Each warring nation tries to turn the known enemy interest in itself into favorable channels. The propagandists of each country try to give the enemy the news which the enemy wants, while so arranging that news as to create a drop in enemy morale, to develop uncertainty in enemy policies, to set enemy cliques into action against each other. The propagandist sometimes becomes very agitated because he recognizes as a technician propaganda opportunities which national policy prohibits his using. The propagandist who is so intent on his target that he forgets his broader responsibilities can often spoil the entire operation.

German broadcasters who emphasized the anti-capitalist character of National Socialism in the programs beamed to Eastern Europe found that B.B.C. picked up the most tactless statements and repeated them to Western Europe, where the Germans posed as anti-Bolshevik champions of private property. American attacks on the Germans for associating with Japanese monkey-men were passed along by the Japanese to the Chinese, who did not like the slur either. The most notorious example of backfiring propaganda was of course the famous "Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion" phrase, which may have made James G. Blaine lose to Grover Cleveland in the national election of 1884; the phrase was used by a Republican clergyman in New York, referring to the Democrats, and implied that the Wets (anti-prohibitionists), Catholics, and Southerners were important components in the Democratic Party. (This may have been true, but it pleased none of them to have the matter pointed out with such epithets; the phrase succeeded in its short-range purpose, that of rousing Republicans, but failed by rousing the enemy even more and offending neutral-minded persons as well.)

The balance between home-front politics and field psychological warfare is difficult to maintain. The closer the psychological warfare officer is to the enemy, the more apt he is to think of the mission in terms of getting the enemy to come on over. Why quibble about a few phrases if the words will save lives, matériel, and time? Unfortunately the phrase that is successful against the enemy on the battle front may prove to be an irritant to the home public, with the sure consequence that the enemy will pick it up and send it back to do harm. Similarly, home-front propaganda can get out to do the theaters of operation harm: "Do your utmost—save lard!" sounds silly to men in combat areas.

This can be illustrated by the propaganda problem of the Japanese Emperor. It would have helped domestic American politics to call the Japanese Emperor a monkey, a swine, a lunatic, a witch-doctor or comparable names; some people did so. But if the American government had done so at home for the purpose of rousing its own public, the Japanese home public would have been roused even more with the net result that the Americans would have lost by such attacks. If the Russians promised—as in another instance they are reported to have done—good food and warm clothes to the Germans on the winter fronts, the Nazis passed that promise along to the Russian civilians, who would not think well of Stalin's letting Fascist invaders be plump and snug while they themselves nearly starved. For the enemy audience, it is good to portray excellent care of enemy personnel; for the home audience, it is poor. For the home audience it is sometimes good to present the enemy as ruthless lunatics, beasts in human form, cruel degenerates, and so on; but the same claims, falling into enemy hands, can be used to the disadvantage of the originator by being relayed to the enemy home audience.

Furthermore, sound psychological warfare must take account of the fact that its ultimate aim is the successful ending of the war. For the end to be successful it must occur—the fighting must stop and the nations must enter into altered but renewedly peaceful relations. Propaganda that promises the enemy too much will alienate both allies and home public. But propaganda that promises bloody vengeance hurts possible peace movements in the enemy camp. None of the great powers in World War II went so far as to promise specific frontiers for the postwar period. They kept their promises vague, knowing that a definite promise would please somebody but alienate everyone else; furthermore, by not promising, the expectations of the hopeful parties can be kept at a higher pitch. If the French do not know that they will get the Saar they will fight so much the harder; but if they are promised the Saar they come in a very short while to regard the promise as a settled matter, and proceed to ask for something else. Meanwhile, other possible claimants to the Saar either have a sense of grievance or lose interest in the matter. For this reason, postwar political uncertainty can be a propaganda asset.

President Roosevelt, in his conduct of the political world role of the United States, promised Manchuria to the Chinese, Korea "in due course" to the Koreans, and the integrity of the French Colonial Empire to the French; outside of that he avoided specific promises. In another instance (to put a complicated matter baldly), the British promised Palestine to both the Arabs and to the Jews in World War I, and consequently got themselves into a political mess which, thirty years later, was still a mess.

For psychological warfare purposes, it is useful to define the enemy as:

• (1) the ruler;
• (2) or the ruling group;
• (3) or unspecified manipulators;
• (4) or any definite minority.

It is thoroughly unsound to define the enemy too widely. On the other hand, too narrow a definition will leave the enemy the opening for a peace offensive if the ruler dies, or if the ruling group changes part of its composition. It was fear of a peace move by the German generals, plus the desire to maintain the precarious anti-German unity of the occupied countries, which led the United States and Britain to adopt the policy of defining the German Reich rather than Naziism as the enemy. In the instance of Japan, we defined the enemy as the militarists and "Fascists," with the capitalists a poor second, and left the Emperor and people with whom to make peace.

If the psychological warfare campaign is operated for a definite political purpose, it is possible for politics to be an aid rather than a limitation. The operator can describe his own political system in its most radiant light. He can say complimentary things about the enemy leaders or groups who might come over (though he should avoid giving them the kiss of death which the Nazis gave certain prominent American isolationists, by praising them too much). He can promise his own brand of Utopia.

If the politics are defensive, vague, well-meaning but essentially non-committed, psychological warfare has to avoid making blunders. In World War II we could not say that we were against one-party states, because our largest ally (Russia) was a one-party state. We could not attack the ruin of free enterprise by the Japanese and German governments since socialism existed on the Allied side too. We could not bring up the racial issue, because our own national composition rendered us vulnerable to racial politics at home. There was a huge catalog of Don'ts (usually not written down but left to individual judgment) in every propaganda office. Whenever we violated them, we paid the price in adverse opinion.

The psychological warfare officer should not make promises to persons in occupied territory, to friendly guerrillas, to underground movements, or to enemy troops when those promises are not backed up by word-for-word quotations from the head of his government or someone of Cabinet rank. The promises may not conform with promises which other psychological warfare officers are making to other groups. (In China, some American officers told the Chinese Communists that the Chinese Communists were wonderful people, and would be sure to get American material aid and political sympathy against Chiang Kai-shek. At the same time, other American officers told the Chinese government people that the United States did not propose to short-circuit recognition of the Chinese government, or to interfere in internal Chinese affairs. The two sets of Chinese heard about the American promises and, for a while, could not decide whether Americans were fools or liars. Much the same sort of thing happened in our dealings with French, Serbs, and Poles.) It is a poor piece of work for a combat officer to promise elections , liberties, labor rights, or even food to people in his path, unless the rear echelon people will be able to deliver the goods when they come up. And it is an irresponsible radio or leaflet man who makes promises without finding out whether his government is in a position, in relation to the political situation, to back up the promises one way or other. His nation itself will be called a liar if he slips up.

The very conduct of psychological warfare encroaches upon perfectionist plans for security. Security is designed to keep useful information from reaching the enemy; propaganda operations are designed to get information to him. Security is designed to keep the enemy from knowing true figures; but propaganda must have a lot of good, current, true information if it is to be believed. Security demands that military and naval news be withheld until the extent of the enemy's knowledge is known; propaganda is designed to tell the enemy the news faster than his own sources tell him, thus discrediting enemy news. Security demands that dubious persons, intimately associated with the enemy, be kept away from communications facilities; propaganda officers have to keep an eye open for people who speak the enemy language well, who can address the enemy sympathetically and get his attention, who have a keen appreciation of the enemy culture.

Often, it is plain, psychological warfare and security officers get in each other's way. This conflict was lessened by American censorship organization during World War II. The United States Office of Censorship under Byron Price achieved a distinguished record of smooth, reasonable, and modest operation. It took an adult view of the intelligence of the American public, and permitted bad news to reach the public except when the Services or the White House intervened. Much of the story of this office is told in Theodore Koop's exciting book, Weapon of Silence,20 which makes it plain that censorship sought to avoid developing negative psychological warfare campaigns on its own initiative.

The usual wartime security procedures apply with special force to psychological warfare operations. Civilian employees who are qualified as political experts, as writers, or as propaganda analysts are often well-educated and artistic. They are apt to value classified information highly for the pleasure which they can derive by violating security—that is, by showing "people they can trust" how much they are "in on" certain operations. The temptation to show off is almost irresistible. (The vice is not unknown even in military echelons.) An atmosphere of excessive security easily degenerates into melodrama, bringing out in many individuals a silly zest for displaying to others how much TOP SECRET information they possess. Where military and civilian personnel work together, this human weakness is stimulated by rivalry. Even among the Germans in World War II, propaganda groups were easily infected by an atmosphere of gossip and intrigue.

Security liaison can check propaganda output in the process of transmission; security supervision can check the output after it goes on the air, and can transmit through channels recommendations for punitive or corrective action. The final military connection should exist (for an all-military psychological warfare group) in the person of a responsible commanding or executive officer. For a civilian group functioning under military control the military connection should lie in the hands of an officer capable of watching a great deal and of saying little. Attempts by security to act as propagandists have been found to be as disastrous as the efforts of operators to get along without security.

It is ridiculous to broadcast to the masses of a country when the masses are known not to have radio facilities. This was done in the anti-Japanese broadcasts of OWI, at least in the early part of the war, in which mass-audience soap operas and popular music were sent to Japan on the short-wave—this despite reports that short-wave sets were almost unknown outside governmental or plutocratic circles. What was known was that the Japanese government itself had listening facilities, and that the content of American broadcasts was relayed through Japanese military and governmental groups. The propaganda (to fit the medium, radio) should have been designed to affect the persons actually reached, and not an audience known to be out of reach. The mere fact that enemy counterpropaganda mentions one's own material is nothing more than a professional exchange of compliments. Goading the enemy radio into a reply may be fun, but unless non-propagandists are known to be listening, the fun is expensive and unprofitable.

(It is really fun, though. The author suggested in the spring of 1942 that the San Francisco radio carry an item to the effect that "American art lovers" hoped the Japanese would move their priceless books and paintings away from the great cities. This was preparation for eventual nagging on the topic, "the air raids will get you if you don't watch out!" The radio civilians in San Francisco put the item on the air. Nothing was heard from the Japanese on the subject. Four days later, Radio Luxembourg [then under Nazi control, of course] broadcast in German to Europe that a spokesman for the "beastly American Air Ministry" had told the Japanese that the Americans planned to destroy cultural monuments. The Nazi commentator added that this was characteristic of the actions of uncivilized Americans. New York picked up the German broadcast. The author enjoyed seeing his item go all the way around the world, but in retrospect he wonders whether he did any good other than to please himself. He did do the actual harm of giving the Nazis another point to distort.)

Media consist simply of the facilities possessed. These are, most commonly:

• (1) Standard-wave radio;
• (2) Short-wave radio;
• (3) Loudspeakers;
• (4) Leaflets;
• (5) Pamphlets;
• (6) Books;
• (7) Novelties.

The limitations consist simply of applying the right medium at the right time. Radio broadcasts need be made only when receiving sets are known to exist. Written material should be dropped only to areas in which at least some people can read. (The OWI in China, at the request cf CBI Forward Echelon Headquarters, made up the leaflet showing pictures only. This was designed for the aboriginal hillmen between China and Tibet—to tell them to rescue downed American pilots. Broadcasting to these people would have been as profitable as spitting in the ocean. None of them could read, much less understand radio.) The probable number of listeners or readers should be calculated conservatively, taking enemy policing, amount of enemy interest, customs of the people, tension among enemy troops or civilians and other appropriate factors into account.

Occasionally propaganda media exceed the expected limitations. The Americans and British dropped leaflets on Berlin. The leaflets had little key numbers in the corners, showing to which series they belonged, and could thus be arranged in series. The Germans prohibited civilians from picking up the leaflets. The Nazi authorities followed up the prohibition by sending the Hitlerjugend and Hitlermädel out to pick up the leaflets and turn them in for destruction. The boys and girls did their job with gusto. Vast quantities were turned in for destruction. What the Nazis discovered—too late, too late—was that the schoolchildren had begun collecting the leaflets, using the key numbers to make up perfect sets. Some numbers were rarer than others, so that the Hitlerite children swapped Allied leaflets all over Berlin, trying to make up attractive albums. Mother and Father—who did not dare pick the leaflets up off the street for fear the Gestapo might be watching—found a convenient file, reasonably complete, in the room of little Fritzl or Ermintrude! The most hopeful British or American planner could not have counted on such a happy result.

The psychological warfare operation must be gauged to the personnel facilities no less than to the material facilities. (In China, the author sat in with an expert on medieval and modern Japanese art, who was writing leaflets which were to be dropped on the Japanese garrisons of the Yangtze cities. The expert wrote pure, dignified Japanese, but the Chinese-Japanese language experts brought up the point, "Would the Japanese common soldier understand this kind of talk?" For a while, we had no plain-spoken Japanese at hand, and we had to send our Japanese leaflets from Chungking up to Yenan, where the Japanese Communists read the leaflets and wrote back long detailed criticisms.)

Whenever the politico-military situation permits, it is sound procedure to check output with live enemies, either interned civilians or captured military personnel. A shrewd interrogator can soon find out whether the comments from the enemy jury are honest or not.

Intelligent psychological warfare procedures have often turned liabilities into assets. Absence of a good orchestra has compelled propagandists to make up current music schedules by recording enemy musical programs, re-broadcasting them with new spoken commentary. Failure to obtain native speakers (such as genuine home-grown Japanese, or Chinese with the properly slurred Wu dialect) has led to the use of substitutes that proved better than the original. There is no point in trying to establish rapport with the enemy unless you talk his language with effortless perfection on the one end of the scale—or else admit that you really are a foreigner, on the other end of the scale. It is easier to build up the image of a trustworthy enemy than it is to create trust in a traitor. Frequently the attempt to talk the enemy's own language is less successful than a frank acceptance of handicaps.

In actual practice this means that either—

• (a) the speaker should be authentically perfect in use of the enemylanguage, whether spoken or written as script; or
• (b) the speaker should make no effort to conceal his foreign accent.

In British broadcasts to Germany, for example, it was found to be desirable for the radio announcers to have British accents in their German, rather than the Viennese or Jewish lilt which many of them did have. A Nazified audience was so infected with anti-Semitism that no Jewish speaker could carry much weight, no matter how cogent his arguments nor how eloquent his appeals. The British tone in the voices of other speakers actually helped carry conviction. The Germans were prepared to listen to a genuine Britisher, and might have been disappointed if he had spoken letter-perfect German.21

Furthermore, with the perfect speaker of the enemy language there is always the question, "What is that guy doing over there?" A traitor is less appealing than an open enemy spokesman; a traitor has to be sensationally good in order to get across at all. Lord Haw Haw was one of a kind, but he seems to have had genuine theatrical talent along with a crazy zeal which persuaded his hearers that though he was on the wrong side, he did believe his own line. The perfect speaker, whether enemy renegade or friendly linguist, has an inglorious role at the beginning of war, when enemy morale is high and the enemy population has not had time to think over the problem of changing sides. Only toward the end of the war, or in any morale downgrade, the man who says, "Come on over! See? I'm here. It's fine," has a chance of being believed.

The propaganda administrator must use his personnel thoughtfully. It is a waste of talent and—in advance field units, of life as well—to impose tasks which operatives cannot handle. An American nisei from California should not be asked to talk slangy Edokko Japanese; a soldier detailed to psychological warfare, because of some special linguistic qualification, should not be considered a great journalist, radio commentator, or actor just because he speaks the right language. If he is given a microphone, and the feeling of having an audience (one that cannot write adverse fan mail), it will be easy for the average man to overestimate the effect of his own talk. The intelligent officer tries to see his staff as the enemy would see them; he keeps their limitations in mind. If they speak the enemy language perfectly, they fall under suspicion as traitors; if they speak it poorly, they may sound like bunglers or jackasses. Nevertheless, propaganda must come from men and through words written by men, and the flavor must be fitted to the situation. Advance planning should therefore consider the available personnel as an actual factor in estimating the situation.

This does not mean that propaganda analysis is not needed. Somewhere in every psychological warfare unit there must be an intelligence group servicing the operation. If, for example, the enemy has announced that the candy your aviators are dropping is poisoned (and has proved it by dropping some of "your" candy, made by his black-operations boys and actually poisoned), there is no point in calling him a liar; you may not know for some time whether poisoned candy has been dropped or not. If the enemy commander has shown his troops photographs of prisoners whom your side has taken and "murdered" (according to his well staged photos), it is not a good idea to ask people to surrender without sending along equally convincing pictures of well cared for prisoners. If the enemy alleges that you and your allies are rioting in the streets or stealing each other's womenfolk, or that one of you is doing all the fighting while the other sits around in safe staging areas, it may be a good idea to send along some leaflets showing inter-allied cooperation on your side, or to run a few radio shows on the subject.

This consists merely of reckoning the enemy propaganda as part of the psychological warfare situation, and of using the enemy as part of the background to your own advantage. The moment you start letting him take the initiative, your propaganda wags along behind his. Tell his people something he can't deny. Let him sit up nights worrying about how he will counteract you. Make him drive his security officers crazy trying to release figures that will please your G-2 in order to reassure his home audience. Really good propaganda does not worry about counterpropaganda. It never assumes that the enemy propagandist is a gentleman: he is by definition a liar. Your listeners and you are the only gentlemen left on earth.

CHAPTER 5
Psychological Warfare in World War I

World War I saw psychological warfare transformed from an incidental to a major military instrument, and later it was even called the weapon which won the war. The story spread, since the Germans liked to imagine that they had been talked out of winning, and since ex-propagandists among the Allies enjoyed thinking that their own cleverness had been decisive when even the tremendous violence of trench warfare had produced nothing more than a stalemate. If psychological warfare is considered in the broad sense, it seems plain that it was among the decisive weapons of 1914-1918. The political decency of the Allies, the appeal of President Wilson's Fourteen Points, the patent obsolescence of the Kaiser and what he stood for, the resurgence of Polish, Baltic, Finnish, Czechoslovak and South Slav nationalisms—all these played a real part in making Germany surrender in 1918. More real than the role of guns, men, ships, planes, tanks? This cannot be answered: it is like asking of a long-distance runner whether his heart, lungs, legs, or head contributed most to his success. Since war is waged by and against all parts of the human personality—physical condition, skills, intelligence, emotions, and so on—it is impossible to distinguish between the performance of one kind of weapon and the other in the attainment of a goal itself complex—governmental surrender. Only a weapon which left no enemy survivors could claim for itself undisputed primacy in victory.

Propaganda came to prominence in war because the nations involved had made mass-communications part of their civilian lives. The appearance of huge newspapers, systematic advertising, calculated political publicity, and opinion manipulation in other forms made it inevitable that skills which developed in civilian life should be transferred to the military. In general, the psychological warfare efforts of each belligerent were the direct equivalent of his peacetime nonpolitical propaganda facilities. (By way of exception, the peculiar genius of the Bolshevik leaders stimulated a propaganda effort disproportionate to the facilities, either of personnel or matériel, to be found in pre-1914 Russia.)

Nations rarely change their basic character in time of war. When war starts it is usually too late to re-educate generations already grown up, teach them wholly new skills, or develop administrative or operational procedures unknown in peacetime life. Sometimes, by great effort, a nation can transform a small available cadre into large, new and effective units on the political, military, economic or social fronts. Even then, the character of the war effort will be colored and influenced by the experience of the men undertaking it. The British had, in 1914, one of the world's finest news systems, a highly sophisticated press, and extensive experience in international communication for technical and commercial purposes, notably the undersea cable system, and they turned these to war use with considerable smoothness. The Germans had a far more regimented press and a more limited network of commercial and technical connections. The British, furthermore, had a diplomatic and consular service of superb quality; comparable German services included a much higher proportion of bunglers and enthusiasts.

From the very beginning the British had the lead. They nailed German propaganda as propaganda, while circulating their own as news, cultural relations, or literature. The Germans who boasted that they were a "cultured" people had their naïveté rewarded when the British let the German word Kultur become a synonym for boorish pedantic arrogance. The Germans had the awful habit of putting many of their own unattractive emotions into words, and the even more ruinous habit of then printing the words. In many instances, the British simply let the Germans think up braggadocio or vengeful phrases, then circulated the German phrases to the world. The English language was permanently enriched by some of these: strafe comes from the German plea that God "strafe" (punish) England. The actual "Hymn of Hate" was originally a song made up by Germans for Germans. The word "Hun" was applied to the German Army by Kaiser Wilhelm himself, and so on. Furthermore, the Germans created in their press and information services a condition of bureaucratic snafu which has rarely been excelled in any war. National character certainly worked out its automatic vengeances in World War I.

The American psychological warfare effort of 1917-1919 also drew heavily on familiar skills: the American press, second only to that of the British at the time; the church, Y.M.C.A., and Chautauqua groups; and the wealth of private clubs which flourish under our liberal system of laws and usages. Other nationalities made efforts similarly in keeping with their peacetime facilities. The Japanese were adroit, but even at that time confused by the mix-up of trying to be a "civilized" power but simultaneously expansionist. The French showed high professional skill in adapting their military and diplomatic personnel to propaganda tasks. France's position as battleground ensured her of the rage of her own people and the sympathy of neutrals, giving propaganda from Paris a hearing. The Chinese, though undergoing the downfall of the Yüan Shih-k'ai dictatorship and lapsing into chaos, maintained an impeccable diplomatic front and played a weak hand for everything it was worth; they had their private quasi-war with the Japanese in 1915. That they did so while putting the blame for Allied disunity squarely on the Japanese where it belonged is to their credit.

The weight of the propaganda war, as of the material war, fell on its prime contestants, Britain, Germany, and the United States. The private and revolutionary groups which emerged as the revolutionary governments played a vigorous part because they had few other functions to distract their attention. The Republic of Czechoslovakia got its start in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1918, and fought psychological warfare from the instant it took form; not till later did it assume the weightier and more expensive responsibilities of ruling and warring.

The British, like the Germans, had immense organizational difficulties. The British ended up by inventing a distinction of roles. Thus they finished World War I with two separate propaganda agencies. The Ministry of Information, under Lord Beaverbrook, with Colonel Buchan as Director of Intelligence, carried on civilian psychological warfare outside Britain; the National War Aims Committee carried on civilian psychological warfare within Britain. Military psychological warfare was carried on by military and civilian agencies, both. The British required five years of honest effort, bitter wrangling, and positive political invention in order to devise a psychological warfare system sufficient to meet the needs of a great power at war. They did not let their administrative difficulties prevent their conduct of correct, poised and highly moral propaganda, nor impede their use of plentiful funds and high ingenuity in getting their propaganda across.22

The British set the pace in coordinating political warfare with news-propaganda, and in effecting workable liaison between national policy-makers and operational and public-relations chiefs of the armed services. It is not likely that, even in World War II, the Americans—within the looser, younger, bigger framework of our more compendious government—achieved as good results in terms of timing. State-War-Navy-OWI-OSS-Treasury timing of related events or news items was obtained through most of World War II in the following manner: the federal agency affected did whatever it was going to do anyhow, and other federal agencies took notice after the event, initiating their related actions, if any were feasible, then and only then. The British sought to get around this in World War I by correlating their policy toward various countries with their policy involving different departments. They were not totally successful but they learned a lot; the net product of their propaganda was, for most of its purposes, superb.

The postwar period of the 1920's saw, therefore, the curious spectacle of the Germans lauding American psychological warfare, and counting it as a major factor of defeat, while the Americans naturally emphasized the fighting record of American troops.

As for Kaiserist propaganda, it started out with the twin curses of amateurishness and bureaucracy, each of them crippling but deadly when paired. German writers and scholars ran wild in 1914 and 1915 in trying to put the blame on the Allies; amateurish in public relations, they succeeded in arousing a tremendous amount of antagonism. They were handicapped by the ponderosity of the German Imperial Government, by the intervention of persons unfamiliar with news or advertising (at that time the most obvious sources of civilian propaganda personnel), and by a military stodginess which made German press communiqués infuriating even to anti-British readers. Overseas propaganda developed through poorly secured clandestine channels, and was mixed up with espionage and sabotage personnel. Inescapable "breaks" gave all German agents a bad name. George Sylvester Viereck, who has enjoyed the odd distinction of being our most vocal pro-German sympathizer in both wars with Germany, later wrote a naïve but revealing account of his operations under the title Spreading Germs of Hate (Boston, 1930). (No British information officer was guilty, even after the war, of a comparable breach of taste.) Viereck praises the British for their sang-froid and skill; coming from him, the praise is more than deserved.

More seriously, German propaganda lacked both organization and moral drive. Lieutenant Colonel Nicolai, the Imperial German General Staff officer responsible, puts part of the blame on the German press and on the press officers of the Army and the Reich: "In fact, the enemy remained virtually untouched by any kind of German propaganda. This reproach falls against the press, it would seem, as well as on the responsible officials.... Internationally minded papers themselves failed to cooperate. Yet it was precisely these which were circulated and esteemed abroad. Newspapers with other (pro-militarist) editorial policies, failing to get leadership from the Government, could not aim at any unified effect.... Instead, the goal of the governmental press leadership remained a thoroughly negative one: to prevent the press from doing harm to national policy."23

Without developing his theme into systematic doctrine for psychological warfare, the German colonel stated the basic defect of World War I from the German point of view. Writing in 1920, he went on to say: "The enemy alleges simply to have copied our front-line propaganda when he initiated his. In so doing, he is guilty of a deliberate untruth, made for the sake of removing the moral blot which is attached to his victory...." Nicolai could not overcome the supposition that propaganda was a dirty and unsoldierly device and that it was much more honorable for armies to exchange loss of life than to save men on both sides by talking the enemy into surrendering, but he went on to the real point at issue. "Furthermore, it was not moralistic misgivings which kept us from applying to the enemy front lines a propaganda campaign as successful as theirs, but very sober practical obstacles. There were available to us none of the (psychological) points of attack at which propaganda would have been effective against the enemy forces, points such as the enemy found in our own domestic conditions. What was lacking was political propaganda as precursor of military."

What the Germans failed to learn in World War I, they later learned and applied in World War II. The German Imperial Government started in 1914 with a defiant assurance of its own power. Power was not sought among the masses so far as Kaiser Wilhelm was concerned; one inherited it from one's ancestors, along with an army, and the masses had better keep their noses out of it. The Hitlerite German government of 1939 began its world war only after two decades of shrewd, conscienceless, bitter domestic propaganda. Hitlerism had come to power by first wooing and then bullying the common man, and the Nazi chiefs, in their strategy of terror or "warfare psychologically waged," subsequently applied the same tactics to the international community. Hitler conquered Europe with these tactics; he started with flattery, made scenes, and ended with cold brutality. These were the skills of the urban slum.