munitions of the mind: the british press in the second world war

Munitions of the Mind: The British Press and the Second World War

Matthew Grant

MA Twentieth Century History

University of Liverpool

(September 2004)

2

Abstract:

In ‘Munitions of the Mind: The British Press and the Second World War’,

Matthew Grant, drawing on theories from previous studies in the social

sciences and original historical research focusing on press coverage,

investigates the nature of British media-state relations during World War

Two. The author begins his investigation by providing a detailed overview

of the demands placed on the British government in its efforts to gain

widespread consensus over the reasons for war, maintain public support

for the government in how the war was prosecuted and maintain morale

amongst the population in the face of prolonged suffering. The author

makes the case that the government responded to these pressures by

establishing a system of propaganda which was made up of two main ‘sub-

systems’; The first of these he defines as the ‘System of Censorship’

established formally by government policy in the decade preceding war.

The second of these is defined as the ‘System of Voluntarism and

Dependency’ which, drawing primarily on the ‘mirror theory’ espoused by

Daniel C. Hallin, is based on an analysis that contends the press and

government are ‘intimately linked’ elite organisations that this close

relationship allowed for state control of the media to move from

censorship to the ‘threshold of lies’. Evidence of this propaganda system in

action is provided through a framework of research and analysis based on

previous work by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky. The author

applies this framework to the British press’ coverage of the London Blitz,

evacuation of Dunkirk, bombing of Dresden and the use of the atomic

bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to support his arguments regarding the

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nature and role of the propaganda system. He then concludes by looking at

how this area of both historical and social science research can be

furthered to develop understanding of media-state relations.

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Contents:

1. Introduction 5

2. The Need for State Control of the Media 8

3. The Propaganda System

3.1. An Introduction 15

3.2. System of Censorship 16

3.3. System of Voluntarism and Dependency 24

4. Proving Propaganda

4.1. The Work of Herman and Chomsky 34

4.2. The British as Victims 39

4.3. Enemy Victims 51

5. Conclusions 64

Appendix 66

Bibliography 73

5

1. Introduction

It would appear from the number of historical texts available on World

War Two that studies of the media and the British war effort have largely

focused on the roles of new forms of media such as cinema and the BBC.

American historians have produced significantly more historical texts with

regards to their own media’s role in World War Two but this again has

mainly focused on new media, especially cinema, and to a lesser extent the

personal stories of individual reporters such as Ernie Pyle. The academic

analysis of the role of the media in twentieth century conflicts has in fact

been primarily taken up by social scientists working in the fields of

communication studies, political science and sociology. These social

scientists have focused their attentions on the limited conflicts of the Cold

War era. Again, the eye of academia has had a tendency to focus analysis

on the roles of new media forms, in this case the issue taking centre stage

being the role of television and the US defeat in Vietnam.

Perhaps one of the reasons for the lack of focus on the role of the

media in World War Two, particularly that of the press, has been that there

is a tendency to think that this area of history is already written, if not in

print. World War Two was a total war; ‘a war that engaged the energies of

the whole nation.’1 The entire society was mobilized and affected directly

by the war unlike those that have followed.2 The totality of the Second

World War resulted in the British state having to bring the political

1 Mackay, R., Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 18 2 Hayes, N., and J. Hill, eds, 'Millions like us'? : British Culture in the Second World War

(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), pp. 3 - 4

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system, the economy and the media under its direct control. It was a move

that defined the whole nature of media reporting and coverage of the war.

And perhaps this is the crucial point in relation to the academic study of

the media and war; where as propaganda and state manipulation of the

media is largely accepted as a necessary and proven feature of nations

engaged in such a clear cut total war in which the ‘good of democracy’

was pitted against the ‘evil of totalitarianism’; the proceeding conflicts of

the Cold War were not viewed by many as morally just conflicts and were

limited wars not requiring the entire energies of the nation, and so the issue

of media state relations and the use of propaganda is a more contentious

one thus resulting in academic research of greater breadth and depth.

The role of the press in World War Two, as one of the oldest

media institutions operating in a conflict where the use of propaganda is

widely accepted by all, is perhaps to some historians and social scientists

largely seen as ‘old news’ in the field of research; there is perhaps a belief

it doesn’t need analysing or researching in great because the answers are

already there. Perhaps the view is that there are more important areas of

media research to be undertaken given the recent increase in direct

Western involvement in conflicts and the continuing debate over Vietnam,

the Falklands War and the first Gulf War? Certainly research by academics

such as Daniel C. Hallin, Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky has

primarily focused on Cold War conflicts such as Vietnam but as I will

demonstrate in this paper; the theories these academics have developed to

show how the media of democratic countries operate in limited conflicts

can also provide historians with new analytical tools to examine the total

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wars of the twentieth century, bring forth new understanding of how

countries such as Britain brought their media under control during these

times and to certain extent highlight the similarities and differences in

media practise during total and limited wars.

An assessment of the British press during the Second World War

drawing on theories developed by social scientists who have researched

and analysed the role of the US media during the Cold War has proved

particularly useful when looking at to what extent democracy was

suspended during 1939-1945; to what extent a historically independent

British media institution became directly manipulated by the government;

and to what extent did the press willingly cooperate in the dissemination of

propaganda. Historical research into this area has highlighted that media-

state relations during the Second World War was not entirely one in which

the government simply dictated to the media what events it should report

and how it should frame them. Rather it has underlined that during World

War Two, the dissemination of propaganda through newspapers was in

fact a collaborative effort between state and media. The state retained its

position as the senior institution in this partnership through a system of

censorship that allowed them to act as the main ‘gatekeepers’ preventing

stories deemed to be harmful from being published and keeping media

staff firmly under their control through laws that allowed them to sanction

anyone viewed to be harming the country’s interests. The media, as the

junior partner, shared the same interests as government in winning the war

and drew its staff from the same social grouping that the British state’s

political, economic and military elites drew from. This, in conjunction

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with a high dependency on political and military news sources, resulted in

supportive coverage of the nation’s leadership and consistent approval of

the war effort.

2. The Need for State Control of the Media

The official line of most films, TV documentaries, ceremonies and general

public remembrance of Britain during the Second World War is that only

through unity, through public sacrifice, through the bravery of the military

and through the steely determination and defiance of the entire population,

including the leadership, did Britain eventually become victorious against

German might. Whilst the accuracy of this remembrance of Britain is still

a hotly contested issue amongst academics and generally too controversial

to question amongst the rest of the nation, it is true that the entire country

would have been radically affected by defeat and so victory against Nazi

Germany and its allies was a collective goal.3 Without the cooperation of

the entire population it was, and generally still is, believed that a total war

could not be fought.4

From the research conducted it is clear that the role of the press

was primarily to maintain high public morale in the face of prolonged

attacks, gain consensus over the reasons for war and elicit support for the

ruling elites. The defining feature of press reporting was to maintain the

‘willingness of the mass of the people to share the leadership’s

3 S. L. Carruthers, The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth

Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 107 4 R. Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 18

9

commitment to winning the war and to bear the burdens that this entailed

over a period as long as or perhaps longer than the First World War.’5

The First World War, having only taken place approximately

twenty years before, was still etched on the memories of a high proportion

of the population. The First World War changed notions of what conflict

entailed. The romanticism of war and serving one’s country that had

motivated so many young men to take up arms and fight on faraway lands,

with the support and encouragement of there fellow citizens, had become

replaced by a ’bloody reality of war’.6 As Mackay observes in ‘Half the

Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War (2002)’:

‘There can be no doubt that in 1939 the people, in contrast to their

predecessors in 1914, had a fairly clear idea of what a major war would be

like.’7

Naturally there was a concern amongst the elites over whether the

British public would be able to endure another prolonged war and whether

the patriotism, self-sacrifice and determination demonstrated by the

masses during the First World War would be repeated.8 The First World

War had proved to be a trigger for political upheaval in several major

European countries including the rise of fascism in Germany, the collapse

of Austria-Hungary, genocide in Turkey and a communist revolution in

Russia.9 This fear over public aversion to future conflicts due to the

horrors of the First World War was compounded by the rightly held belief

that the nature of war had changed. The events of the thirties had

5 Ibid., p. 18

6 Ibid., p. 23

7 Ibid., p. 39

8 Ibid., p. 19

9 Ibid., p. 19

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demonstrated that aircraft was increasingly becoming a weapon of mass

destruction. There was a view amongst military planners and the political

elites that the Spanish Civil War had marked a change in warfare with

aircraft being used as a tool for military combat and crucially, for

destabilizing and spreading terror amongst the enemy population. It was

widely believed that Germany’s vast fleet of aircraft would bring

‘genocide from the sky’.10

The fears over civilian bombing were viewed as

an additional factor in making the public who remembered the First World

War even more hostile to further bloodshed; the public would not only

have to endure the death of their loved ones on foreign lands but face death

on their doorsteps.11

A 1924 Home Office report observed that:

It has been borne in on us that in the next war it may well be that

the nation whose people can endure serial bombardment the longer

and with greater stoicism will ultimately prove victorious.12

There were predictions that bombing of the capital would result in a crisis

with four million people fleeing London as refugees and the army, rather

than fighting on the frontlines, having to be deployed to prevent the

possibility of widespread civilian unrest.13

Other reports similarly

suggested that mass bombing of civilians would damage the war effort not

just through death and destruction but more importantly, in terms of

psychological damage to the populace. There were reports presented to the

Ministry of Health in 1938 that predicted the bombing of civilians would

cause ‘large scale hysteria and mental breakdown’.14

10

Ibid., p. 21 11

Ibid., p. 21 12

Ibid., p. 21 13

Ibid., p. 21 14

Ibid., p. 22

11

The government, aside from reports predicting civil unrest and

opposition to the war, could also point to the growth of organised pacifism

as evidence of the potential for a situation whereby they would be forced

to pursue peace at any costs so as to calm a population opposed to the

war15

. It was widely believed that the First World War would be ‘the war

to end all wars’ and after the weapons had been laid down there were

concerted efforts by sections of the public and even the government itself

to act on the belief that the mass slaughter of humankind could not take

place again. Several pacifist movements were created including the

Fellowship of Reconciliation, Canon Dick Shephard’s Peace Pledge Union

which gained 100,000 pledges to not fight another war and the League of

Nations Union which had over a million members by 1931.16

As the

prospect of war increased this pacifist movement grew substantially with

the League of Nations Union in 1935 launching a ‘Peace Ballot’ which

called on nations to engage in multilateral disarmament and seek to resolve

matters peacefully through the League of Nations. The ballot gained the

support of 11.5million people with nine out of ten who took part in the

vote supporting such a move.17

In addition to this there was the emergence

of the Labour Party as a major political party electing the staunch pacifist

George Lansbury to lead it.18

Twenty two of the party’s members also

released a manifesto in the early stages of the war calling for an early

armistice.19

Even amongst the young elites who would be called upon to

lead the military in a future war there was significant dissent with the

15

Ibid., p. 22 16

Ibid., p. 24 17

Ibid., p. 24 18

Ibid., p. 24 19

P. Knightley, The First Casualty (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003), p. 237

12

Oxford University Union, a traditional area for officer recruitment, voting

in 1933 ‘that this House will in no circumstances fight for its king and

country’.20

One must also not forget that the growth of pacifism was not

limited simply to the public; successive British governments had adopted

policies designed to prevent conflict almost at all costs with strong support

for the League of Nations and the policy of appeasement in its relations

with the German leadership.

The pacifist movement was not the only threat to public morale and

consensus over the war that the government so desperately needed.

During the twenties and thirties there had grown a number of political

movements that challenged the very existence of Britain as a unified,

liberal democratic, capitalist state. The most obvious rival political

ideology to the government was the British Union of Fascists. Given that

Britain faced invasion from a fascist government in Germany the existence

of the BUF was naturally viewed as potentially damaging to the prospects

of the nation uniting against the Nazis. One should also note that both the

Daily Mail and some Tory politicians were sympathetic to Nazi Germany

and had an admiration for Hitler as a strong leader.21

In addition there was

also the existence of the Communist Party of Great Britain which could

potentially provide the seeds for greater dissent particularly if the public

came to believe the forthcoming conflict was yet another war between

imperialist powers.22

Fears over extremist groups would have been

tempered by the fact the BUF could never claim more than 20,000

20

R. Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 25 21

P. Knightley, The First Casualty (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003), p.237 22

Ibid., p. 237

13

members and the belief that ‘the noise generated by the fascists in the

politics of the 1930s was out of all proportion to their numbers.’23

Similarly, the Communist Party’s membership never exceeded 17,000 and

the party only ever managed to secure just one seat in Parliament in 1935

with them too being dismissed as ‘outside Britain’s political mainstream; a

noisy, vociferous presence, but in truth little consequence.’24

It is clear that despite the fears, neither of these parties alone posed

a serious threat to existence of the British state; there was no chance that

Britain’s involvement in a war against Germany would result in the BUF

or the Communist Party having their leader stood on the doorsteps of

Downing Street as the nation’s new premier. However, the existence of

these parties and the small but significant support they had does point to

the fact Britain was a nation in which there was division and discontent.

Britain did not enter the war as a unified nation, marching as one to fight

the evil enemy. Many of the British lower classes who sacrificed so much

in the First World War had not seen immediate reward for their efforts.

Britain during the twenties and thirties had slipped from one economic

crisis to another. The country entered the war on the back of years of

unemployment and there was particularly a feeling amongst the

populations of Northern England, Wales and Scotland that they had

suffered most under the depression and were neglected by the

government.25

Support for the Communist Party was greatest within Wales

and Scotland with the Welsh having a large population of 135,000 miners

23

R. Mackay, Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World War

(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), p. 27 24

Ibid., p. 27 25

Ibid., pp. 27 - 28

14

represented through The Miners Federation under the leadership of the

communist Arthur Horner.26

In addition to this the only Communist Party

MP elected to parliament was voted in by the Scottish constituency of

West Fife in 1935.27

This feeling manifested itself not only in the support

for the Communist Party, but also in support for separatist movements who

advocated the break-up of the union and adopted pacifist policies with

regards to the prospect of war. The Scottish National Party came into

existence in 1934 calling for home rule and promoting a pacifist foreign

policy.28

They gained 16% of the vote but failed to take a seat in

parliament in the 1935 elections.29

Membership also never exceeded

10,000 people.30

Similarly, Wales also saw the emergence of a separatist

and pacifist political group in the form of Plaid Cymru. Members of the

group were involved in a number of incidents of militancy with the leader

Saunders Lewis being amongst three charged for an arsonist attack against

a RAF bombing school at Pen-y-Berth and subsequently being feted as

Welsh martyrs throughout Wales.31

Plaid Cymru also attempted to win

seats in Parliament but polled just 5.7% in the 1935 elections and recruited

no more than 2000 regular members.32

A further concern for the

government was the ongoing troubles in Northern Ireland where an anti-

British Catholic population resided and manifested itself in the IRA

terrorist organisation.33

All these groups offered challenges to the

26

Ibid., p. 28 27

Ibid., p. 28 28

Ibid., p. 29 29

Ibid., p. 29 30

Ibid., p. 29 31

Ibid., p. 28 32

Ibid., p. 28 33

Ibid., p. 30

15

government’s ability to unify and mobilize the nation for war with

Germany.

However, perhaps what concerned the government most was the

general discontent and low morale found throughout Britain’s poorest

areas. Towards the end of the thirties the depression had begun to lift but

this merely exacerbated the problems as gaps grew between the rich who

were getting back on their feet and the 1.25million people who continued

to suffer the hardships of unemployment.34

This is summarised by Mackay

in ‘Half the Battle: Civilian Morale in Britain during the Second World

War (2002)’ where he observes that:

Britain in the 1930s was a divided society. The faultlines lay

between those who were victims of Depression and those who

were spared its ravages; those whose living standards fell and lay

behind figures showing a rise in average real incomes and a rise in

average living standards… Mass unemployment meant that

millions suffered from poverty, bad housing, ill health and poor

nutrition. These were the losers in British society, people who had

little cause to feel they had a stake in it. Would they fight for it?35

3.1. The Propaganda System: An Introduction

It is clear there was a need for close media-state relations during the

Second World War; the British government could not simply assume that

the nation would willingly go along with their policies. The establishment

of the propaganda system was an essential part of broader efforts to

maintain morale, consensus over the war and support for government.36

If

we look at the propaganda system in relation to the print media we can see

that within it there are two ‘sub-systems’ that when working in

34

Ibid., p. 30 35

Ibid., p. 30 36

Ibid., p. 35

16

conjunction provided an effective system for media management. The first

of these ‘sub-systems’ can be described as ‘A System of Censorship’ and

describes official government action to manage the media where as the

second of the ‘sub-systems’ – ‘A System of Voluntarism and Dependency’

– describe how the existing close relationship between the media and state

as interdependent and elitist institutions aided management of media

output; what we could term as ‘unofficial propaganda’.

3.2. The Propaganda System: A System of Censorship

The limits on time and space confine this paper to a focus solely on the

press. However, one should also note that whilst this institution had one of

the highest audiences in the country it was the BBC that had the largest

audiences and therefore would naturally have been the main priority in the

management of the media.37

As such there are limits as to how

representative this study of relations between press and state is of media-

state relations in general. The BBC had an estimated audience of 34million

to 40million by 1944 and its evening news bulletin was reaching 43-50%

of the total population every day.38

The press’ role as the main

communicator of the news was taken over by the BBC who previous to the

war had been banned from reporting before 6pm so as to protect the

position of the print media.39

As a result of this, breaking news was

delivered by BBC radio and the press’ role altered from news announcer to

the provision of detailed follow-up news reporting that elaborated on radio

37

S. L. Carruthers, The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth

Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 81 38

Ibid., p. 81 39

Ibid., p. 81

17

reports and provided analytical commentary.40

A further point to consider

is made by Hayes and Hill in ‘'Millions like us?’: British Culture in the

Second World War (1999)’ where it is argued that. ‘The press entered the

war in many respect discredited.’41

The writers note that over the decade

previous to war it has been argued on several occasions by a range of high-

profile media personnel including a former editor of The Times, the editor

of the New Statesman and a former president of the National Union of

Journalists that the press had lost its democratic role as a political voice

that could question government, had become sensationalist and trivial in

its content and had a ‘cosy relationship’ with the Establishment.42

Despite

the criticisms made of the press, its increasingly changed (some would say

diminished) role and the rise of the BBC as the main news provider; the

importance of the press as a major media institution and mode of

communication between government and the people should not be

underestimated. The new media forms of radio and cinema did not end the

importance of the press; in fact circulations rose by a third during the war

with the tabloids gaining particular importance accounting for 70% of all

newspaper sales.43

The management of the press came under the broader heading of

managing civilian morale. The press was naturally but one facet of this

broader campaign to maintain public consensus and support the war effort.

The debate over how morale would be managed took place at least five

years before the first British guns began to fire; in 1936 the Ministry of

40

Ibid., p. 81 41

N. Hayes, and J. Hill, eds, 'Millions like us'? : British Culture in the Second World War

(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1999), p. 99 42

Ibid., p. 99 43

Ibid., p. 98

18

Information was organised with a staff of twelve members which increased

to just under a thousand in the first month of the war.44

A year before the

1935 Committee for Imperial Defence had made several decisions with

regards to managing the media which included the ‘the release of official

news; security censorship of the press, films and the BBC; maintenance of

morale; the conduct of publicity campaigns for other government

departments; and the dissemination of propaganda to enemy, neutral, allied

and empire countries.’45

The establishment of the MOI was born out of

the belief in the success of British propaganda used during the First World

War.46

The prospect of ‘total defeat’ or ‘unconditional surrender’, as was

the case in the First World War, meant Britain’s very right to self-

determination was threatened, this was not just a war based on limited

goals, but the very survival of nations as independent entities and so a

banning of press freedom, a managed propaganda system befitting that of

the very totalitarian regimes they were fighting against was necessary for

the so called ‘liberal democracies’ to remain just that. The 1938

Emergency Powers (Defence) Act was passed through parliament so as to

provide the government with the predominance felt necessary to direct

Britain to a total war victory. The new powers allowed the government to

do what it saw fit for the war effort without a constant reference to

Parliament; it could effectively rule by decree.

The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act bestowed the government

with the power to bring the entire media apparatus under its direct control.

44

P. Knightley, The First Casualty (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003) 45



Ibid., p. 75

19

The BBC as the publicly funded broadcaster was already heavily regulated

by government but the institutions of press and cinema lost their previous

freedom as relatively independent organisations. However, this is not to

say the government exerted the potential for control it had been bestowed

by the act; the government believing that there would be a public backlash

if they engaged in the telling of complete lies and instead opted for a

system of censorship that would filter out any broadcasts or publications it

considered harmful to the war effort.47

The very naming of the main

organisation responsible for management of the media as the ‘Ministry of

Information’ is telling of the government’s reluctance to acknowledge

press freedom was being restricted. This was in part because the

government had sold the war to the people as a struggle for the very

survival of their liberal democracy against a totalitarian menace, which

indeed it was. Nazi Germany was unashamed of its use of propaganda and

named its equivalent organisation the ‘Ministry for Popular Enlightenment

and Propaganda’ (RMVP)’. The British government wanting to maintain

its position as the antithesis of the enemy opted to set itself apart as having

a ‘Strategy of Truth’ rather than that of a ‘Big Lie’.48

Carruthers, writing in

‘The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth

Century (2000)’ notes that:

The MOI’s modus operandi thus contained a judicious mixture of

pragmatism and principle. It has often been repeated that the

MOI’s News Division aspired, in the words of Ivone Kirkpatrick,

to ‘tell the truth., nothing but the truth and, as near as possible, the

whole truth’. This was a suitably ambiguous aphorism, for in the

nature of total war (not least as prosecuted by a military which

would have preferred a policy of complete secrecy) the disclosure

47

Ibid., p. 87 48

Ibid., p. 56

20

of information was perhaps more often ‘as near as possible’ than

‘nothing but’ the truth.49

This policy was translated practically with the MOI becoming ‘both

conduit of news and suppressor of information’50

, acting as gatekeeper

between media institutions such as the press and the main sources of news

such as the military, politicians and the public in general. All press articles

on the home front were able to be filtered firstly through the Emergency

Powers (Defence) Act which stated everyone, including newspaper editors,

was to be prohibited from ‘obtaining, recording, communicating to any

other person or publishing information which might be useful to the

enemy’ with the threat of prison for those who disobeyed.51

In addition to

this the MOI secretly wired the communication cables for the Press

Association and Reuters offices into the same London Building and

intercepted all information removing that which it deemed damaging; the

MOI thereby prevented certain information from even arriving at the desks

of the press and left the rest to be published in their own styles thus

maintaining a façade of diversity.52

The Emergency Powers (Defence) Act also gave the MOI power to

censor every press, commercial, or private message entering and leaving

Britain, whether by mail, cable, wireless, or telephone.53

This was part of a

wider policy to maintain government control over events taking place on

the frontlines of the conflict. Information from the front lines was also

subject to rigorous gatekeeping first by the military and then by the MOI.

49

Ibid., p. 88 50

Ibid., p. 87 51

P. Knightley, The First Casualty (London: Andre Deutsch, 2003), p. 238 52


Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), pp. 88 - 90 53


21

The military withheld a great deal of information and restricted access to

the frontlines.54

The MOI in turn established a pool of filtered information

with which the print media based its new stories from and also set up a

system of accredited observers who could gain access to the frontline

under the supervision of the military.55

With regards to the army, all

newspapers were asked by the War Office to nominate journalists who

would accompany the BEF.56

These correspondents would then be vetted,

receive army training, be given uniforms and ‘be absorbed as smoothly as

possible into the army machine’.57

The British journalists going to the

frontline did so almost as soldiers under the direct supervision of the army

and therefore would naturally only be allowed to report on matters not

deemed as harmful to their fellow soldiers. Those who were viewed to be

acting independently were sent back to Britain.58

For example, O. D.

Gallagher was returned to London for complaining over the arrangements

made for correspondents and reporting on the incompetence of the officers

in charge of them. Gallagher’s editor was said to have believed him on the

reports but felt it could not be published on the grounds. ‘We can’t fight

the army in war time.’59

Another correspondent, Bernard Gray of the

Mirror, in the early stages of war commented on the lack of action by

reporting that. ‘An occasional shell removes the washing from the line.’60

He was accused of writing a ‘mischievous lie’ and returned home.61

It is

54



Ibid., p. 83 56


Ibid., p. 239 58

Ibid., p. 253 59

Ibid., p. 253 60

Ibid., p. 253 61

Ibid., p. 253

22

reported that the British army was suspicious of the media entourage and

that the officers charged with supervising correspondents ‘hated them’.62

The Royal Navy took an even stricter approach imposing a total ban on

correspondents working on their ships. There was a relaxing of rules

towards the later stages of the war but the Royal Navy’s approach to the

media still remained the strictest out of all the state institutions.63

Stories

sent over to Britain by correspondents on other allied ships were also put

on file until the end of the war effectively resulting in a news blackout

over the Royal Navy’s war effort. 64

The RAF was perceived to be much

friendlier towards the war correspondents and even offered a flight for

those travelling to France in the initial stages of the conflict. The army

threatened to not accredit any correspondents accepting the offer.

However, the Daily Express, Allied Newspapers, Reuters, and the BBC

took up the offer along with a number of American media companies.65

This demonstrates that not only was there inter-service rivalry but clear

tension between reporters and elements of the armed services.66

This

tension came to a head on a number of occasions with the government

having to send police to occupy press offices so as to stop reporting on the

British Expeditionary Force’s mission to France in 1939 and the British

press in turn berating the MOI for its heavy-handed tactics.67

Journalists with the allied forces from France were subject to even

stricter regulations than the British with the military officers developing a

62

Ibid., p. 242 63

Ibid., p. 244 64

Ibid., p. 244 65

Ibid., p. 244 66

Ibid., p. 244 67


Century (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000), p. 81

23

formal ‘system of handling correspondents’ whereby correspondents

dispatched to work with the French Army has to produce four copies of

every article and then had them dispatched first to army headquarters, then

to French general headquarters, then to a representative of the British MOI

in France and then to the British officer in charge of communications to

London; a process that took at least 48hours affecting the ability of the

newspapers to gain up to date newsworthy stories from the frontline. 68

This was a general pattern of the war as the primary research will show, all

news whether from the Home Front or the field of battle was released

slowly and took a minimum two days to go to print. As Carruthers notes in

‘The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth

Century (2000)’. ‘The worst was never told openly nor without delay.’69

A further aspect of the propaganda system applied to the British

press came not from Britain or its allies but from Germany. Germany had

seen its press subdued to will of the Nazi Government by 1939. German

correspondents had no freedom whatsoever and were very much agents of

the state; they were even required to fight on the front lines and

approximately 30% of them were killed – a figure similar to regular

German army personnel fatalities.70

The Nazi government also put in

place a strict system of censorship for neutral journalists working in the

country. Germany attempted to compete with the allies in its broadcasting

of stories from the frontlines of the war by providing photographs, reports

68





24

and newsreels back to the neutral correspondents in Berlin.71

The Ministry

for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda gave ‘friendly correspondents’

various special privileges including favourable exchange rates on

currency, extra rations, travel expenses and a country retreat fitted out as

the foreign media’s headquarters.72

The German government openly talked

of ‘freie Berichterstattung’; that is the ‘freedom of reporting’ but this

freedom was restricted through a similar system of censorship used by the

British government.73

Censorship of foreign correspondents in Germany

was carried out primarily through the privileges system. Correspondents

could in fact send off what they wished for publication. However, the

German government monitored every single article and those

correspondents that printed articles deemed ‘unfavourable’ had their

privileges removed, were denied access to the telephone so as to prevent

any further communications and in extreme cases, they could be arrested

on charges of espionage.74

An example of the fine line between being seen

to report the war and act as a spy for the enemy can be found in the arrest

and imprisonment of Richard C. Hottelet who was jailed for one month for

espionage before charges were dropped.75

3.3. The Propaganda System: A System of Voluntarism and

Dependency

Clearly there was a need to enact a system of propaganda to maintain

public morale, support and consensus over the war. And as we have seen,

71

Ibid., p. 240 72

Ibid., p. 240 73

Ibid., p. 240 74

Ibid., p. 240 75

Ibid., p. 240

25

the government responded to this need with a whole range of measures

including a propaganda system centred primarily on filtering news stories

from the press that could be damaging to the country’s war effort. It is

argued that this censorship policy was framed in the context of not

jeopardising the nation’s security or aiding the enemy’s military campaign

whilst comment and opinion should be free.76

However, as I will prove

through the primary research, the broader propaganda system actually

went beyond this. As Carruthers argues in ‘The Media at War:

Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth Century (2000)’:

The ‘whole truth’ was sometimes lacking, but on occasion sins of

omission and of approximation (as ‘near as possible the truth’)

were surpassed by ‘stretching of the truth to the threshold of

lying’77

The author argues that in particular this was the case in the portrayal of

bombing of civilians as ‘strategic’ rather than in human terms.78

Without doubt a key feature of the Second World War was that

boundaries became blurred over who was a legitimate target and who was

not. If a society was fully engaged in total war then the entire society

became a target in the war effort and so there was an end to previous

distinctions between ‘combatants’ who were legitimate targets and ‘non

combatants’ who had traditionally been seen as morally and technically

beyond the reach of the weapon.79

Britain and its allies engaged in the

same bombing of civilian targets that the Nazis and its allies engaged in.

However, as the ‘good of democracy’ it was difficult for the British to

76



Ibid., p. 89 78

Ibid., p. 55 79

Ibid., p. 55

26

admit this to its population particularly as it had spent great efforts in

condemning the attacks on its civilians as the true mark of the ‘evil of

totalitarianism’ and using this to further mobilize its own people. As such,

the bombing of enemy civilians was portrayed as a strategic military action

in that it was said to target the infrastructure that were directly supporting

the enemy’s war effort. The term ‘strategic bombing’ suggests a technical,

impersonal military procedure but in fact it often acted as a euphemism for

the deliberate targeting of enemy citizens. As Carruthers notes in ‘The

Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the Twentieth

Century (2000)’:

In total war, achieving ‘total victory’ was held to consist of both

demonstrating one’s military supremacy and effecting the enemy’s

mental surrender. Consequently, to marshal and maintain morale

on one’s own side, and attack the opponent’s, ‘munitions of the

mind’ were an integral part of total war. Mass media received their

call-up along with other vital wartime industries.80

The primary research I have conducted and will detail later in this

paper highlights that the press never referred to civilian bombing as just

that and followed the government line that it was ‘strategic’. Clearly a

reason for this was the system of censorship put in place by the British

government and the limited access journalists reporting from enemy

territories would have had to areas that had suffered from civilian

bombing. However, it is my belief that this move from censorship to the

‘threshold of lying’ was in fact part of a wider system of propaganda that

social scientists studying the media, and in particular the academics

studying Vietnam, will assist us in highlighting. First if we look to work

on the Second World War by social scientists such as Carruthers we see

80

Ibid., p. 55

27

that she too in ‘The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the

Twentieth Century (2000)’ has argued there was, in addition to the system

of censorship, the existence of an integrated ‘system of voluntarism’.81

With the system of censorship dealing with any anti-war, anti-government

elements of the media through censorship, we can assume that the

remaining majority of press would have been no different than the

majority of the public in feeling that it was their patriotic duty to ensure

the survival of the British state which in turn raises the question of whether

there was self-censorship and even co-operation in ‘stretching of the truth

to the threshold of lying’ by newspaper editors.82

Furthermore, if we look to the work of Daniel Hallin in ‘We Keep

America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and the Public

Sphere (1994)’ we can find a convincing theory, established from his

studies of the US media and its coverage of the US government’s

involvement in the Vietnam War that can partly answer this question.

There is a belief that the Vietnam War was the first conflict to endure the

full impact of televised coverage and that the visual nature of this media

supported by correspondents operating freely on the ground had a

damaging effect on public support for the war. This in turn lead to the US

having to making an early retreat from Vietnam and resulted in

accusations that coverage of the Vietnam War by the media (particularly

that of television) was the key factor in the USA’s ‘defeat’. The

proponents of this argument accuse the media of betraying their country

but one should view it more as a need to shift blame from politicians,

81

Ibid., p. 88 82

Ibid., p. 56

28

senior figures in the United States army and other elite figures onto a

scapegoat.

The view that it was the journalists who lost the war is explained

by Carruthers in ‘The Media at War: Communication and Conflict in the

Twentieth Century (2000)’ where she notes that:

The journalists who covered the war from the ground in Vietnam

have been copiously criticised: by politicians, the military, and

certain of their colleagues. Sometimes older versions of the young

men who toured Vietnam with notebook in hand have passed

highly critical retrospective verdicts on their younger selves.

Indeed, ‘orthodox’ critics often regard youthfulness as one root of

media irresponsibility in Vietnam, for cub journalists had

something to prove – a name to make – and the easiest way to do

so was by being critical of authority.83

This blame of the Western media was also voiced by powerful political

figures such as Ronald Reagan who attacked the ‘liberal press’ for its

alleged role in eroding away public support for Vietnam and by senior US

army figures such as General Westmoreland who argued that the media

was to blame for the defeat due to its ‘no holds barred, misleading, and

defeatist reporting’.84

However, there is also a persuasive counter-

argument to the above beliefs put forward by academics such as Daniel C.

Hallin who argue there is an ‘intimate institutional connection between the

media and government’ and that this resulted first in uncritical coverage of

the conflict but later resulted in much more critical reporting.85

Hallin

contends that the US media were heavily dependent upon official sources

during the Vietnam War and that this in combination with a journalistic

profession that values neutrality highly lead to a situation where the news

83

Ibid., p. 109 84

J. P. Kimball, ‘The Stab-in-the-Back Legend and the Vietnam War’, Armed Forces and

Society, 14 (1988), p. 440 85

D. C. Hallin, We Keep America on Top of the World: Television Journalism and the

Public Sphere (London: Routledge, 1994), p. 43

29

simply mirrored the views of the US elite.86

Hallin highlights the

behaviour of journalists by stating in ‘We Keep America on Top of the

World: Television Journalism and the Public Sphere (1994)’, that.

What is most striking about the modern American news media, if

one compares them with the media of other historical periods or

countries, is their commitment to a model of journalism which

requires disengagement from active political involvement and

assigns to the journalist the relatively passive role of transmitting

information to the public. Studies of the socialization and

professional ideology of the modern American journalist have

consistently confirmed the centrality of the ideal of a politically

neutral press.87

The writer argues that the media only began to present more critical

viewpoints of the war to the public when events on the frontlines lead to

certain members of the elite taking critical viewpoints themselves. It is his

belief that whilst there was an increasingly oppositional media after the

Tet Offensive which could be linked to the ‘stab-in-the-back’ theory; it

was in fact a combination of journalists aiming to be objective and a high

level of dependency on elite sources, of which many had become

oppositional, that led to more critical media coverage.88

Hallin contends that the events of the Tet offensive created a

domino effect which first caused dissent amongst the political elites over

US intervention in Vietnam, this dissent was then mirrored in the media

and that in turn the critical coverage permitted existing public opposition

to government policy to be moved into the ‘Sphere of Legitimate

Controversy.’89

This theory is explained in detail by Hallin in ‘The

86

Ibid., pp. 43 - 44 87

Ibid., p. 47 88

Ibid., p. 43 89

D. C. Hallin, The Uncensored War: The Media and Vietnam (Berkeley CA; London:

University of California Press, 1989), p. 110

30

Uncensored War (1986)’ where on discussing television coverage he

argues that.

Television coverage was highly dependent both on official sources

in Washington and, probably even more importantly in the early

years of the war, on military sources in Vietnam. As for ideology,

television contained little of the articulated geopolitical world view

that the Times had invoked to explain American intervention in its

early phases. Ideology appeared instead in a complex set of

conventions for talking about the war, conventions which, like the

more articulate level of ideology employed by the Times, had the

effect of putting the war beyond what I shall refer to as the ‘Sphere

of Legitimate Controversy’. In the early years of the war, roughly

up to the Tet offensive, these forces were powerful enough that

television coverage was lopsidedly favourable to American policy

in Vietnam.90

Hallin goes on to highlight the difference in post-Tet offensive coverage

and its impact on public opinion noting that.

Later television’s portrayal of the war changed dramatically, and

there seems little doubt that it must have contributed to the

growing feeling of war-weariness in the later years of the war. But

television’s turnaround on the war was part of a larger change, a

response to as well as a cause of unhappiness with the war that was

developing at many levels, from the halls of the Pentagon, to Main

Street, U.S.A and the fire bases of Quang Tri Province.91

It could be argued that it was not the practise of journalists that had the

greatest impact on the outcome of the war but the lack of consensus

amongst elites and their subsequent influence upon the media and the

public.

This theory expressed by Hallin over US media-state relations in

Vietnam War can provide a reader of British media-state relations in the

Second World War with some important insights when trying to decipher

the propaganda system put in place. First of all, we can state that the

British elites had to unified over the need to win the war, the lack of

90

Ibid., p. 110 91

Ibid., p. 110

31

consensus over Britain’s role in the 2003 Iraq War that could be seen

amongst society from top to bottom would have been devastating to the

war effort had it occurred during the Second World War. As I have already

stated, given the fact the entire nation was involved in a total war and that

more specifically, that total defeat would most likely remove the elites of

their power, status and material wealth, it is understandable that media

elites would have naturally supported the political elites in the war effort.

One can then also highlight that the British press is an industry based on

profit and has to consider relations with other industries, with the people

who buy their newspapers and with the states they operate in order to

survive and thrive.92

The owners and senior figures within the press were

drawn from the same upper classes that other industrial elites and the

political elites are drawn from which in turn leads to the ideas and beliefs

expressed in the press being ‘consonant with the ideas of the controlling

groups in an industrial-capitalist society, because news is an industry with

its own commercial self-interest’.93

In addition, there was a noted regular

interchange of personnel between government and the media organisations

preceding and throughout the war94

with 43 journalists being employed

directly by the MOI.95

This is a factor in news reporting highlighted by

linguist Roger Fowler who argues in ‘Language in the News: Discourse

and Ideology in the Press (1991)’ that:

Because the institutions of news, reporting and presentation are

socially, economically and politically situated, all news is always

92

R. Fowler, Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press (London:

Routledge, 1991), p. 20 93

Ibid., p. 2 94




32

reported from some particular angle. The structure of the medium

encodes significances which derive from the respective positions

within society of the publishing or broadcasting organizations.96

In relation to the Second World War we can argue that the majority of the

elites were unified in their aim to fight a prolonged total war against Nazi

Germany and its allies. The primary research has highlighted that despite

the belief new reports were government managed whilst comment and

opinion was left free; the comment and opinion expressed in the paper was

consistently in support of the political elites. Whilst censorship removed

anti-war and anti-government elements and acted as a ‘big stick’ to

safeguard the government from damaging reports; the fact the press was

owned and managed by the people from the same elites and were equally

as threatened by a Nazi invasion as the rest of the elite acted as a ‘carrot’

in that all had a shared interest in Britain being victorious in war and

avoiding a total defeat. Furthermore, without any major dissent within the

elites over the need for war and how the war was to be fought there was no

room within the ‘Sphere of Legitimate Controversy’ for anti-war or anti-

government beliefs. This is evident in the absolute silence of the press over

a highly critical speech on government bombing policy made by Bishop

Bell on 10 May 1941 to the House of Lords.

In keeping with Hallin’s ‘mirror theory’ it is also clear that the

dependency of the press on official sources acted as a further element in

maintaining the wider system of propaganda. The sources with which the

press bases its stories naturally affects the content which goes to print.

There are a number of regularly used sources which journalists are

96


Routledge, 1991), p. 10

33

dependent upon for their articles. These include parliament, councils,

emergency services, courts, royalty, regular events such as conferences,

government departments, public services, the military, political parties,

prominent people such as bishops and companies.97

There is obviously a

need to interview the public and include them in stories so as to provide

‘personalization’ but in general it is ‘official authority’, social status or

‘commercial success’ to which the press refers to.98

As I have explained,

the correspondents on the frontlines were very much under control of the

military who in turn were under the control of the government. The very

nature of a total war resulted in the existing dependency on official sources

(that even exists within the media today) becoming exaggerated. The

effects of this reliance on elites sources are detailed by Fowler in

‘Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press (1991)’

where he notes that:

The political effect of this division between the accessed and the

unaccessed hardly needs stating: an imbalance between the

representation of the already privileged, on the one hand, and the

already unprivileged, on the other, with the views of the official,

the powerful and the rich being constantly invoked to legitimate

the status quo.99

Whilst the primary research will go into more detail, a classic example of

the reliance on official sources and its effects can be viewed in the Bethnal

Green tube disaster. The disaster, which claimed 178 lives, took place on

the 3 March 1943 and was the result of a panicked rush to gain shelter

from predicted bombings. The news reports, published two days later on 5

March 1943, were framed as newspaper articles but based entirely on an

97


Routledge, 1991), p. 21 98

Ibid., p. 22 99

Ibid., p. 22

34

official statement which claimed ‘there was no panic before the accident

on the stairs’ taking an alternative view that the disaster started ‘when a

middle-aged woman burdened with a bundle and a baby, tripped near the

foot of the flight of nineteen steps which leads down from the street.’100

In addition to the shared interests of the elites who ran both the

political and media institutions we can conclude our discussion on the

propaganda system established in the Second World War by stating that

the reliance on official sources by the press, which was exaggerated by the

very fact Britain was fighting a total war, heightened further the

representation of the political elites views in the press. The system of

censorship provided safeguards against damaging reports and the systems

of voluntarism and dependency ensured reporting would be favourable and

mirror the views of the government; at times to the ‘threshold of lying’.

4.1. Proving Propaganda: The Work of Herman and Chomsky

Having explained in great deal the exact nature of the propaganda system

established in Britain during the Second World War; the next step is to

offer real evidence of this in practise. First however, one must define what

it means to look at the propaganda system in practise. The reader should be

aware that this paper does not address the effects of the propaganda system

on the audience but rather looks at how the propaganda system manifested

itself in media output; namely that of the press. The challenge for the

political elites was to mobilize an entire nation to fight a total war; a nation

of which many had already experienced bloodshed first hand in conflicts

100

‘Government Statement on Shelter Accident’, Daily Mirror, 5 March 1943, p. 1

35

and of which many felt they had no stake in due to the hardships of over a

decade of economic depression. The elites who ran the press shared the

same desires and to a certain extent took it upon themselves to co-opt and

mobilize the masses who would take up the arms, fly the planes, work in

the factories and generally form the backbone of the war effort; without

them defeat was certain. As a result, whilst the press would want to

continue to ‘legitimate the status quo’ with a heightened deference for

those perceived to be the leaders of society; there also had to be a shift in

news reporting to incorporate new ideas of oneness and of an almost

classless inclusive society in which each member played an important role

and would reap the rewards from in the future. This as we shall see, was

one of the most distinctive features of the primary research along with the

efforts to maintain morale and consensus. The media personnel not just

complied with the system of censorship but in fact contributed to the entire

system of propaganda by actively selecting news stories, editorial

commentary, language and even photographs that embodied the new

collectivist spirit. The newspapers aided the government in constructing a

new ‘social reality’ that was beneficial to the elite who required the entire

nation to fight a prolonged total war. This constructed ‘consensual model

of society’, of a nation ‘pulling together’ and of ‘one nation’, has been

recognised by linguists as the language typical of nations in crisis with

politicians and the media joining together to express such desires.101

Fowler in ‘Language in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the

Press (1991)’ contends that the ‘consensual model of society’ is expressed

101



36

by the press through the pronouns “we” and is used to express collective

qualities such as patriotism and fortitude.102

The writer then goes further to

argue that the counter-product of this is that ‘in practise it breeds divisive

and alienating attitudes, a dichotomous vision of ‘us’ and ‘them’.’103

The portrayal of the ‘us’ and ‘them’ by the media is an issue

covered by Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky in ‘Manufacturing

Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media (1994)’. Edward S.

Herman, Professor Emeritus at the Wharton School of the University of

Pennsylvania, and Noam Chomsky, Professor at the Department of

Linguistics and Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,

have conducted a radical study of the US media and its portrayal of Cold

War events including the US Wars in Indochina, the passage of the North

American Free Trade Agreement and other world events that involved the

US government. Their research entitled ‘Worthy and Unworthy Victims’

provides a useful framework with which to assess the media’s participation

in war. Clearly, there are other areas of the war that one could look at for

propaganda but this study provides a suitable framework for this paper,

which due to limits on time and space, requires a very specific and focused

approach.

The authors begin their research by stating that an effective

propaganda system will systematically portray the victims of states defined

as ‘enemies’ as ‘worthy victims’; that is worthy of the reader’s grief, anger

and opposition to the perpetrating state.104

In contrast to this, those people

102

Ibid., p. 16 103

Ibid., p. 16 104

E. S. Herman, and N. Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the

Mass Media (London: Vintage, 1994), p. 37

37

who become victims as a result of their own government or its allies

actions will be treat as ‘unworthy victims’ in that they are reported in an

amount of detail and a style that does not provoke grief, anger and

opposition towards the perpetrators or simply denies the perpetrators are

responsible.105

The writers demonstrate this theory by comparing the

murder of the Polish priest Popieluszko in October 1984 with the murder

of priests and other religious workers in Latin American states at that time.

The first comparisons made are based on a quantitative study of press

articles in which coverage of the Popieluszko murder is compared

numerically to the murders of priests and nuns by US-backed military

juntas in Latin America. The authors conclude from the study that:

The coverage of the Popieluszko murder not only dwarfs that of

the unworthy victims, it constitutes a major episode of news

management and propaganda. Nothing comparable can be found

for victims within the free world.106

This is an interesting and effective method of providing evidence of a

propaganda system in action. However, it is one that is both costly on time

and space; something that as mentioned previously, the limits of this paper

prevent. An equally effective and more viable tool that the researchers

offer for proving propaganda is found in the second part of this study.

After conducting the quantitative analysis the writers move onto a

qualitative analysis of their sources focusing on a number of aspects of

press coverage to draw comparisons. Using the same case studies, the

writers apply methods known to historians as ‘discourse analysis’ and note

that the reporting of ‘worthy victims’ consists of the following features:

105

Ibid., p. 37 106

Ibid., p. 38

38

1) ‘Fullness and reiteration of the details of the murder and damage

inflicted on the victim’: The repetition of the gruesome details of

the murder and the emphasis on the ‘human story’ involving the

emotions of victims. i.e. The fact Popieluszko was said to have

pleaded in fear for his life.107

2) ‘Stress on indignation, shock and demands for justice’: Extensive

use of quotations and assertions of outrage from non-official

sources such as the population ‘continues to mourn’ and ‘public

outrage mounted’. Focus of attention on angry protestors, people in

mourning and memorials.108

3) ‘The search for responsibility at the top’: The constant questioning

of ‘how high up was the act known and approved’.109

4) Terminology used to demonize the enemy: A focus on editorials

and their use of terminology to express those deemed as

responsible. i.e. use of terminology such as ‘thuggery’,

‘shameless’, and ‘Murderous Poland’ in condemning the

communist government of Poland.110

Herman and Chomsky then go onto look at ‘unworthy victims’ and argue

that the reporting of these was the complete opposite of ‘worthy victims’

noting that. ‘The drama is there for the asking – only the press concern is

missing.’111

The writers use the 1977 murders of Father Rutillio Grande

and Archbishop Oscar Romero by the El Salvadoran military junta as

examples of this. They argue that in contrast to the Popieluszko there was

107

Ibid., p. 42 108

Ibid., p. 43 109

Ibid., p. 44 110

Ibid., p. 44 111

Ibid., p. 45

39

clinical reporting with very few quotations from their supporters, no

editorials, no questioning of government involvement (despite clear

evidence showing this) and very few details on the precise details of their

deaths.112

The writers conclude that:

The coverage of the worthy victims was generous with gory details

and quote expressions of outrage and demands for justice, the

coverage of the unworthy victims was low-keyed, designed to keep

the lid on emotions and evoking regretful and philosophical

generalities on the omnipresence of violence and the inherent

tragedy of human life.113

To demonstrate the British propaganda system established in World War

Two, I have followed the same line of inquiry that Herman and Chomsky

use by collating a range of sources that focus on the British as victims and

then comparing it to a range of sources that focus on the German, Italian

and Japanese victims caused by Britain and its allies. The sources used are

taken from the main national newspapers published in Britain during

World War Two and focus primarily on the ‘defining events’ of the

conflict; these include the London Blitz, Dunkirk, Dresden, Hiroshima and

Nagasaki. These sources have been analysed using discourse analysis

techniques, taking the work of Herman and Chomsky as an example and

expanding upon it.

4.2. Proving Propaganda: The British as Victims

The London Blitz is etched on the national memory as a time of bravery,

defiance, self-sacrifice and gritty resistance against the ruthless actions of

the enemy. This remembrance of the event is a continuation of how the

112

Ibid., pp. 46 - 55 113

Ibid., p. 39

40

event was portrayed at the time by the media. As with each case study; my

studies are not focused on entering the historical debates over these events

but rather an attempt to look at how certain truths were prioritised, selected

and refined for press attention and how others truths were ignored. As

historian Angus Calder notes in his text ‘The Myth of the Blitz (1992)’, the

aforementioned bravery, defiance, self-sacrifice and gritty resistance is not

a ‘fable’ but rather a selected view of a broader picture on which ‘an

ancient traditional story of Gods or heroes’ has grown.114

The author notes

that:

My case for applying the word (myth) to the Blitz is that the

account of that event, or series of events, which was current by the

end of the war has assumed a ‘traditional’ character, involves

heroes, suggests the victory of a good God over satanic evil, and

has been used to explain a fact: the defeat of Nazism115

This myth or legend has been covered by other writers who also argue that

the London Blitz was misrepresented both then and now. Knightley in

‘The First Casualty (2003)’ is one such writer; he argues that the

traditional legend of the Blitz centres on the idea that. ‘Cockneys

wisecracked as their streets disappeared in a shower of rubble, while the

old and the children marched off to air-raid shelters singing “Bless ‘Em

All.’116

This portrayal of the London Blitz denies the victimhood of those

involved and misrepresents the whole truth; that this was a traumatic

human event and as such displays all the complexities of humanity. In

addition to stories of bravery, self-sacrifice, people pulling together there

was another story; one that points ‘to panic, to horrified revulsion, to post-

114

A. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London: Pimlico, 1992), p. 2 115

Ibid., p. 2 116


41

raid depression, to anti-social behaviour.’117

Mass observation reported at

the time that there were ‘people panicking, people in despair’118

and even

instances of looting.119

Furthermore there was a class divide with regards

to victimhood, a point Knightley highlights in his work:

The Blitz was not the great social leveller. The protection a

Londoner got from German bombs depended on how much money

he had. When the sirens sounded, residents of the Dorchester went

down into the basement, where a neat row of cots, some labelled

with their owner’s names, offered a safe refuge and even the

possibility of sleep. All-night shelter was offered as part of the

service at most expensive West End restaurants. In the East End,

however, thousands crowded into stifling, insanitary shelters.

Yielding to public pressure, the authorities allowed Underground

stations to be used, but many of these became terrible slums, foul

with the smell of urine, excrement, sweat, carbolic, and unwashed

bodies.

The pressing issue is whether this reported by the press at the time of the

London Blitz. If we look at articles from the main newspapers at the time

we see that there was no reporting of such negative aspects of the human

experience of the Blitz.

First, there was a strong focus of framing the event as a universal

experience. This was carried out to reinforce the idea the nation was

standing as one against the enemy and to create a classless sense of

solidarity amongst the population. Editorials and commentary, the

elements of newspapers that were claimed to be free of government

intervention, were at the heart of this portrayal. The working-class

readership of the Mirror on 14 September 1940 would have read an

editorial that addressed directly rumours that the enemy bombs were

117


Ibid., p. 119 - 120 119


42

mostly affecting the lower classes. The editorial contends under the

heading of ‘All Alike’ that:

In certain quarters, noted for abject meanness, forcible-feeble

attempts have been made to suggest bombs have been allowed to

fall upon the poor; and obligingly diverted from the prosperous. It

is true that the rich can escape from the danger zone, while often

the poor cannot. But the damage done to “rich quarters” of

London, and typically, symbolically, to the King’s Palace, shows

that, as rain falls upon the just and unjust, so the Hitlerian louts

scatter their explosives upon the rich as well as upon the poor. In

this battle, danger and suffering ought, for the time at least, to unite

us all.120

Whilst acknowledging some difference in experience of bombing across

the classes, the article clearly puts forward the message of a nation at one.

This viewpoint was echoed by the middle-class Daily Express which on 9

September 1940 published an editorial entitled ‘We are all one’ in which it

talks of ‘the nation’ and the ‘same race of people’ making every effort to

deal with the effects of German bombing.121

The news reporting also

followed a similar line of thought with the working-class Daily Herald

reporting the bombing on 11 September 1940 with the headlines ‘The

Blitzkrieg Spreads: Raids on London – And on Tiny Villages: Another

Hospital Hit’122

The Daily Herald by framing the attacks in this context

suggests that there is unity between countryside and town in its suffering.

This message is emphasized with an adjacent picture shown in fig.1 above

which the caption reads. “Downhearted? was Mr Churchill’s question to a

crowd in a bombed area. This was their answer -.” The picture shows a

crowd of smiling faces with their thumbs up to show high spirits, unity and

defiance. In these reports we see the press not just ignoring the negative

120

‘All Alike’, Daily Mirror, 14 September 1940, p. 5 121

‘We are all one’, Daily Express, 9 September 1940, p. 4 122

‘Downhearted?’, Daily Herald, 11 September 1940 p. 1

43

aspects of the Blitz experience but actively seeking to emphasize the

positive aspects.

Where as the victims of enemy states in Herman and Chomsky’s

study were described in full details so as to provoke anger, indignation and

mourning amongst the reader, the emphasis in British press reporting of

victims of the Nazi state focused on positive aspects of the Blitz

experience. To maintain morale the newspapers did not go into great detail

of how victims died and instead focused on positive human stories of

hope. For example, the Daily Mirror printed a feature on 12 September

1940 entitled ‘Bombs fell as a baby was born’ which details the work of

nurses Sister I. Beere and Sister M. Allfrey who risked their lives to help

mothers give birth during the bombing raids. The stories rely entirely upon

quotes from what is termed as a ‘casual conversation’ with those involved

and as such are framed as the humble heroics of those working on the

ground. This is demonstrated by the opening paragraph:

A nursing sister tending to a woman giving birth to a baby, with

bombs dropping all around the tall block of a tenement flats.

Another racing to safety through the night in an ambulance with a

mother and two-hour-old baby while the explosions almost shook

the wheel from the driver’s hands… That is how maternity nurses

are carrying on through the raids.123

Another story printed in the Daily Telegraph on 10 September 1940 details

the deaths of an Australian nurse and other victims of the bombing. The

article, despite its tragic subject matter, is framed positively with the

headline ’15-Hour fight for life’ and focuses on the struggle to rescue her

and others under the collapsed building. Despite the nurse dieing

apparently of shock from the air raid sirens after her rescue, the article

123

‘Bombs fell as a baby was born’, Daily Mirror, 12 September 1940, p. 6

44

speaks of how other patients who had been seriously injured ‘met their

misfortune with magnificent spirit’ adding that ‘as the medical staff,

students and other helpers hurried in the darkness to their assistance the

patients sang.’124

What we see from these stories is an attempt to in fact divert the

attention from the idea Britain is a victim through positive stories that

speak of self-sacrifice of one citizen for another and a message of defiance

and resilience against the enemy. This is a clear attempt by the press, on

behalf of the government, to prevent a drop in morale amongst an under

siege population and to emphasize the ‘model of consensual society’. If we

look at some of the commentary of the time we see this in practise with the

Manchester Guardian arguing in its editorial on the 13 September 1940

that:

The British character has great and visible flaws, but it happens to

be well suited to this kind of strain. The Germans cannot

understand grim resolution which is not due either to fanaticism or

to blind obedience.125

What we see in this extract is quite significant as a notably liberal and

potentially oppositional newspaper, whilst tempering its views with

comments on the ‘great and visible flaws’ of the British, actively expresses

that resilience is a key British trait. The press reinforced this message with

commentary cartoons that focused on the ‘defiant cockney’. If we look at

fig. 2 to fig. 6 we see some very clear examples of this both in the

broadsheets and tabloids. What is noticeable is that the warrior-like

resisters are depicted always as male. Another noticeable feature of the

124

’15-Hour fight for life’, Daily Telegraph, 10 September 1940, p. 1 125

‘The Spirit of London’, Manchester Guardian, 3 September 1940, p. 4

45

Daily Mirror cartoons reproduced in fig. 4 and fig. 5 are that these two

images, printed one day after the other, present two significant messages

of defiance. The first, baring a striking resemblance to communist artwork

involving the worker rising up in rebellion, depicts an angry working-class

cockney male standing defiantly amongst the rubble again exemplifying

what it means to be an ideal citizen; this is then reinforced the next day

with a light-hearted, high-spirited Churchillian caricature bouncing back

which implies that the country’s political leaders are also standing strong

on behalf of Britain.

The defiance portrayed by the press is an attempt to deny

victimhood; where as the press reporting on the Popieluszko aimed to

create ‘Stress on indignation, shock and demands for justice’ by detailed,

negative coverage of the Polish priest’s murder, the British press during

the Second World War, fearful of damaging morale and legitimising

opposition to the war effort, had to take a more complex approach to

reporting. Whilst wanting to build the concept of ‘one nation’ and mobilize

the masses against the enemy, it did not want to exaggerate the great sense

of loss many would have already felt. The approach they took to reporting

was one of ‘victory in defeat’ emphasizing defiance, selecting positive

human stories of hope and framing civilian deaths as positively as

possible. A key to the origins of this can be found when looking at the

reporting of the Blitz by the Daily Express on the 9 September 1940 in

which the headline, accompanied by a large photo shown in fig.7 of people

working together, writes ‘This was the East End’s Dunkirk.’126

Another

126

‘This was the East End’s Dunkirk’, Daily Express, 9 September 1940, p. 6

46

example of this can be found in a Daily Express article entitled ‘The

Cockneys are in it’ which opens with the sentence. ‘The civilian

population is taking its Dunkirk.’127

These reports were not on their own,

regularly the press would invoke the ‘Spirit of Dunkirk’ and use it as an

example of how the British were having an indirect victory through their

response to the German onslaught.

The New York Times, writing on the events of Dunkirk, noted that:

So long as the English tongue survives, the word Dunkirk will be

spoken with reverence. For in that harbour, in such a hell as never

blazed on earth before, at the end of a last battle, the rags and

blemishes that have hidden the soul of democracy fell away. There,

beaten but unconquered, in shining splendour, she faced the

enemy.128

The events of Dunkirk certainly provided the government and press with

an unprecedented challenge. The evacuation of 338,200 troops in the face

of an advancing German army was described by Churchill as a ‘colossal

military disaster’ and lead Anthony Eden to remark that it signalled ‘the

end of the British Empire’.129

Clearly in the early stages of war this

military defeat and subsequent retreat was in many ways the ultimate ‘bad

news story’ for a nation that had only just entered the war. There was a

real risk that this retreat could be so damaging to public morale that

instead of the public showing gritty defiance and determination to fight on;

a mood of defeatism and resignation could have set in resulting in the

government having to sue for peace. Historians, whilst recognising the

bravery of those involved with Dunkirk, have noted that as with the Blitz,

this was a human event and as such to follow the traditional line of defiant

127

‘The Cockneys are in it’, Daily Express, 9 September 1940, p. 1 128


Ibid., p. 252

47

Britain pulling together in unison to save their brave soldiers is to neglect

the complexities of the experience. As Knightley notes in ‘The First

Casualty (2003)’:

It is worth looking at Dunkirk, because it became the first great

myth of the Second World War, perhaps the greatest, the origin of

the “Dunkirk spirit” that many believe was crucial to victory, and

the way it was reported at the time was a major factor in

establishing this myth.130

If we first look at research on Dunkirk we see that aside from the much

remembered positive story of the event, there is a negative story that has

largely gone unnoticed. First if we look at the use of ‘little ships’ to aid the

evacuation we see that there are now claims that these were largely

ineffective. Calder in ‘The Myth of the Blitz (1992)’ argues that whilst

there is truth in the idea that civilians were integral to the evacuation, their

contribution was to man large passenger ferries rather than small craft.131

The idea of the little ships aiding military vessels was much documented in

the press at the time and is even now held as the ‘true story’ of the event.

The ‘consensual model of society’ was embodied in the reporting of

Dunkirk just as it was in the London Blitz. Perhaps the greatest story of

Dunkirk is that of the little ships taken over the channel by private owners

who wanted to help the British and French forces trying to escape the

continent. It epitomizes the idea of the underdog nation pulling together

for a collective goal; the idea that the contribution of one person can fuel

great achievements when working in unison with others. The Times

reporting on the 6 June 1940 provides a good example of this by first

noting that;

130

Ibid., p. 252 131

A. Calder, The Myth of the Blitz (London: Pimlico, 1992), p. 97

48

It was made possible by two things – the action of the Admiralty a

few weeks ago in taking a census of all small craft throughout the

kingdom and the enthusiastic response from all yachtsmen and

amateur seamen generally to the call for volunteers to man them.132

And then going further to note;

Nobody made difficulties. The only complaints came from those

boat-owners who could not themselves get on board in time to go

in their boats. One of them, whose boat had been taken in his

absence, telephoned to say that there was a good store of old

brandy on board, which he hoped troops had discovered.133

In these reports we see the paper highlight both the efforts of the military

elites and the lowers classes as vital for the success of the evacuation. We

also see the use of a human story in the reporting of a boat owner who was

left behind but rather than being concerned about the possibility he could

be annihilated by the attacking Germans, rang those on the boat to let them

know about his brandy. The political cartoons of the time echoed this

opinion with the Daily Express on the 5 June 1940 printing a picture

shown in fig. 8 entitled ‘All in the day’s work’ in which a private sailor is

first viewed helping a tourist on board his ship in a picture entitled ‘Then’

and then in the second picture entitled ‘Now’ we see the same private

sailor helping a solider on board a ship whilst bombs reign down. The

Daily Herald’s political cartoon highlighted in fig.9 follows a similar line

on the 3

June 1940 with it printing a picture titled ‘Look Hitler!

Dissension!’ in which six soldiers from various forces and nationalities are

viewed pointing a circle to one another calling each other a hero to

demonstrate unity amongst the Allied forces.

132

‘The small craft at Dunkirk’, The Times, 6 June 1940, p. 4 133

Ibid., p. 4

49

As with the claims over the use of ‘little ships’ there were also a

claim that all the returning British soldiers wanted to do on returning home

was to go back and fight. Again, historians have disputed this version of

events by arguing there was drunkenness and violence amongst some of

the troops, paralysing fear amongst some senior officers and even

incidences of dispirited soldiers throwing away their rifles in protest at

what they saw as the incompetence of senior military figures.134

Knightley

argues in ‘The First Casualty (2003)’ that:

It would be wrong to suggest that in the face of the disaster of

Dunkirk an organised campaign now began to change the

evacuation into a victory. But the newspaper reader of the day

would certainly be forgiven for thinking that something wonderful

has happened to British fortunes in the war.135

Knightley is correct to a certain extent in that there wasn’t an ‘organised

campaign’ of lies. However, we can be sure that had there been any critical

coverage of the events of Dunkirk, the system of censorship would have

prevented it from being published. Furthermore, we should also note that

the correspondents reporting on Dunkirk had already been evacuated to

Britain and so their perspective was from the south-east ports where the

troops landed which again would limit their ability to report on the

incidents of chaos and fear reported on the French coast as the troops

waited for evacuation.136

However, this does not explain the blanket reporting of the event in

such a positive context. The Daily Mail reporting on 31 May 1940

headlined its article on Dunkirk with a quotation from a soldier saying ‘All

We Want is Another Go’ and then went onto note:

134


Ibid., p. 252 136

Ibid., p. 253

50

I met and talked to many of the B.E.F men as they landed from

their rescue ships. I spoke to more, with their comrades of the

R.A.F and Navy as they reached London. Let me tell the story

from the moment of the first shiploads of tattered, mud-stained

men steamed into the shelter of England. Even the wounded – and

there were many – were, like their fathers of the last war, still

smiling and ready to joke. Most of the jokes I heard veiled a grim

intention. The theme of them all was the B.E.F’s readiness even

after days of gruelling fighting under the most heartbreaking

circumstances, to have “another go at Adolf.”137

Other reports followed a similar vain with the Daily Herald going further

and stating in its editorial on 3 June 1940 entitled ‘Out of Defeat’ that.

‘Thus by a strange trick of war, the surrounded British and French Armies

have snatched a superb moral victory out of a great military defeat.’138

As

with the Blitz there was also the selection of positive human stories to

boost morale and set an example to all of what was required of the average

British citizen. The Daily Express on 5 June 1940 ran a feature entitled

‘Unknown Dunkirk Hero Rescues 81 – Shouts “Goodbye”’139

The story,

written entirely in quotation marks, is said to be taken from a letter written

by soldiers returning from Dunkirk. The focus of the story depicts ‘a hero

who saved eighty-one men from almost certain death’ before being killed

by an enemy bomb.140

The article is a moving one and we should not get

into disputing such heroism without evidence. However, we should ask

why this story was picked over others; clearly the answer is because it

embodies the values of the time; the values the government required of its

people in order for it to be victorious.

137

‘All We Want is Another Go’, Daily Mail, 31 May 1940, p. 1 138

‘Out of Defeat’, Daily Herald, 3 June 1940, p. 6 139

‘Unknown Dunkirk Hero Rescues 81 – Shouts “Goodbye”’, Daily Express, 5 June

1940, p. 5 140

Ibid., p. 5

51

As with the Blitz, the proof of propaganda comes from what didn’t

get reported; the sheer neglect of the complexities of this human event is

evidence that a system of media management was in place. There is also

proof of propaganda in the relentless framing of reports as positive through

the use of human stories and editorial commentary. Fowler in ‘Language

in the News: Discourse and Ideology in the Press (1991)’ on speaking of

editorial comment argues that:

They have an important symbolic function, seeming to partition off

the ‘opinion’ component of the paper, implicitly supporting the

claim that other sections, by contrast, are pure ‘fact’ or ‘report’.141

There was no such distinction between these in press coverage of the war.

We see that through news reports and commentary, the press in both

Dunkirk and the Blitz portrayed British victimhood as close to a victory as

it could; there was glory an victory to be had in suffering and defeat.

4.3. Proving Propaganda: Enemy Victims

The model of reporting on ‘worthy victims’ as described by Herman and

Chomsky was not adhered to with reporting of Dunkirk or the Blitz in that

there was no ‘fullness and reiteration of the details of the murder and

damage inflicted on the victim’. However, if we look at both events we

can see that there were ‘demands for justice’ and a ‘search for

responsibility at the top’ that are representative of the confusion over how

to present the enemy to the people. The MOI’s stated policy towards the

enemy aimed ‘by the dissemination of truth to attack the enemy in the

141



52

minds of the public’.142

McLaine in ‘Ministry of Morale: Home Front

Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War Two (1979)’

contends that:

In war it is almost axiomatic that the peoples of the combatant

nations must be taught to hate each other. This applied to Britain

no less than it did to Germany in the Second World War.143

Integral to the Ministry of Information’s plans to maintain morale was the

need to make the population feel that fighting a war against Germany was

necessary and worth the suffering and struggle; the masses had to feel that

pacifism would cause greater hardship than militarism. As such the

portrayal of the enemies in the media came to be viewed as key to

mobilizing the nation.144

This clearly was not such a hard task given the

nature of the German, Japanese and Italian leadership. However, the

assessment of the MOI in the run up to the conflict was that.

The middle classes – ‘still not mentally at war’ – had to be

convinced that the Germans intended to rob them of their incomes

and culture; the professional classes ‘told of refugee professional

men, of they having been hounded and put to menial tasks – like

washing dishes and cleaning lavatories’; and shopkeepers,

businessmen and industrial workers disabused of the idea ‘that

things might go much the same way under Hitler’145

In addition to this, there is evidence that Britain saw itself as a defender of

a Western Civilization based on justice, freedom and democracy with the

Christian faith at its core.146

This can be viewed at its most prominent in

The Times editorial for 14 September 1940 where it is noted that:

At the present moment, when the stuff that our people are made of

is tested to the uttermost, what is needed is those qualities which,

142

I. McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information

in World War Two (London: George Allen and Unwin 1979), p. 137 143

Ibid., p. 137 144

Ibid., p. 143 145

Ibid., p. 144 146

Ibid., pp. 150 - 151

53

while they could not fairly be claimed as exclusively Christian, are

yet in their highest manifestation characteristic of the Christian

spirit. The strength that belongs to a unified and noble directed

personality; the courage that is able to face disaster and tragedy

without loss of faith: the hope that can survive disappointment, and

the shattering of one’s life purpose, the love that can persist and

never give way to bitterness or cynicism no matter what demands

are made upon it – these are the gifts of the divine spirit.147

This tensions between the just free Christian democratic nation against

both the natural emotions of journalists caught up in the war experience

and the aims of the MOI to mobilize the nation for a ‘fight to the death’

was played out in press reports and as we shall see, resulted in a consistent

confusion over two issues:

1) Whether the Nazi leadership was solely to blame or the entire

German people.

2) The need to maintain Britain’s image as the just nation against the

desire for revenge against the enemy.

If we begin with the first point, we see that the MOI decided, after

at first making distinction between leader and people, that ‘there can be no

distinction between a German and a Nazi’.148

The evil of Nazism was to be

portrayed as a manifestation of an evil people. However, this was not

represented clearly in the press. For example, the Daily Mirror editorial

entitled ‘Retribution’ published on 1 February 1943 displays this tension

clearly by firstly arguing that:

Hitler is the satanic architect of that ghastly edifice; the Nazis are

his skilled, ardent workers; and the German people, as a whole,

have admired and applauded the structure as they saw it rise stage

by stage. The war is the greatest crime in history, and there is no

147

‘The Christian Ideal – Strength through Suffering’, The Times, 14 September 1940, p.6 148

McLaine, I. Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information

in World War Two (London: George Allen and Unwin 1979), p. 146

54

other way to deal with the criminals than by subjecting them to a

discipline sufficiently hard to render them harmless in future.149

Here we see at least ambiguity in relation to whom the newspaper regards

as the ‘criminals’ requiring ‘discipline’ if not the implication that the

whole of Germany is at fault and warrants British justice to be meted out

to it. This confusion is continued in a political cartoon published at a later

date by the Mirror on the 15 February 1945 and included in fig.10; the

paper attempts to discuss retribution by placing a caricature of a German

soldier labelled as ‘German People’ and ‘The Stupid Tool of Fascist Hate

and Propaganda’ in front of a British judge who is captioned as saying.

‘Better surrender – we’ve condemned the murderers – not their dupes!’150

It would appear there is an attempt to draw a distinction between a leader

and its people whilst implicitly blaming both by the very fact the German

soldier is placed in front of the judge and therefore is viewed to be on trial.

This debate over retribution and whether it should be delivered to

the whole people or solely its leaders leads to the second point. If we

return to immediately after the onslaught of the Blitz, we see that in the

heat of victimhood there were clear demands by the press for vengeance to

be wrought upon the enemy. On 9 September 1940 the Daily Express

ended its editorial by stating quite simply that. “This nation will live yet to

show its power and its just vengeance.”151

Other articles display less

restraint with the Daily Herald, in its report on the bombing of Hamburg

shortly after the London Blitz, running a headline stating ‘Nazis squeal as

149

‘Retribution’, Daily Mirror, 1 February 1945, p. 7 150

‘Better surrender – we’ve condemned the murderers – not their dupes!’, Daily Mirror,

15 February 1945, p. 2 151

‘We are all one’, Daily Express, 9 September 1940, p. 4

55

RAF sets invasion coast ablaze’152

The article then goes further to add that

bombing was a ‘dose of their own medicine.’153

Here we observe the press

not only make it clear that vengeance is being served but also imply that

the Nazis are pigs and through their fearful squealing display the opposite

reaction to the brave British lions. Another article featured in the Daily

Express on 9 September 1940 continues in the same vein by arguing that

the ‘dirty brutality’ of Germany will be returned in kind with ‘righteous

hate’.154

In this we see the tension on full display with the report

conforming to the ‘worthy victims’ model in that it uses terminology to

demonize those responsible and seeks to call for revenge; however, there is

the significant inclusion of the term ‘righteous’ to suggest the response

will be just and deserving. This contradiction is also displayed in the Daily

Mirror editorial on 10 September 1940 which first muses;

What is the answer to Hitler’s fierce assaults upon London?

Assaults that are obviously indiscriminate; assaults that have for

their main purpose the terrorisation of hundreds of thousands of

helpless civilians? Is the answer to tell Hitler, in calm and stately

tones, that never do we intend to be so low and so vile? Or is it to

do one thing that the Nazis understand – to carry an equivalent

terror into their foul nests?155

In this part of the editorial the answer to the questions is found in the

terminology with the use of terror bombing viewed to be ‘low and vile’ in

comparison to alternative methods which are described as ‘calm’ and

‘stately’. The editorial goes further to state that. ‘We tell our bombers to

return with their bombs – if they fail to find their appointed targets!’156

152

‘Nazis squeal as RAF sets invasion coast ablaze’, Daily Herald, 19 September 1940, p.

1 153

Ibid., p. 1 154

‘The Bully’, Daily Express, 9 September 1940, p. 4 155

‘Terror for Nazis’, Daily Mirror, 10 September 1940, p. 5 156

Ibid., p. 5

56

Again we see the editorial take the view that terror bombing is

unacceptable. However, what is most striking is that the very same

editorial finishes with a discussion on how best to protect Londoners from

the onslaught and concludes that. ‘Better than all the very limited

protection we can provide is the carrying of terror into the loathsome land

which the wild beast Hitler has formed in his own image.’157

What we see

here is an astonishing turn around with the writer directly connecting

Hitler to the land which he leads and furthermore, suggesting that terror

bombing should be returned to Germany.

It is understandable that having experienced the trauma of the

Blitz, people across the country would have felt a strong desire for

revenge; and those working on the newspapers would not have been

immune from this. This is the reason that immediately after the London

Blitz there were calls for vengeance and an openly expressed satisfaction

that the British bombers are fighting back. Throughout the war, 900,000

German civilians died as a result of British bombing; this paper is not

going to make a moral judgement on whether this was ‘right’ but rather

consider how the British government and press portrayed it to the people.

Certainly, if we start with the remembrance of Bomber Command we see

that they have in many ways become the forgotten warriors of World War

Two. This is highlighted by Calder in ‘The Myth of the Blitz (1992)’

where he observes that:

Bomber Command had to be left out of the Myth of the Blitz, or

mythology would have ceased to be efficacious. The heroism of

the British under bombardment was quasi-Christian – its great

symbol, after all, was St.Paul’s dome flourishing above the flames.

157

Ibid., p. 5

57

The Myth could not accommodate acts, even would-be acts, of

killing of civilians and domestic destruction initiated by the British

themselves.158

In the early stages of war as Britain faced relentless attack, it was viewed

as important by the government that the public were made aware that

British bombers were returning attacks on Germany. However, as the war

progressed and the victory of the British and its allies became less of a

faint, distant hope and more of a realistic goal, there appears to be a

change in tact. With the myth of the crusading Christian nation159

against

the satanic Hitler fully established it would have been hard, despite a

deliberate campaign to bomb civilians in full place, to admit that one of the

practises cited as reasons for hating Hitler were being mirrored by the

British government.

The bombing of Dresden is a classic example of this in practise. If

we look to the reporting of the bombing campaign on this German city, a

bombing campaign widely accepted by most historians to be

indiscriminate and more destructive than the atomic bombings, it is clear

that the tension over how to portray the bombing continued. Furthermore

we see that the reliance on official sources resulted in a reinforcement of

the official government line that Dresden was a strategic military target

and a wilful ignorance of the reporting of German civilian casualties. The

reporting across all newspapers of Dresden framed the city strictly as a

strategic target. The following extracts exemplify this;

158


I. McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information

in World War Two (London: George Allen and Unwin 1979), p. 152

58

Dresden had become the chief supply base for the German

defences west of Silesia. Now, the Dresden artery is severed.160

(Daily Express)

As the menace to Berlin grew last night, reports from both Allied

and German sources told how Dresden, planned by the Germans as

a “substitute” capital, is dying.161

(Daily Express)

The great industrial town of Dresden is of immense value to the

enemy as a base for the defence against Koniev’s armies.162

(Manchester Guardian)

The town, one of the largest industrial cities in Saxony, is

described by the Air Ministry as a “very important base for the

defence of Eastern Germany.”163

(Manchester Guardian)

It was to rob the Germans of two priceless centres of

communications that Dresden and Chemnitz were heavily bombed

last week by Bomber Command and the American Eighth Air

Force. 164

(Observer)

British and American bombers have struck one of their most

powerful blows at Dresden, now a vital centre for controlling the

German defence against Marshal Konev’s armies advancing from

the east.165

(The Times)

That damage is being done to her communications and her oil –

different aspects of the same thing. When she most needs mobility,

we are most powerfully armed to deprive her of it. Dresden

showed Allied strength applied to that end. It was the railway

centre of operations against Koniev’s drive west of the Oder.

British and American forces jointly reduced that centre.166

(Sunday

Times)

In addition, fig. 11 depicts a Daily Mirror cartoon printed on 16 February

1945 entitled ‘Combined Ops’ that further reinforces the bombing of

Dresden as a precise strategic attack with the ‘Terrific Allied Air Blitz’

being shown to work in combination with the Russian hammer blowing

160

‘Great Rhine – Dresden Blitz’, Daily Express, 15 February 1945, p. 1 161

‘Dresden – bombed to atoms’, Daily Express, 16 February 1945, p. 1 162

‘Triple Raid on Dresden’, Manchester Guardian, 15 February 1945, p. 4 163

‘Allied bombers strike south-east of Berlin’, Manchester Guardian, 16 February 1945,

p. 5 164

‘Bombers rob Germany of ‘HQ Cities’’, Observer, 18 February 1945, p. 7 165

‘Smashing blows at Dresden’, The Times, 15 February 1945, p. 4 166

‘Allied bombing power has been trebled’, Sunday Times, 18 February 1945, p. 7

59

two Nazi leaders into the air. What we can also observe from the short

extracts above is that, in accordance with Herman and Chomsky’s

‘unworthy victims’ model, we see a reliance on clinical, emotion-less

reporting with the effects of bombing being described by the Sunday

Times as having ‘jointly reduced that centre’167

and the Daily Express

reporting that the ‘artery is severed’.168

This was a distinct feature of the

reporting on the bombing of Dresden and as we shall see, of other

devastating attacks on enemy civilians. The Daily Telegraph reporting on

15 February 1945 described the attacks on Dresden as ‘one of the greatest

assaults of the war.’169

The article goes further to focus on the scale of the

attack repeating official statements that include the number of air crews

and planes used.170

The framing of the report focuses on the attacks as an

achievement due to its sheer scale. Other reports follow a similar line with

a Sunday Times report on 18 February 1945 focusing entirely on the

technical aspects of bombing arguing that the use of ‘better bombs’ has

resulted in an improved ‘combination of blast and fire-raising’ and the

introduction of a ‘technique of accurate bombing’.171

Again the framing of

the attacks is that of an achievement. The mention of a large civilian

presence appeared in a very small number of articles but actual damage to

the population was not mentioned at all except for just one small article

entitled ‘Bombing Policy Stated’ again appearing in the Sunday Times on

18 February 1945 which reported a denial by government officials that the

167

Ibid., p. 7 168

‘Great Rhine – Dresden Blitz’, Daily Express, 15 February 1945, p. 1 169

‘3,650 Allied Planes in Non-Stop Blows’, Daily Telegraph, 15 February 1945, p. 2 170

Ibid., p. 2 171

‘Allied bombing power has been trebled’, Sunday Times, 18 February 1945, p. 7

60

military were using terror bombing.172

These articles could be a result of a

lack of access to Dresden and the system of censorship. However, the

mention of the plight of civilians in Dresden in an article by the Observer

on 18 February 1945 reports that:

Units of the civil administration driven from many parts of eastern

Germany also need the time and the places in which to reorganise.

They are now struggling with the most desperate situation that has

ever faced German government officials. They have a million or

more refugees to shelter, feed and clothe.173

The article does not mention civilian casualties at the hands of the Allied

air attacks but rather frames the plight of civilians as the making and

responsibility of the German government.

The atomic bombing provides further evidence of the British

propaganda system in practise. With the reporting of this event there was

an acknowledgement of civilians deaths but the framing of them as a

consequence of poor Japanese leadership, a dependency on official

sources, and the use of positive stories to divert attention from the negative

aspects of the new technology. The reporting of the atomic bombing of

Hiroshima and Nagasaki focused very much on the advent of a weapon

that the War Department, quoted in the Daily Express on 7 August 1945,

described as ‘a revolutionary weapon destined to change war, or which

may even be the instrumentality to end all wars’.174

In this statement we

see the War Department place emphasis on the positive potential of the

new weapon. This focus on the positive was reflected in the news reports

which in turn viewed the weapon as a dangerous, but potentially

beneficial, technology. The editorial cartoon entitled ‘The Sinking Sun’

172

‘Bombing Policy Stated’, Sunday Times, 18 February 1945, p. 1 173

‘Bombers rob Germany of ‘HQ Cities’’, Observer, 18 February 1945, p. 7 174

‘Blast felt 300 miles from bomb test’, Daily Express, 7 August 1945, p. 1

61

featured in fig.12 highlights this opinion of the press. Here we see ‘allies

atomic energy’ sinking a stereotypical caricature of a Japanese man behind

the rays of the Japanese flag which are drawn to imply they are the

tentacles of a monstrous octopus. One should also note the use of ‘energy’

rather than ‘bomb’.175

Other editorial cartoons take a similar view focusing

on the positive development of technology with fig. 13, taken from the

Daily Mail on 9 August 1945, depicting a scientist flicking away the same

stereotypical caricature of a Japanese man with the caption ‘Out of my

way!’. The framing of the atomic bomb as a positive technical

development with great potential at times bordered on the ridiculous with

the Daily Mirror publishing an article on the 8 August 1945 entitled ‘Atom

Scientists may turn Britain into a Land of Sunshine’.176

The report lists the

following possibilities of the new technology:

Weather.– Our climate could be made warm and sunny.

Land.– New warm continents may be opened up in the Arctic

and the Antarctic.

Labour.- There would be less toil for hundreds of thousands of

miners, transport workers, dockers.

Transport.- Quicker and cheaper.

Coal and Petrol.- As obsolete as charcoal.

Motor Cars.- The future motor car designer will not now have

to take into account the weight of the engine. More

comfortable and roomier cars can be built.177

Given the manner in which it was introduced to the general

populace through the devastating attacks on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the

atomic bomb inevitably had to be recognised for its destructive

capabilities. This recognition came naturally as soon as the reports filtered

through over the bombing. However, any discussion on civilian casualties

175

‘Out of my way!’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1945, p. 5 (fig. 13) 176

‘Atom Scientists may turn Britain into a Land of Sunshine’, Daily Mirror, 8 August

1945, pp. 4 - 5 177

Ibid., pp. 4 - 5

62

was muted through the fact the correspondents were not reporting at

ground level and thereby reliant on official sources. As such the reports

were based totally on quotes from the Allied military personnel involved

in the attacks. For example, the Daily Telegraph reporting on 8 August

1945 headlined its article ‘Eye-Witness Story of the Atomic Bomb’ and

focused upon the pilots efforts to drop the bomb.178

Other newspapers such

as the Daily Express reporting on 7 August 1945 headlined its front page

with ‘The bomb that has changed the world’ with the leading articles

focusing first briefly on the destruction of Hiroshima before a focus on

how the bomb was designed and a statement from Winston Churchill titled

‘In God’s mercy we outran Germany’.179

What we see from this headline

and the proceeding article is that the suggestion the technology had been

entrusted upon the allies by God. The political cartoon shown in fig. 14

demonstrates this view perfectly with the Daily Mail printing its editorial

cartoon showing a female labelled ‘science’ bearing resemblance to the

Statue of Liberty holding up the ‘trophy of atomic energy’ away from

small gremlin-like men labelled with ‘potential Hitler’ and ‘militarisis’.180

If we think of the political cartoons from the Blitz and Dunkirk we see the

resister and warrior as a male and in this the character of peacemaker is a

female; this issue requires more space than this paper can give it but it

provides an interesting line of inquiry for future research. Other news

reports, editorials and political cartoons published by the press mirror echo

the view of the bomb being placed in humane hands, going further to even

178

‘Eye-Witness Story of the Atomic Bomb’, Daily Telegraph, 8 August 1945, p. 1 179

‘In God’s mercy we outran Germany’, Daily Express, 7 August 1945, p. 1 180

‘For adults only’, Daily Mail, 8 August 1945, p. 5

63

suggest that the Japanese had in fact brought the disaster upon themselves

and should be held responsible for the deaths of their civilians under the

bomb. The Daily Express reporting on the 9 August 1945 noted that:

Though Tokyo has broadcast to the whole outside world the horror

of Hiroshima, obliterated by the world’s explosion, it has said not a

word to the people at home. The “Tommy bomb,” as the American

pilots have named it, has according to Tokyo “seared to death”

every living thing, human and animal in a city of 244,000 people.

Unofficially, the death toll is put at 150,000, but Tokyo says it is

impossible to give any reliable estimate. Washington regards the

horror broadcasts as an attempt to set off world-wide revulsion

against “such inhuman assaults”. Japan is seen clutching the same

straw as Germany futilely attempted to grasp – the hope that public

opinion would become so aroused that America would be forced to

discontinue atomic and other types of bombing against “innocent

peoples.”181

Editorials continued in a similar vain attempting to portray the bombing as

a just attack and hold the Japanese leadership responsible for the death

wrought upon them. The Daily Telegraph editorial published on 10 August

1945 writes:

The Tokyo warlords’ virtuous indignation with the American

people at the devastation wrought should impose upon no one: yet

both in America and here there have been protests which deserve

to be considered against the “inhumanity” of the atomic bomb’s

great destructive power. No one, indeed, can reflect without horror

on the consequences, but a like horror must be felt at the suffering

inflicted by any form of warfare and by all weapons... Should the

Americans have denied themselves the use of the atomic bomb and

permitted the Japanese to prolong their massacres and struggle for

ill-gotten gains at an immeasurable cost in American, British and

Chinese lives? That would not have been humane. True humanity

consists in the use of power for peace among men of good will.182

If we refer back to Herman and Chomsky’s ‘unworthy victims’ model we

see that just as the media shifted blames for the deaths of the Latin

American priests and nuns from those directly connected to it; so did the

181

‘Japs open radio sympathy plea’, Daily Express, 9 August 1945, p. 1 182

‘Will to war’, Daily Telegraph, 10 August 1945, p. 4

64

press with the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people living in the

Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

5. Conclusions

At the beginning of this paper I set out at an agenda to provide an

assessment of the British press during the Second World War and

contribute to a larger debate over the nature of the propaganda system

established by the government during 1939-1945 and to what extent

democracy was suspended during this period. Whilst the evidence selected

has been specific and to a certain extent restricts a definite answer to these

issues; we can conclude that in its efforts to defeat totalitarianism, Britain

had to embrace some features of totalitarianism itself. Clearly this

admission is counter-balanced with the argument that for the ‘good of

democracy’ this was ultimately necessary. The press at the time conceded

this and expressed this view to a public, who would not have been

completely unaware as to the restrictions on press freedom and other

aspects of the propaganda system in action. The Daily Express writing in

its editorial ‘No Hitlerism here’ on 7 June 1940 argues that:

“Now we have given absolute powers to our Government given

them of our own free will, so that Hitlerism cannot happen here.

We give Hitler’s powers to Churchill because Churchill will not

use them like Hitler. We know that Churchill will give us back our

liberty, but that Hitler would not – not for a thousand years.”183

Since 1945 there has not been a total war fought but the myths of World

War Two disseminated by the press largely have. Likewise there has been

a re-invoking of the values of the Second World War both by politicians

183

‘No Hitlerism here’, Daily Express, 7 June 1940, p. 4

65

and the press; values of self-sacrifice, one nation, freedom and democracy.

In this we see that whilst the system of censorship was largely dismantled

after World War Two, the system of voluntarism and dependency has

arguably continued.

66

Appendix:

fig.1: ‘Downhearted?’, Daily Herald, 11 September 1940 p. 1

fig.2: ‘Yes, but wait until you see the other fellow!’, Daily Herald, 16

September 1940, p. 2

67

fig.3: ‘Impregnable Target’, Manchester Guardian, 12 September

1940, p. 6

fig.4: ‘And we can STILL take it!’, Daily Mirror, 10 September 1940, p. 5

68

fig. 5: ‘You can’t keep a good man down!’, Daily Mirror, 11 September

1940, p. 5

fig.6: ‘Blind fury’, Daily Express, 10 September 1940, p. 4

69

fig.7: ‘This was the East End’s Dunkirk’, Daily Express, 9 September

1940, p. 6

fig.8: ‘All in the day’s work’, Daily Express, 5 June 1940, p. 4

70

fig.9: ‘Look Hitler! Dissension!’, Daily Herald, 3 June 1940, p. 6

fig.10: ‘Better surrender – we’ve condemned the murderers – not their

dupes!’, Daily Mirror, 15 February 1945, p. 2

71

fig.11: ‘Combined ‘ops!’, Daily Mirror, 16 February 1945, p. 2

fig.12: ‘The Sinking Sun’, Daily Express, 11 August 1945, p. 4

72

fig.13: ‘Out of my way!’, Daily Mail, 9 August 1945, p. 5

fig.14: ‘For adults only’, Daily Mail, 8 August 1945, p. 5

73

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74

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75

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76

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munitions of the mind: the british press in the second world war

Documents

surrender

christian

home front

east ends

positive human

prolonged

manchester

daily telegraph