AXIS PROPAGANDA

Otago Daily Times, Issue 24613, 22 May 1941, Page 11

AXIS PROPAGANDA

MIDDLE EAST POISON “Axis propaganda in the Middle East has followed two distinct lines. First, pamphlets, radio broadcasts and paid agents have been used to produce a defeatist atmosphere by proclaiming Britain’s imminent collapse. From four to six times every day, Bari and Berlin broadcast news of terrific British defeats, with announcers usually making the obvious deduction that to side with Britain in such circumstances would be foolhardy. More vicious were the stories of British atrocities against Islam. Those have been manufactured on a mass production basis along with secret documents purporting to reveal Britain’s evil designs on Arab lands. One of Berlin’s favourite stories has been about an alleged treaty between Britain and the Zionists, by which the former undertook to deliver to the latter vast stretches of territory reaching from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and beyond. So often was the story repeated that, apparently finding it was taking root, the London and the Jerusalem radios had to issue official denials. Other favourites in Berlin have been stories about misbehaviour especially towards mosques and holy places—on the part of Australian soldiers and about their inhuman cruelly. Some of these yarns have been rather lurid and apparently appealed to the Arab imagination, for the British again issued official denials.”—Albert Vi ton, in the American journal Foreign Affairs.