Mind-Munitions

214
Propaganda in the Age of Total War and Cold War
in the entire war. And when all is said and done, and in spite of the
wartime anxieties of the press concerning censorship, it was not so
much what the MOI actually did but rather what it might do which
most frightened journalists. The essential realization that government
and the media had the same objectives as far as winning the
war was concerned, and that their partnership in shaping morale
might help to determine its outcome, led to a mutual appreciation
of the limits to which either side could and could not go.
In May 1940, the government banned the export of communist
journals. Stalin had signed a non-aggression pact with Hitler in
August 1939 and Russia had to be treated as unfriendly, if not as
an enemy, until June 1941 when the Germans attacked them. The
ban was only lifted after the battle of Stalingrad. In July 1940, the
Daily Worker was warned that its pacifist line contravened
Defence Regulation 2D, which made it an offence under the
Defence of the Realm Act ‘systematically to publish matter
calculated to foment opposition to the prosecution of the war’. The
warning was ignored, and in January 1941 the Home Secretary,
Herbert Morrison, ordered Scotland Yard into the offices of the
Daily Worker, together with those of The Week, to stop the presses.
They were only allowed to resume publication in August 1942
when a comprehensive re-education campaign about ‘Our Soviet
Friends’ was in full flight. Far more serious, due to the size and
nature of its circulation, was the constant sniping of the Daily
Mirror. The circulation of this newspaper rose from 1.75 million in
1939 to 3 million in 1946 and was particularly popular among the
troops – no doubt attracted by the charms of its erotic comic strip
heroine ‘Jane’. Even when Churchill replaced Chamberlain as
Prime Minister in May 1940, the paper conducted its acrimonious
campaign against the ‘Guilty Men of Munich’ to the point where
even Churchill was embarrassed. In January 1941, Churchill
summoned its owners and virtually ordered them to desist. His
inclination to suppress the paper was tempered by the Home
Secretary and the MOI who did not wish to suppress opinion or
indulge in post-censorship. A personal interview was sufficient to
abate the paper’s attacks on that occasion.
The period between February and November 1942 was as bleak
for Britain in terms of morale – public as well as private – as at any
time in the war. Barely had the country recovered from the shock of
the news that German battleships had passed undetected through