Global Security and Intelligence Studies Volume 5, Number 1, Spring / Summer 2020 | Page 42

Global Security and Intelligence Studies
Germany. These papers, appearing to
be from Nazi resisters, worked to discredit
Hitler. The OSS also used radio
broadcasts that appeared to come from
within Germany in order to convince
the enemy that they had more resistance
within the country than they
expected (Little 2016). One branch,
the Morale Operations (MO) branch,
headed up most of the undercover propaganda
campaigns with the intent of
inducing fear, confusion, and distrust
among the enemy. The MO and their
British equivalent, the Political Warfare
Executive, distributed rumors by word
of mouth, radio broadcasts, and leaflets.
Some of these rumors stated, “high-level
Nazi leaders had been captured or
had surrendered to the Allies” (Central
Intelligence Agency [CIA] 2010). They
also sent anonymous letters, called
“poison-pen letters,” to the families of
German soldiers. These letters consisted
of both death notices and letters describing
how the soldiers died due to
shoddy doctors. The letters intended
to cause families to hate their own side,
believing them incompetent.
Another method to erode support
for the adversary involved the use
of doctored photos. Back before Photoshopped
images online called into
question whether something was “fake
news,” the OSS suggested distributing
postcards of Hitler that would make
him an object of ridicule. The OSS proposed
ideas like Hitler dressed as a male
ballet dancer, Hitler dancing with children,
and Hitler dancing with an obese
woman (Friedman 2003). The purposes
behind ridiculing the enemy are to raise
morale back home, strip the enemy of
mystique/prestige, erode the enemy’s
claim to justice, and reduce the idea
of the enemy as invincible; depending
on the culture, ridicule can be seen as
a fate worse than death (Waller 2006).
The OSS sought to undermine Hitler’s
efforts by weakening his support among
the population.
In addition to spreading fear,
confusion, and distrust, the Allied forces
also engaged in MILDEC activities
such as Operation Mincemeat. Operation
Mincemeat is one of the wellknown
MILDECs from WWII and it
highlighted how one must understand
the adversary in order to fool them.
When the Allies planned to invade Italy
via Sicily, they were concerned that this
was too obvious of a plan and that Germany
and Italy would be able to anticipate
and counter their efforts. In order
to create a path of less resistance, the Allies
created a disinformation campaign
that led to the German forces believing
the invasion would come from further
east. The Allies accomplished this with
a dead “military officer” planted where
Axis forces could find the body. On the
“officer’s” body was false identifying
documents and paperwork implicating
an Allied invasion occurring at the false
location. The Germans and Italians fell
for the plan, allowing for a safer invasion
of Sicily (Knighton 2017). This
plan involved knowing which populations
would be sympathetic to the Axis
forces, the susceptibility of the enemy
to believing the source documents, and
a lack of contradicting information.
A more suspicious adversary may not
have fallen for this clever trick. Much
like the use of the Trojan Horse, Opera-
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