Propaganda

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War propaganda is a set of messages aimed at the morale of its target population. It can be aimed at one's own civil or military population for the purpose of increasing morale, or it can be aimed at the enemy's civil or military population for the purpose of destroying morale. In the latter case, it is a form of psychological warfare. Although propaganda is often untruthful, it is distinct from disinformation, which is aimed at an enemy's intelligence apparatus.

The English word propaganda was originally a neutral term for messages advocating a position or policy. However, following the First World War, there was a backlash against wartime government propaganda, and the word became a pejorative for untruthful or unbalanced advocacy by government or political parties. This was particularly true in the United States, where Allied propaganda was blamed for drawing the country into an unnecessary war and where the Wilson administration was criticized for having imposed unprecedented wartime restrictions on speech and the press to ensure public support for the government.

The totalitarian governments of the Axis and of communist Russia established ministries of propaganda to manipulate public opinion in their own countries. This reinforced the pejorative connotations of the word in England and the United States, which  may have helped prevent a repeat of the restrictive policies of the Wilson administration. Instead, the majority of the press engaged in voluntary self-censorship of information that could be helpful to the enemy, while criticisms of the Roosevelt administration continued even after U.S. entry into the war. Though the attack on Pearl Harbor guaranteed that there would be little criticism of the decision to go to war, criticisms of its conduct were occasionally quite sharp, particularly in the Republican press.

Another factor in the relatively free operation of the American press during the Pacific War was Attorney General Francis Biddle, who held libertarian views on freedom of expression. Biddle ordered federal attorneys not to bring charges against individuals who demonstrated against the war, such as a young man in Chicago who was fined $200 for disorderly conduct by a local judge when he booed a newsreel of Roosevelt. Biddle's reluctance to pursue sedition charges against outspoken opponents of Roosevelt did not please the president, but it helped preserve a free press during the war years.

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Wikipedia Commons

During the Pacific War, Allied propaganda aimed at their own citizens typically sought to vilify the enemy, amplify the sense of threat posed by his armed forces, and appeal to the population's patriotism. It varied from benign admonitions to work harder "to help bring the boys home" to blatantly racist depictions of the enemy. The latter played on ugly stereotypes of the Japanese, emphasizing their Oriental features and often depicting them as rats, snakes, or other disgusting animals. It is difficult to accurately assess the effectiveness of such propaganda, but the success of ordinary advertising suggests that such propaganda could have a significant effect.

Information in propaganda from the Office of War Information in the United States was rarely blatantly false, but it was selected to promote morale and sometimes stretched the truth. For instance, the deaths of the five Sullivan brothers was used for propaganda purposes, but the fact that some of the brothers probably died because their task force dared not linger to search for survivors was omitted. While the decision to sail on was probably the correct military decision, it was not the kind of decision that it was thought would play well with the public. On the other hand, Yamamoto expressed astonishment that the American government had released accurate information on the casualties at Pearl Harbor within a few months of the attack. By contrast, the Japanese Navy routinely exaggerated enemy casualties while concealing its own, sometimes even from the Japanese Army and government.

In fact, propaganda was most effective when it was truthful. Propaganda that looked like propaganda was almost completely ineffective either at building friendly morale or at destroying enemy morale. The Collier's cover depicting Japan as a fanged bat was probably much less effective than the realistic depiction of a Japanese rifleman taking aim at the viewer. It follows that it was difficult to produce propaganda that was effective at destroying the morale of a nation that knew it was winning or at building the morale of a nation that was watching its cities be destroyed from the air and its ships sunk at sea.

An important source of unofficial American propaganda was Hollywood, which produced dozens of war-themed movies of various quality. The best, such as Casablanca, were genuinely great films where the propaganda was relatively unobtrusive. Others, including many of the films that sought to build sympathy for the Russians or Chinese, were heavy handed and unconvincing. This is another illustration of truthfulness making for more effective propaganda: Neither Russia nor China was anything like a modern liberal democracy, so attempts to depict them as partners in a free world were certain to be unconvincing. France, by contrast, had a long history of liberal democracy and was widely regarded as the United States' oldest ally, making the depiction of Vichy North Africa in Casablanca much more palatable.

While Hollywood combat films were often marred by inaccuracy and cheap heroics, there were notable exceptions. Wake Island and Guadalcanal Diary made reasonable efforts to accurately depict combat within the limitations of 1940s Hollywood movie making. In addition, Hollywood produced a number of documentaries, some of which (such as Fighting Lady) incorporated considerable combat footage and otherwise strove for accuracy. The most unrealistic part of these films was probably the lack of realistic depictions of American casualties: It was not until 1943 that military censors began to pass photographs of dead American soldiers, and even then these were carefully composed to avoid showing mutilated corpses or dead men's faces.

American troops were largely uninterested in war films per se, preferring sheer escapism, preferably with abundant pretty actresses. However, one cannot leave the subject of American propaganda films without mentioning the Why We Fight series, produced by famed Hollywood director Frank Capra for the U.S. War Department. Originally produced to be shown to American soldiers deploying overseas, the films were later shown in theaters to the general public. The films were largely montages of newsreels, including a considerable amount of Axis propaganda footage turned against its original producers. The newsreel footage was interspersed with animations (produced by Walt Disney) and some reenactments, interviews, and lectures. The first three films of the seven-film series, Prelude to War, The Nazis Strike, and Divide And Conquer, are surprisingly good history and illustrate yet again that truth makes for better propaganda. The films on China and Russia were the weakest of the series, for the same reasons that most other wartime films on China and Russia were unconvincing.

Rhodes (1976)

As the Allied counteroffensive rolled forward, American propaganda became more triumphalist in tone, as illustrated by this postage stamp reproducing a famous photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima. The photograph itself had been seen by almost every American and was one of the great iconic images of the war.

The Japanese were contemptuous of propaganda or "thought war" as late as 1937. However, the war in China engendered an interest in propaganda among the military leadership, which began to enthusiastically duplicate the methods of the Nazi regime in Germany. When an Army general, Araki Sadao, became Minister of Education in 1935, military indoctrination of youth became widespread.  Domei was established as the government press agency in 1936 and given a monopoly on foreign news. By 1939 university professors were appointed by the Ministry of Education rather than the faculty. Western ideas were condemned as "dangerous thoughts" and the Japanese were told that Hollywood gangster movies portrayed everyday life in America.

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Japanese propaganda aimed at its own civil population had both similarities to and differences from Allied propaganda. Well before war broke out with the West, Japanese propagandists began speaking of an ABCD (American-British-Dutch-Chinese) encirclement of Japan, thus deflecting popular resentment of wartime shortages from the government to a sinister foreign conspiracy. The Pacific War was depicted as a glorious struggle to liberate Asia from Western colonialism and racist themes played a part. However, much Japanese propaganda celebrated the accomplishments of Japanese fighting forces, often employing blatant falsehoods, as previously noted. The Japanese public were fed stories of aviators whose unconquerable spirits continued to fly and fight even after their bodies were dead. After Japanese fortunes turned for the worse, Japanese propaganda filmmakers began depicting soldiers fighting hopeless struggles in isolated island outposts. Such films would likely come across as antiwar to a Westerner, but to the Japanese they invoked the spirit of self-sacrifice found in such Japanese classics as The Forty-Seven Ronin.

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Curiously, Japanese propaganda directed at their own citizens sought to depict Japanese soldiers as civilized and merciful to Allied prisoners of war. This was in very sharp contrast with reality. Later in the war, the Japanese attempted to counter Allied reports of atrocities with leaflets like the one shown above. The chauvinism of the text cannot have contributed to its effectiveness.

Propaganda aimed at the enemy generally played to his natural fear of the dangers of combat while downplaying the considerable risks of attempting to surrender. Both Japan and the Allies dropped leaflets encouraging surrender over enemy positions. Those distributed by the Japanese often took the form of a "surrender card" with instructions on how to offer surrender on one side and a pornographic picture of a Western woman on the other. These and other leaflets distributed to combat troops were often crude and seem to have rarely been effective for their intended purpose, but they made a nice source of toilet paper. They were typically dispersed from aircraft or artillery.

The Japanese made extensive use of propaganda broadcasts, of which the most famous were those by "Tokyo Rose," actually several Japanese-American women, who broadcast often surprisingly shrewd guesses of Allied dispositions and intentions as a way to break the morale of Allied troops. However, these broadcasts rarely had much effect on Allied morale, particularly since "Tokyo Rose" occasionally was wildly wrong. The Allies relied less on such broadcasts, perhaps from the knowledge that the access of Japanese citizens to radio receivers was tightly controlled. (Private ownership of shortwave receivers, capable of receiving broadcasts from abroad, was banned in Japan in 1932.) However, with the capture of the Marianas in June 1944, the Allies were within range of medium wave receivers in Japan and began a serious effort to broadcast propaganda. Ironically, the mere fact of the loss of Saipan was as psychologically devastating as any Allied broadcast.

In 1949, Iva Toguri was convicted of one count of treason for broadcasting as Tokyo Rose. She was imprisoned for six years and fined $10,000.  An American citizen who had been awarded a degree in geology by the University of California, she was visiting in Japan without a valid U.S. passport at the outbreak of war. She refused to renounce her U.S. citizenship but was subsequently pressured into making (fairly innocuous) broadcasts for the Japanese. In the 1970s, investigative journalists uncovered serious irregularities in her treason trial, and she received a presidential pardon.

Propaganda Leaflets of World War 2

Allied aircraft began dropping leaflets on Japanese cities towards the end of the war. The leaflet reproduced above named the next set of cities the Americans intended to bomb and urged civilians to evacuate these cities. The translation is:

A Warning to the Japanese People

Would you consider saving the lives of your parents, siblings, friends, and yourselves? If you want to save your lives, read this leaflet thoroughly.

In a few days the U.S. Air Force will bomb military targets in all or some of the cities listed on the reverse side of this leaflet.

In these cities there are military targets or munitions production facilities. The weapons used by the Japanese military authorities in order to extend this hopeless war will be completely destroyed by the U.S. Air Force. However, bombs cannot see, so we do not know where they will land. As you know, we Americans are a humanitarian people and we do not want to injure innocent people. Therefore, please evacuate these cities.

You are not America's enemy. The Japanese military authorities who have gotten you involved in the war are the enemy. The peace that the U.S. is considering is to liberate you from the oppression of the Japanese military authorities. If we liberate you, we will be able to establish a new and better nation for you.

It would be better for you to select new leaders who will end the war and restore peace.

The cities not listed on the reverse side of this leaflet may be attacked, but some or all of the cities that are listed will be attacked.

This is a warning. Therefore, evacuate the cities listed on the reverse side of this leaflet.

This leaflet was not dropped solely for humanitarian reasons. It also was a form of psychological warfare, attempting to induce civilian workers to flee their factories. According to some Japanese civilians interviewed after the war, these leaflets made a profound impression, since they suggested the Japanese military could not protect their own cities even when given advance notice which cities were going to be attacked.

In the final days of the war, leaflets with the text of the Potsdam Declaration were dropped over Japanese cities, along with copies of the Japanese government's reply seeking more moderate terms. This evidence that the Japanese government was negotiating for peace was political dynamite, and likely increased the political pressure on the Emperor to intervene to end the war.

Both Allied and Japanese propaganda sometimes suffered from faulty translation and a lack of understanding of the other side's culture and character. American propaganda efforts suffered from gaffes such as placing chopsticks alongside plates the way Americans place their silverware: The Japanese set both chopsticks at the bottom of the plate. The language of early Allied translations was described by one Japanese scholar as resembling a dialect "as archaic as Chaucer." The Japanese in turn came up with memorably clumsy phrasing, such as "The remaining British planes took to their heels." Japanese propagandists never really understood how infuriated the Americans were by the "sneak attack" on Pearl Harbor, nor could they understand how even the most bitter political opponents of Roosevelt could nevertheless support the national war effort.

Astonishingly, the leaflets dropped during LeMay's strategic bombing campaign were drafted by carefully selected Japanese prisoners of war who, "because of their very recent participation in the Japanese mentality, are best able to appeal to their compatriots" (Frank 1999.) Because of the tremendous dishonor the Japanese associated with the act of surrender, those few Japanese who did surrender were often extraordinarily cooperative with Allied authorities.

Overall, Allied propaganda was considerably more effective than Japanese propaganda, for the reasons given by Japanese writer Kato Masuo (Rhodes 1976):

Japan was hopelessly beaten in psychological warfare, not because of any particular adroitness on the part of the Allies, but because the Allies based their propaganda on truth — whereas Japan was unwilling to deal in truth, almost from the outset.

References

Drea (2009)

Fleming (2001)

Frank (1999)
Japanese PSYOP During WWII (accessed 2008-4-12)

Propaganda leaflets of World War 2 (accessed 2008-4-12)
Rhodes (1976)

The Pacific War Online Encyclopedia © 2008-2010 by Kent G. Budge. Index

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