A World at Arms (114 page)

In addition, these and other devices were directed at neutrals to induce a favorable attitude toward one side and, even more important, at the enemy to frighten, weaken, divide, or in other ways assist the war effort of one side. German propaganda and psychological warfare had been developed before the war. During hostilities, it came to be distinguished by famous propaganda films like “Sieg im Westen,” (Victory in the West), which were especially designed to overawe Europe’s neutrals and to show the rest of the world the might of the Third Reich. A massive campaign had been launched in 1940 to try to prevent the reelection of President Roosevelt, and there was even a smaller renewal of this in 1944.
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In between, the Germans had tried with equally little success to make much of the declarations of war on the United States by Bulgaria, Hungary, Romania, and the puppet states of Croatia and Slovakia.
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From time to time, the Germans utilized defectors from the other side to try to score points among their enemies. Thus, in June, 1940, former German Communist leader Ernst Torgler broadcast for them on their French radio program.
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William Joyce broadcast frequently to England, where the main reaction of the humorously skeptical audience was to refer to him as “Lord Haw-Haw” in reference to his accent.
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The German efforts to appeal to Red Army soldiers by utilizing defectors, especially in the elaborate “Silberstreif’ (Silverlining) operation of 1943, were likewise unsuccessful. Many Red Army men were
captured or deserted, but nothing suggests that propaganda played any significant role. In the latter years of the war, German propaganda themes concentrated on the Communist danger and the likely unfaithfulness of the Allied soldiers’ wives and sweethearts at home; neither appeal had much impact. The Germans developed a massive organization of special propaganda companies which recorded action at the front for German newsreels and took thousands of pictures which today provide interesting material for historians.

Italian psychological warfare was aimed at undermining Britain’s position in the Middle East. Given Italy’s own colonial record and imperial ambitions, these efforts were not particularly effective. The string of italian defeats which began in the fall of 1940 made the discrepancy between Mussolini’s ambitions and the country’s performance in the war too large and too obvious. The efforts of extreme nationalist agitators like the Mufti of Jerusalem, Rashid Ali al-Gaylani, and Subhas Chandra Bose to playoff Rome against Berlin in their attempts to obtain Axis promises of independence, which they could then utilize in propaganda beamed at the Middle East and India, were abortive. The efforts reveal more about the shortsightedness of those who sought the sponsorship of the nation which had destroyed the independence of Ethiopia than about Axis psychological warfare.

The Japanese had in effect written off any prospects for propaganda in China by their atrocious conduct in that country. In the rest of Asia, the line they tried to push was that of “Asia for the Asiatics,” an anti-colonialists logan related to the much publicized “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.” In some places these slogans at first had some resonance. Many of the colonial peoples of Southeast Asia were not the least bit unhappy to see their European masters defeated, and defeated very quickly at that. While the rapid collapse of British, French, and Dutch colonial rule permanently destroyed the aura of might and strength the Europeans had once held, the people in the newly Japanese conquered areas quickly learned that they had indeed been conquered, not liberated. As it became more and more obvious that the “Co” was for them and all the “Prosperity” for the Japanese, no amount of Japanese propaganda could convince them to tie their future to Tokyo. As for Japanese propaganda toward the Allies, that never amounted to anything. The Australians and New Zealanders positively hated the intruders upon their portion of the globe. The Americans did indeed “Remember Pearl Harbor”; and no broadcasts by “Tokyo Rose,” as the Japanese radio propagandist was called, was likely to make American troops forget it.

Great Britain tried early in the war to appeal to the German people over the heads of their government by dropping leaflets which recalled
the treaties and promises Germany had broken in bringing on the war. The speculation that the German people might themselves turn against their government proved false. Instead they cheered on their troops to victory in Northern, Western, and Southeast Europe. Thereafter British attention in the field of psychological warfare shifted to the conquered people of the continent. The very continuation of Britain in the war gave them some hope, and this hope was increasingly reinforced by the view and the news of British warplanes flying overhead to bomb Germany (an aspect of early strategic bombing that is often forgotten). Perhaps of even greater importance was the role of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which acquired and held a reputation for truthful reporting and thereby became the major source of reasonably reliable war news for a continent covered by the blanket of Goebbels’s lies. The beam of truth lit the lives of many who lived in the occupied areas and even came to be an important source of information for Germans who defied the ban on listening to foreign broadcasts. The impact of the news programs was in a significant way enhanced by the use of the V for Victory symbol. The people under Nazi rule, often for seemingly endless years, could sustain their morale by the hope of a better future.

The Soviet Union faced what at first looked like a difficult task. Its leaders had been denouncing the Western Powers first as the aggressor in the war and then for continuing to fight Germany when the Soviet Union advocated a negotiated peace with Hitler. Any embarrassment over this situation was quickly eliminated by German policies and actions. It was all too obvious all too quickly that the Germans had invaded the Soviet Union to plunder and to murder, both on the largest possible scale. Whatever the domestic problems which patriotic themes helped to overcome, the difficulties in the foreign psychological warfare field were great. Soviet leaflets addressed to German soldiers were steeped in a Marxist terminology which may have done credit to the orthodoxy of those who wrote them but could only bring derisive smiles to their readers. All the evidence suggests that the appeals of those German officers and soldiers who became members of the National Committee for a Free Germany and the League of German Officers also fell mostly on deaf ears.

The real psychological warfare triumph of the Soviet Union came not from its propaganda but from the hard–won victories of the Red army. The prestige which accrued to the Soviets from their successful defense of the country, the mauling they were obviously giving to the Germans, and the string of spectacular victories which began with Stalingrad was enormous. Here was the power which had stopped the seemingly invincible German army; this was the country which was bravely defending
itself and in the process offering a hope of deliverance from the Nazi yoke to those in the occupied territories. Simultaneously, it was the fighting of the Red Army which impressed the public in Britain and the United States and thereby provided a critical cementing factor for the alliance of the Soviet Union with those countries. The prestige of the U.S.S.R. in the world and of Communist Parties in many countries was a product of Soviet deeds at the front rather than words from Moscow.

The United States engaged in extensive broadcasting and movie propaganda, Frank Capra’s “Why We Fight” series being perhaps the most famous example of the latter. With footage taken primarily from Axis newsreels, these films, prepared at General Marshall’s request, were designed to inform and inspire American soldiers, who often had little background on the developments in Europe and East Asia which had drawn the United States into the war. In the Pacific War, there was practically no opportunity for psychological warfare, given the attitude of Japanese soldiers and the nature of the home front. Only in the last stages of that part of the conflict was there any major effort at the use of leaflets and broadcasts, though to no great effect.

In the European theater, the Americans made a far greater attempt, especially from 1944 on, to persuade German soldiers to surrender rather than fight on in a hopeless cause.
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The use of an official looking pass for those who gave themselves up proved to be the most effective technique, but it is doubtful that many individual surrenders were induced rather than facilitated by these means.
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There were “black” radio stations and “News for the troops” and all manner of other devices, but it remains very much an open question whether all these efforts made a great deal of difference.

Once hostilities had started, psychological warfare could serve to reinforce hope for and confidence in victory and to assist in the consolidation of opinion at home in each of the belligerents. In a war that called for enormous sacrifices, that was undoubtedly a matter of the greatest importance. And this was as true of Americans urged to buy War Bonds as of all others. But undermining the will to fight of the enemy proved extraordinarily difficult for every country at war.

In a war which involved so many new types of weapons, many of them more deadly even than those which had caused such carnage in World War I, there was one field of endeavor in which great advances were made in the saving rather than the destruction of life: Medicine. In the general field of tropical medicine, the invention of new methods of
making synthetic quinine assisted in dealing with the terrible problem of malaria. The discovery of sulfa drugs, and of penicillin and additional antibiotics, made it possible for the Allies, especially the British and Americans, to save the lives of thousands of wounded soldiers who would otherwise have succumbed to infections. Here were new families of drugs of vast post-war significance.

Closely related in practice, though not in theory, to the life–saving role of antibiotics was the development, application and increasing use of blood transfusions in connection with surgery for battlefield injuries. It was this, together with systems for the more rapid movement of the wounded to advance field hospitals, that increased the survival chances of the wounded. The battlefield–which might be in a town under bombing hundreds of miles from the front as well as at a fox-hole-had lost none of its terror; it had in fact gained some new ones; but the capacity for coping with wounds had greatly improved.
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A development of the war which turned out to be a mixed blessing was the discovery of DDT. This powdery chemical proved of enormous value in reducing the incidence of several diseases, especially typhus and malaria, which would otherwise have killed or maimed literally tens of thousands, as had happened in prior wars. There simply cannot be any doubt that during hostilities and in the desperate conditions prevailing in many parts of the world right after the end of hostilities -liberated prisoner of war, internment and concentration camps to mention only some examples–the use of DDT proved a great boon. The indiscriminate use of the new “miracle” dust after the war was to be a cause of great environmental damage, thus showing that it ought to be employed only in the most dire emergencies.

It must also be noted that the war provided the opportunity or the excuse for some of the most awful medical experiments ever carried out on unwilling subjects in German and Japanese camps. Thousands were deliberately wounded, maimed, infected and usually killed during or soon after all manner of horrible procedures ostensibly designed to further the medical or military knowledge of the perpetrators. Though in the German case reported on at professional medical meetings, these activities belong more in the realm of torture than of medicine. At least a few of the “doctors of infamy” were tried after the war; nothing productive came of all their butchery.
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It is easy to draw a balance for the war years between the destructive power of weapons and the potential benefits of new technological and medical discoveries. The endless casualty lists are a silent but convincing record of the net impact of these new developments on mankind. On
the other hand, for the post-war world, the heritage of radar and jet airplanes as aids to travel, and new drugs, surgical procedures, and other therapies for the protection and maintenance of life have left a positive heritage which has improved and extended the life of millions. But only as long as the new nuclear weapons remain unused.

A related major change which had begun in some ways in World War I but reached its maturity in World War II was the great role of scientists in influencing and even determining government policy. Their role in managerial positions was closely related to this change. The positions of Carl Krauch in Germany, of Lord Cherwell in England, of Arthur Compton and James Conant in the United States, derived from the enormous significance of scientific developments requiring expert knowledge for the successful prosecution of modern war between highly industrialized societies. Any interruption of research, such as the German development stop order of October 10, 1941, could have drastic consequences even if dropped later.
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The big war produced big science, and that continued into the post-war years.

Another special aspect of the war, reaching back to the first horn sounded in battle, continued into the post-war years as well. Military music had accompanied all wars from ancient to modern times. Except for the large-scale use of recordings and radio transmissions, the nature of military music did not change appreciably during World War II. One incident, however, deserves special mention. In mid-July 1941 the Red Army captured a German regimental band leader. After the war, he reappeared as a band leader in the National People’s Army (NVA), the military force of the now vanished German Democratic Republic, conducting the music for its goose–stepping parades. In the 1950S he was sent to Communist China to teach military music in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), the army of the People’s Republic of China.
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One can only hope that the resulting performances sounded as well as Tsingtao beer, the “Chinese beer” sold in this country but made by the pupils of German brewers in the former German colony in China, tastes.