Research, Development, and the Future
Psychological warfare is part of civilization. Civilization, no matter
how one defines it, is not a static thing. It is an immense fermenting,
active, often turbulent composite of the _whys_ and _hows_ of the way
men and women think and behave. The short-run factors in a civilization
are often as important as the long-run ones. Though the United States
from 1860 to 1960 has been a steady part of the west European,
predominantly Christian civilization, the United States has undergone
immense changes of fashion, belief, appetite, preference, and behavior.
With any changing, developing civilization, "war" may seem like a very
static term, so that the Civil War and the war of the Western powers
against Germany of 1939-45 may to some degree seem comparable phenomena.
They are comparable, but only within sharp limits.
=The Meaning of War.= Nowhere is the transitoriness and changeability of
modern civilization more evident than in the significance which
intelligent men and women attach to the term _war_. War was "noble" in
1861-65, but in 1941-45 it was "noble" only for the most perfunctory and
most hollow oratory. Push the contrast farther: "psychological warfare"
was an unknown element in 1861-65; by 1941-45 it had become fashionable.
(One can seriously doubt that President Lincoln ever worried about
Northern citizens becoming "un-American" under that rubric, though he
had plenty of traitors to worry him.) The years 1945-53 were momentous.
A whole string of new ideas, new terms, and new behavior patterns
appeared within the USA in a mere eight years. What the next twenty
years will bring is deeply uncertain.
War is coming to mean the effectuation or prevention of revolution, not
the half-savage, half-courteous armed conflict of sovereign nations. War
is getting to be chronic again.[55] War between entirely comparable
states such as the United States and Canada, Mexico and Cuba, Indonesia
and India, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, or any similar combination, is getting
to be more and more unthinkable. War between ideologically dissimilar
states, such as North Korea and South Korea, Communist China and
Nationalist China, Viet Minh and Viet Nam, USSR and USA, is getting to
be virtual normality.
=Research into Tension.= It is true of all people that they solve
particular problems, in many cases, some time after the occasion for
solving the problem has passed. What is called "decision" in government,
politics, and in personal affairs is very often not the selection of one
very real course of action as against another equally real course of
action, but the confirmation of a commitment already made. If this is
true of every-day life, it is even more true of scholars and experts.
One of the disabilities of our time in the field of the social and
psychological sciences and the humanities lies in the fact that although
government officials recognize problems some months or years after they
have arisen and finally attempt to deal with them, scholars frequently
get around problems decades after any practical occasion for decision
has passed.[56]
Nowhere is this more evident than in the discussion of tensions as a
cause of war. Tension certainly contributed very much to the outbreak of
war in 1914. It is possible that the tensions and hostilities of Europe
in the 1930s which allowed Fascism and Communism to become threatening
and powerful also contributed in the end to the outbreak of war in 1939.
It is difficult, however, to suppose that the coming of war in September
1939 was itself the result of tension except as a very remote and
indirect cause. This author believes that tension leads to a
perpetuation of a kind of civilization in which wars are possible, but
cannot persuade himself that an additional factor of tension within
civilization as we know it can be an immediate cause of war.[57]
Research into tensions has been carried fairly far. It may be that the
wartime role of tension can be ascertained by scientific methods, so
that the psychological warfare of Power A can cause so much more tension
than Power B, either among the élite or among the general population,
that Power B cannot further continue the war. Alternatively, it is
imaginable that Power A may be able to relax tension so sharply among
the élite or broad population of Power B that Power B's potentiality for
war, or decision to wage war, can be postponed.
For purposes of research it seems worthwhile to suggest that tension
appears to be highly prevalent in the two most powerful military
civilizations on earth today: the USSR and its satellites, on the one
hand, and the cluster of Western powers, on the other. Tension appears
to be caused by the complexity of every-day life, the demands made upon
the psychophysiological organization of each individual human being, by
the technological facilities available, and through the relief offered
within each civilization by the opportunity to discharge hatred against
members of the other civilization instead of recognizing self-hatred for
the very real problem which it is.
In other terms, it is tough to be modern; the difficulty of being modern
makes it easy for individuals to be restless and anxious; restlessness
and anxiety lead to fear; fear converts freely into hate; hate very
easily takes on political form; political hate assists in the creation
of real threats such as the atomic bomb and guided missiles, which are
not imaginary threats at all; the reality of the threats seems to
confirm the reality of the hate which led to it, thus perpetuating a
cycle of insecurity, fear, hate, armament, insecurity, fear, and on
around the circle again and again.
=Revolutionary Possibilities in Psychology.= It is possible, but by no
means probable, that the rapid development of psychological and related
sciences in the Western world may provide whole new answers to the
threats which surround modern Americans, including the supreme answer of
peace as an alternative to war or the secondary answer of victory in the
event of war. Nothing in the existing academic literature on the subject
of psychology of war, the psychiatry of modern mass behavior, the
psychology or psychiatry of present-day power politics, justifies the
inference that an applicable solution to our "problems" is at all near.
The "problems" are almost all aspects of our entire lives and one cannot
solve life like a Delphic riddle or a single scientific experiment.
It would be unwise of U.S. military and political leaders to overlook
developing strengths within American every-day talk and thinking,
whether academic or popular. Too specific a concentration on the problem
of winning a war may cause a leader or his expert consultants to
concentrate on solutions derived from past experience, therewith leading
him to miss new and different solutions which might be offered by his
own time. Changes need not always be thought of as weaknesses, which
they are if past criteria are retained as absolute standards. Men born
in the period 1910-20 may have endowments which are not commonly found
among men born in the period 1930-40, yet it is entirely possible that
the generation born during 1930-40 may have capacities and resistances
which the older generation does not altogether appreciate.
Apply this concept to Communism. Communism loses strength every day that
it exists: each day deprives it of novelty, each day makes it a littler
more familiar, each day makes its leaders one day older. If Americans
can learn how to be flexible and imaginative and to understand
themselves as they really are, they might find that the real American
appeal to the youth of the world would be much greater than the
Communist appeal. It was unfortunately characteristic of the United
States in the early 1950s of the Cold War that U.S. propaganda was based
on ideals and standards _older_ than the ideals and standards
competitively presented by the Communists, and that therefore in many
parts of the world the struggle between Americans and Communists
appeared to be a struggle on our side of the old against the young.
Nothing could be farther from the truth. The United States army in Korea
in 1950-53 was one of the most revolutionary armies in history, an army
dedicated to non-victory, pledging allegiance to a shadowy world
government of the United Nations behind the practical reality of the
government of the United States. Perhaps never before in many centuries
have men fought so matter-of-factly, so calmly, so reasonably. They
fought well and did not need to be jazzed up with the hashish of "making
the world safe for Democracy" or "establishing the Four Freedoms."
The temper of the U.S. forces in Korea in 1951 was demonstrated by a
Reserve sergeant who scarcely knew he was in the Reserves until he was
on a boat bound for Pusan. He was a practical man, anxious to get home,
but willing to do his share in this war as long as he had to. He was
given the assignment of testing the voice plane of U.S. headquarters at
Taegu. The loudspeaker was not working quite right, and he was
instructed to test the plane at 500, 1,000 and 1,500 feet. The plane
flew low over U.S. headquarters. The roar of the engines almost deafened
everyone within the building, yet even above the roar of the engines
there could be heard the bone-chilling hum of the silent loudspeaker--an
immense magnification of the noise one hears from a radio set which is
turned on without being tuned to a station. Everyone expected the
sergeant to say, "This is the EUSAK voice plane testing; one-ah, two-ah,
three-ah!" Instead the immense voice came through clearly, through
brick, and plaster, and wood, through air and trees. It must have
reached four miles. The gigantic voice of the sergeant seemed to roar
over half of South Korea as he said, "Why--don't--you--imperialist--sons o'
bitches--go--back--to--Wall-Street--where--you--belong?" It was said
that fifty colonels grabbed for their phones simultaneously, but the
purely American gimmick to the whole story lay in the fact that the
sergeant was not punished. No damage was done. The Americans thought
their enemies were funny or silly. We had shown that we were not afraid
of Communist ideas. Several South Koreans told the author that they
regarded the Americans as inscrutable people indeed.
The development of modern civilization is certain to have developments
in war both as to the purpose of war and as to the modes of war. It
seems likely that in the face of the supreme danger of atomic and
thermonuclear weapons nations will resort more and more to small wars
and semi-war operations which will offer the opportunity of strategic
advantage without the cataclysmic danger of a world-wide showdown. In a
very hush-hush way the U.S. Army is looking into the possibilities of
small and irregular kinds of war; security regulations prohibit the
author from discussing some of the interesting new developments in this
field.
=National Research and Development Programs.= The United States
Government considered as a whole has developed a very adequate
scientific research program. Most of this is quite properly keyed to the
physical and mechanical sciences, in which the most tangible results are
obtained. Substantial strides are being made in the medical and allied
fields. Some research is, however, being carried out in fields
pertaining to psychological warfare. These are worth describing, but it
must be remembered that research on PsyWar may not affect PsyWar itself
as much as research in other fields which, by changing the character of
war, will change PsyWar too.
Within the general research field, two basic approaches have been
recognized by the U.S. Army as being distinct from one another:
developmental research and operations research. _Developmental research_
consists of that research which creates new weapons, new methods of war,
new devices or procedures, doing so by digging through modern science,
investigating its applicability to military problems, and then advancing
the frontier of science, when necessary, in the military interest. The
goals of _operations research_ are more modest and, in some respect,
more provocative. Operations research takes operations as they exist and
reexamines them from beginning to end to discover how much of each
operation is scientifically pertinent to its stated goal, what
economies, modifications, or changes might be introduced, and how the
operation might be improved.
=Developmental Research in PsyWar.= At the time of the close of the
1950-53 phase of Korean hostilities, the PsyWar being conducted by the
United States Army in Korea showed little sign of having been influenced
by developmental research into this field of activity. The leaflets were
not better than the leaflets of World War II, nor even very different.
Because of the peculiar political limitations of the war, the radio
program was not as good as the performance of ABSIE under Eisenhower.
The tactical use of loudspeakers had shown a very marked improvement
over World War II standards, but to a non-engineer such as the present
writer neither the Communist loudspeakers nor our own seemed strikingly
better or different.
Developmental research had a great deal to offer, but the gap between
initial scientific advance and practical military application appeared
to be too broad to warrant the assumption that the research had
transformed the U.S. PsyWar program.
=Operations Research in Korea.= Operations research--sometimes slangily
called _opsearch_--was applied to the Korean war with highly uneven
results.[58]
Among other things, Army officers in the PsyWar field showed, early in
the Korean war, that land forces possessed tactical opportunities which
combat propaganda could exploit very effectually. Various experiments
were tried, none of them so decisive as to affect the outcome of the
war, but some of them of real tactical value and others of great
importance in obtaining Chinese prisoners.
One of the points examined was surrender as a _process_. Surrendering
does not depend upon the disposition of the individual enemy soldier to
say _yes_ or _no_ to the war as a whole. He could say _no_ a thousand
times and still be on the other side shooting at us.
The actual physical _process_ of surrender is an elaborate one
consisting of the psychological processes of getting ready to give up on
the other side, the physical capacity to surrender when the opportunity
for getting captured presents itself, and the alternative, more
difficult process of deliberately leaving the other side and getting to
our side alive. In 1951 and 1952 there were considerable developments
along this line. Americans learned much about how to teach enemy
soldiers to surrender. Late in 1952 and early in 1953 the front had
become so static that it took extraordinary heroism for
soldiers--outside of a tiny minority engaged in reconnaissance
patrols--to get away from their own side and surrender to the enemy
without being killed by their friends as deserters or by the enemy as
sneak attackers.
The U.S. public did not realize that throughout the Korean war the
Communists--Russian, North Korean, and Chinese--enjoyed a distinct radio
advantage over the UN side both as to funds available for programs and
as to number of station-hours on the air. The language gap between the
Americans and Chinese was so extreme that it was hard for Americans to
realize that the Chinese broadcasts covered wider audiences and covered
them better than did our own. American restraint in this field may have
been dictated in part by the fact that the war was a limited war
consisting of combat only with those armed Chinese Communists on North
Korean territory, but not with armed Chinese Communists elsewhere in the
Far East.
=Philosophy and Propaganda Development.= In terms of specific literature
of PsyWar it is difficult to find many contributions of professional
philosophers to PsyWar since the end of World War II. This is curious,
in view of the Communist propagation of philosophy, no matter how
perverted its form, as a major weapon. The American philosopher, Dr.
George Morgan, who became a career diplomat, was simultaneously a
Soviet-area expert and a key figure in the Psychological Strategy Board.
There were not many others like him.
Philosophy offers an opportunity for the reexamination of cultural
values. The indoctrination of those professors who will teach the
teachers of the generation after next will influence the capacity of
future Americans to have a world-view which will give them the utmost
opportunities for action in the military field while retaining as far as
possible the blessings of U.S. civilian civilization. That U.S.
civilization is still civilian and not military is, of course, beyond
cavil.
The William Jackson committee was a voice crying in the wilderness when
it asked for new terms and new ideas against which to set U.S.
propaganda operations in the world of modern strategy. Philosophers may
have had the capacity for finding some of the answers, but philosophers,
of all people, do not like to be jostled or hurried. The author has
never heard of a philosopher employed on a confidential basis by the
United States Government to think through the historical and cultural
rationale of a U.S. military victory for the future. Writers such as F.
S. C. Northrop and Erich Fromm--to name only two sharply contrasting
personalities--have written books which possess high significance for
the international propaganda field. The connection appears, however, to
be tangential.
=Literary Contributions.= Almost all the best propagandists of almost
all modern powers have been, to a greater or less degree, literary
personalities. The artistic and cultural aspect of writing is readily
converted to propaganda usage. Elmer Davis is a novelist as well as a
commentator. Robert Sherwood is one of America's most distinguished
playwrights. Benito Mussolini wrote a bad novel. Mao Tse-tung is a poet
and philosopher, as well as a Communist party boss. Down among the
workers in the field, such American novelists as James Gould Cozzens,
Pat Frank, Jerome Weidman, and Murray Dyer, have worked on U.S.
psychological warfare.[59]
Though literary men have converted their writing to propaganda purposes,
few of them have gone on to define the characteristics of a specific
conversionary literature or to compile canons of literary style
applicable to the propaganda field. The contributions may lie in the
future.
=The Social Sciences.= The American Association of Public Opinion
Research (AAOPR) is the professional league of U.S. propagandists and
analysts of public opinion; its quarterly, _Public Opinion_, is the key
journal in the field. The members of this association are drawn both
from the social sciences and from the psychological sciences, ranging
from such practical operatives as Dr. George Gallup and Elmo Roper to
austere theorists like Professors Nathan Leites and Hadley Cantril.
A good argument can be presented to the effect that the skills brought
from the social-science into the propaganda field are more valuable once
they are employed full time in that field than an attempt to apply
political science, or sociology, or economics, each as an individual
compartment, to the field of propaganda. There is still no book
available with the title _The Politics of Knowledge_,[60] even though
the reception, control, prohibition, and dissemination of knowledge is a
major factor in all modern governmental processes both in and out of the
propaganda field.
=Psychology and Related Sciences.= There has been an immense amount of
work done by psychologists, much of it classified, on the field of
propaganda. Some of this work is refreshing in the extreme and should
provide nasty surprises for the Communists in a major war. Other parts
are restatements which if translated into operations might or might not
prove feasible with the kind of army we Americans have or are likely to
have.
One of the most conspicuous developments since World War II has been the
application by psychologists, sociologists, and persons in related field
of _quantifying techniques_. The introduction of rigorous scientific
requirements of _number_ into the attempted reportage of propaganda
behavior or propaganda results is having a significant effect.
Quantification may not obtain everything which its devotees claim for
it. There is a wide area of human behavior which is significant to the
ordinary person, or even to the expert in descriptive terms, and which
loses much of its significance if the descriptive and allusive terms are
replaced by measurements, tables, and graphs. There is, however, no
danger that quantification will replace description as the sole tool of
research in the propaganda field.
What quantification does do is develop a common area of discussion
between propagandists and nonpropagandists. In many instances
quantification can demonstrate results where allegations of failure or
of success would have nothing more than personal authority to support
them. Within our own particular kind of civilization quantification has
a special appeal because of the American trust in engineering and in
numbers. The conclusions of the Kinsey reports on men and on women seem
much more authoritative to the ordinary man because they are presented
with an ample garniture of numbers, even though Havelock Ellis's pioneer
works in the psychology and behavior patterns of Western sex life may
have been much more tangible and much more revolutionary in their time.
=Projection and Research.= All propaganda involves a certain degree of
projection--the propagandist attempts to identify himself with a
situation which he does not face in real life and to issue meaningful
communications to persons about situations which they themselves do not
face _yet_. Much of the psychological research on tactical PsyWar
remains yet to be done, although from the quantitative point of view
there have been significant U.S. achievements within the past four
years.
Another aspect of projection is left unexplored because of its immense
difficulty and its dangerously unscientific character. Consider the
problem this way: the United States one day before the outbreak of war
with a hypothetical enemy, such as the Soviet Union, will possess a
certain group of characteristics. Representative individual lives within
this country can be determined to possess certain habits concerning mass
communication, trust in mass communication, and response to symbols
which may come through press, radio, or other mass devices.
One day after the outbreak of war the United States will change
_because_ the war has broken out.
One month after the outbreak of war the United States will no longer be
the USA_{1} which existed on war-day. It may well have become USA_{25}
because of the rapidity and variety of change. Three Soviet hydrogen
bombs and twelve Soviet atomic bombs might change many of our national,
economic, political, and psychological characteristics, and no one, not
even an American, could predict this change in advance. The best he
could do would be to get ready to study the change as it occurred, to
understand the rate and direction of the change, and to assess the
meaning of the change in light of the conduct of war.
The same would be true of the USSR; that country, like any other major
country, would change under the impact of war. Who could have predicted
the renascence of Russian patriotism and traditionalism resulting from
the Nazi invasion of 1941? Even if we know where the Russians are as of
the outbreak of war, we won't know where they will head or how fast they
will head there, once war has broken out.
The scientific problem presented by attempted serious study of a
U.S.-Soviet war is therefore very difficult indeed. It is really a
problem involving three clusters of moving bodies. The first cluster
will be the American people, their behavior, and their institutions; the
second cluster, the Russians and allied peoples, their behavior and
their institutions; the third cluster, the changing methods of
communication existing between them.
It can be said even now, simply by referring to the character of the
American people and their past history, that if the Communist leaders of
the USSR start a general war, the end of that war is sure (under sets of
words and ideas which have yet to be developed in the future) to involve
the reconciliation of the inhabitants of the USA with the Russian
people. In other words, USA_{v} and USSR_{v} can and must have certain
relationships with each other, preeminent among which are attempts at
undoing war damage, at political and cultural reconciliation, and the
undertaking of the rebuilding of a world which both these great peoples
can support with enthusiasm and _hope_.[61]
USA_{v} and USSR_{v} are imaginable. USA_{1} and USSR_{1} for the day
preceding the outbreak of war, or, alternatively, the day on which the
war occurs, will be known elements. American science in many fields can
help U.S. mass communications and therewith help our armed forces if we
learn how to ascertain how the Soviet leadership changes, how Soviet
élite groups change, and how the Soviet population changes during the
course of the war. We must not only be able to guess what is happening
to them physically, but must try to appreciate and to understand what is
happening to them psychologically and semantically. This is an immense
task. It is by no means certain that our research and development
facilities can give us an adequate research program to handle the
problem.
This much can be said: if the Americans understand the Russians before
the war and during the war, it will be the first time that a nation has
kept its enemy in wide-awake sight.
The usual process in the past has been the acceptance of a few
exaggerated stereotypes of the national characteristics of the potential
enemy, the ascription of every possible kind of infamy and inhuman
characteristic to the enemy during the war, and the redefinition of the
enemy as a friend after the war. It would be strange and wonderful if
the U.S. Government and the U.S. propagandists (or conceivably as much
as a large minority of the U.S. population) could learn how to fight the
USSR in order to _help_ the Russians escape from a tyranny which has
already hurt them much more than it has hurt us.
The Germans suffered a tragic, overwhelming, and perhaps decisive
psychological defeat in the Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic
and in the Ukraine, when they carried with their field forces such naïve
and tragic Nazi misconceptions of Russian and Ukrainian character as to
defeat every opportunity they may have had for a serious anti-Communist
alliance of Germany with the Russian and Ukrainian peoples. They
destroyed themselves not through ignorance, but through what they
_thought_ they knew. If they had been more calm, less assured, more
willing to learn from immediate experience, and less indoctrinated with
their own preposterous misconceptions of Russian and Ukrainian
character, they might have found Russian and Ukrainian allies who would
have joined them in the final extermination of the Soviet system.
The world Communist movement has already suffered very serious setbacks
because of its failure to project U.S. behavior successfully from the
summer of 1950 onward. If the Russian and Chinese Communists had
understood Americans well and had made a correct evaluation of the
American response to the invasion of South Korea, they would not have
driven the United States from lethargy to alertness, from weakness to
military strength, from vulnerability toward Communist and
crypto-Communist propaganda to sharp and angry recognition of Communist
manipulation of symbols such as "progressives," "people's governments,"
and "liberation."
=Communist Developments.= If the U.S. Government agencies know about the
scientific development of Soviet propaganda techniques in the last few
years, they have certainly not told this author. What is here presented
is therefore derived from first-hand interrogation of Communists, from
escapers in both Europe and Asia, and unclassified materials.
Sociologically it would seem that the Russian Communists attempted
definite improvements of the techniques of Communist revolution and that
these improvements have in large part failed in the European satellites.
The governments of Rumania, Bulgaria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland,
and East Germany have turned out to be poor governments--despite the
fact that from the Soviet point of view it was a sharp innovation to
leave them in pseudo-parliamentary form instead of creating outright
Soviet facsimilies.
At the Chinese end of the Moscow-Peking axis the sociology of
revolutionary propaganda and organization appears to have worked out
much more successfully than at the Russian end. The Chinese Communists,
perhaps because they were Chinese, perhaps because they were tougher and
more experienced Communists than the Russians, got their country under
rigid control and then undertook social and political experiments on a
very audacious scale. They have managed not to be un-Chinese while
creating in China the kind of pervasive dictatorship which Communist
control appears to require.
In the manipulation of satellites and in particularization of
propaganda, the North Korean Communist army, the Viet Minh army in
Indochina, and the Malayan Races Liberation Army on the Malay peninsula,
appear to have near-optimum localism and particularism without suffering
serious deviation from the main Communist world-wide pattern. In North
Korea, of course, Chinese intervention and Soviet support have sharply
modified the position of the North Korean People's Army, but the
Annamite and Malay Communist forces appear to be fighting with high
morale and considerable success, despite the duality of control from
Peking and Moscow, and despite the difficulties of reconciling Asian
nationalism with Marxian-world doctrine.
Another Communist technique is now known through Edward Hunter's
provocative pioneer book[62] by its correct name of "brain-washing."
This involves the transformation of a human personality. The author has
himself interrogated victims of brain-washing and can attest to the
terrifying depth to which this process is carried. The victim of
brain-washing is subject to very slight persuasion at the rational
level. He is not even given much propaganda as U.S. propagandists of
recent years might recognize the product. Instead, the process of
brain-washing consists of a frontal attack on all levels of the
personality, from the most conscious to the most hidden. The Communists
seek through fatigue and sustained interrogation to create a condition
similar to what is called "nervous breakdown" in popular parlance. Then
they rebuild the personality, healing their victim into Communist
normality.
One victim to whom the author talked had been so subject to Communist
brain-changing that he thought himself a real Communist even though he
had been reared a Catholic. He was completely convinced of the Communist
cause and of his own life and place in that cause after the
brain-washing had been completed. Unfortunately for Communism, the man
got into serious sexual difficulties, difficulties of a kind which any
American psychiatrist would recognize as potentially devastating.
As a result of his sexual frustrations he suffered a mild equivalent of
the medically recognized phenomenon of the schizophrenic break--that
terrible moment of false enlightenment in which the psychotic
personality cuts loose with a truth of his own and shuts off most or all
communication with normal people--with the consequence that he was
walking along Nanking Road in Shanghai, a normal Communist in one
instant of time and (as he put it to the author) in a millionth of a
second he suddenly realized he was a Catholic, an anti-Communist, the
enemy of every man, woman and child in sight--and at war with his entire
environment. As this writer understood it, the poor man, though adjusted
to the Communist environment after brain-washing, happened to go
crazy--crazy enough to come back to our side.
Who can say which is sane, which insane? When two social and cultural
systems are completely at odds with one another it may be impossible to
be "normal" in both of them.
Scientifically the Chinese process of personality transformation lacked
some of the pharmaceutical features apparent in the Western Communist
conversions for purposes of confession. It appears to be a combination
of audacious practical experimentation with well-known procedures from
textbooks of Pavlovian psychology. It is, of course, an interesting
scientific question to ask one's self: could Communist psychological
researchers do enough psychological research to understand their own
difficulties and to de-Communize themselves in the very act of seeking
better psychological weapons for Communism? If the people in charge of
Communist psychological techniques were scientists, as American
psychologists generally are, there might be a real point of discussion.
Unfortunately, most of them appear to be artists, believers, and
fanatics. The history of the fanatical religions which have inflamed and
ripped so much of mankind across the centuries is not such as to suggest
that Communism will de-Communize itself by becoming more Communistic or
more scientific.
Logically considered, the United States remains the largest extant
revolutionary experiment in the world--the first immense human community
which survives without profound dogma or profound hatred and which
attempts to make short-range, practical, and warm-hearted (though
ideologically superficial) concurrence the foundation for a political
and industrial civilization. If the United States wins a few more wars
it may be that the rest of mankind will be persuaded that our kind of
practicality is not only humanly preferable, but scientifically more
defensible than the philosophies of competing civilizations. It seems
unlikely that Communist research can outstrip us in the propaganda field
so far as the race is run in purely scientific terms; artistically and
gadget-wise the Communists are just as inventive as we are and often
more enthusiastic.
=Private PsyWar and Covert Techniques.= Another aspect in the
development of PsyWar was the inevitable possibility that skills
learned in wartime would not be forgotten in time of peace. Many of the
background studies made for OWI during World War II have been developed,
on the constructive side, into serious scientific contributions to
ethnology, anthropology, or psychology. The postwar studies of RAND
Corporation have in part been released in unclassified form and add to
our knowledge not only of propaganda but of mankind. The RADIR project
at Stanford University, the Russian research program at MIT and Harvard,
and other governmentally inspired or encouraged undertakings have borne
similar fruit for private scholarship and discussion.
On the other side of the coin, it is very hopeful to note that the many
and dangerous techniques developed by OSS for covert propaganda, some of
which were applied with considerable success in Europe, have not been
introduced into domestic U.S. politics, commercial competition, or other
forms of private life. After each war there is often a danger that the
coarsening of a culture by the war will lead to the application of
wartime skills to peacetime situations. This was emphatically not the
case in the Presidential campaigns of 1948 and 1952, even though persons
of rich PsyWar experience in World War II were on the staffs of both
Stevenson and Eisenhower.
It is often forgotten that some of the deadliest and most effective
revolutionary enterprises in the nineteenth century were undertaken
without the consent or assistance of the existing governments. Karl Marx
was certainly not an invention of Lord Palmerston. Bakunin did not
operate out of the French Foreign Office.
In the postwar discussion of USA-Communist rivalry, recommendations were
often made on the U.S. side that we should counter Soviet covert
operations with our own covert operations against the USSR. What has
been forgotten in this context is the fact that such operations have
been made illegal and dangerous under United States law. Under Federal
law as it exists today no Underground Railway could be developed to
assist Soviet escapers in the way that Negro slaves were relayed across
the Free States to Canada in the years before Emancipation. One of the
chief blocks to U.S. covert operations is the immense growth in all
directions of the power, authority, and responsibility of the Federal
Government; this growth makes it almost impossible to wage revolutionary
or conspiratorial operations from U.S. territory without the prior
approval of U.S. authorities--which the authorities, under traditional
international law, cannot give and cannot afford to give.
It would seem desirable, if the Cold War situation persists over a long
period of time, for Americans to reexamine the restraints which they
have placed upon their own citizens and to attempt a revision of the
laws which would permit pro-American secret activities to be launched
without permitting anti-American activities of the same kind to be
carried on. One immediately comes to the conundrum:[63]
How can the Government say _yes_ to the one and _no_ to the other
without being cognizant of what happens?
The answer would appear to lie in the older body of our law in that a
withdrawal of governmental authority from some fields would leave the
individual responsible and subject to indictment and trial if his
enterprises should prove deleterious to the United States Government,
but not subject to punishment if his enterprises hurt the known
antagonists of the USA.
Phrased in another way, this means that the USA might, in a long-range
Cold War situation, be required to make some domestic recognition of the
fact that the Communist states are the antagonists but not the military
enemies of the U.S. system of government and that as antagonists of this
system of government such states, their representatives, their property,
and their organizations, should not be afforded any more protection
under our laws than is given to the National City Bank of New York in
the laws applicable to the city of Moscow, or the American Telephone &
Telegraph Company in the laws which apply in Budapest. For a long time
the Communist states have treated even the most innocent business
enterprise and social club on our side as though they were attainted
with an inherent factor of criminal and subversive intent. The
withdrawal of U.S. legal protection from all things Communist might
allow the American people--or those among them who so chose--to develop
proclivities for adventure and trouble-making against the Communists.
These proclivities are now sternly repressed by Federal statute.
=The Future of Psychological Warfare.= PsyWar has become an existing
art. Where it had no practitioners at all in the United States between
1919 and 1940, it has had a long and distinguished roster of active and
reserve officers, civilian consultants, and demobilized veterans
interested in the field ever since 1945. A wide variety of military
establishments have had PsyWar responsibilities assigned them.
Substantial cadres of officers and skilled enlisted personnel have been
recruited and trained. Radio and leaflet facilities are ready to
accompany our land, sea, and air forces wherever they may have to go. A
U.S. strategic center for global propaganda, instantly convertible to
wartime use, exists in the Operations Coordinating Board under the
National Security Council.
This is not the end of the story.
One of the paradoxical but deeply true factors in the study and conduct
of propaganda is this: the more people know about propaganda, the better
they can resist it.
Propaganda was a tremendous bogey in the 1920s. It probably seems very
ugly and frightening to most people born before 1920. It does not seem
too frightening, so far as the author can judge, to Americans born after
1930. Those born in the period 1920-30 appear to be divided in their
emotional reactions to mass persuasion situations.
PsyWar is not magic. It is a valuable auxiliary to modern warfare and a
useful concomitant to modern strategy. If a particular strategic policy
is sanely and effectively devised as a feasible deterrent to war, the
PsyWar procedures supporting that strategy will contribute to the
prevention of war. Psychological warfare represents a recognition and
acceptance in the military and strategic field of skills which grow
about us every day.
In so far as ultra-destructive weapons may have increased the tenseness
and bad temper of people who must live under the perpetual but remote
threat of atomic bombing, one can say that physicists have upset the
nerves of mankind and that it is now up to the propagandists to reassure
and to reconcile the peoples.
Whatever PsyWar does, it certainly does not and should not increase the
bitterness of war. Fighting itself is the supreme bitterness. Radio
broadcasts and leaflets even in wartime only rarely should promote
hatred. The situation which the world faces is dangerous because of
technological development, not because of psychological knowledge.
PsyWar ranks as a weapon, but it is almost certainly the most humane of
all weapons.
Apart from PsyWar, what military weapon destroys the enemy soldier's
capacity to fight by saving his life? PsyWar tries to bring him over
alive and tries to send him home as our friend. No rival weapon can do
this.
PsyWar, no matter what it may be called in the future, cannot be omitted
from the arsenal of modern war. Neither can it outlast war. Its
improvement is a cheap, valuable, and humane way of increasing the
military potential of any country whether we think that country to be
politically right or politically wrong.
Since 1945 we Americans have written more, studied more, and talked more
about PsyWar than have any of the other free peoples. This is a hopeful
sign. It can be read as an indication that the American love of the
gadget, the American quest for a novelty, can be turned to the arena of
the soul. The Communists are better liars, better schemers, better
murderers than we shall ever be; they start off by being better
fanatics. Is it not in the American spirit that we should out-trick
them, out-talk them, and out-maneuver them? We have a very creative and
resourceful civilization at our backs. We have no Führer to guide us and
no party line to comfort us; we don't even want such things. Hard though
it may be, we can live with our own consciences and not seek for
keepers.
The Communists have started a fight with us. That fight may go on a long
time. If they want to stop fighting we shall certainly try to find peace
with them. But if they push the fight to its bitter end--
We shall not fail.
APPENDIX
Military PsyWar Operations, 1950-53
On 25 June 1950, when the invasion of the Republic of Korea began, no
real military PsyWar organization was tangibly evident. A planning staff
headed by Colonel J. Woodall Greene had been re-created in the Far East
Command's GHQ in 1947, but it was hardly prepared to direct full-scale
propaganda operations on such short notice, especially with a total lack
of field operating units. Yet the staff with hasty augmentation did go
into action--in effect, became its own operating unit--two days
following the invasion, using both leaflets and radio in a strategic
campaign that was continued without interruption for over three years.
At the same time that General MacArthur made provision for the PsyWar
planning staff in the Far East Command, the Department of the Army's G2
in 1947 directed the inauguration of a long-range program of extension
courses to be administered primarily to the specialists of the Military
Intelligence Reserve. One such specialty in the military intelligence
career program was psychological warfare.[64]
Parallel with the development of training literature based on World War
II experience, the Army experimented with the use of PsyWar in field
maneuvers. A special unit, called the Tactical Information
Detachment,[65] was formed at Fort Riley, Kansas.
=Organization of Field Operational Units.= Less than a month after the
1950 invasion, the Department of the Army announced the approval of a
new organizational concept for PsyWar field operational units. The new
concept, profiting by the organizational happenchance in all theaters of
operations during World War II, established two functional units: one
for _strategic_ propaganda support, the other for _tactical_ propaganda
support.
=Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group.= Although the concept for new
unit organization and function was not conceived overnight, FEC's
Psychological Warfare Section (PWS) with its dual planning and
operating responsibilities pointed up the urgent need for a unit
properly manned and equipped to support full-scale strategic operations
in any area. So the Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet (RB&L) Group was
born. Not only was it designed to conduct strategic propaganda in direct
support of military operations, but it likewise was created to support
the national world-wide propaganda effort when so directed. It was built
on a basic framework of three companies:
_Headquarters and Headquarters Company_, containing the command,
administrative, supervisory and creative personnel necessary for
propaganda operations.
_Reproduction Company_, containing intricate equipment and skilled
personnel capable of producing leaflets and newspapers of varying sizes
and multiple color.
_Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company_, designed to replace or augment
other means of broadcasting radio propaganda.
In 1953 a fourth type company was activated at Fort Bragg, North
Carolina--the _Consolidation Company_. This unit was very flexible and
had the job of creating and conducting PsyWar in support of
consolidation operations in areas under Military Government control.
[Illustration: _Figure 75: UN Propaganda._ In some leaflets used in
Korea, the United Nations emerged as a major point. Here UN lavishness
to South Korea is contrasted with Communist rapacity in the North. The
scene does not remind the reader of slums on our side.]
=Loudspeaker and Leaflet Company.= The Group's junior partner in the
conduct of PsyWar support operations was the Loudspeaker and Leaflet
(L&L) Company. This unit specifically supported an army in the field
with adequate _tactical_ propaganda support. Like the Group, it
supported the national propaganda objectives, but it interpreted the
directives that came from the theater commander in terms of more
immediate objectives. Its targets were smaller, lived under unusual
circumstances, and presented highly vulnerable, rapidly changing
propaganda opportunities--a real challenge for the L&L Company.
Organizationally it was a trimmed-down version of the Group. Its
_company headquarters_ and _propaganda platoon_ were the offspring of
Headquarters and Headquarters Company. The _publications platoon_ was a
smaller, more adaptable version of Reproduction Company. And the
_loudspeaker platoon_ was the tactical counterpart of the strategic
Mobile Radio Broadcasting Company.
[Illustration: _Figure 76: Korean Leaflet Bomb, Early Model._ An M16A1
cluster adapter being loaded at the FEC printing plant in Yokohama (1
November 1950). The bomb type adapter will contain 22,500 (5" by 8")
psychological warfare leaflets.]
The Tactical Information Detachment, moving from Fort Riley to Korea in
the fall of 1950, was reorganized as the _1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet
Company_ and, attached to EUSAK, served as Eighth Army's tactical
propaganda unit throughout the campaign. It adjusted its location,
equipment and propaganda tone to keep pace with the ups and downs of the
Korean war.
=Psychological Warfare Center.= Paralleling the creation of the Office
of the Chief of Psychological Warfare in the Department of the Army
PsyWar training was started in the spring of 1951. A faculty was
collected at the Army General School to start the world's first formal
school of military propaganda.
At the same time, reserve officers whose civilian specialties were in or
related to mass communications were recalled to PsyWar assignments.
Several RB&L groups and L&L companies were activated and trained at Fort
Riley. One of these, the _1st Radio Broadcasting and Leaflet Group_, was
deployed to Japan to become the strategic propaganda support unit in
FEC, thereby relieving the hard-pressed Psychological Warfare Section of
its operational functions. The Group left Fort Riley in July 1951 at the
height of the Missouri Valley floods, forcing the unit to take emergency
detours by bus and train in order to meet its scheduled port of
embarkation call. The 1st was the only group to have been used in active
operations. Other groups were employed in training missions. In
addition, Reserve groups and companies trained periodically at key
locations where sufficient specialized personnel were available to keep
the units on a ready, stand-by basis.
In April 1952, the PsyWar training activities at Fort Riley were moved
to Fort Bragg, North Carolina, where the new Psychological Warfare
Center was located. This Center not only provided unit training
supervision and facilities, but it fathered a new activity, the
Psychological Warfare Board, designed to evaluate and test new PsyWar
equipment and techniques. And the Psychological Warfare School, an
outgrowth of the classes conducted by the Army General School, was
formally recognized and established as one of the Army's specialist
schools. More than four hundred officers have received diplomas as
PsyWar officers at the time of this writing (1953). Most of the
graduates have been Army officers, although successfully completing the
course have been students from the Navy, Marine Corps, Air Force, U.S.
Information Agency, and from nine Allied nations.
=Psychological Warfare Staff, FEC.= For nearly two years, the
Psychological Warfare Section operated under the general staff
supervision of Intelligence (G2). Since World War I days G2 had been
given the responsibility for monitoring PsyWar activity, a practice that
was evident throughout World War II. In 1947 the Department of the Army
transferred the monitorship and supervision of PsyWar to Plans and
Operations (G3). The shift was effected in FEC in 1952.
[Illustration: _Figure 77: UN Themes._ This Korean-language leaflet
states: "No soldier would attempt to fight 54 men, yet Communist China
is attempting to fight 54 nations. Don't fight for Communist
enslavement--Join your comrades who have surrendered into safety."]
Early in 1953 PWS was transferred to the staff of the commander, Army
Forces Far East (AFFE), a paper transaction to put the staff in a closer
position to coordinate the plans and operations of the supporting army
PsyWar units.
Throughout the Korean conflict, PWS, like its area commander, wore two
hats: PWS was also the PsyWar operations coordinating agency for the
United Nations Command.
Broad objectives made possible throughout the war years the development
of literally thousands of appropriate themes. One theme so prominent in
World War II propaganda, that of _unconditional surrender_, was never
used. UN policy denied its use, and PWS enforced the prohibition.
=Psychological Warfare Staff, EUSAK.= Recognizing the need for PsyWar
officers on army and corps staffs, the Department of the Army hastened
to make an allocation for these officers to be integrated into
headquarters structures. The PsyWar officers finally came to rest in the
G3 staff section.
Eighth Army's PsyWar division of G3 had the 1st Loudspeaker and Leaflet
Company under its operational control. EUSAK's PsyWar officer kept a
tight control over the propaganda output of the L&L Company by
physically moving the propaganda platoon into his EUSAK staff office.
[Illustration: _Figure 78: Home-front Morale._ When South Korean
communications were interrupted, leaflets such as this provided on early
boost to Korean civilian morale.]
Each of the corps PsyWar officers had under his operational control one
loudspeaker section (with a varying number of teams) from the L&L
Company.
=Radio Operations.= Radio in the Korean conflict was used jointly as a
strategic and a consolidation medium. From the beginning of the war,
radio was the voice of our military policy. An ambitious network,
supervised in 1950-51 directly by PWS and thereafter by the 1st RB&L
Group, became known and recognized as the Voice of the United Nations
Command. The Korean Broadcasting System (KBS) and the Japan Broadcasting
System (JBS) transmitted on a cooperative basis, with the U.S.
Government buying air time. The 1st RB&L Group's radio unit furnished
programming assistance through key stations in Seoul (KBS), Taegu (KBS),
Pusan (KBS) and Tokyo (JBS). In addition, the Group furnished technical
assistance to KBS in order to keep as many as twelve network stations on
the air.
=Leaflet Operations.= As in World War II, leaflets were delivered
primarily by two means: aircraft and artillery. B-29s of the Far East
Air Force ferried leaflet bombs on night missions deep into strategic
areas. Light bombers and liaison craft in support of EUSAK dropped both
leaflet bombs and bundles on tactical targets. The leaflet bundle was a
Korean war development. It was wrapped, tied, and fuzed in such a manner
that it would open and release its leaflets in mid-air. The 105mm.
howitzer remained the principal artillery piece for placing
propaganda-loaded shells on pinpoint targets.
Tremendous quantities of leaflets were printed. The 1st RB&L Group on
many occasions averaged better than twenty million pieces of printed
propaganda every week. To this, the 1st L&L Company in Korea added an
average of three and a half million leaflets per week.
=Loudspeaker Operations.= The airborne loudspeaker was the object of
experimentation, but the bulk of loudspeaker broadcasts were made from
vehicle mounts, such as tanks, and from emplacements. During the static
battle situation of 1951-53, most of the broadcasts were of the latter
kind. Range of the voice casts was short, something like two thousand
yards under ideal conditions. Personnel and equipment were supplied by
the 1st L&L Company, and scripts were prepared by PsyWar Division, G3,
EUSAK.
=Results of Military PsyWar Operations.= When the question was asked,
"Just how effective was PsyWar?" the answer was vague. Clear-cut
immediate evaluation of the effects of each propaganda campaign was
often impossible to ascertain because of the many intangible conditions
that were prevalent in the target area--conditions that were constantly
changing.
Some critics of the PsyWar operations in the Far East Command charged
that there were exaggerated claims of prisoners of war who surrendered
as a result of propaganda. They pointed out that a head count of
prisoners is an inaccurate measure of _direct_ effects of PsyWar used in
support of military operations, because rarely is the taking of
prisoners the _sole_ goal of any major PsyWar campaign.
Other critics expressed the belief that emphasis had been placed on
_quantity_ rather than _quality_ of propaganda. By quantity they meant
propaganda measured by bookkeeping statistics. By quality they meant
propaganda that, planned with potent intelligence, was capable of
exploiting propaganda opportunities with maximum psychological impact.
Did PsyWar achieve its goal?
The effects of planned persuasion in a thousand days of radio
broadcasts, in tens of thousands of loudspeaker appeals, in billions of
leaflets, may be measured only in retrospect. The question may be
answered when reaction in the target area has reached (or fails to
reach) favorable proportion, provided that the tangible results of the
military operations can be clearly separated from those of concurrent
and subsequent strategic international information operations.
[Illustration: _Figure 79: The Famous Airplane Surrender Leaflet._ This
is the controversial Far East Command leaflet that in April 1953 offered
"the sum of 50,000 U.S. dollars to any pilot who delivers a modern,
operational, combat-type jet aircraft in flyable condition to South
Korea. The first pilot who delivers such a jet aircraft to the free
world will receive an additional 50,000 U.S. dollars bonus for his
bravery." The leaflet was printed in three languages--Russian, Chinese
and Korean. In this example of the Russian language leaflet, there are
added notations in both Korean and Chinese that "this is a message from
the Americans to any jet pilot who can read Russian. If you know such a
person, please give it to him. It tells him how to escape to the UN
Forces."]
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Histories of warfare, of politics (though there are no good recent
ones, Edward Jenks' little book being half a century out of date), of
political theory (especially the excellent though dissimilar volumes by
G. H. Sabine and by G. E. C. Catlin), of particular countries, of
diplomacy, of religion, and even of literature all cast a certain amount
of light on the subject. No writer known to the author specializes in
the topic of historical propaganda; none takes up the long-established
historical role of non-violent persuasion in warfare. Some of the
sociologists and anthropologists, such as Karl Mannheim, Max Weber,
Talcott Parsons, Geoffrey Gorer, Ruth Benedict (to mention a few at
random) have presented approaches which would justify re-evaluations of
history in a way useful to propaganda students; but they have not yet
persuaded the historians to do the work.
[2] 7 Judges 22-23.
[3] Leon Wieger, S. J., _Textes Historiques_, Hsien-hsien, 1929, vol. 1,
pp. 628-633.
[4] The author's attention to this reference was drawn by an unpublished
undated typescript article in the War Department files by Lt. Col.
Samuel T. Mackall, Inf.
[5] Lo Kuan-chung, _San Kuo chih Yen-i_, translated by C. H.
Brewitt-Taylor as _San Kuo or Romance of the Three Kingdoms_, Shanghai,
1929, vol. 1, p. 46.
[6] Recent writers on Genghis, such as Lamb, Vladimirtsov, Fox and
Lattimore all credit the Mongols with a higher technological level of
warfare than has been the custom among most Western historians. H. G.
Wells' simple but compelling description of the Mongols in his _Outline
of History_ is worth re-reading in this connection.
[7] Petis de la Croix, _The History of Genghizcan the Great, First
Emperor of the Antient Moguls and Tartars_ ..., London, 1722, p. 154.
[8] Benedict Figken, _Historia Fanaticorum_, Danzig, 1664.
[9] Philip Davidson's _Propaganda and the American Revolution_, Chapel
Hill, 1941, is a careful scholarly study of this period. Comparable
studies have not yet been written concerning other American wars.
Military and civilian historians have a fascinating piece of research
awaiting them in the material concerning Confederate and Federal
psychological warfare. Each participant in the Civil War was vulnerable
to the propaganda of the other. Subversive and clandestine
pro-Confederate propaganda in the North is outlined in George Fort
Milton's engrossing _Abraham Lincoln and the Fifth Column_, New York and
Washington, D. C., 1942, but no comparable study covering all forms of
propaganda on either side is yet available.
[10] Various new editions of Paine's chief works are available in
popular and inexpensive form. They are worth study as good propaganda.
[11] In his _The Political Doctrines of Sun Yat-sen_, Baltimore, 1937,
page 17 and following, this author attempted to present some of the
relationships of ideology to other methods of social control and, in
connection with that enterprise, was furnished by the philosopher, A.O.
Lovejoy, with a definition of "ideology" more systematic and more
elaborate than the one used here.
[12] For example, in the 1920's the Soviet press expressed resentment
and amusement over a ruse adopted by the British during the course of
operations along the Northwest Frontier. Plane-mounted loudspeakers had
told the tribesmen, in Pushtu, that God was mad at them for having
broken the pledged peace, with the result that they scattered and gave
up. This maneuver exasperated the Russians, who themselves were making
equally sweeping propaganda inroads on the other side of the Pamirs. The
Russians were attacking religion, and having heavy going; it struck them
as improper warfare to make use of local superstition.
[13] _Webster's New International Dictionary_, Second Edition,
Springfield, 1944.
[14] The late Huey Long is reported to have created a new word in the
language of rustic Louisiana, the word "damlyingnewspapers." By
instilling in his followers contempt for the "capitalist" press, he got
them to the point where they _disbelieved_ anything which they saw in
print, and _believed_ everything which "Ol' Huey, the Kingfish" himself
told them. This operation was technically competent, since one of the
most effective means of putting propaganda across is to draw alarmed
attention to unfriendly propaganda and then just "happening to mention"
the "truth" (that is, the promoted side). Long attributed to the
newspapers a large number of lies which they did not print, along with
the "lies" (which were in historical fact true) that they _did_ actually
print. Since most of his followers either boycotted the press or read it
in a hostile frame of mind, they never found out whether the newspapers
said what Huey said they said, or not. You can try this out on your
neighbors or friends by making up some idiotic "quotation" (such as,
"The Jewish _Vorwaerts_ says that pickled onions are a cause of
immorality" or "_Le Temps_ of Paris says that Alaska is preparing to
secede") and the listener will be so busy scoffing at _what_ the paper
allegedly said that he will take no time to find out whether the paper
_did_ say it or not. Such attributions occur in everyday life; the smart
propagandist attributes plenty of rich, ripe, silly quotations to his
opponent. How many people actually _know_ what the Communists have said
on any given topic? Or bother to check on the actual claims of the
Zionist organization? Or the statements of the Arabs in Palestine?
[15] The literature in this field is carefully described in two volumes
by a three-man team consisting of Harold D. Lasswell, Ralph D. Casey and
Bruce Lannes Smith, the first being _Propaganda and Promotional
Activities, An Annotated Bibliography_, Minneapolis, 1935, and the
sequel being _Propaganda, Communication and Public Opinion, A
Comprehensive Reference Guide_, Princeton, 1946. The booklists provide
material in plenty for any academic-minded inquirer. The essays in the
two volumes are well worth reading, although the authors have undergone
the professorial delight of inventing a private language of their own.
Parts of the latter book, especially, read like proceedings out of an
unfamiliar lodge meeting; but there is sound sense and acute observation
behind the vocabulary. It must, however, be parenthetically noted that
during World War II the key propaganda jobs were held by a radio
commentator, a dramatist, a newspaperman, a New York banker, and an
absolutely astonishing number of men from commercial radio--along, of
course, with a sprinkling of Army and Navy officers in Washington, and a
heavy majority of non-specialist officers in the field. The propaganda
experts were not, in most instances, called in to do the actual chore of
propaganda. Among the exceptions were Leonard W. Doob, author of
_Propaganda, Its Psychology and Technique_, New York, 1935, who served
in the War Department's Psychological Warfare Branch and in the
Washington propaganda center at OWI; C. A. H. Thomson, who served as a
propaganda staff officer both in Washington and overseas after being a
collaborator with the Lasswell group; and Drs. Edwin Guthrie and A. L.
Edwards, whose chapter "Psychological Warfare" in [E. G. Boring, editor]
_Psychology for the Fighting Man_, Washington, 1943, pp. 430-447, is a
lucid epitome of the topic.
[16] This means that if you want to get baptised, you've got to get
_all_ the way under the water or it doesn't count.
[17] See Doob's book, mentioned above, especially pages 71 through 89
and 413 through 417.
[18] See the bibliographies by Harold Lasswell and others, mentioned
above, for a wealth of literature giving more technical and scientific
breakdowns than this. The formula STASM represents what was actually
used in preparation of up-to-the-minute propaganda spot analysis for the
War Department General Staff by Propaganda Branch during World War II.
Some further aspects of this formula are presented in my article,
"Stasm: Psychological Warfare and Literary Criticism" in _The South
Atlantic Quarterly_, Vol. 46, No. 3, July 1947, pp. 344-348.
[19] See Harold Lasswell's _Propaganda Technique in the World War_, New
York, reissue 1938, Chapter II, "Propaganda Organization," for a
description of the attempts to coordinate policy and propaganda in World
War I.
[20] Chicago, 1946. The discussion of what censorship authorities
regarded as propaganda material possessing value for the enemy, of the
wartime OC-OWI relationship, and of censorship of short-wave broadcasts
are of particular interest to the student of psychological warfare.
[21] In a somewhat different context, it is interesting to note that
Chinese Protestant churches, made up of Chinese church members, like to
hire ministers who mouth their Chinese with a strong American accent.
The American missionaries established the American accent as part of the
liturgical paraphernalia of Protestantism, and the Chinese preachers
trained under them accepted the American mispronouncing of Chinese as a
part of the religion. It is odd to see a church full of Chinese using
absolutely unbelievable tones while singing hymns or making appropriate
individual responses. At that, they are no funnier than the Chinese
Buddhists, who memorize long Indian sutras without understanding a
single syllable.
[22] On World War I, see Harold Lasswell's _Propaganda Technique in the
World War_, previously cited; George Creel's _How We Advertised
America_, New York and London, 1920, the very title of which is an
indication of its chief shortcoming; Lt. Col. W. Nicolai,
_Nachrichtendienst, Presse und Volksstimmung im Weltkrieg_, Berlin,
1920, by the German general staff officer chiefly responsible for staff
work on propaganda and public opinion, a very thoughtful though
prejudiced book; Heber Blankenhorn's enjoyable little classic,
_Adventures in Propaganda_, Boston, 1919 (Blankenhorn was the only
American officer to see field service in propaganda in both wars, as a
Captain in I and a Lieutenant Colonel in II); and George G. Bruntz'
scholarly monograph _Allied Propaganda and the Collapse of the German
Empire_ in 1918, Stanford, 1938. Readers desiring further references
should consult the bibliographies by Lasswell, Casey and Smith, cited
above.
[23] Colonel Nicolai, book cited in footnote 1. pages 160-161.
[24] For a pro-Hitler view of the world, see Wyndham Lewis' _Hitler_,
London, 1931, if a copy is to be found. The author would probably prefer
for the book to disappear. It is an eloquent, very pro-Nazi book,
putting the Hitlerite terminology into the English language and--what is
more important--infusing into the clumsy German pattern of
thinking-and-feeling a lightness of touch which makes Naziism more
palatable. The book converted no one in its time, and is not apt to do
harm at this late date; but it will make the English-reading reader
understand some of the novelty, the revolutionary freshness, the bold
unorthodoxy which made millions of people turn to Hitlerism as an escape
from the humdrum heartbreak of Weimar Germany. Much of the book is
devoted to the problem of power--street-fighting, mass demonstrations,
slogans, symbolisms--which so fascinated the Nazis.
[25] See Carl J. Friedrich, _The New Belief in the Common Man_,
Brattleboro (Vermont), 1945, chapter III, "Independence of Thought and
Propaganda," pp. 81-120, for a cogent discussion of this mentality. The
present author, in _Government in Republican China_, New York, 1938, pp.
18-23, describes in epitome the method whereby the ancient Confucian
leadership of China, while propaganda-conscious, used ideology as an
economical, stable method of control and avoided its maleficent
features. In one of the few poorly argued passages of a great work,
Arnold J. Toynbee overlooks this peculiar characteristic of Confucianism
and merely equates the Confucian dogma with those of other "universal
churches" (_A Study of History_, London, 1939, vol. V, especially pages
654-5).
[26] People's Commissariat of Justice of the U.S.S.R., _Report of Court
Proceedings in the Case of the Anti-Soviet Trotzkyite Centre ...,
Verbatim Report_, Moscow, 1937, page 111. These trials were themselves
propaganda; in this particular instance, propaganda of a rather poor
order, since they failed to convince the foreign public and presumably
persuaded only those portions of the Russian public who were so gullible
that they needed no further persuading. For a brilliant illumination of
them in terms of a readable novel, see Arthur Koestler, _Darkness at
Noon_, New York, 1941; the same author also has a book of essays on the
totalitarian mentality under the rather fancy title, _The Yogi and the
Commissar_, New York, 1945. On the same subject, see Louis Fischer's
_Men and Politics_, New York, 1942.
[27] This document establishing the COI, along with the other major
documents pertaining to American psychological warfare, may be found in
J. P. Warburg's book cited above, _Unwritten Treaty_.
[28] In the course of a routine day of work on overseas propaganda in
1942, the author, who was then in SSG of MIS, found it necessary to get
in touch with Military Intelligence proper, Naval Intelligence, the
State Department, the office of the Assistant to the President, the
Office of Facts and Figures, the British Political Warfare group (which
was vainly seeking its American opposite number), the Office of Civilian
Defense, the Research and Analysis Branch of the office of the
Coordinator of Information, the office of the Librarian of Congress, the
Foreign Information Service, and the Department of Agriculture. Each of
these either operated propaganda, or had policy or intelligence
contributions to make. The Board of Economic Warfare naturally came into
the field too. This was during a period of German and Japanese
victories, so that even if propaganda had been coordinated, it probably
would not have been much more effective than it was. From what could be
figured out later, no real harm was done at this time. Nor was much
achieved.
[29] The bibliographies are cited above, on page 38. The journal comes
out, as its title indicates, four times a year; it is published by the
School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University,
Princeton, N. J. Every major library has it. The review section provides
a good survey of new writing in the field. Journals such as _The
American Political Science Review_, _The Annals of the American Academy
of Political and Social Science_, _The Infantry Journal_, and _The
American Historical Review_ often have significant articles or book
reviews in this field. _International Affairs_ (Royal Institute for
International Affairs, London) has excellent reviews of books arranged
by geographic subheads. Opinion and propaganda topics are usually lumped
together in academic studies; material on the one is apt to lead to the
other.
[30] San Tzu Ching, translated and annotated by Herbert A. Giles,
Shanghai, 1910, pages 2 and 3. The translation quoted is not by Giles.
[31] On the transmitting side, nothing could be more ruinous than mere
translation, the more literal the worse, of a single basic broadcast for
all audiences irrespective of language or culture. For the text of war
communiqués or of official documents, this is permissible, but for news
or feature broadcasts, few things could be worse. It is not possible to
translate subtle psychological appeals embedded in news or commentary;
such materials by their nature must follow forms acceptable to the
audience, building up confidence with familiar allusions and creating a
sense of "we-ness" between the actual announcer and his listeners.
Equivalents can be worked out. The same basic policies can be
transposed. The same source of news and intelligence can be exploited.
But the actual program cannot be translated verbatim from one language
to another; it must be transposed not only from one language but from
one culture to another.
[32] Free advertisement.
[33] Bad news about his side is not necessarily the only kind of bad
news for the enemy to know. Gloomy news about our side can harm the
enemy listener if his government is running a propaganda campaign to
raise production, promote thrift, etc., by claiming things are worse on
_their_ side. In such a case, good news about us would be good for him.
News must be fitted to the propaganda plan and to the propaganda
situation.
[34] Walter Lippmann's book, _Public Opinion_, was first published in
New York in 1922 but it is still clean-cut as a basic statement of the
problems of public opinion. The author's own life as a commentator is
remarkable in fulfilling the mission which he implicitly set himself
when writing about public opinion: the job of lifting issues into
emotional and psychological contexts in which the resulting judgment
will be based on socially sound factors.
[35] The American newspapers between 1942 and 1945 carried intermittent
accounts of these personal and political problems, frequently in the
columns of commentators rather than in the regular news sections. (The
book by Warburg is of course _Unwritten Treaty_, mentioned above.)
[36] For popular histories of the OSS, see _Sub Rosa: The O.S.S. and
American Espionage_ by Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden (New York, 1946)
or Corey Ford and Alastair MacBain, _Cloak and Dagger_ (New York 1946).
An exciting thriller novel by Darwin Teilhet gives an oblique and
guarded description of black propaganda and clandestine polling: _The
Fear Makers_ (New York, 1945); Teilhet was himself in OSS. For an
interesting description of OSS field operations, see Nicol Smith's _Into
Siam_ (New York, 1946). OSS was picturesque from the very start, and it
is likely that other participants in OSS work will from time to time
bring out books on their adventures.
[37] Bureau of the Budget, _United states Government Manual, 1946, First
Edition_, Washington, 1946, says of the Military Intelligence Division,
"It has charge of propaganda and psychological warfare" (page 198). The
fiat may be a little more precise than circumstances warrant, but it at
least shows where, for the record, psychological warfare belonged.
[38] See Charles E. Merriam's study, _Political Power_, Chicago, 1933,
and his later works for suggestive approaches to the political setting
of propaganda problems. He developed the terms miranda and credenda for
modern political science usage.
[39] While this statement is plainly a matter of individual opinion, the
author considers that his own experience supports his opinion in this
instance. He wrote plans on almost every operating level in the
governmental and military hierarchy during World War II, all the way
from drafting plans for the Joint (American) and Combined
(British-American) Chiefs of Staff down to helping field agents in the
China Theater work out practical little propaganda plans for their own
missions, or planning the writing, use, and classification of leaflets
one by one, in collaboration with OWI operators. He found planning to be
fascinating at the top, and worthwhile at the bottom of the pyramid, but
he found no significant correlation between the top and the bottom, save
in the sense which he makes plain.
[40] In the pseudo-technical propaganda slang of the OWI people, this
was called "spelling out." The same people "stockpiled" "campaigns" to
"needle" the enemy.
[41] So far as he knows, the author was the first--about May of 1942--to
urge that a surrender pass be made to look like an official document,
with banknote-type engraving and with formal style. Unfortunately, it
was printed in green, instead of the old-fashioned orange-gold of the
U.S. Treasury yellowbacks, and was sent to the jungle areas of the South
and Southwest Pacific, where everything was green to start with.
[42] These suggestions are based on the comment of Major Martin Herz,
who prepared the leaflets at Anzio beachhead and subsequently was
leaflet expert at SHAEF.
[43] No author, publisher, place or date. Issued by the unit. The
reference is to page 55.
[44] The Department of the Army is understood to be preparing a Field
Manual and Technical Manual for Psychological Warfare which will
describe the doctrines and the equipment, respectively, to be used in
combat propaganda situations.
[45] In the postwar period a great many reflective publications began to
appraise what had happened in the PsyWar field. One of the best of these
is Daniel Lerner's _Sykewar: Psychological Warfare Against Germany,
D-Day to VE-Day_ (New York, 1949), which covers the European operation
in detail. This was followed by _Propaganda in War and Crisis_, edited
by Daniel Lerner (New York, 1951). A heavier work, covering many of the
same problems is _The Language of Politics_, by Harold D. Lasswell,
Nathan Leites and associates (New York, 1949). Leonard Doob's work on
propaganda, long the leading American text in the field, was issued in a
revised, postwar edition (New York, 1948); the postwar book does much to
put "psychological warfare" in perspective. A simpler text than Doob's,
useful for less advanced students, is Frederick C. Irion's _Public
Opinion and Propaganda_ (New York, 1950). A manual directly pertaining
to psychological warfare is _America's Weapons of Psychological Warfare_
edited by Robert E. Summers (New York, 1951); this also contains a
bibliography which is helpful to the layman. Three outstanding works
summarize the postwar propaganda position of the U.S. Government:
Charles A. H. Thomson's _Overseas Information Service of the United
States Government_ (Washington, 1950) shows the continuity of the
problem from war to peace; Wallace Carroll's _Persuade or Perish_
(Boston, 1948) argues the necessity of maintaining an opinion offensive;
and Edward Barrett's illuminating discussion, _Truth is Our Weapon_ (New
York, 1953), brings the story down to the Eisenhower Administration.
[46] New insights into the nature of the Soviet antagonist were
presented by three related monographs originally prepared inside RAND
Corporation, the research facility which often works with the U.S. Air
Force. Nathan Leites, _The Operational Code of the Politburo_ (New York,
1951), digests Soviet fundamentals of international behavior. Margaret
Mead's _Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority_ (New York, 1951) applies
anthropological and psychiatric methods of analysis; this book, to the
military or general reader, should be prefaced by reading her
distinguished work, _Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies_,
which is now available in an inexpensive, paper-bound reprint (Mentor
Books, New York, 1952). Philip Selznick makes the point that
organization is itself a Communist power-achieving instrument in his
_The Organizational Weapon_ (New York, 1952), the third of the RAND
group. Lt. Col. William R. Kintner, a Regular Army officer, prepared the
challenging study of the specific military content of Communist thinking
in _The Front is Everywhere_ (Norman, Oklahoma, 1950). Among the many
good recent books about the Communist challenge, R.N. Carew Hunt, _The
Theory and Practice of Communism_ (New York, 1951), is outstanding for
its dispassionateness while James Burnham's _The Coming Defeat of
Communism_ (New York, 1951) is a ringing appeal to our side to meet the
challenge. Stefan T. Possony, in _A Century of Conflict_ (Chicago,
1953), presents the most coldly damning and most far-ranging critique of
Communist operations which this writer has seen. Willmoore Kendall
rendered Americans a service with his careful translation, editing and
introduction of A. Rossi, _A Communist Party in Action_ (New Haven,
1949), while Bob Darke, in a British counterpart, gives a less
intellectual and much abbreviated description of the British Communist
set-up and operations in _The Communist Technique in Britain_ (London,
1952). Communist revelations of "capitalist" conspiracies which tell
more about the haunted, anxious, nasty minds of the Communists than
about our own operations are, among others, L. Natarajan, _American
Shadow Over India_ (Bombay, 1952), and Jean Cathala, _They are Betraying
Peace_ (Moscow, 1951).
[47] Paul M. A. Linebarger, "Communism as a Competing Civilization in
Southeast Asia," a contribution to _Southeast Asia in the Coming World_,
Philip W. Thayer, editor (Baltimore, 1952).
[48] For a contrary point of view, see the works by Harry Stack
Sullivan, Brock Chisholm, and others.
[49] Problematical in all such attempts of working officers to define
"victory" is the serious intellectual issue of avoiding means which by
themselves defeat the ends which are sought. If the means are
"dangerous" or "immoral" by the standards of the society which applies
them, their value becomes low indeed. For the covert side of U.S.
operations, see the breezy and popular volumes on OSS: Lt. Col. Corey
Ford and Major Alastair MacBain, _Cloak and Dagger: The Secret Story of
OSS_ (New York, 1946); Stewart Alsop and Thomas Braden, _Sub Rosa: The
OSS and American Espionage_ (New York, 1946); and the most vividly
concrete narration of the group, Elizabeth P. MacDonald, _Undercover
Girl_ (New York, 1947). For an astonishing work which seems to violate
security on every page, see Commander Roy Olin Stratton, _SACO--The Rice
Paddy Navy_ (Pleasantville, N. Y., 1950); this is the description of a
Navy group in China which the author shows to be more covert than OSS
itself. A dry, German view of Anglo-American espionage in Holland is
given in that superb, true-life adventure story, H. J. Giskes, _London
Calling North Pole_ (London and New York, 1953).
[50] See the works of Freda Utley, Herbert Feis, the
Linebarger-Djang-Burks political science text (New York, 1954), and
others, not to mention the contributions by Mao, Liu Shao-ch'i, and
other Communist leaders.
[51] The author himself pleads guilty to having criticized the French
unduly without accepting a reasonable share of U.S. responsibility for
the situation in Indochina (Paul M. A. Linebarger, "Indochina: The
Bleeding War," _Combat Forces Journal_, March 1951), and was deservedly
rebuked from some French readers for his denigration of French
imperialism. The author cannot endorse as wise, shrewd, or kind the
French political decisions in Indochina, hut he can say that the
Americans who made (or failed to make) basic policy concerning that area
have been as irresponsible and foolish as the French. He trusts that, by
the time this note reaches print, a more effectual Franco-American
understanding will have replaced the previous difficulties.
[52] Psychological warfare is, of course, neither very psychological nor
is it necessarily warfare. Indeed, within the context of a rigidly
purist and scholastic definition, psychological warfare is not
psychological, in that most of its operations are very definitely _not_
a part of present-day scientific psychology. Neither is it _warfare_
because it can be operated before war, during war, after war, or
contemporaneously with and apart from war. As pointed out above, war
involves the inescapable content of public lawful _violence_. It is hard
to ascribe violence to a short-wave broadcast or to a leaflet. In Korea
in 1951 the author heard that a Chinese soldier was found dead--mashed
by a leaflet bomb which had failed to explode at the proper altitude. If
this story is true, that particular soldier was one of the few genuine
_war_ victims of military or strategic propaganda both so pretentiously
called "psychological warfare" by Americans of the mid-twentieth
century.
Anthony Leviero, who summarized American PsyWar in _The New York Times_
in a series of articles between 9 December and 14 December 1951, is both
an experienced general staff officer and a first-class newspaper man.
His comment in 1953 on the new Operations Coordinating Board was
encouraging or ominous. He stated in his _Times_ dispatch of 4 September
1953 that the William Jackson committee had found that "psychological
warfare did not exist as such." If this meant that the new OCB was to
sweep aside the limitations of top-secret pedantic definitions and move
toward a refreshingly concrete manipulation of the world scene, the news
was encouraging indeed. If the new Board was, however, to be dedicated
to the manufacture of new, complicated and secret definitions of its
own, the news was bad. Given the time-lag on the declassification of
Government materials, it may be twenty-five years, or 1978, before the
precise definitions of 1953 are available to the public. The tendency of
the Board to succeed or to fail will be evident by the time this
material is in print; given the personalities involved, the prognosis
appeared optimistic.
[53] This kind of issue has not been neglected in our public discussions
or our schools. Two sides of one famous case are given in Owen
Lattimore, _Ordeal by Slander_ (New York, 1951) and the bitterly
anti-Lattimore book by John T. Flynn, _The Lattimore Story_ (New York,
1953). A serious intelligent attempt to answer some of the problems
posed by PsyWar and the resulting loyalty issues within a democracy are
the works of Nathaniel Weyl, _Treason: The Story of Disloyalty and
Betrayal in American History_ (Washington, 1950), and _The Battle
Against Disloyalty_ (New York, 1951). A formidable presentation of what
the Communists are doing is offered in Ralph de Toledano, _Spies, Dupes,
and Diplomats_ (New York and Boston, 1952) and in Major General Charles
A. Willoughby, _Shanghai Conspiracy_ (New York, 1952). The kind of
round-table often intellectually conceived and executed within American
schools is well portrayed in the special issue of _Columbia Journal of
International Affairs_ (New York, spring, 1951), in which the entire
issue is given to a synthesis of international problems in the
propaganda field under the heading "Propaganda and World Politics."
Stefan Possony's magistral _A Century of Conflict_ (Chicago, 1953)
provides an excellent general framework.
[54] Nothing in previous U.S. experience prepared Americans for the
invasion of the individual personality which has long been accomplished
by the Communists but which was first publicized in adequate fashion
after the outbreak of the Korean war in 1950. The pioneer book in this
field, and still the best, is Edward Hunter's _Brain-Washing in Red
China_ (New York, 1951). This author has known Mr. Hunter for twenty-odd
years and can vouch for him as a man with a sober respect for fact,
though he does have a vivid taste in adjectives; he has seen not only
Mr. Hunter but has gone over some of the raw material which Hunter used
and can testify to the reality and sympathy with which Hunter portrays
this rather gruesome process. On a different scale, Wilbur Schramm has
given a description of what happens when _The Reds Take a City_ (New
Brunswick, 1951), in a book of that name written jointly with John W.
Riley.
[55] A sharp contrast between the old politics and the new is shown by
the unfortunate book prepared in the Department of State and now
hastily, even guiltily, allowed to go out of print by the United States
Government Printing Office because it showed that some Americans were
guilty or naïve enough to try to love and trust the Soviet state within
the same system as our own. One does not know whether to laugh or to
weep at the spectacle of men lamenting the fact that they were once
innocent and hopeful. The book, prepared by the late Harley Notter and
others, is Department of State Publication 3580, General Policy Series
15, _Postwar Foreign Policy Preparation_ (Washington, 1949). That not
all was innocence, even when things so seemed, is amply attested by
Freda Utley's controversial but brilliant summary, _The China Story_
(Chicago, 1951).
[56] The function of decision-making has been brilliantly though
solemnly explored in Richard C. Snyder, H. W. Bruck and Burton Sapin,
_Decision-making as an Approach to the Study of International Politics_
(Princeton, N.J., 1954.)
[57] For a contrary point of view, see _Tensions That Lead to War_,
edited by Hadley Cantril (Princeton, 1950).
[58] The author had the opportunity of observing opsearch in the Korean
war on three different occasions: September 1950, March 1951, and
November and December 1952 and early January 1953. He visited Korea
itself twice and also spent a great deal of time, part of it in a public
capacity and part of it as a free-lance author, in the periphery of that
war--areas such as Hong Kong, Indochina, Thailand, the Philippines,
Malaya, Burma, Indonesia, and India.
[59] Several novels have touched on PsyWar problems. The most
hard-hitting of the lot is Jerome Weidman, _Too Early to Tell_ (New
York, 1946). Covert PsyWar whispering techniques are thinly disguised
and much improved, technically, in Darwin Teilhet, _The Fear Makers_
(New York, various dates). The covert side of some of these adventures
is portrayed, among others, by W. Stanley Moss, _A War of Shadows_ (New
York, 1952); Ray Franklin Kauffman, _The Coconut Wireless_ (New York,
1948); and Chin Kee Onn, _Silent Army_ (New York, 1953). As exciting as
fiction are Mark Gayn and John Caldwell, _American Agent_ (New York,
1947), describing the work of an enthusiastic amateur, and L. C.
Moyzisch, _Operation Cicero_ (New York reprint, 1952), portraying a
first-class professional. Alexander Foote, _Handbook for Spies_ (London,
1949), and J. V. Davidson-Houston, _Armed Pilgrimage_ (London 1949), are
interesting distillations of personal experience which touch on
espionage and PsyWar.
[60] The author professes he would like to write a preliminary work on
this subject himself some day, if no one else essays the task first.
[61] V = Victory day.
[62] Edward Hunter, _Brain-Washing in Red China_ (New York, 1951).
[63] If one good book can be mentioned without prejudice to the many
other good books in the same field, attention can be drawn to the
excellent undergraduate text which explores the present U.S. position on
the press, George I. Bird and Frederic E. Merwin, _The Press and
Society_ (New York, 1951). At the opposite end of the spectrum, see Oleg
Anesimov, _The Ultimate Weapon_ (New York, 1953). The first book takes
the U.S. as it is and does not envisage profound responses coming as the
inevitable accompaniment of frightful change; the second book states the
outside problem in shocking terms, but asks of Americans things which
neither they nor their press are ever apt to approve.
[64] The development of this activity was handed to the Chief of Army
Field Forces, in whose G2 section Colonel Donald Hall was the PsyWar
officer. The first of these courses with its supporting textbook was not
ready for release by the Army General School until 1949, just one year
before the Korean conflict began. In 1949 likewise appeared the first
officially approved Army field manual on the subject of psychological
warfare support of military operations.
[65] Teams from this detachment, armed with leaflets and loudspeakers,
were sent to and participated in major maneuvers in continental United
States, in the Caribbean area, and in Hawaii. These teams were attached
to the "enemy" forces, and exposed the maneuver troops to military
propaganda in action. The Tactical Information Detachment suddenly
suspended its planning of simulated propaganda operations for Exercise
Pluto in 1950. As the only PsyWar operational unit in the Army, the
Detachment was hustled off to Korea.
Index
Abbeville, 164
Adams, Samuel, 23
Adipadi, 185
Aggression, timing, 43
Aims, long-range, 126
Air dropping, 229
Air rescue, 142, 231
Air support, 228
Aircraft, World War I, 69
Allen, George, 271
Alsop, Joseph, 273
Alsop, Stewart, 182
American Association of Public Opinion Research, 290
American Broadcasting Station in Europe, 270, 288
American Expeditionary Forces, 67. _See also_ Pershing's headquarters
American operations, effects, 103
American policy in Indochina, 260-262
American Revolution, 21
black leaflet, 20
American-Russian meeting, 202
Andersen, Hans Christian, 156
Anger motif, 233
Annamites, 263
Announcers, radio, 58
Anti-Communist appeals, 246
Anti-Semitic propaganda, 138
Anzio, 82, 212, 239
Appeals, black action, 237
Armed Forces Radio Service, 272
Armed Forces Radio Stations, 34
Army Air Forces, 183
Army Forces, Far East, 305
Army General School, 304
Aryan myth, 78
Aryan racialism, 25
Asia, Communism in, 251
Athenians, 7
Atrocities, 46, 79
Attu, 214
Audience, 123
Austria, 184
_Azad Hind_, 185
_Azad Hind Fauj_, 8
Aztecs, 17
Bakunin, Mikhail, 297
Balkan states, 163
Balloons, 21, 69
Barrett, Edward W., 271
Bataan, 223
Beaverbrook, Lord, 64
Belgium, 13
Belly tank, 170
Benedict, Ruth, 3
Bengal, 8
Benton, William, 184, 271
Black counterpropaganda, 148
Black, Lt. Col. Percy, 91
Black propaganda, 44, 88
Blaine, James G., 49
Blankenhorn, Heber, 64, 67
Boers, 24
_Bolshevik_, 71
Bombs
leaflet bombs, 172, 192
V-l, 130, 237
V-2, 237
Bonus troubles, 214
"Book that won the war," 23
Bose, Subhas Chandra, 8
Boxes, packing, 171
Braden, Thomas, 182
Brain-washing, 295_ff_
Breakdown of propaganda items, 122
Brest-Litovsk, 71
Brewitt-Taylor, C. H., 8
Britain in 1940, 163
British, 81
British Admiralty, 87
British Broadcasting Company, 45, 82, 87
British Foreign Office, 64, 87
British in Indochina, 260
British psychological warfare, 263-264
British War Office, 87
Brogan, Denis W., 277
Brown, Don, 208
Broz-Tito, Josip, 87, 89
Bruntz, George G., 64
Buchan, John, 64
Bulgaria, 132
Bullock, Gen. William, 266
Burden, Capt. J. A., 37
Burma, 23, 24, 168, 185, 209, 224. _See also_ North Burma
Buttles, Lt. Col. Bruce, 97
Byelorussia, 13
Cambodia, 186, 262
Canton, 96
Cantril, Hadley, 290
Capabilities, psychological, 158
Capacity, own, 164
Caribbean pirates, 17
Casablanca, 47
Casey, Ralph D., 38
Catholicism, 260
Catlin, G. E. C., 3
Censorship, Russian, 105
Central Intelligence Agency, 274, 276