Source: BBC

By Fiona Macdonald

Secrets and spies

The word ‘propaganda’ might suggest some form of misinformation – yet in boosting morale during World War Two, the British government had to maintain a careful balancing act. While employing a range of psychological tricks, they had to be seen to be as truthful as possible. “The Ministry of Information (MOI) had been disbanded immediately after World War One because official propaganda had become too easily associated with lies and falsehood,” historian David Welch, author of the new book Persuading the People: British Propaganda in World War II, tells BBC Culture. “In World War Two when the MOI was re-established the Ministry was acutely aware of the cynicism associated with propaganda. It was agreed that, with the exception of harmful and unbelievable truths, whenever possible the truth should be told.”

Sloganeering

Former Director General of the BBC John Reith was appointed Minister of Information in 1940. “He laid down two fundamental axioms for the balance of the war: that news equated to the ‘shock troops of propaganda’ and that propaganda should tell ‘the truth, nothing but the truth and, as near as possible, the whole truth’,” says Welch. That didn’t stop the MOI relying on tried and tested techniques to manipulate public opinion. A report commissioned by Chatham House in 1939 established 86 ground rules for doing so, such as “propaganda should fit pre-conceived impressions, e.g. a Chinaman thinks every foreigner a cunning person who is prepared to use a concealed gun should wiliness fail”.

In Persuading the People, Welch writes: “interestingly, [the rules] reveal that those who drafted the secret document were familiar with Hitler’s view on propaganda published in Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle’). Not only that, but they appeared to endorse some Hitlerite propaganda principles. For example, the document talks about appealing to the instinct of the masses rather than to their reason, and stresses the importance of building on slogans and the need for repetition.”

Rage against the machine

The posters, pamphlets and films included in Persuading the People reveal the range of approaches the MOI used throughout World War Two. One of them went by the title of the “Anger Campaign”. “The MOI had initially decided that ‘truth’ should be the main weapon with which to attack the enemy in the minds of the public,” writes Welch. “However, after the bitter and dramatic events in the summer and autumn of 1940, the MOI launched its Anger Campaign and British propaganda took a more drastic approach by emphasising the brutality of Nazi rule.”

In the war’s early period, within the MOI there was “an impatience and an implicit lack of confidence in the public – a belief that they were, according to Lord Macmillan, the Minister of Information, ‘patient, long-suffering, slow to anger, slower still to hate’… that the working man in particular had little comprehension of the consequences of a Nazi victory and was, therefore, in need of a sharp dose of stiffening.”

The Anger Campaign aimed to deliver a shock that could break through what the MOI saw as a “dangerous complacency” with lines like “The Hun is at the gate. He will rage and destroy. He will slaughter women and children”. In a radio broadcast by the author JB Priestley for the BBC General Overseas service, Priestley described the ‘bright face’ of Germany: music, art, and beautiful landscapes. But, he warned, “after the Nazis came … the bright face had gone, and in its place was the vast dark face with its broken promises and endless deceit, its swaggering Storm Troopers and dreaded Gestapo, its bloodstained basements”.

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