Black propaganda, better known as psychological warfare, was a new concept developed by Sefton Delmer, former head of the Daily Express’s Berlin bureau during the rise of the Nazi party. The aim was to spread false information among Germany’s civilians and military, causing confusion and tensions, and undermining morale.
From August 1941 until the end of the war, propaganda in Britain was controlled by the secret Political Warfare Executive (PWE), a WW2 British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate both white and black propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemy morale and sustaining the morale of countries occupied or allied with Nazi Germany.
The Executive was formed in August 1941, reporting to the Foreign Office. The staff came mostly from SO1, which had been until then the propaganda arm of the Special Operations Executive. The organisation was governed by a committee initially comprising Anthony Eden, (Foreign Secretary), Brendan Bracken, (Minister of Information) and Hugh Dalton, (Minister of Economic Warfare), together with officials Rex Leeper, Dallas Brooks and Robert Bruce Lockhart as chairman (and later Director General). Roundell Palmer (the future 3rd Earl of Selbourne) later replaced Dalton when he was moved to become President of the Board of Trade. Ivone Kirkpatrick, an advisor to the BBC and formerly a diplomat in Berlin, also joined the committee, while Leeper left to become British Ambassador to Greece.
After D-Day most of PWE's white propaganda staff transferred to the Psychological Warfare Division (PWD/SHAEF) of SHAEF.At the end of World War II PWE were tasked with the re-education of German prisoners of war. As with different types of propaganda, PWE used the same 'white', 'grey', and 'black' classifications for German POWs. Prisoners classed as 'black' were considered dangerous ardent Nazis, with anti-Nazis classed as 'white' and regular non-political soldiers classed as 'grey'.
Activities of the PWE included distributing covert propaganda ranging from broadcasts to loudspeaker operations to lower morale and encourage desertion, leaflet drops, and underground publications in occupied countries, running rumour campaigns and creating forgeries, among others.
In order to deliver its subversive messages, PWE also disseminated information on events in Germany and the occupied countries, gathering intelligence from other services and agencies, including POW interrogations, and newspapers obtained from occupied countries, and bombing raid photo analysis. This latter source was used to broadcast lists of streets (and even individual houses) that had been destroyed and on occasion to mock up faked "real time" reports of the German media.Some PWE's activities were controversial, such as impersonating deceased German soldiers and sending food parcels to their families with pacifist messages on their behalf. Later, Sefton Delmer, who ran a British black propaganda radio station during the war, quipped that although family hopes to see their loved ones were false, the ham was real.
The PWE's purpose-built studios had the technology to create fake ‘German’ radio stations that offered the immediacy and apparent authenticity of live broadcasts.
Soldatensender Calais, which broadcast jazz interspersed with up-to-date news, whilst presenting events as negatively as possible.
The studio employed a multi-national, multi-lingual team of refugees and prisoners-of-war from Germany, Italy, Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria to broadcast the propaganda. An intelligence section also edited a daily newspaper aimed at German troops stationed in France.
Broadcasts were sent down a dedicated landline to the world’s most powerful transmitter, the newly constructed revolutionary ‘Aspidistra’ – named after the popular wartime Gracie Fields’ song ‘The Biggest Aspidistra in the World.
Example of propaganda that aimed to cause panic and fear among the German population.
During Allied bombing raids on Germany, the military switched off their transmitters to avoid the masts being used as navigational aids.
Aspidistra would immediately begin transmitting demoralising propaganda on the same frequency (known as an intrusion operation), making it appear genuinely German.
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