Psychological Warfare

Bold black propaganda operations can often embarrass the enemy. The dropping of a few hundred tons of well counterfeited currency would tend to foul up any fiscal system. Peacetime counterfeiters operate with poor materials, secretly, and in small shops. When instructed, a government agency can do an astoundingly good job of counterfeiting. The United States is on the vulnerable side of this operation, because our money happens to be the most trusted and most widely hoarded in the world. Various governments are believed to have run off substantial numbers of United States twenty and fifty dollar bills. A less offensive operation consists of giving the enemy populace sets of ration cards, along with simple suggestions on how to finish the forging job so as to make it convincing. The Nazis were especially subject to this kind of attack, since German methodical bookkeeping required a large number of documents to be in the possession of each citizen. Falsification of any of these made the German officials go mad with confusion.

To a country suffering from too much policing, the transmission by black propaganda of facsimile personal-identity cards in large numbers would be welcomed by many common citizens and would keep the enemy police procedure at a high pitch of futile haste. The essence of this, as of all good black propaganda, is to confuse the enemy authorities while winning the thankfulness of the enemy people—preferably while building up the myth within the enemy country that large, well-organized groups of revolutionists are ready to end the war when their time comes.

If white propaganda is to be compared to incendiary bombing, in that it ultimately affects the enemy armed services by disorganizing the homeland behind them, black propaganda may be compared to the tinfoil strips used in anti-radar. Black propaganda strikes directly at enemy security. It gives him too much to do, and thus increases the chances for agents down on the ground to succeed in their lonely, dangerous work.