Psychological WarfareLinebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
History
Psychological Warfare
Linebarger, Paul Myron Anthony
Psychological warfare
[Illustration: _Figure 20: Re-Use of Enemy Propaganda._ Leaflets
sometimes develop an enemy pictorial or slogan theme and use it
effectively against the original disseminators. Employing the colors and
insignia of the U.S. Air Force, this Nazi leaflet for Frenchmen makes no
attempt to minimize American bombing to the French. Instead, it uses the
Allied heading, "The hour of liberation will ring...." Then it adds the
grim point, "Make your will, make your will."]
One operation alone probably repaid the entire cost of OWI throughout
the war. The Japanese offered to surrender, but with conditions. We
responded, rejecting the conditions. The Japanese government pondered
its reply, but while it pondered, B-29s carried leaflets to all parts of
Japan, giving the text of the Japanese official offer to surrender. This
act alone would have made it almost impossibly difficult for the
Japanese government to whip its people back into frenzy for suicidal
prolongation of war. The Japanese texts were checked between Washington
and Hawaii by radiophotograph and cryptotelephone; the plates were put
into the presses at Saipan; the big planes took off, leaflets properly
loaded in the right kind of leaflet bombs. It took Americans three and a
half years to reach that point, but we reached it. Nowhere else in
history can there be found an instance of so many people being given so
decisive a message, all at the same time, at the very dead-point between
war and peace.
The Japanese had done their best against us, but their best was not
enough. We got in the last word, and made sure it was the last.
=Soviet Experience.= Soviet psychological warfare used Communist party
facilities during World War II, turning them on and off as needed. But
Soviet psychological war efforts were not characterized by blind
reliance on past experience. They showed a very real inventiveness, and
the political policies behind them were both far-sighted and
far-reaching.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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