PROPAGANDA IN WAR
GERMAN TECHNIQUE DISCUSSED FALSE NEWS AS A WEAPON LONDON, May 23. We have heard much of the new tactic? of the German offensive. Hitler has staked high on the combination of aircraft and tank. How many tricks he has really taken and what they are worth we shall not judge rightly unless we study the operation of that other arm from which he hopes most—demoralisation' by propaganda and the lie (writes H. C. Bailey in the “Daily Telegraph”). A growing suspicion is justified that the spectacular dash for the coast was undertaken more for its propaganda than tor its slight military value. When that fact is grasped, the operation recedes into its proper perspective. Nazism began, he has told •us in “Mein Kampf,” when he “took charge of the propaganda,” and in his hands its effect was such that “within a short period of time hundreds of thousands of citizens became convinced in their hearts that we were right and wished us victory.” . Pie rose to power by a ladder of incredible mendacities—the absurd racial cult, the charges against the Jews, the fraud of the Reichstag fire. t*x~ tended his power by lies on the grand scale—the fraud on Czechoslovakia and the Allies, the breach of faith with Poland, and the false charges against her. Once plunged into the war, the Fuehrer developed his chief weapon, the lie-machine, on a stupendous scale. One reason is clear enough. He knows that the only way to keep Germans ‘‘convinced in their hearts” that his leadership will bring victory is by monstrous perversion of the hard facts. The other reason is more important to us. Hitler’s hopes are based on the faith that against the Allies the lie is more powerful than aeroplane and tank and submarine. His main strategy is, by false reports of German gains and Allied losses, to spread doubt and dismay ana fear. He is attacking the mind the spirit. 7e shall defeat him, but the defeat will come more quickly and with more crushing force if eacn one of us is on guard against German communiques au 1 German comment. All such stuff should be read with cold scepticism. Some of it, of course, is true. The purpose of it all is to delude the German people and the Allied peoples and the world. Take the latest example, the blare of the German High Command on Tuesday. It was true that German motorised troops had reached Arras and Amiens. But they ai;e already out of Arras, and we know > )w that few of them were ever there. All “French. British, and Belgian armies north of the Somme,” it was proclaimed. “had thus been driven back on to the Channel coast." By the most inconvenient of miracles British troops were, nevertheless, fighting in front of Cambrai yesterday. “To Stun Reason” Rational people had no need to wait for such facts to discount the grandiose boast that Hitler had “launched the greatest offensive operation of all time.” But it is the object of a German communique to stun reason. Those who wish to see things as they are and estimate their consequences should take nothing ’./hich Nazidom publishes for truth without confirmation. Such refusal is not sanguine optimism but common sense. This same egregious communique claimed that on Monday night “in the Straits of Dover six transport ships and tankers aggregating 43,000' tons were sunk.” Our Admiralty promptly denied this in toto. The communique declared that the Allies had lost 120 aeroplanes. It is now known that the actual loss was about 40. So we have proof of huge falsification in the official Nazi statement of the results of “the greatest offensive operation of all time.” Goering has assured us that there has been no one like Hitler- since Frederick the Great. He might have -gone much further back for a parallel with complete justification. No man ever used lying on such a scale. The “greatest offensive” does indeed become still greater when it reaches Italy. The inspiration of Nazidom there has led the press 'to the most grotesque flights of nopsense. France will be interested to hear that we have betrayed. her and she is seeking a separate peace from Berlin. We are given the information that the Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret and the Dutch Princesses are sailing for Canada. Such is the stuff on which Germany and the axis. are being fed now. It proves clearly enough that Hitler is in urgent need of greater successes than he has won. The Italian publicist who remarked that so sweeping was the German victory that active intervention by Italy would now be unnecessary may have been a conscious or an unconscious humorist. But I fear his turn of thought will not gratify the Fuehrer. Air 'Losses What is important for us is clear realisation that all the military operations of Germany, by air and land and sea, are now being devised on, the most spectacular plan and advertised with extravagance of mendacity to persuade Germany and the Allies and the rest of the world that the battle is won and the war is won—or at least will be to-morrow. Rumour has always been one of the most potent means of spreading falsities. To the Nazi experts in mendacity belongs the immortal honour of devising the dissemination of lies behind the battle-front by parachutists. It was done in Norway and Holland to alarm civilians and create chaos. It has been done in France. Boys trained to sacrifice body and soul for the Moloch of Nazism are sent out to deceive women and children into panic. Such is the Youth and Joy movement of Germany. i The full extent of the use of the lie by Nazidom is, however, only to be i discovered by a survey of the many i glaring examples. We had one the other di.” in the statement that 1462 Allied aircraft had been destroyed in : the great (Tensive. The number was so preposterous and yet so precise as to suggest the ironical comment that the German command must have announced its own losses bv mistake. Ours were only a fraction of the total slated. It has later been modified by the Germans to the statement that since the beginning of the attack the Air Forces of the Allies have lost on the average 120 machines a day. Again desire—and deceit—have outrun performance. Our Air Force, taking the larger share of Allied operations, lost not more than a third of that number. The French have suffered less. We may a.ill rely on the calculation that the Royal Air Force is destroying at least three German machines for every one of Ours that does not come back. Turn to the sea affair and the size of the lies is colossal. The submarine war began, according to Germany, by Mr Churchill sinking the Athenia. Nobody should have ”orgotten how the Ark Royal, our newest aircraftcarrier, was “sunk” by German bombing and remained' “sunk” though the United States naval found her afloat and uninjured. Leading Aircraftsman Franks was given the Iron
Cross (First and Second Class) for sinking her. Yet she appeared at Hio de Janeiro. Germany’s “Victory” Let it not be forgotten either, where the Admiral Graf Spec is concerned, that—according to Germany—“the victorious engagement of the German battleship provided a sensation for the whole of America." This is the supreme example of h«.w the victories of Nazidom are made. But at one time or another the German High Command has sunk—with words—almost every ship of importance m the Navy. H.M.S. Hood, Repulse, Rodney, Exeter, and York have thus gone down most often—perhaps it has been conjectured, on the principle “what I tell you three times is true.” For months the figures of destruction of British and neutral merchant shipping were much exaggerated, but in this form of a lie there has been a slump. By way of substitute we have been given fabulous losses of “transports” and the sinking of the Navy in general in Norwegian waters. When Nazidom claimed “at least 135 British warships out of action” the actual sinkings were four destroyers, three submarines, one escort vessel, and five trawlers—total, 13 vessels, none as big as a cruiser. The other day a cruiser was lost—the Effingham, on an uncharted rock, and the Admiralty announced it at once. Meanwhile we know that the Nazi navy has been “massively mutilated,” but of that not a word comes from Berlin. When the ne?ct German communique appears, with its fanfare of brag and the sweeping victories of frightfulness, let these cold facts be borne in mind. That will shatter the grand lie offensive in Britain and France. Let us also be swift with the counter-attack of nailing down the lie and publishing the truth.
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Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23085, 30 July 1940, Page 7
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1,466PROPAGANDA IN WAR Press, Volume LXXVI, Issue 23085, 30 July 1940, Page 7
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