Only rarely does the cinema penetrate enemy territory or reach clandestine audiences. Its direct contribution to critical-zone psychological warfare is therefore slight. Perhaps television may in course of time combine attention-holding with transmissibility.
CHAPTER 13
Operations Against Troops
In every instance of systematic American use of psychological warfare against enemy troops during World War II, affirmative results were discerned after the operation had been in effect for a short while. Figure [46] shows the consummation of the troop propaganda program; these Germans are surrendering and they carry the Allied leaflets with them. By the latter phases of the liberation of France, 90 per cent of the enemy prisoners reported that they had seen or possessed Allied leaflets and the most famous leaflet of them all, the celebrated Passierschein (see [figure 4]) came to be as familiar to the Germans as their own paper money.[41] Since every enemy who surrenders is one less man to root out or destroy at a cost of life to one's own side, the sharp upswing of enemy surrenders was a decided military gain.
Two separate types of psychological reaction are to be sought in the enemy soldier's mind. The first consists of a general lowering of his morale or efficiency even when he is not in a position to perform any overt act, such as surrendering, which would hurt his side and help ours. This may be called MO, or morale operations. The second type of action is overt action (surrendering, deserting his post of duty, mutinying) which can be induced only if the appeal is expertly timed.
Operations against troops must be based on the objective military situation. Suffering and exertion increase realism; plain soldiers are not apt to be talked over by propaganda unless the propaganda is carefully cued to their actual situation. All propaganda should be based on fact; propaganda to troops must be based not merely on fact, but must show shrewd appreciative touches of understanding the troops' personal conditions. Propaganda is not much use to a nation undergoing abject defeat, for the troops on the victorious side will be buoyed up by the affirmation of victory from their own eyes.
Troop propaganda must therefore aim at eventual willing capture of the individual—not at surrender by his individual initiative. It must implant the notion that he may eventually be trapped, and that if that happens he should give up. The propaganda must not meet the soldier's loyalty in a head-on collision but must instead give the enemy soldier the opportunity of rationalizing himself out of the obligations of loyalty ("true loyalty requires survival and therefore surrender"). The steps, therefore, needed for good propaganda to actual combat troops include the following:
- first, the notion that the enemy soldier may have to surrender as his side loses or retreats ("other [named] units have surrendered, with so-and-so many men; you will have to, too");
- second, themes which make the enemy soldier believe that an all-out effort is wasted or misapplied;
- third, the idea that he or his unit may find themselves in a hopeless situation soon;
- fourth, identifying the next authentically bad situation with the "hopeless" situation;
- fifth, concrete instructions for the actual surrender.[42]
