Figure 61: Basic Types: Civilian Action. Desired civilian action can often be obtained by the use of clear instructions transmitted in leaflet form. This leaflet calls on the people of Alsace, Lorraine and Luxembourg to stay away from German communication lines, not to work for the Germans, and to make careful notes of atrocities which the Germans may commit.

German defenses against Allied psychological warfare worked. The German troops fought on when they had no business fighting, when their own generals thought it was time to quit and held out only because the S.S. and Gestapo promised ready death to any high officer who even whispered the word, "Defeat!"

This German defensive success was based on two factors:

A common Landser, tough and ready in a whole division full of well fed, well armed men, could not be expected to undergo despair because freight-car loadings hundreds of miles away had dropped to zero. He might see that the Luftwaffe was less in evidence; he might grumble about mail, or about having to use horse transport, but as long as he could see that his own unit was getting on all right, it was hard to persuade him that defeat was around the corner. In World War I, the German troops at the time of surrender were much better off than most of them thought they were; in World War II, they thought they were better off than they actually were. The Germans may not have been in perfect shape, but they were incomparably better off than the starving scarecrows with whom Generalissimo Chiang was trying to hold back the Japanese in West Hunan or the Americans who had fought despair, fever and Japanese—all three at once—on Bataan.

Along with their relatively good immediate condition, which masked and hid from them the strategic deterioration of the Reich to their rear, the German troops had the services of morale officers who were actually defensive psychological warfare operators.

In some units (more on the Eastern front than the Western) the Germans had PK units—Propagandakompanie, or propaganda companies. These were organizationally very interesting. They combined the functions of a combat propaganda company—printing, radio work, interrogation of prisoners, etc.—with the job of morale builders. Their services were available not only for use against the enemy, but for aid to the German troops themselves. Since they were currently informed of Allied propaganda lines, they were able to distribute counteracting propaganda at short notice and were even capable, on occasion, of forestalling Allied propaganda themes in advance.

Defensive psychological warfare in the Wehrmacht and, so far as it is known from Russian articles and fiction, in the Red Army as well, depended on unit-by-unit indoctrination with contempt of the enemy, mistrust of his news facilities, fear of his political aims, and hatred for the whole enemy mentality. Propaganda officers, countersubversive operatives, public relations men, and information-education officers were either in the same office or were in fact the same men. Combination of functions made possible the use of flexible counteracting propaganda.

Most of this counteracting propaganda was not counterpropaganda, technically speaking. It was not designed against Allied propaganda, but for German morale. Morale-building was not left to occasional recreational facilities, newspapers for troops, USO entertainment and the like, but was compelled through the use of internal espionage, affirmative presentation of the German case, and unified informational operations. This German tactical defensive psychological warfare was neither a total success nor a total failure; insofar as it helped the Wehrmacht hold out, it aided the last-ditch Nazi war effort.