D E F G H I J K L
JUNE B C D E G H I J K L
JULY H I J
AUGUST I
Key to Chart:
A POSTERS
B ADVERTISEMENTS
C CITY DAILY PAPERS
D LOCAL DAILY PAPERS
E WEEKLY PAPERS
F MAGAZINES
G SPECIAL JOURNALS
H GOVERNMENT RELEASES
I MOTION PICTURE ANNOUNCEMENTS
J REPORTS OF SPEECHES
K RADIO PROGRAMS
L OTHER MEDIA
]
Along with the local press of one or two selected localities, the
analyst should select several government personages and should follow
every word of theirs he can find. The basic principle is for the analyst
himself to determine the range of materials to be covered by deciding
his own work-load in advance. This in turn depends on the time he has
available for the task, his mastery of the language, his interest in the
projects, probable interruptions due to semiofficial elbow-bending, and
other personal factors.
The rule remains: _Consistent analysis of the same output with reference
to basic topics over a sustained period will inevitably reveal the
propaganda intention of the source._ (It must be pointed out that the
expert analyst still is needed to select topics and to confirm
interpretations.) To make a first guess as to whether the intended
effect is being achieved or not, the analyst uses himself as a
propaganda guinea pig. What does he think of the issues? What might he
have thought otherwise? What would he think if he were a little less
intelligent, a little more uncritical, than he is? And to complete the
analysis, the analyst must go out to the audience that receives the
materials and find out what effect the propaganda has had by asking them
about it (see interrogation, page 145).
=Printed Materials.= The most readily available sources of propaganda
are not printed ones. Especially in time of hostilities, it may not be
easy to subscribe to enemy materials by the process of sending an
international postal money order. Delays involved in transmitting the
printed materials may make them useless for spot analysis, and valuable
only for long-range basic studies of morale. The propagandist who is
being analyzed may oblige by reading large numbers of editorials on the
radio. (During the last war, officers and citizens occasionally exploded
with alarm when Radio Tokyo quoted a _Life_ or New York _Times_
editorial several hours after it appeared. They naturally supposed that
the Japanese had a secret short-wave transmitter running from New York
City direct to Tokyo, and overlooked the fact that the OWI may have
quoted long excerpts in slow Morse code on its trans-Pacific beam to
China. The Japanese had picked it up, used subquotes, and beamed it
back.)
Printed matter goes on the air in any major news operation. It is only a
matter of time before telephoto facilities develop in line with the
experimental New York _Times_ edition printed in San Francisco during
the United Nations organizational conference. This was sent, all in one
piece, by wirephoto to Frisco and reprinted. The delay between the two
editions was merely a matter of minutes. In the future, wireless
telephoto may reduce this to seconds, so that all belligerents can
simply tune in on each other's major newspapers.
=Radio.= For the present radio remains the biggest source of propaganda
intake. Radio is convenient. It can be picked up illegitimately without
too much fear of detection. For the cost per person reached, it is
certainly the cheapest way of getting material to millions of people
promptly. It lends itself to monitoring, and even standard (long)
wavelengths can be picked up from surprisingly great distances.
The only defense against enemy use of radio monitoring or broadcasting
consists of the application of wired radio--which means plugging all the
radio sets in on the telephone circuit, putting nothing on the air, and
defying the enemy to eavesdrop. If the radio sets are then policed, and
are made incapable of receiving wireless material, that particular
audience is effectively cut off from the enemy. (When the Red Army, with
its acute propaganda-conscious security, moved into many Eastern
European cities, the first thing it did was to round up all the radios
which the Nazis had overlooked. This prevented the liberated peoples
from being enslaved by the "filthy reactionary lies" of the American and
British governments, and made sure that the peoples would stay
liberated under influence of their local Soviet-controlled newspapers.)
Wired radio is expensive. Radio suppression is difficult; the successful
concealers of radio receivers become two-legged newspapers and go around
town spreading all the hot dope which the authorities are trying to
suppress. Scarcity puts a premium on such news; rumor then becomes
unmanageable. Except for strangely drastic situations, it is probable
that the great powers will continue to tolerate radio reception even
though it may mean letting foreign subversive propaganda slip in now and
then.
It is therefore likely that radio broadcasts will be available for
monitoring for the pre-belligerent stages of the next war, should war
come again in our time, and that radio may last through a great part or
all of the duration of the war. Factors which cannot now be foreseen,
such as radio control of weapons, will affect this.
Radio propaganda analysis follows the same considerations as those which
govern choice of materials for analyzing printed matter. It is a surer
method to follow one or two programs on a station than to make wide
random selections. A standard-wave transmitter to the home audience
comes closer to revealing the domestic scene than would a global
rebroadcast of ostensibly identical material. Radio has a further
advantage over print. Few nations print out separate propaganda for each
foreign-language area, while almost every large and medium-sized country
has international facilities for broadcast. Since the programs are
beamed to different language groups, the senders automatically make up
propaganda lines for each audience.[31]
Attentive monitoring can provide material for distinguishing the various
lines which any given nation is sending out to its friends, neighbors,
or rivals. Frequently the differences between these lines make good
counterpropaganda. If you hear the Germans telling the Danes that all
Nordics are supermen and all non-Nordics scum, while telling the
Japanese that the National Socialist idea of the world transcends
pluto-democratic race prejudice, put the two quotations together and
send them back to the Danes and the Japanese both.
Radio, unlike print, cannot be held for the analyst's convenience. It is
physically unhandy to try to file actual recordings of enemy broadcasts
for preservation and reference. When the analysis center is large, as it
would be if near the headquarters of a government or a theater of war,
the difficulties of monitoring involve problems of stenographic and
language help. The monitors themselves can then be stenographers, taking
verbatim dictation. They write down the enemy broadcast word-for-word,
either right off the air or from records. The editor then selects the
most important parts of the day's intake for mimeographic or other
circulation. Important material can be put in a daily radio summary of
enemy propaganda for the area monitored. The rest of it can be sent
along by mail, put in files and classified (lest the enemy government
find out what its own propagandists really were saying), preserved on
the recording, or destroyed.
During World War II these basic verbatim reports played a very important
part. The Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service did the job for the
United States, operating through the war years under the Federal
Communications Commission. It has since been shifted from FCC to the War
Department, and from the War Department to the Central Intelligence
Group. Its materials sometimes are unclassified, although during most of
the war they were marked _restricted_, and they are not available to the
public except through microfilm copies of the Library of Congress file.
These FBIS daily reports skimmed the cream off the enemy news
broadcasts, and included editorial or feature material which might have
intelligence or policy interest.
=Monitoring by a Single Individual.= Where monitoring must be done by a
single individual or a very small staff, it is desirable to find a basic
news broadcast and to take it down verbatim where possible. This gives
the analyst the chance of a second look at his materials and keeps him
from having to make snap judgments of what is important and what is not,
right during the course of the broadcast. Selection of a basic news
program, followed by reference to speeches, plays, lectures and other
programs that indicate the over-all tone of the day's output, will make
it possible for one person to do an adequate monitoring job on about
one-eighth of his full-time work per station. This does not leave him
time to do much fancy analysis, or to prepare graphs, but he can pass
along the general psychological warfare situation so far as that
particular beam on that particular transmitter is concerned.
The most likely situation for the isolated consul, businessman, officer,
missionary, or amateur is one in which he can get a certain amount of
stenographic help in taking down the broadcast material. The radio for
monitoring varies in accordance with general reception conditions.
Practically all the U. S. Army Signal Corps receivers will perform
satisfactorily for local monitoring; so too will ordinary private sets,
including the larger portables. An automobile radio can often be driven
away from interference and from a hilltop or the edge of a lake can pick
up a standard-wave station that cannot be distinguished on a much larger
house set in the city. For transoceanic or world-wide reception, a
short-wave receiver is of course necessary.
It is unwise to pick a sample that involves too much rapid speech, such
as a foreign soap opera. The best reception is almost always the Morse
code transmission of news or the slow dictation-speed reading of news
from one central station to outlying news offices or substations.
Selection of a program which usually comes in, arrangement for a
verbatim copy of the program, daily checking of the news under standard
analysis procedures--this gives a very fair cross-section.
One man sitting at Hankow could find out just what both the
Generalissimo and the Chinese Communists were trying to tell the
French-understanding and the Dutch-understanding listeners in the Far
East. Another with pipe and slippers in Brussels could keep tab on the
basic Russian lines to the Spanish-speaking world. Such monitoring
obviously comes in handy for newspapers, commercial firms, governments,
military establishments, speculators, and research institutions.
=Identification: Propaganda vs. Truth.= The point will invariably arise:
"This tells me how to listen to a foreign radio. Okay, I'll get the
news, the lectures, the plays--all the rest of it. But so what? How am I
going to know what's the truth and what's propaganda? How can I tell 'em
apart? Tell me that!"
The answer is simple: "If you agree with it, it's truth. If you don't
agree, it's propaganda. Pretend that it is all propaganda. See what
happens on your analysis reports."
Propaganda was defined (at the beginning of this book) as follows:
_Propaganda consists of the planned use of any form of communication
designed to affect the minds and emotions of a given group for a
specific purpose._ Taking a lesson from Communist theory, we can say
that any form of mass-communication is operated for propaganda purposes
_if no other motive for running it is evident_. Human beings talk; they
like to talk. Much private talk is idle--but only an imbecile would talk
over a radio network just for the pleasure of hearing himself talking.
Propaganda is presentation for a purpose; it is the _purpose_ that makes
it propaganda, and not the truthfulness or untruthfulness of it.
The collected news of any modern country contains more truth each day
than any one man can could read in a lifetime. The reporters, editors,
writers, announcers who collect truth not only collect it; they select
it. They have to. Why do they select it? That is the propaganda
question. If they select it to "affect the minds and emotions of a given
group for a specific purpose," it is propaganda. If they report that a
little girl fell out of bed and broke her neck--with the intent of
frightening parents among their listeners into following the Safe Homes
Week Campaign--that is propaganda. But if they report it because it is
the only death in the community, and because they might as well fill up
the program, it is not propaganda. If you put the statement on the air,
"An American negro workman in Greensboro, N. C., got eighty cents for a
hard day's work last week," that can be presented and interpreted as:
(a.) simple news, if there is something more to the story, about what
the man said, or how he spent the eighty cents on corn meal to feed
his pet tarantula;
(b.) anti-capitalist propaganda, if you show that eighty cents is
mighty little money for American business to pay its workers;
(c.) pro-capitalist propaganda, if you show that the eighty cents will
buy more than two weeks' wages of a worker in the city of Riga, when
it comes to consumer goods;
(d.) anti-White propaganda, if you show the man got only eighty cents
because he was a Negro.
And so on, through a further variety of interpretations. The facts--man,
happening, amount, place, time--are _true_ in each case. They could be
sworn to by the whole membership of an interfaith conference. But the
interpretation placed on them--who communicates these facts to whom?
why? when?--makes them into propaganda.
And interpretation can no more be true or untrue than a Ford car can be
vanilla or strawberry in flavor. The questions of truth and of
interpretation are unrelated categories. The essence of motive is that
it is ultimately private and impenetrable, and interpretation commonly
involves imputation of motive. You can dislike an interpretation; you
can kill a man for believing it; you can propagandize him out of
believing it; but you cannot sit down and _prove_ that it is untrue.
Facts and logic are useful in propaganda, but they cannot be elevated to
the point where you can say, "Is it propaganda or is it true?" Almost
all good propaganda--no matter what kind--is true. It uses truth
selectively.
There is no secret formula which, once applied, provides an unfailing
test for propaganda. It is not possible for a person unfamiliar with the
part of the world affected, with the topic discussed, with the
interested parties, and with the immediate politics involved to put his
finger on an item and say, "This Rightist charge is propaganda," and
then to turn and say, "But that Rightist statement is not propaganda. It
is fact." Untruthful statements are made at times for other than
propaganda purposes; truthful statements may be propaganda or not. The
analyst must himself be an interested party. He must determine ahead of
time what he will regard as propaganda, and what not. And he must do so
by delimiting the field of his analysis before he starts. No one person
or staff of people could ever trace all the motives behind a single
statement; even to attempt that, he would have to be a novelist of the
school of Marcel Proust. (And he would end up feeling like James Joyce,
Gertrude Stein, or Franz Kafka.)
[Illustration: _Figure 21: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Slogans._
Home-front propaganda was sometimes repeated in an inappropriate place,
in order to achieve an effect contrary to that originally intended.
These Nazi leaflets, dropped on American detachments in Europe, used
modifications of the "It's Your Job!" posters and advertisements used by
the U.S. for home-front purposes.]
[Illustration: _Figure 22: Mockery of Enemy Propaganda Technique._ When
the content of enemy propaganda cannot be attacked, the media themselves
can sometimes be criticized. This German leaflet attempted utilization
of potential suspicions of Hollywood. In so doing, it used three
techniques: built up from a news item, suitably faked; raised suspicion
of the movies which the Germans knew our Army showed for morale
purposes; and spread racial hate.]
The analyst looks in the direction in which the message is going. He
defines the _propaganda presentation_ of the people who get the message
in terms of _all the public information to which the persons addressed
have access_. If he does not know the purpose of the message, he may
divine it from the character of the audience and from the effect he
presumes the message may reasonably be expected to have upon the
audience. If he does not know the audience, he can at least follow the
physical transit of the message. In what language does it move? Whence?
Whither? When?
[Illustration: _Figure 23: Direct Reply leaflet._ World War II
propagandists often succumbed to the temptation of using the enemy
materials and sending them right back. Sarcasm can be effective if the
reader identifies himself with the speaker and not with the addressee.
In this Nazi leaflet from the Anzio beachhead, the Germans probably
antagonized more Americans than they befriended. A simple statement of
the news would have been more effective. (Signal Corps photo.)]
=The Stasm Formula.= The formula given earlier (page 44) was found
useful in the spot analysis of German broadcasts, both open and
clandestine, and Japanese materials, during the last months of the war.
The formula reads:
=S=ource (including Media)
=T=ime
=A=udience
=S=ubject
=M=ission
The neologism, _Stasm_, may serve a mnemonic purpose.
The formula works best in the treatment of monitored materials of which
the source is known. First point to note is the character of the source.
There are several choices on this: the true source (who really got it
out?) and the ostensible source (whose name is signed to it?); also, the
first-use source (who used it the first time?) and the second-use source
(who claims merely to be using it as a quotation?). Take the statement:
"Harry said to me, he said, 'I never told anybody that Al's wife was a
retired strip-teaser.' Mind you, I don't pretend to believe Harry, but
that's what he said, all right." What are the possible true sources for
the statement of fact or libel concerning Al's unnamed wife? What are
the alternatives on ostensible sources? First use? Second use? The
common sense needed to analyze this statement is of the same order as
the process involved in analyzing the statement: "Reliable sources in
Paris state that the visit of the American labor delegation has produced
sensational repercussions in Moscow, and that Moscow, upon the basis of
the American attitude, is determined to press for unification of the
entire German labor movement."
[Illustration: _Figure 24: Black Use of Enemy Subversive Materials._
This leaflet, printed in brilliant red, white and blue, was found in the
printshop of a Nazi military propaganda company overtaken in Lorraine.
It apparently dates from 1939-40, when the Soviet Union and Nazi Germans
were at peace, with the result that Communists throughout the world
opposed the "imperialist war." The leaflet may or may not be duplicated
from a French Communist original; the important thing is its reuse by
the Germans. This constitutes black propaganda in one of its purest
forms.]
It is soon evident that the mere attribution of source is a job of high
magnitude. A systematic breakdown of the STASM formula produces the
following analysis outline, applicable to any single propaganda item,
civil or military, in war or peace, spoken, visual, or printed. There
are many other possible arrangements; the one given below is not
represented as having official sanction or mysterious powers of its own.
It has simply worked well for the author.
[Illustration: _Figure 25-A: Black Use of Enemy Information Materials._
The Nazis used this leaflet on the Western Front. The real source was a
German propaganda unit; the ostensible source was U.S. Army facilities.
Note that the leaflet has nothing to do with stopping VD among troops,
which is what the originals sought; instead, its effect is to depress
American troop morale.]
[Illustration: _Figure 25-B: Block Use of Enemy Information Materials._
Compare this with the preceding leaflet. The real source in both cases
is enemy. The ostensible source in both cases is the U.S. Army. The
ostensible mission in both cases is the prevention of VD. But the
mission is entirely different in the second leaflet. The first was
addressed to troops--Americans--designed to make them feel bad. The
second was dropped on civilians--Filipinos--whom the Japanese thus tried
to stir up against the Americans. (Leyte Campaign. Courtesy of Mr.
Robert Kleiman.)]
=Complete Breakdown of a Single Propaganda Item.=
a. _Source_
(1) True source ("Where does it really come from?")
(a) Release channel ("How did it come out?") if different from true
source without concealing true source
(b) Person or institution in whose name material originates
(c) Transmitting channel ("Who got it to us?"), person or
institution effecting known transmission--omitting, of course,
analyst's own procurement facilities
(2) Ostensible source ("Where does it pretend to come from?")
(a) Release channel ("Who is supposed to be passing it along?")
(3) First-use and second-use source (first use, "Who is said to have
used this first?"; second use, "Who pretends to be quoting someone
else?")
(a) Connection between second-use source and first-use source,
usually in the form of attributed or unacknowledged quotation; more
rarely, plagiarism
(b) Modification between use by first-use and second-use sources,
when both are known
(i) Deletions
(ii) Changes in text
(iii) Enclosure within editorial matter of transmitter
(iv) Falsification which appears deliberate
(v) Effects of translation from one language to another
b. _Time_
(1) Time of events or utterance to which subject-matter refers
(2) Time of transmission (publishing, broadcasting, etc.)
(3) Timing of repetitions
(4) Reasons, if any are evident, for peculiarities of timing
c. _Audience_
(1) Intended direct audience ("in English to North America"; "a paper
for New York restaurant operators")
(2) Intended indirect audience (program beamed "in English to North
America" but actually reaching Hong Kong and Singapore by deliberate
plan of the sender; "a paper for New York restaurant operators" being
faked and sent to Southeast Europe in fact)
(3) Unintended audience (a Guadalcanal native studying _Esquire_; your
aunt reading the _Infantry Journal_; a Chinese reading American
wartime speeches against the "yellow devils" of Japan)
(4) Ostensibly unintended direct audience (such as an appeal to
strikers in very abusive-sounding language, sent to businessmen to
build up opinion _against_ the strikers, or Hitler's black use of the
forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion)
d. _Subject_ ("What does it say?")
(1) Content listed under any convenient heading as though it were
_straight news or intelligence_
(2) Content epitomized as demonstrating _new propaganda technique_
(such as, "_Now_ they're trying to get us out of Tientsin by appeals
to our isolationists!")
(3) Content which may be useful in _counterpropaganda_ (such as, "They
said that the Greeks are our witless puppets, so let's pass that along
to the Greeks")
(4) Significance of content for _intelligence analysis_ (examples:
When the Japanese boasted about their large fish catch, it was an
indication their fishing fleet was short of gasoline again, and that
the fish catch was actually small; when the Nazis accused the Jews of
sedition, it meant that rations were short and that the Nazi
government was going to appease the populace by denying the Jews their
scanty rations by way of contrast)
e. _Mission_
(1) Nation, group, or person attacked
(2) Relation to previous items with the same or related missions
(3) Particular psychological approach used in this instance (such as
wedge-driving between groups, or between people and leaders, or
between armed services; or demoralization of audience in general; or
decrease of listeners' faith in the news)
(4) Known or probable connection with originator's propaganda plan or
strategy
[Illustration: _Figure 26: Religious Black._ Perhaps because of their
contact with Americans who happened to be missionaries, the Japanese
overemphasized the effect of religion on Americans. They attempted crude
appeals on religious themes. It is doubtful that leaflets such as this
had any practical effect. (Philippines, 1944-45.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 27: Malingerer's Black._ One of the favored
targets of black propaganda is the malingerer. Suspicion of successful
malingering inevitably hurts the morale of a unit. Even if the enemy's
instructions are not followed, the troops may suspect genuine
psychoneurotics of having faked their troubles. Almost all participants
in World War II issued such instructions; the Allied samples are not
available for publication. This is a Japanese leaflet from the
Philippines, 1944-45.]
Such an outline would be useful only if it were applied in common-sense
terms, without turning each item into an elaborate project and thus
losing the woods in the trees. In most cases, it would suffice to state
the item briefly for reference and study in the order of the entries.
When poorly trained help is available, it is of course necessary to
print or mimeograph a form to be used.
It is as vain to prescribe a propaganda analysis procedure without
knowing the user as to prescribe an office filing system while knowing
neither the nature of the office nor the kind of files kept. In time of
war, subordinate commanders in operational areas will need to keep files
at a minimum, while rear echelon or national facilities may be able to
keep files of enormous range and thoroughness. In the recording of a
large number of propaganda items, however, the material becomes
hopelessly unmanageable unless there is some standardized system for
organizing it. Mere alphabetization leads inevitably to the question,
alphabetization of what?, and the analysis function can be exercised
more readily in terms of the _sources_ of propaganda than in terms of
its incidental topics.
=Identification of Enemy Plans and Situations.= Propaganda has its
inevitable mirror image which gradually becomes plain to the analyst. If
the analyst is careful, using shrewd judgment in appraising specific
missions, he will gradually see forming in his files a record of the
immediate and long-range aims of the propaganda originators. This
becomes possible only when enough material is available, over a period
of time to make up a complete list of the probable enemy propaganda
objectives for the period covered. The intent of propaganda is always a
result observable as action, however remote the action may be from the
date of operation. Much of the propaganda of the Communist Party in the
United States is directed to the inculcation of correct _scientific_
thinking (see pages 70-74) which will be of decisive use only when the
remote Day of Revolution arrives. Few of the Communist leaders, even in
private conference, would venture to predict the exact year of the Day
of Revolution; some may not even expect to see it; but they believe that
if the propaganda is effective, the "proletariat" will be "militant" and
its leaders will be conscious of their "historic role." From the
propaganda of today, the action may be anticipated, no matter how
distant it may seem; once the action is determined, the relation of
other propaganda items to that action can be traced.
In war, the action sought is something militarily harmful to the
enemy--strikes against his production, panic in his population,
complaint from his consumers, mistrust from his newspaper readers and
radio listeners (resulting in eventual subversive or negative action on
their part), surrender of his troops, disunity of his political
leadership to be expressed in deadlocks, and so on. In pre-belligerent
or peacetime propaganda, the action sought is against the war-making
capacity of the audience--against war itself, if the propagandist feels
that his own population is in no immediate danger of being infected by
defeatism.
=Estimating the Enemy's Propaganda Situation.= In addition to presenting
a picture of the enemy goals, and of the psychological means he
considers to be useful in reaching those goals, propaganda analysis is
also valuable in presenting the enemy's own propaganda situation. He
avoids certain topics because he must. He talks about others because
circumstances force him to do so.
For example, if the Germans stop talking about rations for Jews (in the
World War II situation), it may be that their own people, filled with
anti-Semitic poison, have been protesting the issuance of rations.
Alternatively, it may mean that the Nazi authorities have just cancelled
Jewish rations and are letting the Jews starve or are murdering them
overtly. If the Germans follow this up with an item on the poor barley
crop, it may be that they are preparing the sentimental and humane
listeners in their own audience for the announcement of Jewish
starvation. If they run Paris-quisling accounts of Jewish hoarding, and
of Jews concealing large quantities of food, it means that they are
almost certain to be under pressure to explain their Jewish policies and
that, therefore, two factors face the German propagandist: first, he
must get ready to announce the attack on the Jews; second, he thinks
that the Jewish situation is going to arouse anti-Nazi sentiment even in
Germany (if these are German-language programs) and he is therefore
compelled to defend something because public opinion is believed by him
to be against it. Out of a silence (no further news on rations), a
domestic item (poor barley crop), and a foreign item (Paris Jews
allegedly hoarding), it is possible to reconstruct a whole situation.
The reconstruction may fall, if other interpretations arise, but it
provides a starting guess.
The situation of enemy morale is often reportable through propaganda
analysis long before it can be described by eyewitnesses. Omissions of
attacks on the Church may indicate that the religious problem has become
touchy. Failure to attack Communism may mean that the government is
seeking a diplomatic deal with a Communist state. Mention of children
may refer to the fact that parents complain of cold schools, bad food,
absent doctors. Good morale is shown by a quiet tone in propaganda; bad
morale is shown by extremes, whether of silence or of great vehemence.
It is useful to know what the enemy propagandist thinks he is doing,
what he considers the obstacles to his propaganda. Such considerations
inevitably get to be embodied in the propaganda itself. A tone of
extreme defiance, poor international cooperation, war bluster and so on
may often spring from the desire to divert a hungry or discontented home
public from its real worries at home to imaginary worries abroad.
=Propanal as a Source of Military Intelligence.= Propaganda analysis, or
_propanal_ for short, can serve as a very useful adjunct to military
intelligence even if when not directly connected with counterpropaganda
operations. In the first place, the enemy must give news, comment,
opinion, entertainment in order to get attention. The incidental content
and make-up of this propaganda is itself useful study material. If his
ink is bad, his paper poor, his language incorrect, it shows shortages
of supply and personnel. If he boasts about his victories, he usually
gives his version of place names and aids cartographic reporting. In
mentioning the names of heroes, he may supply order-of-battle. In making
a good story out of his economic situation, he fills in missing
statistics; even if the figures are falsified, they must be falsified
for a purpose and can be used in conjunction with others in making up an
estimate.
Nothing is as smart as a human being except another human being. What
any one man can try to achieve in the way of deceit, another man can try
to figure out. The bulk of propaganda, short of peremptory tactical
leaflets, is filled with information about the enemy's personnel, his
opinion of himself, his opinion of you, his state of mind, his order of
battle, his economic system, and all the rest. The Japanese government,
throughout the war, kept the United States informed _in English_ of the
changes of ministers and other high officials in the Japanese
government. This gave us good political background. There was no use
their trying to hide it over a long period of time, and presumably _Joho
Kyoku_ (the Imperial Japanese Board of Information) figured that the
help it gave the Americans, in filling out their political intelligence
files for them, would be more than counterbalanced by the fact that such
news would make American newspapermen, officials, officers and others
read the propaganda in order to get the facts.
Over and above the direct contribution to straight news or intelligence,
enemy propaganda in times of war or crisis affords a clue to enemy
strategy. If the coordination is not present the propaganda may do the
enemy himself harm. But the moment coordination is present, and one end
of the coordinate is handed over to us, we can start figuring what the
coordination is for. Sometimes propaganda is sacrificed for weightier
considerations of security; German propaganda gave little advance
warning of a war with the U.S.S.R., and Soviet propaganda gave none. In
other instances, the coordination does give the show away.
In 1941-1942, the Japanese radio began to show an unwholesome interest
in Christmas Island in its broadcasts to Japanese at home and abroad.
Christmas Island, below Sumatra, was pointed out as a really important
place, and tremendously significant in naval strategy. Subsequently the
Japanese armed forces went to and took Christmas Island. The home public
was delighted that this vital spot had been secured. Of course,
Christmas Island was not as important as the Japanese radio said it was,
but the significant thing was that the radio talked about it _ahead of
time_. For what little it was worth the Japanese had given us warning.
Enemy realization of an impending defeat may be preceded by
disparagement of the importance of the area in which the defeat is to
take place, or by description to the home audience of the enormous
strength which enemy forces face at that particular place. Enemy
action--when the enemy is security-minded--may be anticipated from his
complete silence on something which he would normally talk about. It
must have seemed odd that the Americans stopped talking about nuclear
fission altogether, when prewar years had seen a certain number of news
items on the subject in the New York press each month.
A nation getting ready to strike _à la_ Pearl Harbor may prepare by
alleging American aggression. A nation preparing to break the peace
frequently gets out peace propaganda of the most blatant sort, trying to
make sure that its own audience (as well as the world) will believe the
real responsibility to lie in the victim whom he attacks. Hitler
protested his love of Norwegian neutrality; then he hit, claiming that
he was protecting it from the British. No hard-and-fast rules can be
made up for all wars or all belligerents. The Germans behaved according
to one pattern; the Japanese, another.
For example, the German High Command sought to avoid bragging about
anything they could not actually accomplish. They often struck blows
without warning but they never said they would strike a blow when they
knew or believed that they could not do it. The British and Americans
made up a timetable of this, and were able to guess how fast the Germans
thought they were going to advance in Russia. Knowing this, the British
and Americans planned their propaganda to counter the German boasts;
they tried to pin the Germans down to objectives they knew the Germans
would not take, in order to demonstrate to the peoples of Europe that
Nazi Germany had finally bitten off more than it could chew.
Later, the Allies remembered this German habit when the Nazis on the
radio began talking about their own secret weapons. When the British
bombed the V-1 ramps on the French coast, the German radio stopped that
talk. The British therefore had additional grounds for supposing that
the ramps they had bombed were a part of the secret weapon the Germans
bragged about. The British further knew that the Germans would try to
counter the psychological effect of the announcement of Allied D-Day
with some pretty vivid news of their own. When the German radio began
mentioning secret weapons again, the British suspected that the Germans
had gotten around the damage done to the ramps. D-Day came; the Germans,
in one single broadcast designed to impress the Japanese and Chinese,
announced that the secret German weapon was about to be turned loose,
and that more such weapons would follow. One day later the first V-1 hit
London.
[Illustration: _Chart IV._
ENEMY MENTION OF SELECTED TOPICS, FIRST HALF-YEAR, NUMBER OF MENTIONED
TOPICS PER 10-DAY PERIOD, WITH REFERENCE TO NAVAL WARFARE, FOOD SUPPLY
AND SECRET WEAPONS]
In order to follow this type of propaganda, a quantitative chart is
needed. A sample imaginary chart for a three-month period is given in
chart IV. This chart reveals at a glance the fact that the enemy kept
mentioning food supply and naval warfare until the middle of March,
because he presumably thought his blockade runners would bring in more
food. After March, food drops in emphasis but naval warfare continues to
be stressed. In May, following enemy admission to himself of the
hopeless naval situation, naval warfare drops almost altogether out of
sight. Foodstuffs continue to be modestly mentioned as the enemy
explained away minor difficulties, but the use of secret weapons
propaganda shows that the enemy propagandists had to have something
sensational to keep up the courage of the home audience. Whether the
enemy really had a secret weapon or not, depends on the national
character, past records, and so forth. The Germans and Japanese both
said they had world-shaking secret weapons. The Germans delivered; the
Japanese did not.
Such quantity records will also be useful in showing the enemy's
propaganda statistically with reference to number of words uttered on
each of his major subjects, number of inches of newspaper columns for
specified kinds of news, and so on. Percentage charts show which major
shifts his propaganda performs. Audience charts (that is, how much time
he spends addressing workers, pacifists, mothers, minorities, etc.) show
which groups he is really trying to reach. Emphasis charts for selected
topics on which your own propaganda has been active show how much you
force him to talk about something which he may not wish to discuss.
Such statistical use is possible only if usable records are maintained.
A basic item-by-item file of all important or new items, combined with a
worksheet of the amount of radio time or printed space the enemy put
into use for a stated period, will provide the materials needed for
propanal. Propanal is indispensable to psychological warfare. It sifts
ordinary intelligence out from propaganda in one process, processing
straight intelligence ready for the intelligence people to use, yet
providing analysis for psychological warfare purposes.
For peacetime purposes, it is to be remembered that though enemies may
hide their scientists, their launching ramps, or their rockets, they
cannot hide the occasion for war, nor their own readiness measures. No
government can afford to seem the plain unqualified aggressor.
_Propanal_ may prove to be one of the soundest war-forecasting systems
available to us in a period of ultra-destructive weapons. Psychological
mobilization may be disguised: it cannot be concealed.