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Principles and Objectives of British Propaganda in Foreign Countries

There are two main purposes of our propaganda abroad:

A. To make other countries believe that we shall win the war .

B. To make other countries want us to win the war .

A.

The problem of making other countries believe in our victory has its positive side, i.e. to make them believe in our strength , and its negative side, i.e. to make them believe in Germany's weakness .

On the positive side, the creation of belief in our strength has three aspects (i) military (ii) economic (iii) moral.

(i) In the matter of military strength, the eloquence of facts is all important. The success of German propaganda in the first month of the war was mainly due to the concrete fact of the German victories in Poland. The end of the Admiral Graf Spee was probably the most effective piece of British propaganda up-to-date. Even countries whose strict neutrality rules out any expression of opinion in their press cannot exclude facts. Even the enemy cannot suppress facts altogether. But facts only have their full effect if we get the reputation for truth in our announcements. A story which first appears several days after the event often excites scepticism. We should always announce our facts as fully and as promptly as possible and we have lost much through the tardiness of many of our communiqués of military events.

Apart from actual events, official statements of military strength, and especially statistics, are impressive. The glorious national exploits of the past can be discreetly exploited. But here care is necessary. It is a delicate matter to recall exploits achieved at the expense of France, and references to the Spanish Armada are not appreciated in the Spanish-speaking world. Moreover, no encouragement must be given to the view which has obtained some currency in Germany, Italy and even the United States that a glorious past is Britain's chief remaining asset. Anything in the nature of boastfulness should be studiously avoided. Statements that the submarine menace was well under control have more than once been followed by serious losses. This makes a particularly unfavourable impression abroad.

(ii) Economically, facts are once more the most eloquent witnesses, One of the most effective practical methods of propaganda in any country is to be economically strong enough to supply it with commodities which it needs and to purchase commodities which it has to sell. Statistics of production and trade, of supplies of food and raw materials already stored in Great Britain or available in overseas markets under British control, of the tonnage of ships daily reaching British ports in spite of enemy mines and submarines, are everywhere effective. Economic staying power should always be featured as one of Great Britain's surest assets.

(iii) Morally, it is important to stress the voluntary solidarity of the home front, the voluntary solidarity of the British Commonwealth of Nations, and our solidarity with France . 236 - 2 -As regards the first, some play can he made in democratic countries with the free expression of minor differences of opinion, though this theme is better avoided in dictatorship countries, where it is interpreted as a symptom of weakness. As regards the British Commonwealth of Nations, the voluntary nature of the relationship embodied in the Statute of Westminster and of the participation of the Dominions in the war should be stressed. But over-statement must be avoided, and in handling South Africa and India the less rosy shades of the picture must not be passed over in silence. Solidarity with France can be featured everywhere, but must be handled with some restraint in those countries where French policy after 1919 was the object of distrust and suspicion.

The most important moral asset to be emphasised is the firmness of our resolve to win at the cost of whatever sacrifice to ourselves .

Our publicity should seek to bring into the lime-light the reality of the effort being made by all classes of the British people. The heroism of our navy, our mercantile marine, our air force, will be invoked to appeal to the instinct of hero-worship and spirit of adventure. But this must be matched by the determination of our munitions workers, and the magnitude of their effort (long hours, increased production, abandonment of peace time restrictions) must be shown. The extent to which women have been drafted into industry and agriculture both to increase output and to replace men should be advertised. The introduction of rationing should be treated as a symptom, not of shortage of supplies, but of determination to make any sacrifice in order to utilise supplies to the best advantage of winning the war. The general picture created should be one of ready acceptance of hardship and privation for the good of the cause.

In the same way, it is important to build up a picture of British efficiency . The impression deliberately created by German propaganda before and since the outbreak of war that Britain is a decadent and inefficient nation has unfortunately received much encouragement from the attitude of some organs of the British Press. This impression cannot be removed by words alone. But efficiency in conducting our propaganda is one of the methods by which we can seek to counteract it. So long as British newspapers and periodicals reach neutral countries days or weeks late, so long as British films are almost unknown in neutral picture theatres, we foster the belief in our inefficiency. The recent improvement in the supply of British news and British photographs is an encouraging symptom.

On the negative side, i.e. propaganda designed to convince the world of Germany’s weakness , the some three aspects will be stressed. Germany is militarily weak, economically weak, morally weak.

In the first of these aspects, it will be argued that the Nazi regime has broken up everything that was good in the old German military tradition, and by inculcating everywhere blind, unreasoning obedience has created a machine incapable of producing the individual initiative required in modern warfare. On the economic front, statistics will be piled up showing Germany's dependence on foreign imports, the extent to which these have been cut off by the cessation of Germany's overseas trade, the illusory character of Russian supplies, the tonnage of German ships scuttled or captured, etc.

Morally, stress will be laid on deep-seated disunion in Germany, the suppression of every spontaneous working-class movement, the antipathy between the old military tradition and the Nazi regime. [illegible] necessity of a Gestapo should be adduced as evidence of a lack of spontaneous unity of purpose. Prophecies of an early collapse should not, however, be indulged in. The brutal efficiency of the party machine in forcibly holding together discordant elements and keeping potential unrest in check should be admitted and even emphasised. But this need not prevent us from arguing that in the long run the Nazi regime is inefficient because it is oppressive, corrupt and unpopular.

In order to defeat German counter-propaganda whose theme is Britain's weakness and Germany's strength, it is of the utmost importance to destroy its credit by representing it as false and misleading.

The right method for this purpose is not to attempt the individual refutation of every German misstatement. Repeated refutations tend to give such misstatements a wider currency than they would otherwise obtain, create the feeling that British propaganda is on the defensive, and, by boring the reader or the listener, too often end by provoking the reaction “six of one and half a dozen of the other”. The right policy is carefully to collect misstatements, and from time to time issue, through all the media available to us, a budget of such of them as can be simply and obviously disproved or as lend themselves to ridicule or contempt . Probably the most effective method of all is to give the widest possible publicity to the not infrequent cases in which German pronouncements contradict one another (e.g. the four or five different versions of how the Athenia was sunk, the statement that the Admiral Graf Spey had entered Montevideo undamaged followed by the protest to the Uruguayan Government for compelling her to sail in an unseaworthy condition.) Such cases are likely to be multiplied now that Germany is broadcasting in many languages to many different types of audience. We shall thus seek, while choosing our own ground and not allowing ourselves to be drawn into controversy and denial on less favourable issues, to undermine the whole German case by depicting it as built on a foundation of habitual and calculated falsehood. Quotations from Mein Kampf and other Nazi publications help us here.

B.

The problem of making other countries not merely believe that we shall win, but want us to win, raises more complicated issues, since different countries have different points of view and different interests. The main lines of our propaganda must be the same everywhere. But they must be adapted to local needs. Here the Press Attachés must be allowed a wide discretion.

On the positive side, emphasis should be placed on the spiritual and material achievements of British and French civilisation; on our political freedom, as opposed to the organised terrorism of the Gestapo; on our art and our culture, as opposed to the regimented art and standardised culture of Nazi Germany; on our social services and our humanitarian outlook; on the freedom of the British Commonwealth of Nations and the acceptance of “trusteeship” as the principle of administration on our colonial empire; on our respect for the rights and interest of other nations; on our belief in the peaceful settlement of disputes and in international co-operation for the common good on the economic plane . If such 238 - 4 -propaganda is not to be vitiated by self-complacency, however, two provisos must be observed;

(a) Less emphasis should he laid on the achievements of the past, which should always he represented as imperfect and incomplete than on hopes for the futures, on what mankind will be in a position to achieve when the present squandering of energy and resources in mutual destruction has been brought to an end;

(b) There should ho nothing exclusive about claims made on behalf of Britain and France. Few things are so boring as self- praise; and flattery is often the subtlest form of propaganda. The countries to which the propaganda is directed should be specifically associated with our own achievements and aspirations, so that the impression may be created of a community of interests and ideals from which Nazi Germany has excluded herself. Propaganda will thus be used constructively as a means of creating mutual esteem and good-will among nations; and Germany is pilloried by implication as the enemy of those things which the civilised world holds dear.

If we wish to give our propaganda a moral basis, we must make some attempt to apply the same measure to all. It has not been easy to condemn Germany and avoid condemning Italy. This task has been rendered just possible by the fact that Italy's “aggressions” belong to the past. It is impossible, without depriving our propaganda of all moral content, to condemn Germany without condemning Soviet Russia. We may be physically unable, with our other pre-occupations, to come to the aid of Finland. That is excusable. But our propaganda must not burke the fact that Soviet Russia, just as much as Germany, is attacking the interests which we seek to defend and the values for which we stand.

In its negative aspect, our attempt to make other countries desire our victory involves us in the endeavour to persuade them that a German victory would (i) prejudice their interests and (ii) represent the triumph of what is morally the worst cause.

(i) Except, perhaps, for Spain, there is no country of any importance in Europe which has not direct cause to fear the consequences of a German victory. Outside Europe, there are few countries which do not feel that they have more to lose than to gain by it. Fear of German domination in Europe, fear of the extension of German influence outside Europe is an emotion so prevalent and so overwhelming that we need do little but stimulate it by well-chosen quotations from Mein Kampf and other Nazi classics, by references to German policy since 1937, and by giving publicity to the organised activities of Nazis in neutral countries where considerable numbers of Germans reside. All these points should receive attention from our propaganda.

A special point may be made here of the peculiar menace to small nations of Germany's economic policy. Even before the war Germany had reduced such part of international trade as she was able to control to a system under which neighbouring countries were forced to sell their produce to her for prices paid in terms of currency whose value was arbitrarily fixed in Berlin, Many European countries, not excluding Italy, had experience of this form of German commercial dictation , and of the manner in which it was used to capture the markets of central and South Eastern Europe. British policy, on the other hand, being that of a commercial nation, starts from the assumption that British 239 - 5 -prosperity is bound up with the prosperity of her customers. British restrictions on trade and payments, unlike German restrictions, are purely war-time expedients: and even these are far less drastic than the restrictions imposed by Germany in peace time. Germany, having exhausted all her financial resources in the armament race has nothing to offer her suppliers but the spare products of an already overstrained industry, which are forced on Germany's creditors at an arbitrary valuation. German victory would mean that the small nations of Europe would be incorporated willy nilly in the German economic system.

(ii) The second objective, i.e. to represent the German cause as morally damnable, introduces us to one of the most difficult problems of our publicity policy. i.e. the extent to which organised vilification of the Nazi regime and of Nazi leaders should be encouraged. This is always a tempting and popular theme, and played a considerable role in our propaganda during the first weeks of the war. Experience and reflexion have induced us to use this weapon more sparingly in recent months. The following indications are based on a careful review of the evidence:-

(1) Personal attacks on Nazi leaders are believed to have been effective in Germany, particularly in the case of leaders who were already unpopular. In neutral countries such attacks are for the most part discounted in advance. But employed sparingly, and in cases where they can be supported by indisputable evidence, they may be effective.

(2) Atrocities reported as news from neutral sources or through neutral correspondents make a great impression. But care must be taken in openly utilising atrocity stories for propaganda purposes. The “Atrocities” White Paper was not warmly received except in France (where it was welcomed mainly as evidence of a rising tide of anti-German feeling in Great Britain). In some countries, its net effect was probably adverse (as it certainly was in the United States).

(3) Stories of German brutality in the conduct of the war fall into rather different category. Brutal attacks on neutral shipping may be effectively used in the countries concerned. But even here caution is required. If we multiply accounts of German submarines turning crews adrift in open boats or German bombers using machine guns on them, we foster the feeling that, after all, Britannia no longer rules the waves, and may also defeat our own purpose of keeping as much neutral shipping as we can in the high seas.

(4) Germany's flouting of international law should be treated as an attack not on our rights but on those of small nations, and as a foretaste of what is in store for them if Germany wins, it can be more easily driven home. In some cases also we have to expose German breaches of international law in order to justify our own measures of retaliation. In general, controversies about international law are however not very effective for propaganda purposes in neutral countries.

(5) Rather than indulge in general denunciations of German “aggression”, we should play on the fear of other countries as to what would happen to them if Germany won. Had Britain and France not been prepared to fight in 1939, the small European countries would have been swallowed up one by one. It was Germany who kept the world for three years in a chronic state of crisis and 240 - 6 -apprehension and Germany who finally started the war by launching [illegible] attack on Poland in conditions which were bound to bring in Britain and France.

(6) An important count in the moral indictment against Nazi Germany is her hostility to organised religion . In Catholic countries, the Nazi attack on the Catholic Church and on those moral values which are particularly stressed by Catholics - the sanctity of the family, the religious education of children, the international spiritual authority of the Papacy - opens an important field for our propaganda and makes it easy to depict a German victory as the triumph of what is morally evil. In Protestant countries, the persecution of religion in general and of the Protestant churches in particular will carry weight in many circles. Even in Islamic countries the anti-religious character of Hitlerism can he effectively used. While it is clearly impolitic to identify the Allied cause with Christianity as such, emphasis may he laid on the contribution of the Christian tradition and ethic to Western civilisation, and on the specifically anti- Christian character of the Nazi (and Communist) ideology. The sense of spiritual values underlying the attitude of the Western Powers will be opposed to the purely secular and nationalist outlook of Nazi Germany.

(7) The moral aspect of our opposition to the Nazi ideal of government also merits attention. The inquisitorial methods of the Gestapo, borrowed from those of the Ogpu, represent the overthrow of the rights of man and of that belief in the supreme value of the individual which is the ethical basis of Western civilisation. A state ethic replaces an individualist ethic; and the brutalities of the Nazi regime are the material corollary of the charge. This argument may be used to counter the now familiar German attack on the social inequalities of the British system. The Nazi philosophy makes men equal by depriving them of any rights at all against the omnipotent state.

(8) The most generally effective moral charge which we can bring against Germany is probably the charge of broken promises No British non-official document has had a wider circulation or a more devastating effect in neutral countries than the “Hitler Calendar” which originally appeared in “ The Times ” and which was a bald narrative of Hitler's promises and his breaking of them. Similarly, the widest publicity should be given to the denunciations of the Soviet regime by Hitler and other Nazi spokesmen, placed side by side with the German-Soviet Pact and corresponding utterances subsequent to it. Just as, on the material side, is important to drive home by cogent examples the lesson that German statements of fact cannot be relied on, so on the moral side; it is of the utmost value to drive home the lesson that German promises cannot be trusted. By these two measures, we undermine the very foundation of German propaganda.

Some notes on the special objectives to be pursued by our propaganda in particular foreign countries arc attached as an Appendix to this memorandum.