Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
Short-wave has its own advantages, however, apart from its utility as a
means of getting program material to the relay stations. Short-wave can
and will be picked up by the enemy monitors and enemy intelligence
systems. It will also be heard by persons of power, wealth, and
influence, irrespective of the economic or political system of the
enemy. The big shots of any system know how to transcend limitations
that awe or defeat the ordinary man. The short-wave transmitter speaks
therefore to the enemy government, to the groups which compose the enemy
government, and to the individuals in or out of the enemy government who
are leaders in their own country. We found that the _Joho Kyoku_ and the
_Gaimusho_ (Foreign Office) in Tokyo were mimeographing a daily summary
of our San Francisco broadcasts, and we thus knew that anything we said
over San Francisco would be heard by the most influential men in Japan.
Captain Ellis Zacharias, U.S.N., spoke Japanese and had known most of
the Japanese leaders personally before the war; with government
monitoring known to exist he felt free to address the Japanese leaders
personally and directly with assurance his words would reach them, and
his broadcasts are confessed by the Japanese themselves to have played a
contributory part in bringing about the Japanese decision to surrender.
=Standard-wave.= The most effective use of radio is that which falls
within the receiving capacity of the ordinary receiving sets owned or
used by the enemy population. This means the establishment of
transmitting facilities close enough to the enemy territory for the
programs to get through. As between the United States and Japan from
1941 through 1944, this was very difficult. No Americans ever dared join
the Shantung guerrillas, whether Kuomintang or Communist, with
transmitters; and as long as we broadcast from the safety of our side of
the ocean, we could only hope that occasional freak conditions would
echo programs into Japan two or three times a month. With the British
and the Germans, it was altogether different; the two countries were
virtually touching, and each could cover the entire enemy territory.
With short-distance standard-wave broadcasting to an enemy known to have
millions of radio receivers, strategic radio becomes effective. The
chance is provided for building up a consistent group of listeners, for
influencing their morale and opinions, and for circulating rumors that
will reach almost every single person in the enemy population. The
temptation to perform tricks, to lapse back to peacetime standards of
radio-as-entertainment or radio-as-advertising, is a constant one. The
propagandist knows that he is being heard, and he fears that his
audience will lose interest if he does not stimulate them with a
brilliantly variegated series of programs.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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