=American Psychological Warfare Agencies.= The American Army failed to establish its authority and leadership in the field of psychological warfare despite its creation of the Psychological Warfare Branch under G-2. In large part this was a matter of practical politics and of personalities. The United States government as a whole, in the successive administrations of President Roosevelt, acquired tremendous administrative vitality but at the same time permitted the older "constitutional" agencies to lose ground to their newly founded rivals. Had an administrative purist and traditionalist been in the White House, instead of a bold governmental experimenter, the logical creation of a psychological warfare facility would have paralleled the later creation of SWNCC (State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee). From the purely theoretical standpoint, it would have been far sounder to put national policy formulation (White House and Congress), foreign policy formulation (State), strategic propaganda (State, War, Navy) into a single administrative entity than to create a new federal agency with improvised procedures, improvised security, and an improvised staff. However, the State, War and Navy Departments (at the very opening of our war) were overworked and understaffed. Many of the senior personnel regarded psychological warfare with downright suspicion and propaganda was regarded as a dirty name for a dirty and ineffectual job. Hence the old-line agencies let pass the opportunity for establishing initial control. [Illustration: _Figure 48: Consolidation Propaganda: Posters._ An American soldier pastes American posters over Nazi ones while a French crowd looks on. (The crowd is pretty typical as to size and content, but a thousand such crowds will cover an entire town.) The poster operation shown was conducted by Psychological Warfare Division of SHAEF. (OWI-PWD photo.)]