Victory at any Cost? - Allied Censorship (UK, USA) - WW2 > .
Censorship was not just a practice in totalitarian regimes. During WW2, democratic liberties in Allied countries often clashed with propaganda and restrictions of the press.
The British government declared war on Nazi Germany on 3 September 1939. "The declaration came after eleven days of mounting international tension and was just one part of a flurry of governmental activity.
Over three million people had already been
evacuated,
five million posters had been printed,
15 million ration books awaited delivery,
thousands of temporary civil servants had been employed, and a
handful of new government departments were ready to organise life on what was referred to as the
‘Home Front’.
The
Ministry of Information was among the most
high profile of these new departments. The Ministry was in many ways an
unprecedented experiment in the
British government’s control of communication. It was designed as
‘the centre for the distribution of all information concerning the war’. This meant that, unlike its First World War namesake, it would be responsible for both the issue and censorship of news.
Formed on September 4th 1939, the day after Britain's declaration of war, the
Ministry of Information (MOI) was the central government department responsible for publicity and propaganda in the Second World War. The initial functions of the
MOI were threefold: news and press censorship; home publicity; and overseas publicity in Allied and neutral countries. Planning for such an organisation had started in October 1935 under the auspices of the Committee for Imperial Defence, largely conducted in secret; otherwise the government was publicly admitting the inevitability of war. Propaganda was still tainted by the experience of the First World War. In the ‘Great War', several different agencies had been responsible for propaganda, except for a brief period when there had been a Department of Information (1917) and a Ministry of Information (1918) Planning for the new MOI was largely organised by volunteers drawn from a wide range of government departments, public bodies and specialist outside organisations.
In the 1930s communications activities had become a recognised function of government. Many departments however had established public relations divisions, and were reluctant to give this up to central control. In early 1939 documents noted concern that the next war would be ‘a war of nerves' involving the civilian population, and that the government would need to go further than ever before with every means of publicity ‘utilised and co-ordinated', as it fought against a well-funded and established Nazi machine. Threatened by censorship, the press reacted negatively to the MOI, describing it as shambolic and disorganised, and as a result it underwent many structural changes throughout the war. Four Ministers headed the MOI in quick succession: Lord Hugh Macmillan, Sir John Reith and Duff Cooper, before the Ministry settled down under Brendan Bracken in July 1941. Supported by Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the press, Bracken remained in office until victory was obvious.
The Ministry was responsible for information policy and the output of propaganda material in Allied and neutral countries, with overseas publicity organised geographically. American and Empire Divisions continued throughout the war, other areas being covered by a succession of different divisions. The MOI was not, in general, responsible for propaganda in enemy and enemy-occupied countries, but it did liaise directly with the Foreign Office.
For home publicity, the Ministry dealt with the planning of general government or interdepartmental information, and provided common services for public relations activities of other government departments. The Home Publicity Division (HPD) undertook three types of campaigns, those requested by other government departments, specific regional campaigns, and those it initiated itself. Before undertaking a campaign, the MOI would ensure that propaganda was not being used as a substitute for other activities, including legislation.
The General Production Division (GPD), one of the few divisions to remain in place throughout the war, undertook technical work under Edwin Embleton. The GPD often produced work in as little as a week or a fortnight, when normal commercial practice was three months. Artists were not in a reserved occupation and were liable for call up for military service along with everyone else. Many were recalled from the services to work for the Ministry in 1942, a year in which £4 million was spent on publicity, approximately a third more than in 1941. £120,000 of this was spent on posters, art and exhibitions. Many extra designs were pre-prepared in order to cope with short lead-times and the changing events of war. Through the Home Intelligence Division, the MOI collected reactions to general wartime morale and, in some cases, specifically to publicity produced.
Press censorship in the Second World War worked on a principle of self-enforcement. Newspapers were issued with guidance about topics that were subject to censorship and invited to submit any story that might be covered by these so-called ‘Defence Notices’. Submitted stories would be scrutinised by the censor and redacted in accordance with the guidelines. Any information of potential military significance – from weather reports, to the exact location of troops – would be removed.
If a story were suitable for publication, it would be returned to the newspaper bearing an official stamp, with any changes marked in blue pencil. Any story that was not ‘Passed for Censorship’ was liable for prosecution if it were found to contravene the guidelines. Reports directly issued by the Ministry of Information were censored before release.
The system was designed to strike a balance between press freedom and national security. But it was only a week before it came to the brink of collapse. This was a result of a chaotic attempt to apply retrospective censorship to news about the arrival of the British Expeditionary Force in France. Subsequent events led to a crisis in government, stoked press hostility, and threatened the very existence of the Ministry of Information.
The crisis began at midday on Monday 11 September when an official broadcast in Paris wrongly announced that British troops were engaged in offensive action against Nazi forces. The claim was subsequently repeated in a second broadcast by the French author Roland Dorgeles. Before long, it had been cabled to the USA and spread worldwide by the United Press and Reuters press agencies.
In London, where news about the British Expeditionary Force had been subject to a D-Notice since the first landings on 4 September, officials in the Ministry of Information concluded that any military value in the news had been lost. And so they wrote to the War Office requesting that reports about the existence of British troops in France should be released.
It was 9pm before the War Office confirmed to the Chief Censor that the story could be released and 9.40pm before the decision was transmitted to the Ministry of Information’s Press Room. With the assembled journalists anxious to make their morning editions, many decided to submit drafts that had been prepared from the press agency reports of Dorgeles broadcast. These reports included the claim that British troops were engaged in active combat. Because the Censorship Division was under strict orders to confine the news to the bare fact that troops had arrived in France, all such reports were passed back to the War Office for further vetting. Their contents caused the military authorities considerable worry.
Leslie Hore-Belisha, the Secretary of State for War, was informed of the situation within an hour of the first reports reaching the War Office. He held an emergency telephone conversation with the Ministry of Information’s Deputy Director at 11pm but was unconvinced by the Ministry’s assurances. Fearing that the censors would not be able to protect vital information from leaking out, Hore-Belisha decided that the War Office would re-impose its original ban on the news at 11.30pm.
This decision forced the Ministry of Information to make a desperate request for retrospective self-censorship. It was explained that the previous decision was void and that any such mention could result in prosecution. Indeed ‘All possible steps’ would be taken to protect ‘the national interest’.
The Ministry was certain that editors would alter their front pages to ensure compliance with the new ruling. The Home Office, which had been contacted directly by Hore-Belisha, was not so sure and one unnamed senior official decided additional measures were necessary. Scotland Yard were instructed to arrange the seizure of all newspapers, police officers were deployed to newspaper offices and wholesale newsagents throughout Britain, roadblocks were erected in Fleet Street, and newspaper trains were stopped en route from London. The situation was widely described as one of ‘chaos’ and ‘complete confusion’.
The Ministry of Information continued to petition the War Office but their pleas were ignored. Things became almost farcical when the Ministry’s French equivalent (the Commissariat Génèral à l’Information) released additional information about the British troops in the early hours of 12 September. This led to a second change of heart in the War Office and the ban was finally lifted at 2.55am. However, the decision came too late for some newspapers to include the story in their early editions, and many papers were delivered hours late on the morning of Tuesday 12 September.
The events of 11-12 September led to a storm of criticism in the press. An editorial in the Daily Mirror attacked ‘muddle-headed bureaucrats’ and accused the government of acting in a ‘true Gestapo manner’. The Daily Mail pointed out that ‘all of the details originally given were originally passed by Ministry of Information censors’ and claimed that some had been ‘suggested by Ministry officials’. This theme was continued by the Daily Express which singled out Hore-Belisha for blame.
The situation became more serious when Francis Williams, the editor of the Daily Herald, pressed the opposition Labour Party to find out why he had been woken at 1.45am to be told that the police had seized control of his office. The parliamentary debate held on Wednesday 13 September served to shift the blame back onto the Ministry of Information. This changed the nature of debate within government and the Ministry came under pressure to undertake radical reform.
This was a defining moment in the British government’s relationship with the press. After two weeks of further criticism, it was decided that the current system was broken beyond repair. The Ministry of Information’s responsibility for issuing and censoring news was duly removed on 9 October 1939 and passed to an independent Press and Censorship Bureau. This episode brought the Ministry to the brink of collapse and necessitated a lengthy process of rebuilding that was not completed until 1942.
The War proved to be a
tough test of the BBC's independence. At times the Government and the military wanted to use the BBC to counter crude propaganda from the Nazis, and there was talk in Westminster of taking over the BBC.
The temptation to interfere was greatest in the early days of the war, when the Government was confronted with the startling success of William Joyce, known as 'Lord Haw-Haw' to the millions of British listeners who tuned to Radio Hamburg. Through the first months of the war - the 'phoney war', in which no direct threat to the UK was evident - Haw Haw's humorous take on Britain and the British proved light relief from the dull diet of the Home Service.
But the Corporation argued that to put out clumsy rebuttals at the behest of Government would dignify Haw-Haw's propaganda, and undermine the trust of the audience. In the long run, a trusted news source for audiences at home and abroad would be a more potent weapon.
In fact the Government had recognised this long before hostilities broke out. Throughout the 1930s, as the Nazi threat was looming over Europe, then
Director-General John Reith was in secret discussion with the Cabinet over broadcasting arrangements in the event of war. It was agreed that the BBC should seek to report events truthfully and accurately, but not in such detail as to endanger the civilian population or jeopardise operations.
The result was that the
BBC did report setbacks as well as successes. It would say, for instance, that bombs had fallen and that there were casualties. But precise number of casualties and the location and time of a bombing would often be withheld, so that the enemy would not know which of its missions had found the target.
In practice, the BBC and the Goverment did not always see eye to eye in squaring what the nation needed to know with what the Ministry of Information felt should be concealed, and at times the relationship was difficult.
Frederick Ogilvie, who had succeeded John Reith as Director-General in
1939, found the pressure too great, and he
resigned early in 1942.
Listening to BBC broadcasts (or any other banned broadcasts) in occupied countries was often punishable by death. In Poland it was illegal to even possess a radio. For these audiences the BBC broadcast a special news service in morse code, so that sympathisers could publish the reports in their illegal newspapers.
The correspondents were equally frustrated.
Frank Gillard's report of the futile assault at Dieppe in 1942, when more than 3,000 Canadian troops were killed, wounded or captured, was
heavily censored, to his life-long disgust. And after the German surrender in 1945,
Richard Dimbleby threatened to quit if the BBC did not put out his report on the
horrors of Belsen. As it was, the Corporation delayed the broadcast for a day while it considered the impact that such stark revelations about the Holocaust would have at home and abroad..
In many ways the World War 2 made the BBC. The fact that for decades after the war people in the Iron Curtain countries risked their lives to listen to the BBC is testimony to the reputation for integrity that it built up in the face of the Nazi threat.
Lord Haw-Haw: William Joyce was a UK citizen who, at the height of his popularity as a Hamburg Radio announcer, drew audiences of six million with his entertaining commentary on British life each evening after the 9 o'clock news. But there was a sinister side to his broadcasts, which sought to undermine the allied war effort, and which were worryingly well-informed.
In one broadcast he gave a special mention 'to all of the BBC based out in Evesham', to the infuriation of the staff. Two curious facts about Joyce: his brother worked at the BBC until he was persuaded by events to join the army; and the Germans bombed the family home in London during the blitz. After the Nazi surrender Joyce was tried and hanged for treason.
The Battle of the Beams: During World War 2 BBC engineers were engaged in a secret and highly technical battle with the Luftwaffe.
The Nazis introduced their 'Knickebein' (crooked leg) navigation system, which used two radio signals, transmitted from two different sites in occupied Europe, to guide bombers to their targets in Britain. The two beams would be aimed so that they crossed above the target. Pilots would fly along one beam, and release their bombs when they picked up the signal from the other.
But after the British thwarted these assaults by putting out spoiler signals from UK transmitters on the same frequencies, the Germans devised the X-Gerat system. This was similar, but used several cross-signals to give greater accuracy. The destruction of Coventry on 14 November 1940 is testimony to just how devastating it could be.
Then, when the British worked out how to jam that system, the Nazis introduced even more sophisticated technology, the Y-Gerat system. A single transmitter, using two signals of different frequencies, would point the bombers in the right direction, and then tell them when they were over the target.
But by now, thanks to information gleaned from German PoWs, the British were ahead of the game, and BBC engineers based at Alexandra Palace deployed their London transmitters - idle since the closure of the television service on the day war was declared - to beam Y-Gerat signals back at the advancing aircraft, and thus confuse their instruments.
The Unmentionables: For most of the war the broadcasters were banned from mentioning the weather. No references to conditions more recent than the day before could be given out, as this would reveal conditions for bombing. Other unmentionables were names of military regiments, or the whereabouts of members of the Royal Family.
On the outbreak of war in September 1939 responsibility for
postal and telegraph censorship was placed on the
Army Council operating through the director of military intelligence. In
April 1940 responsibility for the postal and cable censorship sections was transferred to the Ministry of Information, though they remained distinct elements within the ministry's organisation.
On 6 April 1943, on Treasury authority, the
Postal and Telegraph Censorship Department was established as a separate department with its own director general, though the Minister of Information remained responsible to Parliament for its work.
The department undertook all measures in connection with the imposition of postal and telecommunications censorship in the United Kingdom, together with the censorship of documents carried by travellers departing from and arriving in the country. It was also responsible for the co-ordination, through its overseas staff, of censorship measures in the field throughout the Empire and other areas of British interest and in association with Allied postal and telegraph censorship organisation. The broad framework of the department consisted of a central secretariat and other branches serving the whole department; Postal and Telegraph Censorship Branches, each maintaining units in London and other large centres in the United Kingdom; a Regional Organisation in the civil defence regional headquarters throughout Great Britain; and Overseas Organisation consisting of controllers or liaison officers in foreign, dominion and colonial centres; and a number of small specialised sections.
On 30 September 1945 all censorship operations in the United Kingdom ceased, except those in respect of correspondence of enemy prisoners of war.
In March 1946, the MOI was dissolved. Its residual functions passed to the Central Office of Information (COI), a central organisation providing common and specialist information services. The Postal and Telegraph Censorship Department was wound up and those residual functions transferred to the charge of the Home Office on 1 April 1946. A Planning Section was established on 7 May 1946, the responsibility for the work of which was transferred to the Ministry of Defence on 26 May 1959.
The Ministry of Information is the subject of a major AHRC-funded research project being undertaken by the
School of Advanced Study in collaboration with
The National Archives and the
Department of Digital Humanities at King’s College London.
More
http://www.moidigital.ac.uk .
The
Office of Censorship was an
emergency wartime agency set up by the
United States federal government on
December 19, 1941 to aid in the censorship of all communications coming into and going out of the United States, including its territories and the
Philippines. The efforts of the Office of Censorship to balance the protection of sensitive war related information with the constitutional freedoms of the press is considered largely successful.
The agency's implementation of censorship was done primarily through a
voluntary regulatory code that was willingly adopted by the
press. The phrase
"loose lips sink ships" was popularized during
WW2, which is a testament to the urgency Americans felt to protect information relating to the war effort.
Radio broadcasts, newspapers, and newsreels were the primary ways Americans received their information about WW2 and therefore were the medium most affected by the
Office of Censorship code. The closure of the Office of Censorship in November 1945 corresponded with the ending of WW2.
