Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
Tactical psychological warfare can be estimated, though to a limited
extent, as part of a tactical potential of either the enemy or one's own
side. Strategic propaganda can be planned and evaluated only in terms of
the diffuse general situation, with the reasonable and fair expectation
that if properly employed it will better the position of the user. It
sometimes achieves results which astound even the originators, but these
results cannot be calculated (except by hunch) in advance. Nevertheless,
the operation is well worth trying since it has incalculable
possibilities and is quite inexpensive in relation to the gross cost of
war.
PART THREE
PLANNING AND OPERATIONS
CHAPTER 10
Organization for Psychological Warfare
Big jobs require big organizations. Eight _billion_ leaflets were
dropped in the Mediterranean and European Theaters of Operations alone
under General Eisenhower's command. That is enough to have given every
man, woman and child on earth four leaflets, and this figure, large as
it is, does not include leaflets dropped in all the other theaters of
war by ourselves, our allies, and our enemies. It does not include the
B-29 leaflet raids on Japan, in which hundreds of tons of thin paper
leaflets were dropped. Huge American newspapers were developed, edited,
printed and delivered to our Allies and to enemy troops. One of these,
_Parachute News_ (_Rakkasan_), attained a circulation of two million
copies per run; this was in the Southwest Pacific. In parts of the upper
Burmese jungle and the Tibetan borderland where no newspaper was ever
distributed before, the Fourteenth Air Force distributed a Japanese
newspaper, _Jisei_, along with picture sheets for illiterate tribesmen.
In getting at the enemy, the United States printed leaflets, cartoons,
pamphlets, newspapers, posters, books, magazines. In black operations
enough fabrications were perpetrated to keep the FBI busy for a thousand
years. Movies in all forms (commercial, amateur, all known widths, sound
and silent, even lantern slides) went out all over the world. Radio
talked on all waves in almost every language and code; loudspeakers,
souvenirs, candy, matches, nylon stockings, pistols you could hide in
your mouth, sewing thread, salt, phonograph records and baby pictures
streamed out over the world. Much of this was necessarily waste. In the
larger waste of war it appears almost frugal when taken in relation to
the results thought to have been achieved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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