Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
The War Department agency, under the Military Intelligence Service of
G-2, had been renamed Psychological Warfare Branch and had executed
within the G-2 structure the equivalent of a knight's move in chess,
ending up at a new place on the TO with no observable change in function
or authority; it had passed under the authority of Colonel (later
Brigadier General) Oscar Solbert, a West Pointer with wide international
and business experience; he had been out of the Army as a top official
with Eastman Kodak, after a cosmopolitan army career which sent him all
over Europe and gave him one tour of duty as a White House aide. With
the establishment of OWI, Colonel Solbert's office fissiparated like an
amoeba; the civilian half of Psychological Warfare Branch, with a few
officers, went over to OWI to be a brain-trust for the foreign broadcast
experts, who failed to welcome this accession of talent; the military
half remained as an MIS agency until 31 December, 1943, when OWI
abolished its half and MIS cooperated by wiping out the other, leaving
the War Department in the middle of a war with no official psychological
warfare agency whatever, merely some liaison officers. Psychological
warfare became the responsibility of designated individual officers in
OPD--(the Operations Division of the General Staff), an outfit
celebrated for conscientious overwork, as well as in MIS and the War
Department got along very nicely. Meanwhile OWI and OSS fought one of
the many battles of Washington, each seeking control of foreign
propaganda. The D.C. and Manhattan newspapers ran columns on this fight,
along with news of the fighting in Russia, Libya, and the Pacific. For
one glorious moment of OSS, it seemed that the President had signed over
all foreign propaganda functions conducted outside the United States to
OSS, cutting the OWI out of everything except its New York and San
Francisco transmitters; the OWI was stricken with gloom and collective
indigestion. The next day, the mistake was rectified, and OWI
triumphantly planned raids on the jurisdiction of OSS. Meanwhile, the
following things were happening:
Highly classified plans for psychological warfare were being drafted for
both the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff. These were discussed at
various meetings and then classified a little higher, whereupon they
were locked up, lest the propaganda writers and broadcasters see them
and break security on them by obeying and applying them.
Broadcasts--thousands of words in dozens of languages--were transmitted
to everyone on earth. They were written by persons who had little if any
contact with Federal policy, and none with the military establishment,
except for formal security. The plans at the top bore no observable
relation to the operations at the bottom.
[Illustration: _Chart II_
PRE-O.W.I. ORGANIZATION O.W.I. ORGANIZATION
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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