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Black Propaganda in the Second World War

The History Press

To most people 'propaganda' is – and not without reason – a dirty word. It implies lies, misrepresentation, manipulation. Consequently it evokes negative emotions. 'Information', on the other hand, sounds better: it seems to imply honesty, although it does not follow that it must be objective. Skilful selection of information can also distort the truth. As Aldous Huxley wrote in: 'The greatest triumphs of propaganda have been accomplished, not by doing something, but by refraining from doing. ... By simply not mentioning certain subjects, by lowering ... an iron curtain between the masses and such facts or arguments as the local political bosses regard as undesirable, totalitarian propagandists have influenced opinion more effectively than they could have done by the most eloquent denunciations.'

Generally speaking, our enemies – the bad guys – indulge in propaganda. If we are American, we conduct 'Psychological Operations' (PSYOPS), 'Morale Operations' and 'Psychological Warfare' or, if we are British, 'Political Warfare'. Now we also hear of 'Information Operations'. These terms are useful, as they get away from the moral ambiguities inherent in the word 'propaganda', but they are not fully equivalent.

Political warfare, the most comprehensive concept, is the application of propaganda to the needs of total warfare. When this term was first introduced, it did not always present an advantage. Ministers and officials, on whose goodwill the Political Warfare Executive (PWE, responsible for black propaganda) depended, did not appreciate the difference between propaganda and political warfare and assumed that it was a blatant attempt by the propagandists in PWE to inflate their own importance.

According to Bruce Lockhart, the wartime director of PWE, political warfare practises every form of overt and covert nonmilitary attack. It seeks, by special knowledge, to anticipate and forestall the intentions of the enemy; to commit him to military objectives which appeal to the enemy public but which his forces cannot fulfil; to undermine his morale by secret broadcasting stations, allegedly operated by dissatisfied enemy subjects inside his own territory; and by other 'black' operations that can be classified as subversion and deception. Its main purpose is to soften the way and make easier the task of the armed forces, or even to achieve military gains without the use of military force. It begins long before the declaration of war and does not stop with overt hostilities. In addition to propaganda, political warfare includes diplomatic action and economic warfare.

Since this book is not a study of the last two aspects, the term psychological warfare seems more apposite. The credit for coining this term goes to J.F.C. Fuller, who thought that in the future, traditional means of warfare might be replaced by a purely psychological warfare, wherein instead of using weapons, the corruption of the human reason, the dimming of the human intellect and the disintegration of the moral and spiritual life of one nation would be accomplished by the influence of the will of another. The aim of psychological warfare could also be defined as to 'create attitudes and behavioural patterns in enemy, friendly or neutral target audiences that will assist in achieving political or military objectives'.

The aim of propaganda is to make others think and act in a particular way. Hans Fritzsche, the top German wartime radio commentator, described it as 'the art to wake up in other people thoughts and feelings that would never come to the surface without such prompting'. His chief, Dr Goebbels, defined propaganda in a more romantic vein as 'the art of listening to the soul of the people', failing to mention that he reserved for himself the right to determine the contents of that soul.

It would be very difficult for propaganda to be effective if, rather than exploiting an existing situation (that does not have to be present in the conscious mind of the target), it tried to create a totally new situation. But it aims at more than this: its ultimate goal is either to force the target into action or to make him stop doing something. This is called 'operational propaganda'. Often, especially in the case of black operations, it has to be preceded by 'preparational propaganda', which aims to produce the right frame of mind in the target. The definition of partisan warfare as 'death by a thousand cuts' could be applied to this process.

A member of the Polish Resistance (who played his part in the P1 team) remembers what he was taught during his training:

When you are engaged in propaganda, you must remember two rules: you must not speak the whole truth and you must not speak what you feel. When we say that you must not speak the whole truth it does not mean that you may lie. You should never tell lies. If you do, you will be inevitably caught out. You must select those parts of the truth which you need to achieve the desired effect. When we say that you must not speak what you feel, it's to prevent you from falling into the delusion that your targets feel the same way as you do. You must concentrate on understanding how your targets think and feel.

There are, generally speaking, three types, or colours, of propaganda – white, black and grey. One should not fall into the trap of thinking that these colours indicate the degree of veracity of the materials being disseminated. Colour – white, grey or black – only indicates the degree to which the identity of the originator is disclosed. In practice, effective propaganda is usually 95 per cent true. The originator hopes that the remaining, vital 5 per cent, hidden by a thick coating of obvious truths, will be swallowed by the addressee. Credibility is a of propaganda's acceptance.

White propaganda is an open activity where the originator does not disguise his identity: he speaks for his government. Usually he concentrates on the positive aspects of his own side. The safe conduct passes dropped during the Second World War to enemy front-line troops, inviting them to surrender and guaranteeing proper treatment, were a good example of White.

Black propaganda, on the other hand, hides its origin behind false signatures, and usually purports to be produced by clandestine organisations within the enemy country, not necessarily totally opposed to their government. Sometimes it pretends to come from the target audience's own authorities. It concentrates on the failings of the enemy government and, even more, on the failings of the members of the ruling elite. The poster I pinned on the chestnut tree in Kielce in the summer of 1944 was a typical piece of black propaganda.

Grey propaganda is anonymous; it bears no signature and leaves the target guessing its origin. The best-known example is the ('News for the Troops') daily newspaper produced by PWE in 1944 and dropped by aircraft to the German troops on the Western Front.

The inherent weakness of white propaganda is the self-evident fact that it is enemy propaganda. It has the daunting task of overcoming the mistrust and suspicions of the target audience, before its message stands a chance of being accepted as credible. The camouflaged or false origins of grey and black propaganda, on the other hand, delay their identification as enemy propaganda, so that the effectiveness of any countermeasures is unavoidably reduced.

The success of black propaganda depends on the complete concealment of its true origin. White propaganda is unable to access and bring out any feelings of resentment towards the authorities that might lurk in the dark recesses of the enemy soldier's mind. This a job for Black. The danger, however, is that detection of the true origin of such propaganda may not only evoke a hatred of the originator for having slyly invaded the target's mind, but will also reduce the effectiveness of any parallel white propaganda. The latter's efforts to convince him of its honesty and truthfulness could now be in vain.

Unfortunately, the term 'black propaganda' carries a double negative charge – plus, as in. Germans solved this problem by coining the term (camouflaged propaganda). They also spoke of (intellectual warfare) and (underground propaganda). Russians call it, a word also derived from 'camouflage', but embracing any action aimed at deceiving the enemy. They also invented a related term, 'disinformation'. Perhaps we should call it 'deception propaganda'. Another possibility is offered by the terms 'overt' and 'covert' propaganda, with grey sometimes defined (uncharitably) as 'poorly disguised black'.

Psychological warfare, and especially its black aspects, have always been treated by all governments as State secrets. An impregnable Chinese Wall ensured its total isolation from the departments responsible for internal propaganda, one's own population being denied any knowledge of what was being said to the enemy.

It is difficult to classify some examples of propaganda. For instance, Hitler's for the attack on Poland on 1 September 1939 was an ostensibly Polish armed raid the evening before on a German radio station, close to the Polish border. In fact, it was carried out by SS troops in Polish army uniforms. Corpses were procured from a nearby concentration camp. Was this political warfare, psychological warfare, black propaganda or, perhaps, 'black warfare'? Or the forged food ration cards dropped over Germany by the RAF? Psychological or economic warfare? Or in 1982, the British broadcasts in Spanish to Argentinian soldiers in the Falklands, just giving them news from home with a devastating effect on their morale? How should we classify this kind of operation?

A straitjacket of strict classifications would not be very helpful in discussing black propaganda. Its basic characteristic, in addition to subversive intent, is the false signature. But not always. For instance, the British-based and British-run Polish-language radio station, which openly represented the Polish Resistance, was nevertheless regarded as a black station, because its location was disguised. It pretended to broadcast from occupied Poland but was, in fact, situated near Bletchley. So perhaps we should widen the characterisation of black operations by adding to subversiveness not necessarily a false originator, but any attribute calculated to mislead the enemy.

A good introduction to psychological warfare, although this term is not used there, can be found in Hitler's, written while he was imprisoned after the failed of 1923. It is certainly not a literary masterpiece; a lot of it is a hotchpotch of ideas that had been cropping up in Germany since the mid-nineteenth century. Hitler did not attempt to conceal his programme; on the contrary, he gave notice of his intentions. One could say that he bared his soul. He devoted an entire chapter to propaganda, especially war propaganda, specifying its rules. He did not claim to have invented these rules; he freely admitted that he had formulated them on the basis of his observation of marxist and British propaganda during the First World War. Propaganda must be a means, he wrote, never an end. It should address itself not to the elites but to the masses. It must appeal to their emotions, rather than to their reason. Its intellectual level must correspond to the lowest mental common denominator of the target public. Propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials, which should be persistently repeated and, ominously: 'all humane and aesthetic considerations must be set aside'. He quoted von Moltke, who wrote that since in war it is essential to bring the matter to a rapid close, the most ruthless methods of fighting are, at the same time, the most humane. According to Hitler, the propagandist must adopt a one-sided attitude towards every problem that he has to deal with, and must never admit that he might be wrong.

Tuning a propaganda campaign to the lowest mental common denominator of the target public, however, does not guarantee that this group will be the most receptive. For instance, after the Second World War communist propaganda made very little headway in the case of simple east European peasants, whose religious beliefs became their near-impenetrable shield. Addressing propaganda to amorphous masses may produce spectacular results, but in the case of black propaganda it is more effective when addressed to relatively small, specific groups, appealing to their common self-interest. BBC broadcasts and RAF leaflets could never do that.

In a pre-war conversation with Sefton Delmer, who became the father of British black propaganda, Hitler said that inside every man lurks a ('bastard') who should be propaganda's main target. Delmer based his black propaganda techniques on this principle, and became a worthy heir of Lord Northcliffe, who, during the First World War (ably assisted by H.G. Wells), perfected British psychological warfare first against Austria-Hungary and then against the and the German civilian population.

Hitler rated Northcliffe's psychological warfare very highly, maintaining that Germany was beaten by propaganda, rather than in the field. This theory was first propounded in the early 1920s by Ludendorff and became the official German line during the interwar years. In Germany this encouraged a serious study of the theory of propaganda. During those years, twice as many books on propaganda were published in Germany as in Britain, France and the USA combined. It also encouraged many people in Britain to believe that the next war could be won by propaganda alone. They were to be bitterly disappointed. It is now generally acknowledged that propaganda – of any colour – cannot be relied upon to produce miracles on its own; to have a chance of being effective it must be used in conjunction with other weapons.

Since Hitler wrote, the principles of propaganda have been expanded. It is now generally accepted that it should be aimed at both issues and personalities, and that it should be disguised. Rather than create new doubts and controversies, it must take advantage of existing ones, approaching them preferably in an oblique manner. It must be dynamic, responding to developments instantly. It should not use abstracts like 'patriotism', 'freedom' or 'hope'. Its message should be concrete and, ideally, combine social and selfish elements. For example, 'Your cattle have been taken away because Ruritania is enslaved.' It will be more effective if it is addressed to a small specific group rather than to a large amorphous mass, since the self interest of a small group is easier to identify and invoke.

The importance of psychology in warfare was recognised long before Hitler. The earliest-known military commentator, the Chinese general Sun Tzu, wrote 2,500 years ago: 'Attacking does not merely consist in assaulting walled cities or striking at an army in battle array; it must include the art of assailing the enemy's mental equilibrium ... to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy's resistance without fighting.' One of his main 'force multipliers' were psychological operations aimed at reducing the enemy's will to fight: spreading false rumours and misleading information, corrupting and subverting officials, creating internal discord.

Cicero maintained that there was nothing more glorious than to subjugate people's minds by the power of one's words, making them act according to one's will. Twenty centuries later Lenin was praising 'psychological warfare, wherein weapons are not even used on the battlefield, but instead ... the disintegration of the moral and spiritual fibre of one nation by the will of another is accomplished'. He thought that of all the genres of literature, the most important was propaganda leaflets. He was of the opinion that military operations should be delayed until the morale of the enemy had been so reduced that the final blow could be delivered quickly and decisively. In practice it did not always work that way. During the Second World War Anglo-American propaganda directed at the German soldier began to have an effect, albeit a limited one, only when it became obvious to all that Germany could not possibly win the war. The effect of Soviet propaganda on the German soldier was negligible.

Some of Sun Tzu's ideas were adopted successfully 1,500 years later by Genghis Khan. During his reign, the first two or three cities taken at the beginning of a campaign would be routinely looted and torched and all the inhabitants killed. Then the Mongols made sure that news of what had happened to those who did not surrender on sight preceded their advance, as did rumours of the overwhelming numerical superiority of their forces. Not many cities on their list of targets dared to resist. Ghosts of Genghis Khan and of his hordes still haunt the people of central Europe.

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Excerpted from Black Propaganda in the Second World War by Stanley Newcourt-Nowodworski. Copyright © 2013 Stanley Newcourt-Nowodworski. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
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