Mind-Munitions

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Propaganda in the Age of Total War and Cold War
the Casablanca conference of January 1943, it was no longer easy
to distinguish between Germans and Nazis. Atrocity propaganda
was never used on the same scale as in the First World War: that
had long been discredited. But the underlying message of all this
material was that Nazism itself was an atrocity and all Germans
were guilty of it. If any further ‘proof’ was required, newsreel
footage of Belsen and the other concentration camps was to
provide it at the end of the war.
Thus far, we have been dealing with ‘white’ propaganda, namely
propaganda emanating from a clearly identifiable source. The most
potent source of white propaganda in Britain during the entire war
was the BBC. The significance of radio depended not just upon its
universality or its immediacy; like the other news media, its potency
as a medium of news communication and of propaganda rested on
the entertainment context in which it operated. The BBC’s wartime
role extended even further, from monitoring to overt and covert
broadcasting and even to the air defence of Great Britain. But the
first round of the radio war went to the Germans, partly due to the
lack of preparedness with which the BBC went to war but also, of
course, due to the facts of the military situation. The only ingredient
present was a philosophy: ‘no permanent propaganda policy
can in the modern world be based upon untruthfulness’.
The outbreak of war was greeted by a virtual news blackout,
producing a bleakness and dullness in radio broadcasting that was,
before long, to prove counter-productive in terms of morale. In the
BBC’s case, this was not due solely to the reluctance of the censors
to release news. Great caution was exercised by the Air Ministry,
which was worried that radio beams would act as navigational aids
for enemy bombers. In the event of an imminent air raid, Fighter
Command would order the BBC by direct telephone to close down
any transmitter serving as a beacon, whereupon the BBC would
synchronize the introduction of another transmitter outside the
target area, with a slight reduction in volume and quality. The
result was that the BBC was permitted a single programme on two
wavelengths (the Home Service) on which to serve up its reduced
diet of news amidst an endless stream of pep-talks and pre-recorded
gramophone music. It was not long, however, before the advantages
of allowing the BBC to function as independently as possible
became apparent. The MOI soon learned that it was better to leave
news communications to the experienced professionals and that the