Figure 62: Basic Types: Labor Recruitment. On occasion, civilian labor becomes a highly critical factor even in an area of active operations. Leaflets can urge labor to strike against the enemy; they can also induce labor to come over and get to work. This leaflet was dropped on the Burmese, Shans, and Kachins, showing all the good things of life, promising high wages and bonuses and adding that, anyhow, it was patriotic. Come work for the Allies!
The American army did not employ defensive psychological warfare in World War II. Troop indoctrination was extremely spotty. American morale remained good, not because it was made good by professionals who knew their job, but because Providence and the American people had brought up a generation of young men who started out well and—since the situation never approached hopelessness—kept on going with their spirits high.
For the future, the American and British armies face the problem of devising arrangements whereby within the limits of a free society soldiers can be affirmatively indoctrinated in the course of operations. USO, Red Cross, public relations, information and education at home, morale staffs in the theaters, Armed Forces Radio Service, OWI, the American press and the overseas military papers—these went their separate and uncorrelated ways without doing any harm, last time. If the next war starts, as it may, with an initial interchange of terrifying strategic bombardments, the morale situation may be inherently less healthy. Wise planning would provide, perhaps, a single chain of command for public relations, military propaganda and morale services—extending this all the way down to the platoon, if necessary—to make sure that the "national line" on any given topic is explained, presented, repeated, and (if necessary) enforced.
Such defensive psychological warfare might work against sensational enemy black operations, against attempted political division, and against fabrication of the news—provided it was carried out in an expert fashion. It could not change morale deterioration resulting from practical deterioration within the troop unit itself, except to decelerate the rate of decline. It would not make up for poor leadership. Nothing makes up for poor leadership.
Defensive psychological warfare at higher levels remains a self-contradiction. As pointed out above (page [159]), good psychological warfare is never directed merely against other psychological warfare. It is directed at the mind of the target audience, at creating attitudes of belief or doubt which lead to the desired action. Getting and keeping attention is one of its major missions, and psychological warfare which starts by fixing attention on the enemy presentation is doomed from the start. One of the most conspicuous examples of this was President Roosevelt's sensational message of 15 April 1939, addressed personally to the German Chancellor, Hitler, asking that Hitler promise not to invade 31 countries which Roosevelt listed by name. Defensive in tone, the message gave Hitler the chance to answer over the German world-wide radio while his Reichstag laughed its derision and applause. President Roosevelt's message was decent, sane, humane; it was inspiring to the people who already agreed with him; but it created no attitude in the Germans to whom it was addressed. A sharp, bullying, implicitly threatening speech from President Roosevelt might have penetrated the German mentality of the time, even Hitler's; reasonable reproach did not work. It was not aimed at creating any specific emotional reaction in the German mind.
Finally, it must be mentioned that defensive psychological warfare must include countersubversion and counterespionage. The Cheka—Soviet secret police in its first form—once boasted that "capitalist trouble-makers and saboteurs" could not long function in Russia because the countersubversive police were over a hundred million strong. What they meant was that they had trained and bullied the population into reporting anyone and everyone who seemed out of line. An attitude of popular cooperation with countersubversive agencies can be achieved only when those agencies are efficient, respected, and properly presented to the public. Psychological warfare can defend its homeland against enemy operations in kind only if it creates an awareness of propaganda and makes the public critical of attitudes or opinions adverse to national policy. Inexpert official tactics, or the general denunciation of dissent, makes the citizen believe, with Mr. Bumble in Oliver Twist, that "... the law is a ass, a idiot."