Allied psychological warfare

Allied psychological warfare during World War II and the postwar period used a wide variety of methods, including white and black propaganda, targeted at both the own and the enemy side, and both at soldiers and civilians.

According to Holocaust revisionists, it is a fundamental factor behind the politically correct view on the Holocaust. See Holocaust motivations: By the Allies regarding why the Allies would have had an interest in spreading stories of German atrocities. See the article on Anti-Holocaust revisionism on "conspiracy theory" criticisms.

Allied psychological warfare and propaganda involved many other topics besides the Holocaust, such as accusations of National Socialist Germany and allies being involved in various other alleged crimes, negative propaganda on many other aspects of National Socialist Germany and its allies, making allegations of corruption and incompetence among the leadership, alleging widespread opposition among the rank-and-file and civilians, blaming Germany and allies for starting the war, censoring Allied atrocities, depicting the Soviet Union as a utopia or at least censoring the atrocities by the Soviet Communists against their own people, and so on.

Especially at the end of the war and in the postwar period, an important motivation has been argued to be to cover-up/distract from/justify Allied atrocities, such as Claimed mass killings of Germans by the WWII Allies.

First World War

The Allies made false claims of Germans atrocities for propaganda purposes already during the First World War. Examples include false allegations of production of human soap, false allegations of mass atrocities against the Belgian civilian population, and false allegations of hundreds of thousands Serbs being killed by methods such as poisonous gas.

Second World War

Czechoslovakia

Czechoslovakia has been stated to have been one of the main prewar financial contributors to "The Focus", which helped Winston Churchill gain prominence and that paid Churchill to produce anti-German propaganda before the war. See the article on Winston Churchill and the section on "The Focus".

See the article on Konstantin von Neurath on postwar accusations stated to be propaganda by Czechoslovakia.

France

France was one of the major Allied countries involved in the first and most important of the Nuremberg trials, the International Military Tribunal. An important Holocaust document from France is the Gerstein Report. An example of a disputed non-Holocaust German atrocity in France is the alleged massacre at Oradour-sur-Glane.

Jewish organizations in non-Allied countries or in several Allied countries

The Jewish Agency in Palestine (JPA) (also known as the Jewish Agency (JA)) has been argued to have been the unofficial Israeli government at the time of WWII. It had extensive contacts with Zionist Jews and Zionist organizations, such as the World Jewish Congress (WJC) in Europe and the United States. The organization has been stated to have worked closely with the US "Office of Strategic Services" (OSS), which later became the CIA. The Jewish Agency in Palestine and other Zionist organizations were involved in spreading claims of Holocaust atrocities.

The Jewish YIVO organization was involved in stealing documents from German archives, "processing" them, and then submitting claimed authentic documents as evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

The Jewish Holocaust revisionist Joseph G. Burg and others have stated the existence of sometimes huge forgery workshops at several camps for displaced persons in the postwar period. These produced forgeries for purposes such as gaining compensations for people already dead, for non-existing people, for people not entitled to receive any, and so on. It was possible to obtain any document or certificate needed, in any language. Large scale fabrications of seals and signatures occurred. It has been suggested that, for example, the controversial Jewish Nuremberg prosecutor Robert Kempner may have obtained claimed authentic documents used as evidence from such forgery workshops.

Polish partisans, Polish government in exile, and Communist Poland

Polish partisans such as Jan Karski and the Polish Government in exile in London have been argued to have produced propaganda, sometimes black propaganda, sometimes in collusion with others.

The Black Book of Polish Jewry‎ is a 1943 example of prominent Americans, Jews, and Poles supporting a propaganda statement, which contains claims that now are admitted to be false also by non-revisionists.

Similarly to the Soviet Union, Poland created "commissions" for the investigations of alleged German war crimes, which produced "reports" which contain allegations, such as steam killings at Treblinka, which even non-revisionists today admit were false. However, they were accepted as valid evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

Communist Poland has been stated to have had a team of experts who specialized in fabricating "evidence" and "documents".

Soviet Union

The first photo shows Joseph Stalin with the "Vanishing Commissar" (Nikolai Yezhov) in 1937, before Soviet retouching.

The second photo is after Soviet retouching, with Yezhov entirely removed. Also non-revisionist historians admit that the Soviets had long "conspired" to mislead the public by using such fabrications and false propaganda in order to rewrite history before the war, but revisionists argue that such fabrications and false propaganda were also used for Holocaust propaganda.

Examples of revisionist criticisms of claimed Holocaust photographs: External link.

The Communist Soviet Union produced massive amounts of anti-German propaganda, for example by the Jewish leading propagandist Ilya Ehrenburg, which have been argued to have contributed to the politically correct view on the Holocaust and to large-scale atrocities against German civilians by Soviet soldiers.

Many of the early Holocaust claims originated from the Communist Soviet Union and from Communist influenced resistance groups in the Holocaust camps and started after the German invasion of the Soviet Union. See Timelines of Holocaust historiography and revisionism.

The Soviet Union was the first of the Allies to reach the Holocaust camps, such as Majdanek and later the other camps in Poland, and there claimed to have found evidence of genocidal killings.

Another example is the creation of "commissions" for the investigations of alleged German war crimes, which produced "reports" which included allegations (such as 4 million being murdered at Auschwitz) which even non-revisionists today admit were false. However, these reports were accepted as valid evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

Non-revisionists have also admitted that an extensive collection of "evidence" submitted by the Soviet Union to the Nuremberg trials, which was intended to show that Germany was responsible for the Katyn massacre, was falsified, as discussed in the article on the Nuremberg trials.

Organizations and individuals active in non-Soviet areas, but to varying degrees controlled by or supporting the Soviet Union, were involved in spreading Soviet influenced propaganda. Examples include the Comintern, the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, and many openly Communist parties and organizations. During the war, there were various Communist partisan and resistance organizations and individuals, such as often very influential Communists in the Holocaust camp resistance organizations, with one example being the Communist Bruno Baum. After the war, the Communist countries in the Eastern Europe supported Soviet propaganda. Various post-war organizations, such as the "International Auschwitz Committee", have been seen as covertly pro-Communist, see the article on Hermann Langbein.

The "Extraordinary State Commission" (fully: "Extraordinary State Commission for ascertaining and investigating crimes perpetrated by the German–Fascist invaders and their accomplices, and the damage inflicted by them on citizens, collective farms, social organisations, State enterprises and institutions of the U.S.S.R") was an enormous organization, with a staff of over 32,000 and contributions made by additional millions of people, according to its own statistics. Thus, there were very large resources available that could be used for purposes such as propaganda and fabrications. See also the separate article on this organization, its importance, numerous criticisms, and a large number of fabrications, now admitted even by non-revisionists.

Stalin has been argued to have insisted on the Nuremberg trials, due to his earlier successes in destroying rivals with the help of elaborate show trials in the Soviet Union. Roosevelt and Churchill fell in line after initially having argued for simply executing most German leaders without a trial.

The Soviet KGB in the postwar has been argued to have instituted a disinformation campaign, intended to discredit Ukrainian and Lithuanian nationalism, and to cause Jewish hostility to such opposition to the Soviet system. This included fabricating black propaganda and fabricating evidence of participation in alleged "Nazi" war crimes against Jews. One example is John Demjanjuk.

See also Holocaust testimonial evidence: Communists and witnesses on topics such as the Communist influenced Auschwitz resistance and Communist countries influencing Holocaust trials in Western Europe.

United Kingdom

Statement attributed to Sefton Delmer, organizer of Allied black propaganda and psychological warfare. The statement appeared in book by a German attorney, according to which the statement occurred during a meeting with Delmer after the war and in response to a remark that now, after the end of hostilities, it was time to stop the propaganda and permit peaceful co-existence between the people of the world based on the truth. The book was withdrawn from circulation and prohibited in Germany by a German court, because of the quoted statement.

See also the article on Sefton Delmer on Delmar stated to have admitted in an autobiographical book that he and his staff forged a large amount of German documents, including documents having Germans committing a large number of war crimes and used in the Nuremberg trials and history books.

See the article on Winston Churchill on various propaganda related aspects, such as he being argued to have been bribed in the prewar period, in order to spread anti-German and pro-war propaganda.

The British "Special Operations Executive" (SOE) was a World War II organisation created in 1940. The "SO1" department dealt with propaganda.

The British "Political Warfare Executive" (PWE) was set up in 1941. It included staff from the Ministry of Information, the propaganda elements of the Special Operations Executive ("SO1"), and from the BBC. As the Political Warfare Executive was a secret department, when dealing with the outside world it used the covername "Political Intelligence Department" (PID).

After the United States entered the war, most of PWE's white propaganda staff transferred to the "Psychological Warfare Division" (PWD) of the "Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force". The PWD was formed from staff of the US Office of War Information (OWI) and the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE).

Black propaganda continued to be controlled by the Political Warfare Executive's Sefton Delmer. See also the article on Sefton Delmer.

British agents have been argued to have conducted a sizable propaganda campaign and a number of intelligence actions in order to bring the United States into the war, such as British money being poured into congressional elections to defeat isolationist politicians, British agents spending money freely to ease the passage of the Lend-Lease Act, British agents planting pro-British articles in interventionist newspapers and magazine, and some national opinion polls being rigged to reflect a deeper and stronger pro-British sentiment than existed. British agents are furthermore argued to have set up Bill Donovan's Office of Strategic Services (the OSS, which later became the CIA) and to have helped run it, and to have established or influenced a number of organizations pushing for American intervention.

"In 1976, the public finally learned the story of William Stephenson, the British agent code named "Intrepid," sent by Churchill to the United States in 1940. Stephenson set up headquarters in Rockefeller Center, with orders to use any means necessary to help bring the United States into the war. With the full knowledge and cooperation of Roosevelt and the collaboration of federal agencies, Stephenson and his 300 or so agents "intercepted mail, tapped wires, cracked safes, kidnapped, … rumor mongered" and incessantly smeared their favorite targets, the "isolationists." Through Stephenson, Churchill was virtually in control of William Donovan's organization, the embryonic US intelligence service."

United States

The influential World Jewish Congress, and other influential Jews more generally, are argued to have played an important role in spreading Holocaust allegations in the United States, bringing the United States into the war, and making such allegations an official part of US government policy and propaganda, despite initially strong skepticism and opposition to this.

"There is a feeling now prevalent in the United States marked by a growing hatred of Fascism, and above all of Chancellor Hitler and everything connected with National Socialism. Propaganda is mostly in the hands of the Jews who control almost 100 percent of radio, film, daily and periodical press. Although this propaganda is extremely coarse and presents Germany as black as possible – above all religious persecution and concentration camps are exploited – this propaganda is nevertheless extremely effective since the public here is completely ignorant and knows nothing of the situation in Europe. As a result at the present moment most Americans regard Chancellor Hitler and National Socialism as the greatest evil and greatest peril threatening the world…. It is interesting to note that in this extremely well-planned campaign which is conducted above all against National Socialism, Soviet Russia is almost completely eliminated. Soviet Russia, if mentioned at all, is mentioned in a friendly manner and things are presented in such a way that it would seem that the Soviet Union were co-operating with the bloc of democratic states. Thanks to the clever propaganda the sympathies of the American public are completely on the side of Red Spain; this propaganda, this war psychosis is being artificially created. The American public are being told that war is inevitable." ~ Count Jerzy Potocki, Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to the USA, in a report to the Polish Foreign Minister in Warsaw, dated 12th January 1939.

Communists, such as the very influential Jewish official and Soviet covert agent Harry Dexter White, are also argued to have influenced US policy and propaganda.

After the United States entered the war, most of the British PWE's white propaganda staff transferred to the "Psychological Warfare Division" (PWD) of the "Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force". The PWD was formed from staff of the US Office of War Information (OWI) and Office of Strategic Services (OSS) and the British Political Warfare Executive (PWE).

The "Office of the Coordinator of Information" was a US intelligence and propaganda agency created in 1941. It was split in 1942 into the "Office of War Information" (OWI) and the "Office of Strategic Services" (OSS), which later became the CIA. Both agencies were involved in propaganda. The OSS has been stated to have worked closely with the Jewish Agency in Palestine.

Dwight D. Eisenhower was Supreme Allied Commander, Military Governor, and President. See the article on Eisenhower on his role in Allied propaganda.

The US Treasury under the Jewish Secretary of the Treasury Henry Morgenthau, Jr. (and with Harry Dexter White as his assistant) had long conducted an anti-German campaign and interfered in foreign policy. Morgenthau in 1944 managed to establish the "War Refugee Board" (WRB), which notably gave official US sanction to the Vrba-Wetzler report in the form of a WRB report.

William “Wild Bill” Donovan, head of the United States’ OSS intelligence service (predecessor to the CIA), has been stated to have made it clear to chief prosecutor and Zionist Robert H. Jackson that the OSS intended to manage the Nuremberg trials along the lines of a Soviet show trial, with Jackson being little more than a professional actor. As part of the stage-management, they proposed to run a pre-trial propaganda campaign in the United States, with “increasing emphasis on the publication of atrocity stories to keep the public in the proper frame of mind.” Furthermore, the OSS is stated to have had many member on the prosecution staff at the IMT.

The "War Crimes Branch", of the US military occupying Germany, has been argued to have been another controlling agency of US activities, during trials such as the Nuremberg trials and the Dachau trials that have been seen as propaganda show trails. In charge of setting up the "Nuremberg Military Tribunals" (NMT) (the later parts of the Nuremberg trials that were conducted by the United States alone) and deciding judges, prosecutors, and lawyers was the Jewish Zionist David Marcus, who would later become Israel's first general and who died in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. See the article on the Nuremberg trials regarding more details on argued Jewish and Zionist influence.

See also the articles on Writers' War Board and Society for Prevention of World War III‎‎ and the section "Hollywood" below in this article.

Yugoslavia

Communist Yugoslavia in the postwar period conducted war crimes trials, which "proved" various atrocities by Germany and allies, such as at the Sajmište camp.

Examples of argued propaganda

Guilt for starting the war

The revisionist Germar Rudolf has written that "The German amateur historian Gerd Schultz-Rhonhöf, a retired major general of the German army, pointed out in 2014 that the files given back by the Allies to the Germans are riddled with forgeries. These can be recognized, he stated by the fact that these forgeries were not written on original paper which, quite in contrast to authentic German documents, do not turn yellow as they age (Schultz-Rhonhof 2014). But he has only analyzed documents regarding the guilt question of the war". (Criticizing Holocaust documents in Germany may cause severe punishments for the crime of "Holocaust denial".) Rudolf has written that there may also be "forgeries on original paper among the German files. These could not so easily be recognized as such. After all, at war's end the Allies had all the official German stationary at their disposal."

See also the articles on Gleiwitz incident, Lebensraum, and Revisionist views on the causes of the World Wars.

Joseph Goebbels - the "Big Liar"

Joseph Goebbels was in Allied propaganda described as the "Big Liar", master of the Big Lie. Revisionists have criticized this as false Allied propaganda, as discussed in the article on Goebbels.

False statements on deaths of specific individuals

The Holocaust revisionist Jürgen Graf has written that "Just how industriously Germany’s military enemies propagated their atrocity stories becomes obvious from the following report by the Norwegian Erling Bauck, who was transferred from Sachsenhausen to Majdanek together with 13 other Norwegian inmates, where they were liberated:

“In the early fall of 1944, it was possible to read in the American newspapers and illegal Norwegian newspapers, that fourteen Norwegians had been executed in Lublin on orders from Berlin. That we were supposed to be the fourteen executed Norwegians proves that the order must have been issued at least four months earlier, when there were still fourteen of us. 115 We were all mentioned by name and inmate serial number. In November, the priest from Notodden received a letter signed by Ilya Ehrenburg in which the priest was requested to inform the father of the Brattli brothers that his sons were among the fourteen executed men. Papers found in the camp by the Russians stated that we were killed with Zyklon gas and then laid in an acid bath so that no mortal remains could be found.”

Immediately after the liberation of Majdanek by the Red Army (on July 23, 1944) the Soviet-Jewish reporter Constantin Simonov wrote a report describing, among other things, the murder of former French Prime Minister Léon Blum in the same camp in the spring of 1943. In writing his report, Simonov relied on two eyewitnesses, P. Mikhailovic and C. Elinski, who described Blum’s last moments “in great detail”. Radio Moscow gave solemn credence to this story. The French Communist newspaper Fraternité reported in August 1944:'

“Radio Moscow reported the death of former Prime Minister Léon Blum, seventy years of age, who fell a victim to racist barbarism like so many of his fellow faithful."

The report of Léon Blum’s murder in Majdanek was a total fabrication. In reality, Blum was deported to Buchenwald in 1943 and then transferred to Dachau, where he was liberated on May 4, 1945.

The Holocaust

Mr. Allen and myself have both followed German atrocities quite closely. [...] As regards putting Poles to death in gas chambers, I do not believe that there is any evidence that this has been done. There have been many stories to this effect, and we have played them up in P.W.E. [Political Warfare Executive] rumours without believing that they had any foundation. [...] I think that we weaken our case against the Germans by publicly giving credence to atrocity stories for which we have no evidence.

—Stated on 27 August 1943 by Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee of the War Cabinet, with automatic access to all Intelligence input including the highest grades such as ULTRA intercepts.

Examples argued Allied propaganda on the Holocaust are stated in numerous different Holocaust articles. A few short examples will be mentioned here.

One example of the Western Allies argued to be involved in Holocaust propaganda is regarding the Western Holocaust camps, as described in the article on this topic.

One example of the Soviet Union argued to be involved in Holocaust propaganda is regarding the "reconstruction" of a gas chamber at Auschwitz (see David Cole) and the construction of a gas chamber at Sachsenhausen. (Americans have been argued to have "rebuilt" a gas chamber at Dachau.)

Regarding revisionist views on what Allied intelligence actually found on the Holocaust during the war, see Holocaust documentary evidence: Spies, cracking of all German message codes, and other intelligence gathering activities.

Anti-Katyn propaganda

The Germans discovered the Soviet Katyn massacre of Poles in early 1943 and used it for propaganda purposes. The Allies are argued to have fabricated various forms of counter-propaganda against this.

One example is that a former member of the "Political Warfare Executive" has stated that the British distributed black propaganda posters throughout Poland, with the following invented content (including claims of the German steam and electrocution killings):

[The General Government had ordered an] excursion to Auschwitz for a committee of all ethnic groups living in Poland to be organized. The excursion shall examine, how humane the means are, which are utilized for the mass extermination of the Polish people, in comparison with the methods employed by the Bolsheviks. German science has accomplished a miracle here for European culture; in place of a brutal massacre of troublesome rabble, in Auschwitz one can see the gas and steam chambers, electric surfaces etc., with which thousands of Poles are helped from life to death as quickly as possible, and in a manner that brings honor to the entire German nation. It suffices to indicate that just the crematory can take care of 3,000 bodies each day.

Another stated example of anti-Katyn propaganda is that “On March 23, 1943, for instance […] the radio station ‘Sviet’, run by the British Secret Service and broadcasting in the Polish language, published the invented claim, meant as counter propaganda […], according to which the Germans would burn some 3,000 people every day in the crematory of Auschwitz, ‘mainly Jews.’ On April 13, 1943, German radio had also broadcast this number in connection with the first exhumed Polish murder victims [at Katyn]. On April 15, 1943, [the Soviet newspaper] ‘Pravda’ tried to pin the number 3,000 onto the Germans in an attempt of falsifying history."

Contrary to this, the British secret service is argued to already since the summer of 1941 to have known of the Katyn massacre and that it had been committed by the Soviets.

Hollywood

Hollywood, argued to early having a large Jewish influence, produced many anti-National Socialist movies, long before the United States entered the war, to such a degree that in September 1941 a committee began hearings on "war propaganda disseminated by the motion picture industry and of any monopoly in the production, distribution, or exhibition of motion pictures." After the United States entered the war, several different official organizations influenced the contents of motion pictures, such as the "Office of War Information", the "Office of Censorship", and the "Office of Strategic Services". Other aspects include often depicting the Soviet Union as a utopia, while depicting the Japanese as almost being a different species. Hollywood was also involved in the creation of "documentaries" of alleged German atrocities in the Western Holocaust camps.

"As historian of the American film industry Neal Gabler pointed out in his An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood, Jewish screen writers and movie executives in Hollywood USA were concerned about the plight of their Jewish brethren across the ocean in Europe.[24] These important Hollywood figures held a meeting in early 1936 during which they discussed what was to be done to combat Hitler’s Germany. Film producer David Selznick wanted to fight against Hitler “in the usual Jewish way of being on the fringes and not letting yourself appear as involved in it.” He further suggested: “Don’t get too public. Do it quietly. Behind the scenes. [...] Before the US declared war following the Pearl Harbor attack in December 1941, certain Hollywood Jews were willing to use their influence to incite a pro-war sentiment in the United States. In a 20 May 1940 memo to President Roosevelt from studio executive Harry Warner, the latter stated: “[P]ersonally we would like to do all in our power within the motion picture industry and by use of the talking screen to show the American people the worthiness of the cause for which the free peoples of Europe are making such tremendous sacrifices.” A few months later motion picture mogul Nick Schenck offered to place his entire studio in the service of President Roosevelt’s campaign for war with Germany."

Also British propagandists have been stated to influence Hollywood.

A famous director who produced wartime propaganda was Alfred Hitchcock, as discussed in the article on him.

See also

• Holocaust documentary evidence: Movies
• Holocaust fictional descriptions
• Jewish influence:Media

See also

• Allied atrocities

External links

• Auschwitz: A Three-Quarter Century of Propaganda
• Britain’s collusion in creating “death camp” atrocity lies exposed

Article archives

• Codoh: Propaganda
• Codoh: Lies + Propaganda
• Codoh: Re-Education

Books

• The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, The Case Against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry
• The Real Case for Auschwitz—Robert van Pelt’s Evidence from the Irving Trial Critically Reviewed - Part Five: The Origin of the “Convergence of Independent Accounts”
• Auschwitz: The First Gassing—Rumor and Reality