Figure 52: Basic Types: Troop Morale. Leaflets may be aimed at (1) morale, (2) news, (3) action. Morale leaflets neither communicate news nor call for specific action. Rather, they pave the way for action. Many of the previous illustrations have been of this type. This one is a troop morale leaflet used by the puppet Free India Army on their own men, who were discouraged by the self-evident lack of matériel and numbers. (Singapore, about 1944.)
Morale Operations.
Figure 53: Paired Morale Leaflets. The Christmas card showing the Nativity was dropped by General MacArthur's psychological warfare people on the Filipinos. The Christmas cards with bells were prepared by the Japanese for the U.S. Army. The former were designed to cheer on the Filipinos; the latter, to depress the Americans with the defeatist messages inside the cards.
Morale operations on the white side included such items as the following:
- Sending mournful poetry leaflets to Japanese units which were known to be demoralized for lack of home furlough (China Theater);
- Dropping beautiful colored pictures of luscious Japanese victuals on starving troops (North Burma);
- Showing the Japanese Sad Sack in a cartoon, fighting everywhere while his officers get all the liquor, all the food, all the girls, and all the glory, while the common soldier ends up cremated (Southwest Pacific);
- Demonstrating that the Nazi pets on the German High Command have disrupted the splendid German military tradition and have thrown out the really competent professional generals (Soviet-German front);
- Pinning the nickname, Der Sterber (roughly, "Old Let's-go-get-killed!"), on a German general who had boasted of his willingness to expend personnel (Anglo-American and Soviet radio);
- Telling the German troops they were dying for a cause already lost (Italy);
- Reporting back to the Germans the statements made by prisoners, to the effect they were damned glad that they were out of the fighting (France);
- Telling the Japanese on Attu and Kiska that just as surely as the kiri leaf, symbol of death, would fall in the autumn, they too would fall (North Pacific);
- Telling the Japanese homeland and troops that the Japanese Emperor had loved peace but that the militarists had dragged the Sacred Empire into war ("Peaceful is Morning in the Shrine Garden" leaflet; designed for Aleutians, used over Japan);
- Telling the Chinese in China that the Americans would soon cut the Japanese conquered empire in two with Asiatic landings, and then dropping the leaflet, written in simple Chinese which could be figured out by Japanese, on the Japanese troops (China);
- Congratulating imaginary agents in ostensible code over the voice radio for the excellent work they have allegedly done in the enemy home country (all theaters).
Figure 54: Troop Morale Leaflet, Grey. This German leaflet from the Italian front attempts to remind American troops of the bonus troubles of 1932—a year in which most of the American soldiers were still in school. Only to older men could the appeal carry much weight. The drawing and typography are distinctively German. In terms of source, this leaflet is grey.
Figure 55: Chinese Communist Civilian Morale Leaflet. This leaflet attempts to raise peasant morale while calling in general terms for economic action. It shows a peasant family welcoming home the father, who has been made a Hero of Labor. (Given the author by Political Department, Border Area Government, at Yenan in September 1944.)