Psychological Warfare

The Soviet government was the one government in the world which could be even more totalitarian than Nazi Germany. Many Americans may consider this a moral disadvantage, but in psychological warfare it has very heavy compensating advantages. The Soviet people were propaganda-conscious to an intense degree, but the authorities took no chances. Revolutionary Communist themes were brilliantly intermingled with patriotic Russian items. Army officers were given extraordinary privileges. Everyone was given epaulettes. The Communist revolutionary song, the famous Internationale, was discarded in favor of a new Soviet hymn. History was rewritten. The Czars were honored again. The Church was asked to pray for victory. The Soviet officials were able to tailor their social system to fit the propaganda. They did so, even to the name of the war. They call it the Great Patriotic War. Outsiders may murmur, "What war is not?" But the Russian people liked it, and the regime used traditionalism and nationalism to cinch Communism in the Soviet Union.

In their combat propaganda the Russians were equally ruthless and realistic. They appealed to the memory of Frederick the Great of Prussia, they reminded the Germans of Bismarck's warning not to commit their forces in the East, they appealed to the German Junker caste against the unprofessional Nazi scum who were ruining the German army, and they used every propaganda trick that had ever been heard of. They turned prisoners into a real military asset by employing them in propaganda, and talked a whole staff of Nazi generals into the Free Germany movement.

Only in radio did the Russians retain some of their old revolutionary fire with its irritating qualities for non-Communist peoples. This was explicable in terms of the audience. The Russians could keep their domestic propaganda half-secret by imposing a censorship ban on those parts of it, or those comments on it, which they did not wish known to Communists abroad. The censorship was a permanent institution, in war and out, and therefore did not impose special difficulty. They could keep their front-line propaganda quiet, since they did not allow their Allies to send military observers up front, and the Nazis could be counted on not to tell the world about effective anti-Nazi propaganda. But their radio propaganda had to be audible to everyone. Hence the radio propaganda was the least ingenious in using reactionary themes effectively. The Russians and Germans both used black radio, but since each policed the home audience rigorously against the other, it is possible that the efforts cancelled out.