Black Rumours during World War
From "Black Propaganda In the Second World War"
By Stanley Newcourt - Nowodworski
Chapter 5.
Before the arrival of mass media people had to rely for their news on word-of-mouth dissemination. It is thought that rumours had almost as great an influence on public opinion as the radio or press, and that only the arrival of television drastically reduced the importance of the whispered rumour as an effective channel of propaganda.
In the U.S., within weeks of Pearl Harbor, nearly a thousand malicious rumours were recorded by researchers. They promoted anti-Semitism and distrust of the armed forces, tried to stimulate evasion of military service and opposition to the purchase of War Bonds -- anything that would weaken the war effort. President Roosevelt had to repudiate them in a special 'fireside chat'.
'Made in Britain' wartime propaganda rumours were called 'sibs', from Latin sibillare -- to whisper. Some of them could be classified as black but most were grey. Rumours, like any other instrument of propaganda, are produced for definite and specific purposes, for example, to make the enemy move his tropps, to undermine his morale, to destroy his faith in his leaders or to confuse and misled neutrals friendly to the enemy. A rumour may be based on truth, but by the time it starts to circulate it will have shed most of the elements of that truth.
Rumours as weapons must not be created in a haphazard fashion. They have to be part of a strategic or political plan designed to achieve a specific result. Unrelated rumours can do more harm than good. They should also be short. Verbose rumours lose their padding while being passed, while lean sibs become more elaborate. They must be directed at a well-defined target and they must not breach unwittingly your own security. If they are about enemy leaders, salacious details will enhance their effectiveness.
British sibbing suffered from the absence of a whole-time professional endowed with a gift of a scientific approach combined with a brilliant imagination, consequently, the majority of the sibs were feeble and often childish. For example, the 1940 sib, attacked in Daily Mail, that the British government had imported from Australia 200 man-eating sharks and let them loose in the Channel as an anti-invasion measure. Another said that von Ribbentrop had instructed Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna to ask the Pope to canonise Hitler's mother.
Another medical sib concerned allegedly contaminated blood supplies in military hospitals. The story was that blood had been taken from Russian POWs to be given to German wounded, and that most of this blood was infected with venereal disease and other bacteria. To give an appearance of authenticity, names of members of military transfusion teams were used.
Most sibs were quite simple, for example:
-> Women in war factories are losing their good looks, their skins go yellow and they lose their capacity to bear children.
--> Badly wounded soldiers are given mercy injections to prevent them being a burden to the State.
--> Ships arriving in Denmark from the Eastern Baltic brought back a pig disease, which can affect humans who eat pork.
Few people can resist the temptation to pass on bad news; even more love to know and to pass on spicy details of the lives of their local or national leaders, and practically everybody can be seduced by the prospect of acquiring some pieces of secret or restricted information and, once in possession, to enhance his status by passing them on. These traits of human nature are the basis of whispered propaganda. Of course, a successful rumour must be alarming and scandalous enough to be passed on, and credible enough to conceal the fact that it is a concoction.
By Stanley Newcourt - Nowodworski
Chapter 5.
Before the arrival of mass media people had to rely for their news on word-of-mouth dissemination. It is thought that rumours had almost as great an influence on public opinion as the radio or press, and that only the arrival of television drastically reduced the importance of the whispered rumour as an effective channel of propaganda.
In the U.S., within weeks of Pearl Harbor, nearly a thousand malicious rumours were recorded by researchers. They promoted anti-Semitism and distrust of the armed forces, tried to stimulate evasion of military service and opposition to the purchase of War Bonds -- anything that would weaken the war effort. President Roosevelt had to repudiate them in a special 'fireside chat'.
'Made in Britain' wartime propaganda rumours were called 'sibs', from Latin sibillare -- to whisper. Some of them could be classified as black but most were grey. Rumours, like any other instrument of propaganda, are produced for definite and specific purposes, for example, to make the enemy move his tropps, to undermine his morale, to destroy his faith in his leaders or to confuse and misled neutrals friendly to the enemy. A rumour may be based on truth, but by the time it starts to circulate it will have shed most of the elements of that truth.
Rumours as weapons must not be created in a haphazard fashion. They have to be part of a strategic or political plan designed to achieve a specific result. Unrelated rumours can do more harm than good. They should also be short. Verbose rumours lose their padding while being passed, while lean sibs become more elaborate. They must be directed at a well-defined target and they must not breach unwittingly your own security. If they are about enemy leaders, salacious details will enhance their effectiveness.
British sibbing suffered from the absence of a whole-time professional endowed with a gift of a scientific approach combined with a brilliant imagination, consequently, the majority of the sibs were feeble and often childish. For example, the 1940 sib, attacked in Daily Mail, that the British government had imported from Australia 200 man-eating sharks and let them loose in the Channel as an anti-invasion measure. Another said that von Ribbentrop had instructed Cardinal Innitzer of Vienna to ask the Pope to canonise Hitler's mother.
Another medical sib concerned allegedly contaminated blood supplies in military hospitals. The story was that blood had been taken from Russian POWs to be given to German wounded, and that most of this blood was infected with venereal disease and other bacteria. To give an appearance of authenticity, names of members of military transfusion teams were used.
Most sibs were quite simple, for example:
-> Women in war factories are losing their good looks, their skins go yellow and they lose their capacity to bear children.
--> Badly wounded soldiers are given mercy injections to prevent them being a burden to the State.
--> Ships arriving in Denmark from the Eastern Baltic brought back a pig disease, which can affect humans who eat pork.
Few people can resist the temptation to pass on bad news; even more love to know and to pass on spicy details of the lives of their local or national leaders, and practically everybody can be seduced by the prospect of acquiring some pieces of secret or restricted information and, once in possession, to enhance his status by passing them on. These traits of human nature are the basis of whispered propaganda. Of course, a successful rumour must be alarming and scandalous enough to be passed on, and credible enough to conceal the fact that it is a concoction.
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