Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
To effect this end, the British set up an agency which never had an
American counterpart, the Political Warfare Executive (known by its
initials, PWE). This agency had representation from the War Office, the
Admiralty, the Foreign Office, and the Ministry of Information. The PWE
was the policy-servicing and coordinating agency for all British
external propaganda, and left the execution of its operations to the
Ministry of Information (MOI) and to the British Broadcasting
Corporation (BBC). British radio propaganda maintained a high level of
effectiveness. American officials and propagandists often complained
that the British were running the entire war in their own national
interest. The charge was unjust. The British had facilities for knowing
exactly what they wished to do and when they wished to do it. If the
Americans came along without clear policies or propaganda purposes, it
was natural that the British should take the lead and let the Americans
string along if they wished. Furthermore, the British were usually
scrupulous in yielding to America's primary interest in areas they felt
to be American problems--Japan, China, the Philippines. They were least
cooperative when the OWI tried to spread the ideals of Mr. Henry Wallace
in Burma or to explain the CIO-PAC to the Hindus.
No clear victor emerged from the Anglo-German radio war; the victory of
the United Nations gave the British the last say. In the opinion of
many, the British were one war ahead of the United States. They had
profited by their World War I experience, and by their two years'
operational lead which they had on the Americans. But side-by-side with
the Germans, it is harder to appraise their net achievements. The
British had immense political advantages; the resentment of a conquered
continent worked for them. But they had disadvantages too. The enemy
worked from the starting point of a fanatical and revolutionary
philosophy; the British had the tedious old world to offer. The postwar
interrogations of civilians in Germany showed that an amazingly high
proportion of them had heard BBC broadcasts, and that many of the ideas
and attitudes which the British propagandized were actually transmitted
to the enemy. On the British side, it is almost impossible to find any
surviving traces of the effect of Nazi propaganda. Had the war been
purely a radio war this test might be conclusive. But if psychological
warfare supplements combat, combat certainly supplements propaganda. The
great British and American air raids over Europe unquestionably created
an intense interest in British and American plans and purposes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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