Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
The Germans soon learned a basic principle of war radio. They learned
not to permit radio to run ahead of their military capacities. At first,
when their spokesmen promised attainment of a given goal by a given
time, and the army failed to live up to the schedule, the British radio
picked up the unfulfilled promise and dangled it before the world as
proof that the Germans were weakening. The Germans thereupon effected
Army-radio liaison so that the radio people could promise only those
things which the army was reasonably sure of delivering. (When Allied
propaganda analysis woke up to this fact, it added one more source of
corroboratory intelligence to be checked. (See page 126.))
The British had their hands full getting news out in the languages of
the occupied countries. It was immensely difficult for them to follow
the politics of the underground. German counterespionage, under the
deadly _Sicherheitsdienst_, made it difficult to keep track of opinion
in the occupied countries. Work against Naziism depended on the temper
of the people; propaganda against collaborators had to distinguish
between outright evil collaborators and those public officials who
stayed on out of a sense of mistaken or necessary duty. The British did
not necessarily announce themselves at any time as anti-Communist, and
collaborated for short-range purposes with Communists all over the
Continent. Mr. Churchill himself shifted his North Balkan political
support from Mikhailovich to Broz-Tito. But it was vitally necessary to
know just how and when to change support from one group to the other.
Since the undergrounds had very few radio transmitters, and none of
these was reliable during most of the war, the British faced the task of
providing radio facilities for all of the occupied countries. The
consequence was to make their radio warfare highly sensitive to
politics; they had to address the right people with the right language
at the right time, on penalty of failure.
[Illustration: _Figure 17: Anti-Radio Leaflet._ Sometimes
ground-distributed leaflets were used in an attempt to counteract enemy
radio propaganda. This leaflet, circulated in France by the Nazis, uses
the form of an Allied leaflet and accuses the Armed SS of wanting such
things as a decent Europe, and end to atrocious killings every
twenty-five years, and a worthy life. Allied broadcasters are identified
as Jews.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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