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Posted on 12/20/2001 9:40:34 AM PST by Pokey78

Warriors have been employing psychological warfare at least since Alexander the Great. Some have had greater success than others.

"PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA, PROPAGANDA," Adolf Hitler once wrote, "all that matters is propaganda." When it came to employing propaganda, the Fuehrer was obviously on board. Dedicating two chapters of "Mein Kampf" to the subject, the patron of the art that brought us Leni Riefenstal and Joe Goebbels became a propaganda champion after watching Germany's trouncing in World War I, which came in no small part because of British propaganda efforts directed against it by the not-so-subtly named "Ministry for the Destruction of the German Confidence."

Because Hitler made Nazism so readily identifiable with propaganda (Goebbels, never a light touch, assumed the title "Minister of Propaganda"), the very word tends to give American soldiers a severe case of the euphemisms. This I learned when visiting the U.S. Army's propaganda specialists at Fort Bragg, North Carolina "Psyching Out the Taliban" in the current issue of The Weekly Standard). The last century has seen propaganda dissemination called everything from "psychological warfare" to "information operations" to today's relatively clinical sounding "psychological operations" ("And how did your psychological operation go?" one colleague asked upon my return).

"I prefer not to use the word propaganda," says Lt. Col. Glenn Ayers, the 9th PSYOP battalion commander. "It has negative connotations." So it does, but many argue it shouldn't. Dr. Philip Taylor, in his book "Munitions of the Mind," writes that "Propaganda itself is neither sinister nor evil. It is really no more than the organization of methods designed to persuade people to think and behave in a certain way, and in wartime that usually means getting them to fight or to support the fight."

Or to stop fighting altogether. Since warfare's beginning, military philosophers and strategists have recognized the necessity of "psychological operations" (a subset of propaganda, since PSYOP is generally directed at the enemy, while propaganda is additionally used on one's own). Sun Tzu wrote, "One need not destroy one's enemy. One need only destroy his willingness to engage." And Carl von Clausewitz wrote, "Killing the enemy's courage is as vital as killing his troops." How forces have gone about doing so demonstrates the full spectrum of wartime caginess and brutality, of ingenuity and comic ineptitude.

As Taylor writes, the word "propaganda" actually comes to us from the Vatican, which established the "Congregatio de Propaganda Fide" (The Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith) intended to defend Catholicism against the heretics of the Protestant Reformation. But even before it had a name, it was widely practiced.

Retired PSYOPer Ed Rouse, keeper of psywarrior.com (the web's definitive PSYOP history source), says that Alexander the Great was one of history's earliest propagandists. After conquering most of the known world, his army was stretched thin. Forced to retreat and regroup with armies he had left behind, he realized such an action would advertise that he was vulnerable to attack. His only option was to intimidate opposing forces as a deterrent. So Alexander had his armorers build oversized breastplates and helmets, ones that looked as if they were fitted for eight-foot tall soldiers. As his army retreated, they left the big-and-tall armor behind, scaring possible pursuers who feared they'd be doing battle with giants. (During the Vietnam War, American operatives tried to trick the North Vietnamese into thinking they were facing giants of another sort, by planting foot-long condoms along the Ho Chi Minh Trail.)

Other forces, however, exhibited less cleverness, which is not to say they weren't effective. One Assyrian king discouraged revolts in the rebellious city of Suru by nailing the flayed skins of revolutionaries to a pillar of the city gate. While in the pre-leaflet era, Vlad the Impaler found that his most effective calling card came from spearing Turkish invaders on tall spikes.

Gutenberg and Marconi certainly didn't end wartime barbarity. But their inventions allowed for the dissemination of propaganda through the more sophisticated means of printed materials and radio broadcasts. The British helped usher in PSYOP's modern era, which sought to persuade the enemy to cease fighting, as much as it did to demoralize them while they still were.

The Brits weren't always perfect gentlemen. During World War II, they grew especially nasty with their own P.G. Wodehouse, who they were convinced was a Nazi collaborator. One BBC broadcaster derided Jeeves's creator, claiming "he was throwing a cocktail party when the storm troopers clumped in on his shallow life. They led him away, the funny Englishman, with his vast repertoire of droll butlers, amusing young men, and comic titled fops. Wodehouse was steadily groomed for stardom, the most disreputable stardom in the world--the limelight of quislings."

But when it came to the Nazis themselves, the Brits were downright thoughtful. As the Allies' blockade began to starve the Germans, they air-dropped menus from London restaurants to show what they were missing. BBC broadcasts into Germany went so far as to offer gratis English lessons: "Please repeat after me. ICH BRENNE. I am burning. DU BRENNST. You are burning. WIR BRENNEN. We burn." Rouse writes that the lesson, which the Germans were promised would be "very useful," helped confirm already prevalent rumors that the British were capable of torching the English Channel when Hitler invaded. It was a fabrication so expertly spread, many Germans believe it to this day.

Ridicule has long been a favorite propaganda tool. The Nazis, for instance, attempted to drive a wedge between the Allies by claiming that "Britain will fight to the last Frenchman." Add a sex chaser, and ridicule can be devastatingly effective, or blow up in the propagandist's face.

During World War II, Taylor writes in "Munitions of the Mind," the Brits would interrogate captured Nazi submarine crews, soliciting the names of customers at the brothels in Brest and Kiel. The names would then be broadcast within Germany in order to disgrace officers of distinction, a charge some took so seriously that they actually committed suicide. The Axis powers weren't quite as successful. According to Dr. Stanley Sandler, the former command historian at the U.S. Army's Special Warfare Center and School, Americans generally refrained from incorporating sexual themes in their propaganda materials. (One exception, says Sandler, came against the Nazis, when a PSYOP loudspeaker team "thoughtfully provided the names of local girls infected with VD to a dug-in German garrison in Cherbourg.") But the Japanese showed no such restraint. When they dropped pornographic leaflets on sex-starved American GI's, intending to show how their girls were getting defiled back home, "It raised morale," says Sandler. "Our guys loved it."

Sandler, who wrote the psychological operations history "Cease Resistance," says many of the most unintentionally hilarious propaganda pieces tend to have sexual themes. During the Korean war, tin-eared Commies blasted Americans with loudspeaker broadcasts promising "We have plenty of food, victuals, intercourse, and time off to play cards." One of the most unpopular coalition leaflets during the Gulf War was drawn up by King Fahd's illustrator. "(It) showed two figures walking hand-in-hand into the sunset, flanked by Iraqi and Saudi flags," says Sandler. The message was "'Arab brotherhood'--screw Saddam. But some U.S. troops called this 'the fag leaflet,' not realizing that men of heterosexual persuasion (in this region) walked around holding hands."

Not being attuned to such cultural nuances can prove disastrous, which Iraq demonstrated with its abysmal propaganda campaign. Iraqis claimed not only that Americans had come to rape their women and spread the AIDS virus, but also that "we would kill them and eat them," writes Richard D. Johnson in his book "Seeds of Victory." Even more preposterous were the propaganda broadcasts of Iraq's Baghdad Betty, who attempted to demoralize our troops by warning them that their women back home were being seduced by Bart Simpson.

Asserting that the enemies' wives are being violated by cartoon characters is the kind of snafu U.S. PSYOPers are particularly determined to avoid. This is why the Army's 4th Psychological Operations Group employs 35 civilian experts, skilled in a region's language and cultural nuances. Dr. Robert Jenks, the Group's Deputy Commanding Officer for Research, Analysis and Civilian Affairs, says that just as in regular commercial marketing, they have to be extremely wary of committing cross-cultural blunders. As an example, he mentions chicken king Frank Perdue, whose ad claimed, "It takes a tough man to create a tender chicken." When the same ad was translated into Spanish, Jenks says, it came out, "It takes an aroused man to create an affectionate chicken."

Oddly enough, perhaps the only thing more important than not implying that your audience fondles farm animals is being truthful. "You don't have to tell the whole truth, but one of the basic rules of PSYOP is tell no lies," explains Sandler, who says it's an absolute necessity when trying to establish credibility with a hostile foreign audience you want to see surrender. "If we say, 'you're gonna be well-treated,' then we use your ear for an ashtray, the word gets out."

Hewing close to the truth is why American PSYOPs has generally been more effective than that of our counterparts. Of all the propaganda experts I spoke with, not a single one could think of an American defection that had been caused by our enemies' propaganda (Jane Fonda excepted). Occasionally, of course, we shade the truth a tad. During Vietnam, Rouse writes, covert operatives created a false fishing village on an island off South Vietnam, where they brought blindfolded, kidnapped North Vietnamese fisherman. After wining and dining them, then telling them how the village belonged to a bogus resistance group known as "The Sacred Sword of the Patriot League," they returned them back to North Vietnam. There, the disinformation spread rapidly, causing our enemy to devote resources to crushing a movement that didn't exist.

One man's lie, of course, is another's "tactical misdirection." But all advertising paints selective pictures, which is why Sandler says, "A lot of people in World War II got into PSYOPs from advertising. It's the same thing--there's the hard sell, the soft sell, the guy next door, the glamour-puss. That's one of the reasons we're so successful. We invented bullshit--on Madison Avenue."

Matt Labash is senior writer at The Weekly Standard.

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