Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
[Illustration: _Figure 31: Oestrous Black._ Young human beings,
especially young males, are apt to give considerable attention to sex.
In areas of military operations, they are removed from the stimuli of
secondary sex references which are (in America) an accepted part of
everyone's daily life: bathing beauty photos, magazine covers,
semi-nudes in advertisements, etc. Our enemies tried to use the
resulting pin-up craze for propaganda purposes, hoping that a vain
arousal of oestrum would diminish morale. This choice Japanese item is
from the Philippines. (The best collection of these is kept in a locked
file--for experts only--at the Library of Congress.)]
The Japanese who obediently hated the Americans when it was their duty
to do so nevertheless could not help looking at maps that showed where
the Americans actually were. Nazis who despised us and everything we
stood for nevertheless studied the photographs of our new light bombers.
The appeal of credible fact is universal; propaganda does not consist of
doctoring the fact with moralistic blather, but of selecting that fact
which is correct, interesting, and bad for the enemy to know.[33]
On the friendly side of the battle lines, the procurement of our own
news is a budgetary matter. The propaganda office can subscribe to the
news tickers, newspapers, telegraph services, and so on. How much is a
matter of administrative housekeeping. In the field, the communications
officer can frequently steal news from the news agencies of his own
country or allied countries by the process of picking it out of the air.
It would be highly unpatriotic of the news agency to send him a bill in
the zone of operations, and he can classify his record copies of his
material RESTRICTED so that the owners of the material would have no
legitimate business acquiring copies that could later be taken into
court to support a claim. (Americans would not do this, of course; the
reference is to Byzantines.)
[Illustration: _Figure 32: Oestrous Grey._ This and the succeeding
illustration show a series of four leaflets which the Nazis used against
American troops in Europe. Anti-morale in intent, they rely on the
illustrations to get attention and then develop their malicious,
salacious anti-Semitic story. The series illustrates the strength and
weakness of Nazi propaganda.]
[Illustration: _Figure 33: Oestrous Grey, Continued._ Concluding the
series begun in the preceding illustrations, these Nazi leaflets tried
to lower American morale by combining oestrum, resentment,
discouragement and inter-American hatred. The Dr. Mordecai Ezekiel
mentioned in No. 2 is a real person, a splendid American and
conscientious official. The Nazis used his name because it was so
plainly Jewish, hoping that the ignorance of the American troops would
permit their lies to spread.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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