Propaganda: can a word decide a war?

Parameters, Autumn, 2007 by Dennis M. Murphy, James F. White

In 1922 he took his examination farther in the book Public Opinion, questioning the premise of an informed and rational citizenry, even if balanced, reliable information was available. Lippmann believed that the average person has neither the time nor the ability to make informed opinions about the questions of public policy. He or she must rely instead on specialists who are freed by their education and training from prejudices and stereotypes. John Dewey, the American philosopher and educator, later termed Public Opinion "the most effective indictment of democracy as currently conceived ever penned." (16)

Across the Atlantic, 35-year-old Austrian war veteran Adolf Hitler produced another perspective. He published the first volume of Mein Kampf ("My Struggle") in 1925 outlining his belief that Germany had been defeated from within by invidious Allied propaganda, as well as subversive elements within the German society--particularly German Jews. Chapter 6, titled "War Propaganda," specifically and concisely addressed what Hitler called the real lessons in the field. These, he felt, were to be learned from British and American examples during the war. The short chapter presents a cynical, amoral primer on publicity techniques in the service of a dark objective:

   The very first axiom of all propagandist activity: to wit, the
   basically subjective one sided attitude it must take toward every
   question it deals with.... What, for example, would we say about a
   poster that was supposed to advertise a new soap and that described
   other soaps as "good"?... The whole art [of propaganda] consists in
   doing this so skillfully that everyone will be convinced that the
   fact is real, the process necessary, the necessity correct, etc....
   The masses are slow moving, and they always require a certain time
   before they are ready to even notice a thing, and only after the
   simplest ideas are repeated thousands of times will the masses
   finally remember them ... For instance a slogan must be presented
   from different angles, but the end of all remarks must always and
   immutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can propaganda
   have a unified and complete effect. (17)

Hitler later created the "Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda," appointing Dr. Joseph Goebbels as minister.

World War II: Propaganda and Misinformation

When the United States entered WWII its public information efforts were very much shaped by the experiences of some 20 years earlier. President Franklin D. Roosevelt had witnessed the Creel operation at close range from his position as Under Secretary of the Navy and did not want a similar centralized organization. American opinion leaders were also increasingly concerned by what they saw as an organized, sophisticated, and highly successful German propaganda effort in the early 1930s, increasingly aimed at North and South America. Some were concerned about the susceptibility of large segments of the population to foreign propaganda and misinformation, others about the effect of comprehensive US government influence organizations on American society and its political balance. These included members of the media who did not care for the Creel style of a centralized clearinghouse and censorship for stories concerning the World War. There was also continued congressional suspicion of any effort that could be viewed as serving to publicize the administration.