Organization for Psychological Warfare
Big jobs require big organizations. Eight _billion_ leaflets were
dropped in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operations alone
under General Eisenhower's command. That is enough to have given every
man, woman and child on earth four leaflets, and this figure, large as
it is, does not include leaflets dropped in all the other theaters of
war by ourselves, our allies, and our enemies. It does not include the
B-29 leaflet raids on Japan, in which hundreds of tons of thin paper
leaflets were dropped. Huge American newspapers were developed, edited,
printed and delivered to our Allies and to enemy troops. One of these,
_Parachute News_ (_Rakkasan_), attained a circulation of two million
copies per run; this was in the Southwest Pacific. In parts of the upper
Burmese jungle and the Tibetan borderland where no newspaper was ever
distributed before, the Fourteenth Air Force distributed a Japanese
newspaper, _Jisei_, along with picture sheets for illiterate tribesmen.
In getting at the enemy, the United States printed leaflets, cartoons,
pamphlets, newspapers, posters, books, magazines. In black operations
enough fabrications were perpetrated to keep the FBI busy for a thousand
years. Movies in all forms (commercial, amateur, all known widths, sound
and silent, even lantern slides) went out all over the world. Radio
talked on all waves in almost every language and code; loudspeakers,
souvenirs, candy, matches, nylon stockings, pistols you could hide in
your mouth, sewing thread, salt, phonograph records and baby pictures
streamed out over the world. Much of this was necessarily waste. In the
larger waste of war it appears almost frugal when taken in relation to
the results thought to have been achieved.
Every American theater commander, given the choice of using
psychological warfare or not, as he chose, did choose to use it. Every
major government engaged in the war used psychological warfare, along
with a number of assorted private characters, some of whom later founded
governments. (The sacred government of the Dalai Lama, in forbidden
Lhasa, undertook a neat little maneuver in limited overt propaganda when
it printed a brand-new set of stamps for presentation to President
Roosevelt; the Inner Mongols were propagandized by the Outer Mongols;
the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg broadcast against the Reich.)
Psychological warfare proliferated so much as to change the tone if not
the character of war. General Eisenhower wrote, at the end of the
European operations, that psychological warfare had developed as a
specific and effective weapon of war.
The organization of psychological warfare was as much a problem as the
operation. It overlapped military, naval, diplomatic, press,
entertainment, public relations, police power, espionage, commercial,
educational and subversive operations. Almost every nation involved had
extreme difficulty in fitting these new powers and unknown processes
into the accepted frame of government, and almost every national
solution was different. The British and the Japanese achieved a
considerable degree of unification. The Americans, Nazis and Russians
were hampered by the number of competing agencies. The French were
burdened through most of the war by an excess of governments. The
Chinese did things in their own formal but offhand manner; the
Nationalist party carried on information functions for the Chinese
government, while the Communist guerrilla authorities carried on
functions for the Communist party.
[Illustration: _Figure 39: Leaflet Production: Military Presses._ The
machines shown are Davidson presses, widely used by the Americans in all
theaters of war. The unit shown is Psychological Warfare Branch during
the Leyte operations. The leaflet being run off is addressed to both
Filipino guerrillas and Japanese troops, facilitating a difficult
three-way operations whereby Japanese are told to surrender to
Filipinos, Filipinos told not to kill surrendering Japanese, and
Americans instructed to receive prisoners from Filipinos.]
[Illustration: _Figure 40: Leaflet Production: Rolling._ When round
bombs were used, the leaflets had to be rolled into round packages to
fit. Forty thousand leaflets could be packed into one bomb, and a
Mitchell bomber could carry seventeen such bombs. (Photo by Ninth Air
Force Combat Camera Unit.)]
[Illustration: _Figure 41: Leaflet Distribution: Attaching Fuzes._
Packaged leaflets must spread out. Bundles of paper which fall intact
make little impact on the enemy unless they hit him on the head. Their
subsequent employment is rarely related to propaganda. To be effective,
leaflets must scatter. World War II saw the adaptation of various
scattering devices, of which the most effective was the barometric fuze,
shown here. The others included self-timing packages, slip-strings which
unwrapped the package in the air, and a belly-tank which fed leaflets
out at any desired speed, either in a continuous stream or in bursts.]
The lower down the echelon, the nearer the armies of the world came to
standardizing psychological warfare organization. They did this for the
same reason that they all organize into regiments instead of centuries,
cohorts, or tribes. Modern war is a self-standardizing process if the
enemy experience is to be copied, enemy techniques improved, allied
assistance accepted, and military practice kept up to world standards.
Psychological warfare units needed printing and radio sections; to
service these sections they all needed intelligence and analysis
offices; to distribute their materials they all needed agents and
liaison. Black propaganda organization varied more than did white, but
it was amazing to Americans, uncovering Japanese subversive-operations
units, to see how much the Japanese organization resembled their own.
[Illustration: _Figure 42: Leaflet Distribution: Packing the Boxes._
Sometimes boxes were used instead of bombs. These, being square,
facilitated the packing process, since the rectangular packages could be
used just as they came out of the printshop. The fuze is attached to the
package, not to the box.]
[Illustration: _Figure 43: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Boxes._
Boxes were built to fit the bomb bays. Boxes were opened, one after the
other, by a trip lever, shown above at left. Each box can be emptied in
turn, giving the pilot the opportunity to select more than one target.]
[Illustration: _Figure 44: Leaflet Distribution: Bombs at the Airfield._
Leaflet bombs, filled with rolls such as those shown in figure 40, are
delivered to the bomber. The scene shown is somewhere in England.
Officers and men picked up British slang for leaflet operations, and
called such missions "nickelling."]
[Illustration: _Figure 45: Leaflet Distribution: Loading the Bombs._ The
bombs were loaded as shown. The entire bomb dropped out of the plane and
was disintegrated in the air by a small explosive charge. No
illustration can do justice to the sight of such a bomb in the actual
dropping, since the leaflets tend to look scattered or to disappear
under normal flight conditions. Army motion picture films preserve the
process for the official record, however.]
[Illustration: _Figure 46: Leaflet Distribution: The Final Result._
Search of prisoners provided a fair, accurate test of how the leaflets
took effect. Sometimes surrender leaflets actually came to have black
market value. Enemy officers prohibited the carrying of Allied surrender
leaflets, since they knew that a soldier who had one in his pocket or
hidden in his clothes was halfway or more through the psychological
process of surrendering. Here a German hands in a leaflet to his
American captor.]
=National Propaganda Organizations.= At the national level, the
psychological warfare facilities were parts of their national
governments. Neither the Axis nor the United Nations developed
super-national psychological facilities. The closest thing to
international agencies were the American-British coordination facilities
under authority of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, along with that
mysterious force which in the latter part of the war impelled
Russian-occupied countries to sound amazingly much like Moscow. Short of
preparing a textbook for political science study, explaining each of the
governments and the location of its intelligence and informational
functions, it would be impossible to explain in any detail how each of
the systems worked. Even between governments having the same general
political orientation, the improvised war agencies were different, and
in the same government, the practices of World War I were not carried
over into World War II. Some description of the American psychological
warfare may be warranted, chiefly as a means of showing how a simple
task can be accomplished even with intricate and confused organizations,
and the Japanese system (on paper, the best of them all, though weak in
field operations and control) may be outlined for the sake of contrast.
[Illustration: _Figure 47: Consolidation Propaganda: The Movie Van._
Consolidation of friendly, neutral or hostile civilians in an area of
operations can become a vitally important function. During the North
African operations, this movie van showed newsreels and documentary
films to the local people. Similar vans were used in Italy, France,
Holland, Belgium, Germany, Austria, and other areas.]
=American Psychological Warfare Agencies.= The American Army failed to
establish its authority and leadership in the field of psychological
warfare despite its creation of the Psychological Warfare Branch under
G-2. In large part this was a matter of practical politics and of
personalities. The United States government as a whole, in the
successive administrations of President Roosevelt, acquired tremendous
administrative vitality but at the same time permitted the older
"constitutional" agencies to lose ground to their newly founded rivals.
Had an administrative purist and traditionalist been in the White House,
instead of a bold governmental experimenter, the logical creation of a
psychological warfare facility would have paralleled the later creation
of SWNCC (State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee).
From the purely theoretical standpoint, it would have been far sounder
to put national policy formulation (White House and Congress), foreign
policy formulation (State), strategic propaganda (State, War, Navy) into
a single administrative entity than to create a new federal agency with
improvised procedures, improvised security, and an improvised staff.
However, the State, War and Navy Departments (at the very opening of our
war) were overworked and understaffed. Many of the senior personnel
regarded psychological warfare with downright suspicion and propaganda
was regarded as a dirty name for a dirty and ineffectual job. Hence the
old-line agencies let pass the opportunity for establishing initial
control.
[Illustration: _Figure 48: Consolidation Propaganda: Posters._ An
American soldier pastes American posters over Nazi ones while a French
crowd looks on. (The crowd is pretty typical as to size and content, but
a thousand such crowds will cover an entire town.) The poster operation
shown was conducted by Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF. (OWI-PWD
photo.)]
Subsequent experience suggests that the use of existing facilities and
existing agencies wherever possible instead of new ones imparts
stability, discipline, and morale, and lowers the organizational
friction common to all new political agencies, especially to
instrumentalities in so controversial a field as propaganda. On the
chart shown, for instance, it would not have mattered whether the
Psychological Warfare Facility (whatever its name) were put for
housekeeping purposes under the State, War, Navy Department, or the
Office for Emergency Management. The essential requirement would have
been to use State Department men for jobs that involved determining
foreign policy, military men for tasks of a military nature and naval
for navy work, and to recruit only after cadres had been established.
The sponsorship of psychological warfare by one--any one--of the
old-line departments might have slowed down the feverish tempo of
reorganizations, quarrels, cabals, internal struggles for power and
clashes with other Federal agencies which were so characteristic of OWI
and its colleague organizations.
[Illustration: _Figure 49: Consolidation Propaganda: Photo Exhibit._
When newsprint is short, a photo exhibit has great appeal to civilians.
In backward countries, people sometimes waited their turn to get a
chance to see the American pictures. Even in Cherbourg, the French city
shown, these passersby are showing a very real interest in the picture
display.]
The actual conduct of psychological warfare was shown in Chart I. (No
official authority exists for such a chart; the author bases it on his
own observation and experience.) Only agencies themselves originating
psychological warfare materials are shown. Relationships between State,
War and Navy were stable, but were frequently by-passed; for example,
the Zacharias broadcasts, which were our biggest political warfare
experiment, did not go to the State Department until after they had
started. Relationships between OSS and other agencies were erratic and
cloaked in extraordinary but irregular security. The OWI ran for most
purposes as an autonomous group, with occasional reference to State,
Navy, and War Departments. The President in his individually official
capacity was apt to improvise psychological warfare operations of high
importance, without warning his subordinates of what was coming (paper
knife made of human Japanese bone; the "unconditional surrender"
formula). The White House staff sometimes worked through channels,
sometimes not; the Harvard professor who advised on inflation was
simultaneously involved with psychological warfare on continental Asia.
The Secretary of the Treasury openly discussed what _he_ would like to
do with Germany in terms which the Nazi radio naturally conveyed to its
own people. Within the OWI itself, the overseas operation was separated
from the domestic, the broadcasters from the planners, the outposts
from everybody else, during much of the war.
But the job was done!
Success was not due to the formal structure of the Office of War
Information (see charts V, VI). No administrative formula could have
transcended such governmental confusion. It was owing to the fact that
all the people just described--who went around, with the best will in
the world most of the time, minding one another's business--did in the
end achieve effective results. The common denominator behind them was
not the authority of the President, the discipline of the Democratic
Party, or the casually designed, casually overlooked formal lines of
authority. The common denominator was American civilization itself. Had
we been deeply disunited, this ramshackle structure would have collapsed
into chaos. But there was broad concurrence, a sense of cooperativeness,
good will and good temper. A German, Russian or Japanese bureaucrat
would have gone mad in the wartime mazes of the Federal system; a
Chinese would probably have felt very much at home, but would have
polished up the titles and honorifics a little.
The difference between our governmental organization and that of our
enemies lay in the fact that to us the T/O were something that could be
used when convenient, and could (without breach of faith or law) be
short-circuited when convenient. Word was passed around, material
exchanged, coordination effected in ways which could not be shown on any
imaginable chart. It was neither a merit nor a defect, but simply an
American way of doing things.
This characteristic has the effect, however, of making after-the-fact
studies quite unrealistic. There is not much from the formal records and
the formal charts which conveys the actual tone of governmental
operations in terms of propaganda. Study of World War II organization
for the sake of research and planning against possible future war would
not be very profitable unless it delved into the concrete experience of
individuals. The formal outlines mean nothing; they are positively
deceptive unless the actual controls and operations are known. (Mr.
Warburg makes it plain in his book that he thinks little of Mr. Elmer
Davis' conception of his job; but he does not mention that Mr. Sherwood,
theoretically Mr. Davis' subordinate, ran foreign operations without
much reference to Mr. Davis or to any other part of the Federal
government. Since Mr. Sherwood was closer to the White House than was
Mr. Davis, this important consideration escapes being recorded on the
chart: foreign operations were actually autonomous.[35]) Examples of how
things really worked--as opposed to how they looked as though they
worked--could be multiplied forever; but the soundest way of finding out
sober, judicious opinion will necessarily await the writing of
autobiographies and memoirs by the people concerned.
With these sweeping reservations in mind, it is worth noting the
organization of OWI (internal). The Domestic Operations Branch can be
dismissed with brief mention. It proved to be the object of profound
suspicion on the part of many members of Congress, and its function was
to stimulate and assist inward media of public information in support of
the war effort. The Domestic Operations Branch never superseded other U.
S. government informational services (State, Agriculture, Treasury, War,
and so on), so that it was the wartime supplement to the governmental
supplement to the regular news and information system, which remained
private. This precluded intimate coordination of domestic and overseas
propaganda and rendered illusory any hope that domestic propaganda, as
eavesdropped by our enemies, could be used as an instrument of war.
The Overseas Operations Branch had two basic missions. Within the United
States it was the operating and controlling agency for government-owned
or government-leased world-wide short-wave. For actual overseas
purposes, it was the rear echelon of both the Navy and Army theater
facilities and of its own OWI Outposts. The Outposts were themselves
under OWI for certain purposes; for other purposes they were subject to
the chief of mission (ambassador, minister or chargé) of the U. S. in
the foreign country, and still other purposes under the American
military commander having local jurisdiction. (OWI-Delhi, for example,
was under the office of the American High Commissioner in India; also
under the Rear Echelon Headquarters of the Commanding General, United
States Army Forces, China-Burma-India Theater; also under OWI-New York
for supply of its printed materials, most personnel and needed presses;
under OWI-San Francisco for supply of its wirelessed news; and under
OWI-Washington for general policy, hiring and firing, and everything
else.)
In terms of its own global radio, OWI prepared planning and control
materials in Washington and relayed these to New York and San Francisco.
The radio facilities in these cities then transmitted the material
overseas. Through the first three years of the war, the precise nature
of the Washington controls was in question, enforcement remained a
perplexing problem, and coordination between planning and execution
remained unsolved in part. By the spring and summer of 1945, OWI had
solved most of these problems, chiefly by means of circulating the Area
I, II, and III chiefs to the operating offices. When personal relations
were satisfactory (as in the instance of Mr. Owen Lattimore, chief in
OWI San Francisco, Mr. George Taylor, chief of Far East in Washington,
and Mr. F. M. Fisher, chief of China Outpost in Chungking, all of them
China experts) coordination might be difficult but was never
exasperating.
[Illustration: _Chart V_
+----------------------+
| DOMESTIC BRANCH |
+--------------------+ +- - - - - - - - - - - + +-----------------+
| ASSISTANT TO THE +---+ DIRECTOR +----+ SPECIAL |
| DIRECTOR | + - - - - - - - - - - -+ | ASSISTANT |
+--------------------+ | EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR | +-----------------+
+----------+-----------+
|
+---------------------+------------------------+
| | |
+----------+-----------+ | +- - - - + +----------+---------+
| ASSISTANT | | |PROGRAM | | DIRECTOR |
| DIRECTOR | | PLANNING | OF WAR PROGRAMS |
+----------------------+ | | AND | +--------------------+
| Speech Clearance Unit| | REVIEW | Industry |
| | | | BOARD | | Liaison Officer |
| Inter-Agency | | + - - - -+ | |
| Publications | | | Scheduling and |
| Committee Unit | | | Allocation Officer |
+- - - - - - - - - - - + | | |
| Advisory Committee | | | Copy Editor |
+----------------------+ | +--------------------+
|
|
+-----------+-----------+------+------+----------+-----------+
| | | | | | |
+----+----+ +----+----+ +----+----+ | +----+---+ +----+-----+ +---+----+
| DEPUTY | | DEPUTY | | DEPUTY | | | DEPUTY | | DEPUTY | | DEPUTY |
| DIRECTOR| | DIRECTOR| | DIRECTOR| | |DIRECTOR| | DIRECTOR | |DIRECTOR|
| ----- | | ----- | | ----- | | | ----- | | ------ | | ---- |
| ECONOMIC| | | | | | | | | | | |
| STABIL- | | | | LABOR | | | | |PRODUCTION| | |
| IZATION | | FOREIGN | | AND | | |MILITARY| | AND | | WAR |
| FINANCE | |RELATIONS| | CIVILIAN| | | | | MANPOWER | | FOOD |
| AND | | | | WELFARE | | | | | | | |
| TAXATION| | | | | | | | | | | |
| ----- | | ----- | | ----- | | | ----- | | ------ | | ---- |
| PROGRAM | | PROGRAM | | PROGRAM | | |PROGRAM | | PROGRAM | |PROGRAM |
| MANAGERS| | MANAGERS| | MANAGERS| | |MANAGERS| | MANAGERS | |MANAGERS|
+---------+ +---------+ +---------+ | +--------+ +----------+ +--------+
|
+----------+---------+----------+--------+--------+---------+
| | | | | | |
+---+----+ +---+---+ +---+----+ +---+---+ +--+---+ +--+---+ +---+---+
|BOOK AND| |FOREIGN| | | |MOTION | | | | | |SPECIAL|
|MAGAZINE| | NEWS | |GRAPHICS| |PICTURE| | NEWS | |RADIO | |SERVICE|
| BUREAU | |BUREAU | | BUREAU | |BUREAU | |BUREAU| |BUREAU| |BUREAU |
+--------+ +-------+ +--------+ +-------+ +------+ +------+ +-------+
(Source: OWI administrative memorandum. Courtesy of Dr. E. P. Lilly.)]
[Illustration: _Chart VI_
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
| Organization and Membership of the Review Board |
| |
| +-----------------------+ |
| | WASHINGTON | |
| +-----------------------+ |
| | Overseas Director | |
| | Executive Director | |
| | Deputy Directors | |
| | (Reg. Specialists) | |
| | Liaison Chief | |
| | Spec. Advisor Pol. | |
| | OWI Director (Ex.| |
| | Assoc. Director (Off.| |
| +------------+----------+ |
| | |
| +---------------+----------------+ |
| | | |
| +--------------+-------------+ +--------------+-------------+ |
| | NEW YORK | | SAN FRANCISCO | |
| +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ |
| | Assistant Chief for Policy | | | |
| | Regional Specialists | | Regional Specialists | |
| | Media Specialists | | | |
| | Outpost Representatives | | | |
| +----------------------------+ +----------------------------+ |
| |
+-----------------------------------------------------------------+
+----------+ +-------------+
| Spec. | | DIRECTOR'S |
| Advisor | | OFFICE |
| on Policy| +-------------+
+----------+ | DIRECTOR +-------+-------------+-------------+
| Spec. | | EXECUTIVE | | | |
| Advisor +-+-+ DIRECTOR | +-----+-----+ +-----+-----+ +-----+-----+
| on | | | ASST. | | AREA ONE | | AREA TWO | | AREA THREE|
| Long | | | EXECUTIVE | +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| Range | | | DIRECTOR | | Deputy | | Deputy | | Deputy |
|Operations| | |LIAISON CHIEF| | Director | | Director | | Director |
+----------+ | +----------+--+ | Regional | | Regional | | Regional |
| | |Specialists| |Specialists| |Specialists|
| | | (Wash. | | (Wash., | | (Wash., |
| | | & N.Y.) | | N.Y., | | N.Y., |
+------------+-+ | | | |San Fran.) | |San Fran.) |
| Bureau of | | +-----------+ +-----------+ +-----------+
| Intelligence | |
+--------------+ |
|
+---------------+------------------------+
| | |
+---------+---------+ | +----------+----------+
| Outpost | | | Communications |
| Services Bureau | | | Facilities Bureau |
+-------------------+ | +---------------------+
|
+------+-----------+-------------------+
| | |
+--------+----------+ +-----+-----+ +-----------+-----------+
| NEW YORK OFFICE | | OUTPOSTS | | SAN FRANCISCO OFFICE |
+-------+ +-------------------+ +-----------+ +-----------------------+
| Short | | Chief of | | |
| Range +-+ New York Office | | Chief of |
|Control| | Assistant Chief | | San Francisco Office |
| Staff | | for Policy | | |
+-------+ +---------+---------+ +-----------------------+
|
|
+------------+--+---------------+---------------+
| | | |
+------+-----+ +------+-----+ +------+-----+ +------+-----+
| MOTION | | RADIO | |PUBLICATIONS| | NEWS AND |
| PICTURE | | PROGRAM | | BUREAU | | FEATURES |
| BUREAU | | BUREAU | | | | BUREAU |
+------------+ +------------+ +------------+ +------------+
(Source: OWI administrative memorandum. Courtesy of Dr. E. P. Lilly.)]
In terms of supply, the materials gathered by the other agencies went to
the Outpost Service Bureau, which ran a virtual informational Sears
Roebuck for the outposts. Foreign demands for American materials were
unpredictable. The OWI learned rapidly and effectively, and the material
going out of the outposts to foreign audiences very soon reached a high
level of quality.
Other psychological warfare agencies at the national level were the CIAA
(Coordinator of [later the Office of] Inter-American Affairs) which
conducted propaganda exclusively to Latin America and the Caribbean, and
the OSS (Office of Strategic Services), which serviced the Joint Chiefs
of Staff with intelligence and policy materials, and served as a home
base for its own units which operated abroad under Theater authority. No
U.S.-based black propaganda operations were reported to the public.[36]
Reduced to the concrete terms of definite policy execution (as opposed
to the making of policies that might or might not ever reach their
supposed executors) and the routine working of operations, the national
level was not important except for the two functions stated above,
global shortwave, and source of supply. The decisive choices were made
in the theaters or at the outposts, half the time in ignorance of what
Washington policy-makers had decided in conclave on that particular
topic. (When the author was in China, he found that the OWI China
outpost decoded its week-to-week propaganda instructions only after they
were hopelessly obsolete; they were then filed.) The theaters were able
to use psychological warfare as and when they pleased. Between the ETO
and Washington close politico-military coordination was possible.
Between Washington and the others it was impracticable.
The War Department participation in the control and planning of
psychological warfare is shown by Chart VII, which represents the
situation as of 1945. The Propaganda Branch, attached to G-2 as a staff
agency and not to Military Intelligence Service as an operating agency,
served to carry out the psychological warfare functions of the War
Department.[37] The Chief of the Branch represented the Joint Chiefs of
Staff at OWI meetings, along with his Navy confrère; he took care of
official messages to the Theaters pertaining to psychological warfare
matters, and his office itself performed a few limited functions. (One
of these functions required the author to get up at four-thirty mornings
in order to digest the overnight intake of enemy propaganda. He was
joined in this by Teheran-born, Columbia-trained Edward K. Merat. It was
with real relief that he saw the Nazi stations go off the air. He was
then able to pass the early-bird business to his Persian colleague.) The
Branch also made up propanal studies whenever these were warrantable at
the General Staff level. The Deputy Chief (Air) was the vestigial
remnant of a short-lived Army Air Forces propaganda establishment; he
had direct access to the air staff, and took care of things having a
peculiarly air character. (The abbreviations under Theaters are
explained below, on page 187, since Theater nomenclature for
psychological warfare was never standardized.)
[Illustration: _Chart VII_
+--------------+ +----------------+
| JOINT CHIEFS +------------------------------------+ CHIEF OF STAFF |
| OF STAFF | +--------+-------+
+------+-------+ |
| +-----------+ |
| | CG 20TH | |
+- - - - -+ AIR FORCE +- - - - + +-----------------+
| +-----------+ | | |
| | |
| | | |
+------+-----+ +-------+----+----+ +----+--------+
| JOINT STAFF| | HEADQUARTERS | | A. C. OF S. |
| PLANNERS | | ARMY AIR FORCES | | G-2 |
+------+-----+ +---------+-------+ +----+--------+
| | |
+------+--------------------------------+--------------------+---------+
| PROPAGANDA BRANCH |
| ARMY MEMBER OF |
| JCS LIAISON WITH DEPUTY CHIEF OF BRANCH |
| OWI, CIAA (CHIEF CHIEF (USING OPD AND |
| OF BRANCH) (AIR) OTHER WD CHANNELS)|
| |
+-------+---------------------------+--------------------+-------------+
| | |
+---+-----+---------+ | |
| | | | |
+---+--+ +---+--+ +---+--+ | +----+-----+
| OWI | | CIAA | | OSS | | | THEATERS |
+------+ +------+ +------+ | +----+-----+
| |
| +-------+-----+-+-------+
| | | | |
| +--+--+ +--+--+ +--+--+ +--+---+
| | PWD | | PWB | | TPWO| | PWB |
| |SHAEF| | AFHQ| |CHINA| |OTHERS|
| +-----+ +-----+ +-----+ +------+
+-----------+-----------------------+
| |
+-----+------+ +-----+-----+
| OPERATIONS | | RESEARCH |
+-----+------+ +-----------+
|
+----------+------+------+-------+ +-----+-----+
| | | | | | | |
+-----+--------+ | +----+----+ | +-----+------+ +----+---+ | +---+----+
|ADMINISTRATION| | | MILITARY| | |LIAISON WITH| | MORNING| | | DAILY |
+--------------+ | | GUIDANCE| | | OWI, OSS, | | FLASH | | | REPORT |
| | FOR OWI | | |NAVY, STATE,| +--------+ | +--------+
| +---------+ | | ETC | |
| | +------------+ |
| | |
| | |
| | |
+------------+----+ +------+------+ +-----+------+
| SPEECH AND | | SPECIAL | | SPECIAL |
| PUBLICATIONS | | STUDIES | | PROJECTS |
| CLEARANCE | +-------------+ +------------+
+-----------------+
(Source: Chart prepared for Colonel John Stanley in Propaganda Branch,
G-2.)]
With the termination of hostilities, though it was not the juridical
finish of the war, both OSS and OWI were swept out of existence. By
executive order of 20 September 1945, effective ten days later, OSS was
broken up; the scholastic portions were dismembered and reassembled into
the Department of State, where they presumably helped collate material
for the new interdepartmental Central Intelligence Group (CIG). The
operational parts were handed over to the War Department. For all the
author knows, some distressed colonel may have a desk full of
fountain-pens which explode, transmit radio messages, or can be used for
invisible tattooing, along with an edible blotter, a desk telephone
which is really a hand grenade and a typewriter which is a demountable
motor scooter; such speculations are delightful topics on which to
dwell, but the day of black propaganda is over. Obsolescence reduces all
things, even OSS, to absurdity.
The OWI perished a more lingering administrative death. It was
transferred to the Department of State as an operating unit under the
name Interim International Information Service (IIIS) and a new
Assistant Secretary of State, Mr. William Benton, took over its
sponsorship. Later, under the abbreviation OIC (Office of International
Information and Cultural Affairs), it was coordinated on January 1,
1946, with preexisting State department offices and with certain
leftovers from the Office of Inter-American Affairs (OIAA). It retained
the global broadcasts on a limited budget; it still served the surviving
outposts, which were being integrated with diplomatic and consular
offices overseas; and for Korea, Japan, Germany, Austria, and Venezia
Giulia, it acted as the supplying service for the Military Government
information programs in those areas. The Bureau of the Budget took over
limited domestic functions when the OWI passed out of independent
existence on 31 August 1945.
=The _Joho Kyoku_.= Comparison of this United States system with the
Japanese Board of Information (_Joho Kyoku_), as outlined in chart VIII,
shows the difference between integrated and disparate systems. The
Japanese developed a close-knit system which combined public relations
of both army and navy, all domestic government publishing, complete
control of book-publishing, magazines, press, radio, and film,
propaganda intelligence and over-all psychological warfare. The progress
of an item through the Japanese psychological warfare system may look
intricate when followed on the chart, but it was in fact much less
intricate than the comparable American processing of an item.
[Illustration: _Chart VIII_
+----------------------------------+ +----------------------+
| SECRETARIAT | | BOARD OF INFORMATION |
| SOSAI-KAMBO | | JOHO KYOKU |
| | | |
|INVESTIGATION OFFICE SHINGISHITSU +---------+ PRESIDENT |
| PLANS INFORMATION AND PROPAGANDA | | VICE PRESIDENT |
| SECRETARIAL SECTION - HISHO-KA | | COUNCIL MEMBERS |
| DIRECTOR | +-----------+----------+
| PROTOCOL SECTION - BUSHO-KA | |
| DIRECTOR | |
| ACCOUNTS SECTION - KAIKEI-KA | |
| | |
|WARTIME DATA OFFICE - | |
| SENJI SHIRYOSHITSU | |
| 1st SECTION - DOMESTIC AFFAIRS | |
| 2nd SECTION - FOREIGN AFFAIRS | |
+----------------------------------+ |
|
+-------------------------+-------------------+-----+
| | |
+----------+--------+ +-------------+-------------+ +---------+---------+
| FIRST DIVISION | | SECOND DIVISION | | THIRD DIVISION |
| DAIICHI-BU | | DAINI-BU | | DAISAN-BU |
| | | | | |
| DIRECTOR | | DIRECTOR | | DIRECTOR |
| VICE DIRECTOR | | | | |
| | |1st SECTION - DIRECTOR | |1st SECTION - |
|1st SECTION - | | GOVERNMENT ANNOUNCEMENTS,| | DIRECTOR |
| DIRECTOR | | NEWSPAPER COMMUNICATIONS,| | REPORTS FOREIGN |
| WAR GUIDANCE AND | | EXPOSITIONS, EXHIBITIONS | | DEVELOPMENTS; |
| PROPAGANDA | | | | NEWS FROM FOREIGN|
| PLANNING | |2nd SECTION - DIRECTOR | | NEWSPAPERS, |
| | | RADIO BRODCASTS, MOTION | | DIRECTS OVERSEAS |
|2nd SECTION - CHIEF| | PICTURES, DRAMA, MUSIC, | | BROADCASTS |
| ENFORCEMENT OF | | ETC. | | |
| PLANNING AND | | | |2nd SECTION - |
| PUBLIC RELATIONS | |3rd SECTION - DIRECTOR | | DIRECTOR |
| CONTROL | | MAGAZINE PUBLICATIONS, | | OVERSEAS CULTURAL|
+-------------------+ | ART WORK, PHOTOGRAPHS | | WORK AND |
| | | PROPAGANDA |
| EDITORIAL OFFICE - CHIEF | +-------------------+
| PUBLISH WEEKLY NEWS |
| AND PICTORIAL REVIEWS. |
| |
|4th SECTION - DIRECTOR |
| CENSORSHIP |
+-------------+-------------+
|
|
+------+------+
| OUTPUT |
+-------------+
(Source: Chart prepared before VJ-day in Propaganda Branch, G-2.)]
The only aspect of psychological warfare that does not show on the chart
is the Japanese political warfare system--by the test of success, the
best developed by any belligerent during World War II. The Japanese very
early learned the simple rule: _Political warfare cannot convert a
sub-subsistence economy and government into a satisfactory system, but
political warfare can convert a subsisting area into one that has the
illusions of prosperity and national freedom._ To succeed in the face of
economic difficulty, political warfare must be shrewd, simple,
insistent, and backed up with a touch of terror. The Japanese moved into
the Western colonial areas of the Far East between 1940 and 1942
(Indo-China, Malaya, Indonesia, the Philippines, parts of China, Burma,
and areas inhabited by substantial Indian minorities). They organized
the following "independent" governments:
The Imperial Government of Manchukuo;
Federated Autonomous Inner Mongolia;
The Reorganized National Government of China, superseding earlier
puppets;
Malai (under Japanese military control but promised ultimate
independence);
The Republic of the Philippines;
The Empire of Vietnam (later the Vietnam Republic);
A dictatorship in Burma of the Adipadi;
Republic Indonesia;
Azad Hind (Free Indian government-in-exile) and the Azad Hind Fauj
(quisling Indian National Army, which put large forces into the field
against British-controlled Indian troops and helped to neutralize the
entire military potential of India);
The independent Kingdom of Cambodia (made independent by telling the
helpless King that he need not let the French come back).
These Japanese-sponsored governments flew their own flags, had enough
troops to help Japan police their home areas, developed psychological
warfare facilities with intensive Japanese assistance, and went through
all the motions of independence. In 1944, some of them even held an
international conference at Tokyo, thanking Japan for liberating all the
non-White States and adopting high-sounding resolutions. (The Siamese
puppet ambassador to this meeting had the unforgettable name of His
Excellency, the Honorable Witchit Witchit Watakan!)
Behind the pageantries of Japanese political warfare, economic and
social realities were horrid. The Japanese printed money which had far
less backing than cigar store coupons. They bankrupted all non-Japanese
business so that Japanese carpetbaggers could buy their way in cheap;
businesses owned by white foreigners were expropriated out of hand. They
cut off communications, spread terror, raised the price of food, put
hospitals out of business, degraded schools--and received the devoted
loyalty of large parts of the cheated populations. It did not matter to
millions of Burmese whether they had lived well under British rule or
not; the British did not let them have their own flag, did not let them
send ministers and ambassadors, did not let them run a scow up and down
the river with a mortar on it, calling it a navy. The _miranda_, the
pageantry of politics, was what mattered--not law-and-order, democracy,
security, education, health.[38]
The same story might have been repeated on a larger scale throughout the
Far East, perhaps ultimately leading to something like Lothrop
Stoddard's old nightmare, _The Rising Tide of Color_. Countervening
factors included the presence of Chinese agitation both Kuomintang and
Communist in leadership, guerrilla operations throughout Southeast Asia,
and the ruinous economic effects of American submarine and Fourteenth
Air Force anti-shipping operations. Shipping losses drove the Greater
East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere below subsistence level and created a
condition where even the most fanatic patriot realized the disadvantages
of the situation.
The Japanese put all the captured radios to work. They had traitors of
all kinds on their side--including, it is shameful to admit, Americans,
Russians, British, Australians, and French. (Despite the fact they
occupied all of Guam, they never used a single Guamanian
traitor--testimony to the simple loyalty to the U.S. of the Chamorro
people and to the popularity of the long-established U.S. naval
government on the island.)
Japanese psychological warfare failed because the real warfare behind it
failed. The Japanese could not whip their over-docile troops into a
fighting frenzy without allowing those troops to behave in a way which
made deadly enemies for Japan among the peoples she came to "liberate."
The Japanese did not have sense enough to be satisfied with 100% return
per year on their money, but wrecked the conquered economic systems with
inflation, poor management, and excess exploitation. Even the quislings
became restless under the poor occupation policies of the Japanese, and
before the war was over a considerable number of the Japanese quislings
re-quislinged back to the United Nations side.
=Theater Psychological Warfare.= The Japanese had superlative close-knit
psychological warfare staff organization within metropolitan Japan. They
possessed many first-class field operators, first among them the
true-life master-mind Major General K. Doihara, whose dinner guests
often woke up the next morning with bad hangovers and high treason on
their consciences. But the Japanese did not have adequate channels of
communication, supply, and control between their smooth system at the
top, and the working propagandists at the bottom. The _Kempeitai_
(military-political gendarmerie) structure got in the way; Japanese
propaganda lines lost touch with the strategic realities of their slow
defeat. They did, instead, what any propaganda system does on the
downgrade; they turned to repression instead of counterpropaganda with
the inevitable result.
In contrast, the American psychological warfare structure included
Theater operating units, usually called PWB (Psychological Warfare
Branch), although it became PWD (Psychological Warfare Division) in
SHAEF and did not grow beyond TPWO (Theater Psychological Warfare
Officer) in China Theater. The supreme authority was, of course, the
Theater Commander, on whose responsibility the operation had to be
carried out. When propaganda bungled and got into the field of political
trouble, it was the Theater Commander and not the subordinates who took
the blame. Every theater was under the command of a general, except for
Central Pacific (under Admiral Nimitz, and he used an Army colonel as
his propaganda chief). In most theaters, the Political Adviser was the
buffer between psychological warfare and the commander himself; in
Southwest Pacific and later the Headquarters of the Supreme Commander
for the Allied Powers, Japan, General MacArthur instituted the office of
Military Secretary and made this officer responsible for reporting to
him personally the developments in the propaganda field.
Subject to local variation, the Theater agencies faced similar problems.
They had to serve in turn as a rear echelon to service the needs of
combat propaganda, while working as the actual operating agencies for
the bigger radio programs and the preparation of strategic leaflets. As
the areas behind them became more consolidated, displays and films took
their place beside news and leaflets as chores that had to be performed.
Communications facilities were a problem. Purely military facilities
could not, of course, be overloaded by the lightly coded transmission of
hundreds of thousands of words of political and other news and guidance;
the psychological warfare establishments had to jerry-build
communications facilities out of what they could borrow from Army, or
obtain from OWI supplies in the United States, or buy locally.
In most Theater organizations, the chief was a military man and the
staff was partly military and partly civilian. Under General Eisenhower,
PWD was not only Army and OWI but included OSS, on the American side,
along with British partnership, French participation, and other Allied
personnel as well. Under General MacArthur, OWI participated under
strict Army control. Under General Stilwell, no Theater organization as
such was set up; the G-2, the Political Adviser or the General himself
handled propaganda matters when they turned up. Under General Wedemeyer,
there was a Theater officer. Under General Sultan, the OWI ran itself;
the Outpost serviced the Theater. Under General Clay, Information
Control Service, OMGUS, became an integral part of military control. The
same thing happened in General MacArthur's reorganized PWB--an
organization termed CIES (Civil Information and Education Section) had
the organization and personnel not only of the American structure, but
the usable purged parts of the _Joho Kyoku_ obedient to its command and
liaison. Other Theaters had comparable arrangements, each suited to the
Theater.
[Illustration: _Figure 50: Consolidation Propaganda: Door Gods._ One of
the most unusual consolidation propaganda operations was the
distribution of "door gods." These were small good-looking posters which
traditionally displayed figures from the Chinese Pantheon. During the
war, farm families who had been accustomed to putting up new door gods
each lunar New Year found that they could not afford them. China
Division, OWI, then run by F. M. Fisher, Richard Watts, Jr., Graham
Peck, and James Stewart, made up new door gods which showed American
aviators, thus familiarizing the Chinese peasantry with our insignia and
preaching the cause of inter-Allied cooperation.]
[Illustration: _Chart IX_
PRODUCTION
of a
TACTICAL LEAFLET
(Army Level)
INTELLIGENCE
+----------+ +----------+
| RECORDING| | CIVILIAN |
| UNIT | | INTERROG.|
| | | OFFICERS |
+-----+----+ +-----+----+
| |
v v
+------+-------+
|
v PRODUCTION
+-----------+----------+ +------------+
| INTELLIGENCE | | LEAFLET |
| OFFICER +==============++ ++===+ WRITER |
| AND STAFF | || || | |
+-----------+----------+ || || +------+-----+
^ || || |
| || || |
+------+-------+ || || |
^ | ^ || || |
| | | || || v
+-----+----+ | +-----+----+ || || +------+-----+
| POW | | | CORPS | || || | LAYOUT |
| INTERROG.| | | LIAISON | || ++===+ ARTIST |
| OFFICERS | | | OFFICERS | || || | |
+----------+ | +----------+ || || +------+-----+
| || || |
+------+-------+ || || |
^ ^ || || |
| | || || V
+-----+----+ +------+----+ +--------++-------+ || +------+-----+
|MONITORING| |PSYCH. WAR.| | FW COMBAT TEAM | || | PRINTING |
| UNIT | | AT OTHER | |OPERATIONS CHIEF +====++===+ UNIT |
| | | LEVELS | | | | (MOBILE) |
+----------+ +-----------+ +--------++-------+ +------+-----+
|| |
|| V
+-------------------------------------][------------------------+------+
| || |
| || |
| || |
| || |
| || |
| +---------------+ || +---------------+ |
| | AIR CORPS | || | ARTILLARY | |
| | LIAISON +==================++============+ LIAISON | |
| | OFFICER | | OFFICER | |
| +------++-------+ +------++-------+ |
| || || |
| || ++=======++ |
| || || || |
| +------++-------+ || +---++----+ |
| | AIR BOMB | || | LEAFLET | |
| | DEPOT OFFICER | DISSEMINATION ++===+ ROLLERS +<----+
| | | || | |
| +------++-------+ || +----+----+
| || || |
| || || |
| || || V
| +---++----+ || +----+----+
| | BOMB | || | SHELL |
+---->+ LOADERS | ++===+ LOADERS |
| | | |
+----+----+ +----+----+
| |
| |
V V
FIGHTER ARTILLARY
BOMBER INSTALLATIONS
FIELDS
(ASP'S BATTERY POSITIONS,
DIVISION ARTILLARY, DAQ'S)
LEGEND
|
---- | FLOW OF MATERIAL AND IDEAS
||
==== || OPERATIONAL CONTROL
(_Source: History of 2d Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company._)]
The common features of all Theater establishments were:
(1) Liaison or control from Army, State, and OWI, sometimes including
OSS.
(2) Responsibility to the Theater Commander.
(3) Direct operation of strategic radio.
(4) Preparation of strategic leaflets, and sometimes of tactical
leaflets as well.
(5) Use of local, native, or allied personnel.
Within the Theater staffs, the psychological warfare facilities were to
a great extent assimilated for control and movement of personnel,
supply, and so on. The G-3's and G-4's of the Theaters normally serviced
the PWB's along with the rest of their work. The OWI and other civilian
persons were put into uniform and given simulated rank, sometimes wildly
disproportionate to their Army counterparts. The Army G-2's naturally
worked with the PWB intelligence facilities; in some Theaters the G-2
was _ex officio_ the chief of psychological warfare, as was the
Assistant Chief of Staff G-2, War Department General Staff, himself at
home. G-1's usually kept out of the way of psychological warfare and the
housekeeping of the units was in most cases autonomous.
Responsibility for financing psychological warfare was never established
as doctrine. The State Department kept most of it off its budget,
leaving the actual payments up to the War Department and the OWI to
figure out. Oftentimes this resulted in a curious sort of neo-capitalism
within the U.S.-owned socialism of the Army. The two agencies would hold
on to property as though it were private property, on the basis of
immediate title, without reference to the plain fact that all of it was
paid for in the end by the United States Treasurer. (OWI once murmured
threateningly about bringing its radio material home from Manila rather
than let General MacArthur's people highjack it. Such talk ended when
the material was declared surplus or stolen.)
=Field Operations.= Field operations were most highly developed in the
Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operation. Combat propaganda
units came into being, carrying fully equipped mobile radio stations,
and high-volume printing presses, along with them. Later, under SHAEF,
these units developed further and Army-level organizations were set up
which duplicated the Theater organizations on a reduced scale. (See
Chart IX for chart of an Army unit.)
The tactical leaflet (page 211) came into its own with such units. It
was possible to develop high-speed routines for using intelligence
swiftly. Maps were dropped on the enemy in unfavorable situations. Order
of Battle became highly important for psychological warfare purposes
when enemy units could be addressed by their proper unit designation or
by the name of their commanders. Intelligence was brought into play: bad
food, bad supply, poor command, or mishandling of enemy forces in any
way brought prompt propaganda comment.
Radio was the least useful for tactical operations simply because enemy
troops do not carry private portable radio sets around with them. Radio
was of high value in consolidation operations, passing along
instructions to liberated populations, and telling civilians in the line
of approach about measures which they could take for the common benefit
of themselves and of the Allies.
A constant problem, never completely ironed out, was the use of
airplanes for dropping purposes. The leaflet producers had, in all
Theaters, a tendency to prepare excellent leaflets, bale them, and send
them along to the airfields in the expectation that an overworked,
unindoctrinated air force staff would automatically pick up the
leaflets, develop dropping mechanisms, pack the leaflets into planes,
take them out and drop them to the right language-groups at the right
time in the right place. This was of course as absurd from the aviators'
side as it was, to the civilians, to let their brain-children accumulate
in hangars or warehouses. For strategic droppings, systematic
arrangements could be made through proper official channels, and a
regular air operation detailed to do the job. Tactical dropping did not
allow enough time for elaborate staff work in each instance, and
recourse was had to psychological warfare liaison officers (either Army
officers or civilians with the approximate status of Tech-rep, technical
representative, a familiar sight on World War II airfields) to get in
touch with the units, help them install dropping facilities, explain the
leaflets to the actual pilots and bombardiers, and thus obtain a high
degree of cooperation. In almost every theater, this policy succeeded,
and a wide variety of leaflet bombs, leaflet dispensers, and other
leaflet-circulating gadgets was developed.
Artillery distribution also played a significant part. For front-line
situations artillery could do the job better than planes, without
risking aircraft in a quasi-combat operation. Leaflet bombs of
considerable scope appeared, and could be made to fit almost any
appropriate weapon. Circulation was also effected by means of
clandestine operations to friendly civilians, frequently combined with
air-drop of weapons, medicine, and other essentials.
The organization of all these new functions has changed military
organization. A whole new series of units were attached in echelon, each
fitted to the appropriate level for its work. The rear-area functions
and strategic propaganda work always required a considerable proportion
of civilian aid, since some of the best workers in this line were
persons who either did not wish to join the Army or whom the Army did
not wish to have join it. These psychological warfare organizations were
unbelievably cheap, even if measured by the most conservative estimates
of their success. It is impossible that the army of the future, whether
American or foreign, will overlook this source of assistance.
Psychological warfare nowhere replaced combat, but it made the impact of
combat on the enemy more effective.