Alternativas de integración de aplicaciones

‘The war holds a unique position as the benchmark against which the heroism, brutality and futility of modern industrialised warfare had come to be measured.’.77

The outbreak of the war caught Britain unprepared. Whereas the Nazis had developed a well organised propaganda apparatus, British propaganda seems to depend on improvisation.78 _{To a}

large extent this was the result of the British interwar foreign policy of appeasement, based on an assumption that compromise and acceding to Hitler’s demands could preserve peace in Europe. It was also a reflection of pacifist tendencies in Britain and the nationalist movement in Europe, influenced by fresh memories of the First World War and the global economic crisis. In contrast, the German long term strategy had already been articulated by Hitler in the interwar years, namely to ‘destroy the enemy from within, to conquer him through himself’ and ‘mental confusion, contradiction of feelings, indecision, panic’.79 _{Yet, the lack of a strategic approach}

to propaganda was also the outcome of government actions taken after 1918. Propaganda was considered unimportant and ‘unsuitable’ in peacetime foreign policy, therefore the Ministry of Information (MoI) and the Crewe House (the organisation responsible for propaganda against Germany in the First World War) were disbanded.80 _{The association of propaganda with lies}

and distortion employed during World War I had such a profound effect that the British government even attempted to ban the word ‘propaganda’ from diplomatic vocabulary.81

Consequently, until the mid-1930s, the British government did not engage in overseas propaganda other than the ‘official service’ provided by the News Department of the Foreign Office transmitting news abroad and the British Council, established in 1934 with the task of spreading British culture throughout the world.82 _{The BBC Arabic Service was inaugurated in}

January 1938 in order to counter anti-British German radio propaganda to the Middle East. Yet

75 _{Herman. E. S & Chomsky N., Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media}

(London: Vintage, 1994).

76 _{Nye, J., Soft Power: The Means to Success in World Politics (New York: Public Affairs, 2004).} 77 _{Welch, op. cit., 2013, p. 81.}

78 _{Mansell, op. cit., p. 56.}

79 _{Rauschning, H., Germany’s Revolution of Destruction, cited in Mansell, ibid, p. 55.} 80 _{Black, op. cit., p. 1.}

81 _{Welch, op. cit., 2013, p. 33.} 82 _{Black, op. cit., pp. 2-3.}

the importance of the BBC transnational broadcasting was not truly recognised until the Munich Crisis in September 1938.

An assumption was, however, made that German people were not united in supporting Hitler and his party. Thus Britain positioned itself as an acquaintance of the German common people subjected to totalitarianism, in an attempt to attack and weaken the Nazi organisation from within.83 _{Although on his return from Munich, Neville Chamberlain, officially stood by his}

policy of appeasement, he secretly ordered Sir Campbell Stuart, the director of The Times to form a new propaganda department. It was not until spring 1939, however, that the value of propaganda against Germany was recognised. The department of which Stuart was a chairman was first based at Electra House (EH) and, after the war broke out, was moved to Woburn Abbey in Bedfordshire, changing its name to the Department of Propaganda in Enemy Countries, also known as ‘the country’.84 _{The Foreign Office also had its own Political}

Intelligence Department, led by Rex Leeper, which was later attached to EH.

Equally problematic was the government’s approach to propaganda at home – the MoI was not reconstructed until a day after Britain declared war on Germany. But it was clear that mistakes made during the First World War could not be repeated. In order to distance itself from fascism and communism, the MoI outlined its policy as ‘to tell the truth, nothing but the truth and, as near as possible, the whole truth’ as ‘distrust breeds fear much more than knowledge of the reverse’.85 _{The principles driving home propaganda laid in convincing the public that it was the}

‘People’s War’ and, for the first time, the average worker was addressed in BBC broadcasts.86

Confidence in the government was to be achieved by it assurance of honesty. Scholars, however, seem to disagree to which extent the ‘strategy of truth’ was applied in reality. While Balfour, Mansell and Briggs argue that the government was averse to the deliberate perversion of the truth, McLaine questions this view, recalling MoI directives from March 1940 which proposed that a pragmatic approach should be taken, because

‘truth (…) is what is believed to be the truth. A lie that is put across becomes the truth and may, therefore, be justified. The difficulty is to keep up lying … it is simpler to tell one big, thumping lie that will then we believed’.87

83 _{Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 11.} 84 _{Ibid, p. 17.}

85 _{Cited in McLaine, I., Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World}

War II (London: Allen & Unwin, 1979), p. 28.

86 _{Taylor, op. cit., 1995.}

87 _{INF,1/856, MoI directive, March 1940, citied in McLaine, op. cit., p. 28. See also Balfour, op. cit., &}

It can also be argued that Balfour, Mansell and Briggs’ assessment of British wartime

propaganda is based on comparison with German propaganda because, as Carruthers observes, ‘freedom of speech was, after all, one of the ‘Four Freedoms’ for which the war was being fought, as FDR (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and Churchill framed the Allied purpose in 1941’s Atlantic Charter’.88

She goes further by asserting that:

‘British and American wartime-managers self-consciously set themselves apart from their German foe and Soviet ally by cultivating a ‘strategy of truth’, but ‘truthfulness was a strategic choice as much as an ideological imperative. A degree of candour would encourage citizens to feel that their leaders trusted them to accept even bad news with unruffled equanimity’.89

This notion, however, is challenged by Welch who demonstrates that the government recognised the limited capacity of the public to absorb bad news and therefore excluded material from dissemination.90 _{As in the previous war, selectiveness of information became an}

important element of propaganda, both at home and overseas. This practice was not limited to bad news; censorship was applied to all information which could undermine the unity of the allies’ coalition, weaken public morale or, in general, did not follow the official line of the government. Not by lying, but by the selection of news, the government was able in Welch’s words ‘to distort reality’. As he explains: ‘silence – even when the facts are known – becoming a means of preventing the proper understanding of those facts by modifying the context.’ 91 _This

questions the BBC policy of ‘bad news first’ as it indicates that not all defeats of the allies were reported. Seaton, however, argues that, although the government limited the amount of news, ‘the public knew more than might have been expected’.92

Despite the government commitment to truth, in the first months of the war ‘official policy toward the media remained so shambolic that reporters feared a return to the ‘‘Dark Ages’ of 1914–15’’.93 _{As Carruthers points out, ‘in an echo of August 1914, the military imposed a total}

news blackout on the British Expeditionary Force’s dispatch to France’.94 _{It was only after the}

fall of France in June 1940 that the necessity of coordinating and expanding all agencies involved in both overt and convert propaganda was recognised. It was on the initiative of

88 _{Carruthers, op. cit., p. 77.} 89 _Ibid.

90 _{Welch, op. cit., 2013, p. 34.} 91 _Ibid.

92 _{Curran & Seaton, op. cit., p. 140.} 93 _{Carruthers, op. cit., p. 77.} 94 _{Ibid, pp. 77-8.}

Winston Churchill, who succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister in May 1940, that Special Operations Warfare (SOE) was established with the task ‘to co-ordinate all action by way of subversion and sabotage against the enemy overseas’.95 _{The Minister of Economic Warfare,}

Hugh Dalton, who was put in charge, divided the SOE into SO1, which took over secret

propaganda from EH, and SO2, responsible for sabotage. Further attempts to co-ordinate, also

following Churchill’s intervention, took place in August 1941 with the creation of the PWE, with the Ministerial Committee of three in charge: Bruce Lockhart representing the FO, Rex Leeper the MoI, and Major General Brooks the Ministry of Economic Warfare (MEW), shortly replaced by Hugh Dalton.96 _{As the BBC European Service became recognised as an important}

instrument of propaganda, Ivone Kirkpatrick, who acted as Adviser of Foreign Policy to the BBC from February 1941, was invited to join the Committee. This link proved to be particularly important as it was the PWE which became responsible for issuing directives to the BBC European Service. By the beginning of 1942 it was acknowledged, however, that the work of the PWE Ministerial Committee was not effective, resulting in its disbandment and a reshuffle of responsibilities: Lockhart was appointed the PWE Director-General; the Foreign Secretary, Anthony Eden, took overall charge of propaganda policy; and the newly appointed Minister of Information, Brendan Bracken, was responsible for administration. 97

The main challenge to British propaganda came with Hitler’s attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The British government took the initiative to convince the public that the Soviet Union was no longer an enemy whilst Churchill, who had previously attacked the USSR and warned the public about the danger of the communism, addressed Stalin as an ally and called for Anglo- Russian co-operation.98 _{As Briggs points out, ‘the USSR entry into the war transformed the war}

in real terms as well as in terms of propaganda’.99 _{As the main thrust of Britain’s policy was to}

maintain the unity of the allies’ coalition, uncomfortable facts about Stalin’s regime or his political manoeuvring in Eastern and Northern Europe became taboo. The BBC played a key part in projecting Stalin as an ‘architect of enduring peace and the Red Army as liberator’.100

References to communism were omitted to the extent that the BBC was required to use ‘Russia’ instead of the Soviet Union in their broadcasts.101 _{Political aspects of the Anglo-Soviet alliance}

are discussed in chapter 3.

95 _{Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 17.} 96 _{Tangye Lean, op. cit., p. 97.} 97 _{Cruickshank, op. cit., p. 34.} 98 _{Stenton, op. cit., pp. 61-2.} 99 _{Briggs, op. cit., p. 11.}

100 _{Nicholas, S., The Echo of War: Home Front Propaganda and the Wartime BBC, 1939-1945}

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1996), p. 175.

It was, however, the Atlantic Charter which became the backbone of British propaganda. Freedom and the right of nations to self-determination provided an alternative to communism, attacking Nazi dogma at its core.102 _{Less successful was the use of ‘unconditional surrender’}

towards Germany sprung by Roosevelt at Casablanca in January 1943, as it encouraged the Germans to fight to the end and disheartened resistance in Germany. Churchill did not welcome this propaganda line; aware of Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, he hoped that, together with Germany, Britain would be able to stop the fall of the iron curtain, but officially, in the name of allied unity, he supported it, as did the BBC.103 _{After the end of the war, many scholars,}

including Newcourt, expressed the view that the Casablanca Declaration had a negative effect; not only did it give ammunition to the propaganda of Goebbels and strengthen the military and civilian morale of the Germans but it empowered Stalin. In fact, he argues, that the war could have ended two years sooner.104