Читать книгу The History of Psychological Warfare - Paul Myron Anthony Linebarger - Страница 27

Various labels were devised to name Hitler's queer, terrifying strategy for the period 1936–1941. One writer, Edmond Taylor, called it "the strategy of terror" in a book by that name (Boston, 1940), and also "the war of nerves." Another, Ladislas Farago, a political journalist who started out as an authority on the Axis fifth column in the Near East and ended up in American naval psychological warfare planning, put forth a book called German Psychological Warfare: A Critical, Annotated and Comprehensive Survey and Bibliography (New York, 1941), which digested hundreds of German works on topics pertaining to psychology and war, much of this material concerned personnel practices, psychosomatic medicine, and other non-propaganda aspects of psychology, but the book as a whole was an impressive demonstration of how much the Germans had done to make their war scientific. Other articles and books on the Nazi "inventions" followed in rapid succession.

After the excitement had died down, it was found that the novelty of the German war effort lay in two special fields:

 first, the perfect or perfect-seeming synchronizing of political, propaganda, subversive, and military efforts;

 second, the use of the findings of modern psychology for the attainment of military goals.

The Germans set the pace, in the prewar and early war period and United Nations psychological warfare tried to keep up, even though the two efforts were different in scope and character.

In conquering Europe, the German staff apparently used opinion analysis. Much of this analysis has turned out to have been superb guesswork; at the time, it looked as though the Nazis might have found some scientific formula for determining just when a nation would cave in. In the conduct of war, the Germans waged a rapid war—which was industrially, psychologically and militarily sound, as long as it worked. Their "diplomacy of dramatic intimidation" used the war threat to its full value, with the result that the Czechoslovaks surrendered the Sudetenland without a shot and then submitted themselves to tyranny half a year later; the Germans wrung every pfennigs worth of advantage out of threatening to start war, and when they did start war, they deliberately tried to make it look as horrible as it was. The psychologists had apparently taught the German political and military intelligence people how to get workable opinion forecasts; German analysis of anti-Nazi counterpropaganda was excellent. Add all this to strategy and field operations which were incontestably brilliant: the effect was not that of mere war, but of a new kind of war—the psychological war.

The formula for the psychological war is not to be found in the books of the psychologists but in the writings of the constitutional lawyers. The totality of war is a result of dictatorship within government; total coordination results from total authority. The "secret weapon" of the Germans lay in the power which the Germans had openly given Hitler, and in his use of that power in a shrewd, ruthless, effective way. The Führer led the experts, not the experts the Führer. If the Germans surprised the world by the cold calculation of their timing, it was not because they had psychological braintrusters inventing a new warfare, but because they had a grim political freak commanding the total resources of the Reich. Even in wartime, no American President has ever exercised the authority which Hitler used in time of peace; American Cabinet members, military and naval figures, press commentators and all sorts of people are free to kibitz, to offer their own opinions, to bring policy into the light of day. That is as it should be. The same factors which made "psychological warfare" possible in the beginning of the war were the ones which led to Germany's futile and consummate ruin in 1944–45: excessive authority, an uninformed public, centralized propaganda, and secret political planning.

That kind of "psychological warfare"—war tuned to the needs of fanatically sought lusts for power, war coordinated down to the nth degree, waged in the light of enemy opinion and aiming at the political and moral weaknesses of the enemy—is not possible within the framework of a democracy. Even from within Imperial Japan, Pearl Harbor had to be waged secretly as a purely naval operation; those Japanese who would have told the Board of Field Marshals and Fleet Admirals that an unannounced attack was the best way to unify all American factions against Japan were obviously not brought into the planning of the Pearl Harbor raid. The Japanese still had too much of their old parliamentary spirit left over, as Ambassador Grew's reports show; the military had to outsmart the home public, along with the foreigners. In the Western dictatorships, the home public is watched by élite troops, secret police, party cells, and is made the subject of psychological warfare along with the victim nations. Hitler could turn the war spirit on and off; the Japanese did not dare do so to any effective extent. "Psychological warfare" was too dictatorial a measure even for prewar Japan; it is therefore permanently out of reach of the authorities of the United States. After war starts, we are capable of surprising the enemy with such things as incendiary raids, long-range bombers, and nuclear fission; but we cannot startle with the start of war. The United States is not now capable and—under the spirit of the Constitution, can never be capable—of surprising an enemy by the timing of aggression. If the same were true of all other nations, peace would seem much nearer than it does.

German psychological warfare, in the broad sense of warfare psychologically waged, depended more on political background than on psychological techniques. Disunity among the prospective victims, the complaisance of powers not immediately affected, demonstration of new weapons through frightful applications, use of a dread-of-war to harness pacifism to appeasement, the lucky geographic position of Germany at the hub of European communications—such factors made the German war of nerves seem new. Such psychological warfare is not apt to be successful elsewhere except for aggressions by dictatorships against democracies; where the democracies are irritable, tough, and alert, it will not work at all.

The psychological warfare which remains as a practical factor in war is therefore not the Hitlerian war of nerves, but the Anglo-American application of propaganda means to pre-decided strategy. Let him who will advocate American use of the war of nerves! He will not get far with commentators publishing his TOP SECRET schedule of timing, with legislators very properly catechizing him on international morality, with members of his own organization publishing their memoirs or airing their squabbles right in the middle of the operation. He would end up by amusing the enemy whom he started out to scare. Psychological warfare has its place in our military and political system, but its place is a modest one and its methods are limited by our usages, morality, and law.