German Men and Women: The Government of the Reich has, with cold deliberation, forced war upon Great Britain. It has done so knowing that it must involve mankind in a calamity worse than that of 1914. The assurances of peaceful intentions the Fuehrer gave to you and to the world in April have proved as worthless as his words at the Sportspalast last September, when he said, "We have no more territorial claims to make in Europe."

Never before has any government ordered subjects to their death with less excuse. This war is utterly unnecessary. Germany was in no way threatened or deprived of justice.

Was she not allowed to reenter the Rhineland, to achieve the Anschluss and to take back the Sudeten German in peace? Neither we nor any other nation would have sought to limit her advance so long as she did not violate independent non-German peoples. . . .

It is not us, but you they have deceived. For years their iron censorship has kept from you truths that even uncivilized peoples know. It has imprisoned your minds in a concentration camp. Otherwise, they would not have dared to misrepresent the combination of peaceful peoples to secure peace as hostile encirclement. ... " An American travelling by train through Germany in the last months of 1939 reported one German fellow passenger's reaction to the British propaganda: "How foolish it is of the British to think that by their stupid leaflets they can separate the German people from their Fuehrer!" 7 These early strategic leaflets may have satisfied the soul of the writer, but they had no noticeable effect on the German people. Indeed, in England a story began to make the rounds about the first bombs dropped on Germany, carrying the label: "You are lucky; this might have been a leaflet." Needless to say, British propaganda quickly took on a more appealing tone.

The Soviets in particular during World War II were addicted to stuffing their leaflets with long political harangues, full of Communist verbiage and Marxist dogma. Many Soviet political officers insisted that the Red leaflets dropped on the German soldiers be "revolutionary," when battle conditions made such ideological leaflets meaningless. Similarly, the Chinese Communists in their leaflets to the American soldiers during the Korean War spoke of "Wall Street imperialists," and the like, to no meaningful purpose. Toward the end of both wars, however, Russian and Chinese leaflets began to improve when the Communists came to understand the necessity of divorcing ideological themes from combat propaganda.

Concerning the subject matter of tactical leaflets, Martin Herz, chief leaflet writer of the Psychological Warfare Division, SHAEF, commented that "there is in most cases no need for sophisticated political propaganda themes. The soldier in battle has a closely restricted horizon. When high explosive shells are bursting around him and he hears our tanks moving up, ideological considerations take a distinctly secondary place in his mind.” 9

At least one enemy soldier of World War II, a Japanese captured on Tinian Island in August 1944, held the same opinion. Questioned by Allied interrogators, this prisoner offered the view that conflicting ideologies of war had little relation to the practical problem of inducing troops to surrender. He said that the Japanese of Tinian treated American leaflets

as a joke; he objected in particular to appeals made on political or ideological grounds (for example, "You have been misled by the military clique"). The Japanese soldier, he reported, was not interested in the crimes of the military caste; he was simply fighting for his country and regarded as nonsense any suggestion that he do otherwise. 10

In general, ideological approaches should be avoided in propaganda aimed at enemy soldiers. In the final report on U.S. Army operations against the Germans in World War I, the writers responsible for the U.S. leaflet operation suggested their rules for future Army leaflets. They should contain simple, accurate statements calculated to suggest the thought of surrender to the average private. In addition, leaflets should take into consideration the condition of enemy morale, the general military situation, and the special character of the enemy unit aimed at. These recommendations may still constitute the best "rules" to follow in the preparation of tactical leaflets.

1. SHAEF PWD Report, p. 34.

NOTES

2. R. H. S. Crossman, "Psychological Warfare," Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, 97 (August 1952), p.324.

3 Psychological Warfare Branch Hq. Fifth Army, Functions of the 5th Army Combat Propaganda Team (April 1944), p. 16.

Hqs. Seventh Infantry Division (G2), letter to ACofS, G2, USAFPOA, 10 Jan. 1945, sub: Psychological Warfare. In Hq SWPacArea Records Group No. 975-A45–43, Drawer No. 1, No. 650.1, Folder 4, "Effectiveness of Frontline Broadcasts in Inducing Surrender and Lowering Enemy Morale," p. 70, Federal Records Center, hereafter FRC.

5. Ibid.

• Robert Powell, "Warfare by Leaflet," Living Age, 357 (Dec. 1939), p. 326.

7. Oswald Garrison Villard, "German-British Propaganda Duel," Living Age, 357 (Feb. 1940), pp. 508-11.

8. Lindley Fraser, Propaganda (London: 1957), p. 111.

• Martin F. Herz, "The Combat Leaflet-Weapon of Persuasion," Army Information Digest (June 1950), pp. 37-43.

10. "Reaction to Propaganda, Fifteenth Report," 15 Dec 1944. In Hq SWPA Records Group No. 975-A45-43, Drawer No 1, No. 650.1, Folder 4, "Effectiveness of Frontline Broadcasts in Inducing Surrender and Lowering Enemy Morale," p. 173, FRC.

ONE PAIR OF SHOES*

BY REUBEN S. NATHAN

PSYOP should cater to man's deep psychological needs, his inability to understand the events that create anxiety. It is the task of the psyoperator to lower the level of this anxiety by simple appeals to fundamental human needs.

The most significant sentence I ever found in an interrogation came from a Viet Cong defector, a naive and not overly intelligent fellow, who, when asked why he had defected, said: "You must understand that here

*Original essay by Reuben S. Nathan.

in Vietnam people do not like to be killed. . . ." He reduced many questions to a fundamental human element, an element so pathetically obvious that it is often forgotten.

THE HUMAN EQUATION

The psyoperator seeks the human equation. Only great writers can get at the basics of the human mind. Lesser men need at least a measure of empathy with others, a deep concern with the human condition, and love of one's fellow man to understand what makes him tick. Hatred yields nothing of value-yet, as PSYWAR is usually concerned with enemies, much of PSYOP intelligence is tainted by enmity. How then does one get at the truth on which effective PSYOP must be based? How many sources possess the required empathy with other men, not to mention enemies? How many dare to love in war, to take a chance on being considered weak or ridiculous? It is safer to rely on statistics or on the techniques of public opinion polls-no matter how unreliable. Quantitative approaches are in vogue.

Yet the fact is that the answers to the really important questions lie largely in ourselves. To be effective, PSYOP must appeal to fundamental human emotions. These are the same everywhere: hope and fear; wanting to live; to have a chance, if not for oneself then for one's children. Germans, Poles, Chinese, Cambodians-all fall in love precisely the way we do. People everywhere aspire to the recognition of their dignity.

Kipling was wrong when he claimed that East is East and West is West and that the twain shall never meet. They have met: close to a billion Asians live by the concepts of a white German, Karl Marx, if only because they must. It is true enough that historical, cultural, political, climatic, and other differences exist but they represent a relatively thin layer superimposed on the essential identity of mankind. It is important to know of these differences because they dictate the language one must speak. But it is even more important to realize that these differences matter less than the basic human condition-of which we know because we share it. The American Indians have a prayer: "Grant that I may not criticize my neighbor until I have walked a mile in his mocassins." An Estimate of the Psychological Situation cannot be too far off if one concludes from one's own emotions about those of the enemy, provided one defines correctly the conditions under which he lives and puts oneself in his mocassins.

SIMPLE AND OBVIOUS THEMES

There are, after all, so many ingredients of our art that are as yet hardly understood. I had a visitor, a senior government officer, FSO (Foreign Service Officer)-1. We had worked together many years before. He read my PSYOP plan for the 1962 Cuban missile crisis and confessed to being disappointed. “When I heard you had been recalled," he told me,

"I had visions of a truly sophisticated program. Instead you came up with only such simple and obvious themes."

He was quite right. But I was not ashamed of the simplicity of my annex, I was proud of it. In the business of propaganda and PSYOP, simplicity is the apex of sophistication, the result of the most painstaking efforts. This is in fact one of the very few things on which Madison Avenue and PSYOP are in agreement.

It is essential to reduce complex appeals to what I call the terms of one pair of shoes. When our troops entered Auschwitz, one of the Nazi extermination camps, they found two mountains of children's shoes, 600,000 altogether. Photographs of these pitiful monuments to the horror of Nazi barbarism appeared in many newspapers. But what could the readers do? Nobody is capable of facing up to the murder of 300,000 little kids, to the misery of their last hours, alone, terrified, uncomprehending. So one turns the page, has another cup of coffee and tries to forget. But when some time later the press reported that a little boy by the name of Nubby was doomed to die of leukemia and that his parents had decided to give him a last Christmas many months before the real Christmas would come around, tens of thousands of people sent him presents. People can identify with one little child, with one father's and one mother's grief, but not with the fate of hundreds of thousands. That is why good propaganda must talk in terms of one pair of shoes, in terms people can easily understand and accept.

But there are other reasons for the utmost simplicity. The most effective medium of propaganda is face-to-face persuasion. That means that the essential message must be so formulated that it can be projected by great numbers of people-not all of whom are sophisticated enough to communicate involved appeals. Repetition is the mother of propaganda, and who could, or would, repeat complex claims ad infinitum?

I had long before started preaching that the secret of good propaganda is the reduction of the scores of possible appeals, which usually emerge from a sound PSYOP plan, to the smallest possible number of the simplest possible themes. When one finally defines them and puts them on paper, they look very easy, obvious, and unimpressive. That accounted for my friend's criticism and the small regard in which he held my annex. Things like that can hurt one's pride. But then, if "a policeman's lot is not a happy one," that of a conscientious psyoperator is even more trying. We must console ourselves with the feeling that we are trail blazers. We may yet be making the grade. Meanwhile we had better learn to live with the probability that there are no Distinguished Service Medals in our immediate future.

THE SOVIET "PEACE AND PROGRESS" BROADCASTS*

By the 7TH PSYOP GROUP

The receptivity of the audience to a message or appeal may hinge, at least initially, on the perceived attitude of the communicator. A radio broadcast projecting a favorable attitude toward the target audience, depicting the motive to communicate as altruistic, portraying communicator objectives as being in the intellectual and social interest of the target audience, and making no appeals for radical behavior may be viewed by the target audience as congenial communication and should be more favorably received than a neutral or hostile one.

On 1 March, a special broadcast in Mandarin for the "Chinese People" was inaugurated in Moscow. The broadcast is called "Peace and Progress" and is a definite Soviet psychological operation against the present Government of the Chinese People's Republic. The sponsor's appeal to the listeners in inaugurating the "Peace and Progress" broadcast is important and interesting. It spells out Soviet guide-lines and goals for this propaganda action, and gives some idea what Soviet experts on China believe might win over Chinese. For this reason, the entire text of the 1 March broadcast is reproduced here:

We representatives of Soviet mass organizations would like to extend our hand of friendship to you heroic Chinese working class and the glorious millions in the rank and file of Chinese Communist fighters. To the diligent Chinese peasants, we send you our regards and earnest affection.

To our fraternal Chinese younger generation, listen, here is our appeal to you Chinese young men and women: Mao Tse-tung and his clique are attempting to dislodge you from the right track, that is, the revolutionary path.

We also send our regards to the members of the Chinese people's Liberation Army which in the past has always been together with the people and fought for their freedom and happiness.

May our voice also reach you Chinese activists of literature and arts.

This Peace and Progress station has been created to express the Russian people's friendship and sense of justice to Chinese friends.

In these programs we shall introduce to you Soviet public opinions toward the undertakings of your country. You shall hear of the Soviet people's growing anxiety and concern for the Chinese people. In our programs we shall voice the opinions of the representatives of the Soviet people, their indignation and denunciation of the attempt by Mao Tse-tung and his clique to undermine the fraternal friendship of the two peoples which was forged with the red blood of their distinguished children shed in the struggle against the common enemy and for their common undertaking.

This station shall alert you to (the) danger of Mao Tse-tung's policy to the Chinese people and the fruits of the Chinese revolution. We shall introduce to you the truth about the events taking place in your country, although Mao Tse-tung and his cronies are attempting to conceal them by keeping mum.

We shall report to you news made available to us concerning the events taking place throughout your great country, and introduce to you materials on Chinese events as reported by mass communication media of other foreign countries,

*Excerpts from "The Soviet 'Peace and Progress' Broadcasts," Communist Propaganda Trends," Issue No. 628 (January 1968), pp. 14-16.