Читать книгу The History of Psychological Warfare - Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger - Страница 14

In the American Revolution, psychological warfare played a very important role. The Whig campaign of propaganda which led up to colonial defiance of Britain was energetic and expert in character, and the very opening of hostilities was marked by passionate appeals to the civilian population in the form of handbills. The American forces at the Battle of Bunker Hill used one of the earliest versions of front-line combat propaganda (see Figure 11). The appeal was as direct as could be wished. Artful use was made of the sharp class distinctions then existing between British officers and enlisted men; fear was exploited as an aid to persuasion; the language was pointed. Even in our own time, the Bunker Hill propaganda leaflet stands as a classic example of how to do good field propaganda.

The Americans made extensive use of the press.9 When the newspaper proprietors veered too far to the Loyalist side, they were warned to keep to a more Patriotic line. If, in the face of counter-threats from the Loyalists, the newspaper threatened going out of business altogether, it was warned that suspension of publication would be taken as treason to America. The Whigs, before hostilities, and their successors, the Patriots of the war period, showed a keen interest in keeping the press going and in making sure that their side of the story got out and got circulated rapidly. In intimidation and control of the press, they far outdistanced the British, whose papers circulated chiefly within the big cities held as British citadels throughout the war. Political reasoning, economic arguments, allegations concerning the course of the war, and atrocity stories all played a role.

Figure 12: Money as a Carrier of Propaganda. The note on the left above is French revolutionary currency; observe the use of revolutionary slogans. Next to it is the famous Russian 10,000 ruble bill which calls for the world revolution in seven languages. The Japanese peso note (at top of page 22) carries American propaganda on the reverse; captured notes were overprinted by Psychological Warfare Branch during the Philippine campaign and dropped back on the enemy. The two five-rupee notes date from the Japanese occupation of Burma. The lower of the two was issued by Americans as a means of deriding the Japanese.

George Washington himself, as commander of the Continental forces, showed a keen interest in war propaganda and in his just, moderate political and military measures provided a policy base from which Patriot propagandists could operate.

Some wars are profoundly affected by a book written on one side or the other; the American revolutionary war was one of these. Thomas Paine's Common Sense (issued as a widely sold series of pamphlets) swept American opinion like wildfire; it stated some of the fundamentals of American thinking, and put its bold but reasonable revolutionary case in such simple terms that even conservatives in the Patriot group could not resist using it for propaganda purposes.10 Common Sense has become a classic of American literature, but it has its place in history too, as "the book that won the war." Other pamphleteers, with the redoubtable Sam Adams in the lead, also did well.

American experience in the Mexican war was less glorious. The Mexicans waged psychological warfare against us with considerable effect, ending up with traitor American artillerymen dealing out heavy murder to the American troops outside Mexico city. Historians in both countries gloss over the treason and subversion which occurred on each side.

In the Civil War, psychological warfare was practised by both Lincoln and the Confederacy in establishing propaganda instrumentalities in England and on the continent of Europe. The Northern use of Negro troops, which was followed, at the end of the war by the Confederate plans for raising Negro troops, did not become the major propaganda issue it might have because of the community of feeling on the two sides, indecision on each side as to the purpose of the war (apart from the basic issue of union or disunion), and the persistence of politics-as-usual both North and South of the battle line.