Writers' War Board
The Writers' War Board was an important domestic propaganda organization in the United States during World War II. It coordinated American writers with government and quasi-government agencies that needed written propaganda.
Supposedly privately run and organized, it was established in 1942 at the request of the United States Department of the Treasury, led by the Jewish Henry Morgenthau, Jr. The Treasury department was also involved in other propaganda activities, such as the influential Vrba-Wetzler report on Auschwitz. United States government funds subsidized the Writers' War Board offices and clerical staff.
In its first year, the Writers' War Board mobilized 2,000 professional writers and produced over 8,000 stories, radio scripts, ideas, slogans, poems, dramatic skits and books.
One example of activities was the involvement in the staging of thousands of propaganda commemorations of book burnings in National Socialist Germany. See also Book burning/censorship and National Socialist Germany
From 1944 until 1948, prominent U.S. policy makers launched a domestic propaganda campaign aimed at convincing the public to agree to a harsh peace for the German people, for example by removing the common view of the German people and the NSDAP as separate entities. The Writers' War Board was important in this. The chairman and claimed Communist/Communist sympathizer Rex Stout also led the similarly anti-German Society for the Prevention of World War III. See also Morgenthau Plan
