This book offers the first in-depth intellectual and cultural history of British subversive propaganda during the Second World War. Focussing on the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), it tells the story of British efforts to undermine German morale and promote resistance against Nazi hegemony. Staffed by civil servants, journalists, academics and anti-fascist European exiles, PWE oversaw the BBC European Service alongside more than forty unique clandestine radio stations; they maintained a prolific outpouring of subversive leaflets and other printed propaganda; and they trained secret agents in psychological warfare. British policy during the occupation of Germany stemmed in part from the wartime insights and experiences of these propagandists.
Rather than analyse military strategy or tactics, British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World War draws on a wealth of archival material from collections in Germany and Britain to develop a critical genealogy of British ideas about Germany and National Socialism. British propagandists invoked discourses around history, morality, psychology, sexuality and religion in order to conceive of an audience susceptible to morale subversion. Revealing much about the contours of mid-century European thought and the origins of our own heavily propagandised world, this book provides unique insights for anyone researching British history, the Second World War, or the fight against fascism.
Author(s): Kirk Robert Graham
Series: Britain and the World
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 314
City: Cham
Acknowledgements
Praise for British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World War
Contents
1 Introduction: British Propagandists and the German Problem
The View from Woburn Abbey: The Political Culture of PWE
The Brazen Horde: British Propagandists and the Course of German History
Germany on the Couch: The Role of Psychology and the Social Sciences in the Development of Subversive Propaganda
No Man so Lecherous as the German: Nazi Perversion and German Masculinity in British Subversive Propaganda
A Rebellion Against the Divinely Appointed Order: Totalitarian Theory, Secular Religions, and Religious Anti-Fascism in British Subversive Propaganda
The Logic of Subversive Propaganda
2 The View from Woburn Abbey: The Political Culture of PWE
Gentleman Amateurs and “the Other Germany”
The Significance of Germanophobia
Filling the Ranks, Affirming the Orthodoxy
Conclusion
3 The Brazen Horde: British Propagandists and the Course of German History
Hermann Rauschning and the Two Germanies Theory
Robert Vansittart and Transatlantic Germanophobia
Germanophobic Propaganda and the Limits of Vansittartist History
German Anti-Fascists and the Value of Social History
A New Europe
Conclusion
4 Germany on the Couch: The Role of Psychology and the Social Sciences in the Development of Subversive Propaganda
Psychological Judo
The Push for Pure Psychology
J.T. MacCurdy and Henry Dicks
The German National Character and the Nazi Mind
Conclusion
5 No Man so Lecherous as the German: Nazi Perversion and German Masculinity in British Subversive Propaganda
Pornography and the German Mind
A Gendered Pathology
Pigdogs and Englishmen
A New Answer to the German Question
Conclusion
6 A Rebellion Against the Divinely Appointed Order: Totalitarian Theory, Secular Religions, and Religious Anti-Fascism in British Subversive Propaganda
Kicking Against the Pricks
Ersatzreligion and the Origins of Totalitarian Theory
Black Sabbath
Towards a Catholic Donauraum
Conclusion
7 The Logic of Subversive Propaganda
A Contested Legacy
Winning the Peace
Anti-Semitism and the Morality of Resistance
Sowing Dissent?
Conclusion
8 Epilogue: Breaking Hearts and Minds
Bibliography
Index
