Military Review English Edition May-June 2016 | Page 64
To Respond or Not
to Respond
Addressing Adversarial
Propaganda
Lt. Col. Jesse McIntyre III, U.S. Army, Retired
G
erman political and military leaders attribute Germany’s defeat in World War I in
part to Allied propaganda efforts and the
failure of Germany to effectively counter them.1 By
the spring of 1917, Germany was reeling from propaganda activities. Indeed, in May 1917, senior German
officials met to outline a plan to combat the demoralizing effects of the Allied propaganda effort.2 The
plan included the establishment of a central agency
within the Foreign Office to collect Allied propaganda and press releases, to develop programs to raise
the morale of German soldiers, and to develop policy
to guide propaganda activities directed at the Allies.3
The Germans’ decision to direct an effort at such a
high level indicates the importance they placed on
countering propaganda. Unfortunately for them, the
effort came too late and was ineffective in changing
the course of the war.4
History is replete with examples of the consequences of using or failing to use counterpropaganda
measures. One of the earliest recorded was during the
Peloponnesian Wars. Propagandists on both sides of
the Athenian and Spartan Archidamian War (431–
404 BC) responded to each other’s propaganda with
counterassertions without directly denying the
claims or acknowledging the propaganda itself.5
Thucydides observed that the counterassertions were always more severe than the original,
concluding it was a requirement for effective
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counterpropaganda.6 During World War I, the
Italians conducted counterpropaganda operations against Austro-Hungarian troops by altering
Austro-Hungarian trench newsletters with propaganda messages.7
However, history also shows that counterpropaganda efforts must be executed skillfully in order to
keep them from backfiring. For example, German
propaganda practitioners created an interesting
counterpropaganda leaflet during the Battle of Anzio
in World War II.8 When the Allies disseminated a leaflet that described Allied successes against
German positions on the Cassino Front, German
propagandists attempted to counter the claims with
remarks that reflected a reverse in battlefield fortunes
for the Allies. The German leaflets ultimately proved
futile as an attempt to discredit the Allied leaflet with
American soldiers, but they did have the unintended
result of being so ridiculously unbelievable that they
increased the morale of the GIs.9
Executed by experts, counterpropaganda can have
a powerful and decisive influence over an ideological
adversary. For example, President Ronald Reagan
delivered perhaps one of the best examples of successful counterpropaganda that had worldwide
repercussions in 1987. During the 1980s, Soviet
propaganda had been successful in creating the perception in Europe that then-Soviet President Mikhail
Gorbachev was a leader of peace efforts.10 While
May-June 2016 MILITARY REVIEW