But it was only during the war that it became obvious what tremendous results could be achieved through the correct application of propaganda. Here again, unfortunately, all research will have to be carried out on the experience of the enemy side, since this kind of activity on our side was at least modest … For what we did not do, the enemy did with amazing skill and downright brilliant calculation. I myself have learned a great deal from this enemy war propaganda.
Adolf Gitler
Public Opinion Management Technologies. As noted here in the last article, in our country for some reason there is some very strange reverence for Dr. Goebbels, who is considered almost a genius of propaganda, but they know nothing at all about those people to whom this false doctor owed all his successes”and from which his boss Adolf Hitler himself did not hesitate to learn.
Therefore, today we will somewhat move away from the everyday life of modern PR men and turn to a topic that is certainly interesting for all readers of "VO" - the topic of war and propaganda in wartime. And we will reveal the sources of the "genius" of the same Goebbels, who invented nothing, well, absolutely nothing himself, but simply read the necessary books and adapted what was stated in them for himself.
Back in the book published in 1920, which was called "How We Advertised America", its author George Creel, during the First World War, led the Committee on Public Information, described in detail what principles of PR and advertising he and his people used to so that the Americans would want to fight against Germany. And since he succeeded, Creel's success showed people like Hitler and Goebbels what can be achieved by using information to influence the masses.
On April 14, 1917, President Woodrow Wilson ordered the creation of the Committee of Public Information. It included the Secretary of State, the Minister of War and the Minister of the Navy, and the famous liberal journalist George Creel was appointed its director. "House of Truth" - so he called this organization. And received excellent funding. And it began! What he did for that time became an unprecedented phenomenon, and in fact was the first experience of total control of public opinion.
First of all, Creel decided that propaganda should go through every conceivable channel of information. Let there be newspapers, movies, radio and telegraph, but we also use posters and signs, rumors and oral presentations. Any moment of person-to-person communication is an opportunity to “sell the war”. You just need to figure out how to put this moment at your service. However, he did not come up with anything new again … In the novel "Pharaoh" by the Polish writer Boleslav Prus, written back in 1895, Prince Hiram tells the merchant Dagon how to influence Tsarevich Ramses so that he starts a war with Assyria: "You must make it so that no one knows that you want war, but that every cook of the heir wants war, every hairdresser wants war, that all bath attendants, porters, scribes, officers, charioteers - so that they all want war with Assyria and that the heir should hear about this from morning to night, and even when he sleeps."
To provide himself with such "scribes", Creel lobbied for a presidential decree that workers in the field of advertising were enrolled in the logistics, so that now it is easy to mobilize for the work of the Committee. Newspapers had to provide him with their pages for free. The most famous journalists, advertisers and artists were involved in the work.
The country's 750 famous cartoonists began to issue a "Cartoonist Weekly Newsletter." It printed ideas and headlines on the topic of the day, artists had to visualize them, and newspapers had to print. Information was sent by the Committee to another 600 foreign newspapers in 19 languages, news was broadcast via radio transmitters on ships of the American Navy.
Lenin has not yet uttered his catchphrase that for us the most important art is cinema, and Creel has already contacted Hollywood and actually put it under the control of KOI. The pretentious films were shot: "The Pershing Crusaders", "America's Response", "Under Four Flags", etc. A special person was involved in promoting the films, he also wrote reviews on them. Under a pseudonym, of course.
Remember the grocery sets of the Soviet era, where the scarce buckwheat was sold with a load of sprat in tomato? So patriotic American films were sold in the world market in the same way. Want a top movie? Fine! But without 2-3 "our" tapes, we will not sell the film you need. And so that the impression percentage is appropriate. And then put more "Pershing" on the shelf … There was one more very strict condition: do you want our films? Then don't you dare show German! Complete, so to speak, freedom of choice, isn't it? So KOI not only secured orders for Hollywood, but also ensured profitable sales of its products.
Another very effective example of KOI is the so-called “four-minute”. Creel believed (and it is) that people trust information transmitted orally more than what is written. That is why rumors are so tenacious. And so a special "oratory department" was created in KOI, for which 75,000 people worked, among whom were a variety of people - volunteers. They were selected on the basis of "can a person speak and whether he looks convincing." The job of the four-minute runners, as Creel says, was to "manage ongoing conversations." Each of these 75,000 several times a week had to deliver a four-minute speech in front of their audience, while preaching the justice of the US military aspirations, and, of course, in the most unconditional way condemning anti-war and any socialist sentiments.
To help the propagandists, leaflets were issued: "Why we are at war", "Exposing German propaganda", "Lies of the enemy and our truth", "In support of moral foundations and morale", "The threat to democracy." The topic was divided into 5-7 parts - separate speeches + interesting additional information was given. Those ideas that should have been given special attention were emphasized + typical samples of such performances were applied. Speakers were instructed to be enthusiastic, and the quality of the speeches was judged by the chairman of the local KOI cell. Those whose speeches were boring, and their eyes did not burn, were ruthlessly driven out. Everything is just as it was with us, the lecturers of the OK and the RC of the CPSU, when I was in this service. You speak, and the party organizer sits down and writes down what you say, how you say, whether you mumble, whether you adequately answer the workers' questions, whether there is insincerity, and if once you are caught on "something like that", two, then you are more mass the audience could not see how their ears were.
Moreover, the task of the “four minutes” was also to provoke conversations with their speeches, and they themselves would control them and perform the functions of political investigation, that is, to identify and inform people with anti-war sentiments. With the latter, they did this: first they invited them for a conversation, at which they explained the erroneousness of their behavior. As a rule, in 80% of cases it worked. The remaining 20% were "stubborn", with whom they usually acted differently: the committee recommended employers to fire them under a variety of pretexts.
The work of adults was also duplicated by youth groups: "junior speakers" from primary and secondary schools. Under the guidance of loyal teachers and principals, schools have hosted public speaking contests on the themes of the National School Service Bulletin. They were discussed at the classroom clock in such a way that the children would later discuss them with their parents at home with a high probability.
Accordingly, the "colored Brunswick speakers" worked in the "colored" areas to cover all, absolutely all social and national segments of the population of the United States.
Public relations specialists recognized the role of emotions even then and moved from the concept of "communicating the facts" to the concept of "targeting the heart, not the head." True, George Creel himself always denied that the activities of the Committee "hit the emotions", but in fact this was exactly the case.
Accordingly, the US state machine supported the Committee not only financially, but, which is very important, legally. On June 15, 1917, the United States passed the Anti-Espionage Act, and in 1918, the Subversive Activities Act. The former encouraged the censorship of anti-war ideas, while the latter declared any criticism of the Wilson administration unlawful.
Well, only 75,000 of Creel's volunteers, who supported the war with their four-minute speeches, read more than 7.5 million speeches, reaching an audience of 314 million people living in 5,200 cities and towns. Many of Creel's publications were published in national languages.
For example, the pamphlet "Warm Words for Abroad" was published in Czech, Polish, German, Italian, Hungarian and Russian. Even such special editions as "German Socialists and the War" were published.
And, of course, it was KOI who prepared the texts of the leaflets, which were then dropped on the heads of the German soldiers. Moreover, knowing about their poor food supply, especially at the end of the war, the leaflets first of all reported that if they surrendered to the allies, they would be treated well and that their diet would include “beef, white bread, potatoes, beans, raisins, real grain coffee, milk, butter, tobacco, etc.”. And all because the ration of ordinary German soldiers was so bad that they often said that kommisbrot (German "soldier's bread") was baked from dust collected on the floors of army bakeries.
A lot of useful information was obtained in POW camps, where special agents who knew German well were sent. They argued with the prisoners about the war and thus learned which arguments against them were most effective. As the saying goes, a fool sows words, a clever one reaps a harvest from them. The Germans did the same. In conversations with them, PR people found out which newspapers they considered the most truthful, which Reichstag deputy was trusted more than others, and why. Then all this was compared with information received through diplomatic and intelligence channels; then the draft of the leaflet was drawn up, it was approved, and the leaflet was printed.
Here is the title of one of them: "Day rations of American soldiers: German prisoners of war receive the same rations." But this is for the especially hungry and hungry for normal food: "Beef - 567 grams, potatoes and other fresh vegetables - 567 grams", and also: "Coffee beans - 31, 75 grams." It was noticed that eight out of ten prisoners captured by the Americans had American leaflets in their pockets promising the Germans good food. Moreover, in just three months of the war in 1918 over German positions, the Americans dropped about three million of these leaflets.
But when the war ended, the Creel committee was disbanded … at 24 hours! The need for it has disappeared - why spend extra money?
Now let's summarize. Everything that many of the uninformed people traditionally attribute to Dr. Goebbels was used long before him and with tremendous effectiveness against Germany already in the First World War. The experience of information warfare was not hidden or concealed by anyone, primarily because its effectiveness was directly related to the level of the country's economic power. To repeat what was done by the Creel Committee in the United States in this area, was only within the power of the United States, and all other countries could create only something similar and nothing more. Contemporaries testified that such a truly comprehensive and effective propaganda machine had never been launched in the United States before. And I must say frankly that Goebbels was just an apprentice alongside such luminaries of public opinion management as Creel, Lippman, Bernays and Ivy Lee … the Gestapo and the SD worked for him and in turn. However, we will deal with a concrete analysis of his mistakes.
