Can You Win an Information War?

Pomerantsev, Peter.  How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist who Outwitted Hitler.   

          New York: PublicAffairs, 2024.  ISBN: 9781541774728

In an age of news silos, is it possible to reach folks?  Especially folks who only seem to listen to only one viewpoint?  Peter Pomerantsey has not given up hope.  He draws inspiration from Sefton Delmer who ran a black propaganda system during World War II that caused problems for the Nazi propaganda machine.

Sefton Delmer was born in Berlin to Australian parents.  His father was a professor in Imperial Germany and he was ten when World War I broke out.  He experienced the effects of propaganda first-hand as school friends turned on him in a matter of weeks.  His family did not get out of Germany for several years and this experience shaped his view of life and people.  He finished growing in England, got an Oxford degree and then became a journalist for the Daily Express in 1920's Germany.  He chronicled the rise of the Nazi regime, acting as an aide-de-camp to Ernest Rohm, the leader of the Nazi storm troopers at a private meeting.  Delmer accompanied Hitler on his airplane as he campaigned to become president against Hindenburg.  Delmer also gave lots of parties in Berlin that attracted a number of Nazi officials.  After World War II, broke out and France was occupied, Hitler gave a speech offering peace to Great Britain.  Sefton Delmar was selected at the BBC to provide an immediate reply that threw the Nazis for a loop.  This was what he wanted to do, using language to subvert the enemy.  But before he could get a position in the psych-ops wing of the British intelligence services, he had to persuade the powers that be that he was not a Nazi infiltrator and that he had an idea that would reach beyond the "Good German" that the current BBC programming was focusing on.  

In late1940, Delmer was posted to Lisbon by the Daily Express.  He was also to find out German plans regarding Gibraltar for the Secret Intelligence Service.  Then he got recalled to London where he resigned from the Daily Express and was placed in charge of a "Research Unit" - actually a code for "freedom radio."  Delmer had the challenge of setting up a right-wing sounding radio to influence the German public!  Finally Delmer could put his ideas into practice!  Propaganda was what was needed and that was what was delivered using language, tone, and innuendo that got the listeners to stop believing everything on the official radio broadcasts.  Delmer took the German broadcasts and spun them with sly bits of commentary that would get listeners rethinking their attitudes toward Nazi officials, the military, their neighbors, and eventually everything.  Delmar used the truth to undercut the lies and "fake news" that the official German broadcasts had regarding bombings, outcomes of battles, and survival of individuals. But, Delmer's success in floating some propaganda ideas during the war had unintended consequences after the war, specifically, the stories he spread regarding the German general's opposition to Hitler.  After the war, Delmer never knew the success he had before and during the war, but his contribution to winning the war was immense.

So if you are interested in the concept of propaganda and/or black ops during World War II, do pick up Peter Pomerantsev's How to Win An Information War!  You might even get some ideas on how to be subversive in countering today's propaganda silos. 

For the Love of Dictators

Heilbrunn, Jacob.  America Last:  The Right's Century-Long Romance with Foreign Dictators.

        n.p.: Liveright, 2024.  ISBN: 9781324094661

 

 

Everyone alive knows that Donald Trump seems enthralled with Putin and Ron DeSantis with Victor Orban. What about dictators is so attractive to a certain mindset?  And when did this obsession become a passion of the Conservatives?  These are some of the issues that Jacob Heilbrunn seeks to clarify in America Last.

 

Jacob Heilbrunn lays out early in the opening of the book his relationship with the conservative movement to establish his credentials for the history he reveals.  He starts with the present day where the conservatives and many Republicans seem to think that Hungary and its culture wars is the future they should pursue.  So how and when did this "homage to authoritarianism" develop?  

 

So who all has the Right praised?   "Kaiser Bill" for one was praised by Henry Louis Mencken and George Sylvester Viereck as an upholder of traditional values.  Theodore Lothrop Stoddard, Madison Grant, and H. P. Lovecraft adored Benito Mussolini, the Fascist ruler of Italy.  Ezra Pound was another vocal advocate of both Mussolini and later Adolf Hitler.  Elizabeth Dilling was a fascist supporter who accused the YMCA and the League of Women Voters as communist front organizations and college campuses as "hotbeds of radicalism."  Then there was the America First Committee that openly support Germany with the assistance of Henry Ford, Charles Lindbergh, the return of George Sylvester Viereck, and the funding of William Randolph Hearst.  After the war, came the era of McCarthy with the Senator hunting for "dirty Commies" everywhere while working on rehabilitating Nazi Germany.  

 

In the 1950's Henry Luce and his wife Clara Booth Luce helped lead the charge against the U.S. State Department while fawning over Nationalist China's ruler, Chiang Kaishek.  About this time William F. Buckley wandered on to the stage praising McCarthy while pushing a shift from isolationism to confronting the Communist menace through The National Review.  However, Buckley, his brother-in-law Leo Bozell, Jr., and others also looked to Franco of Spain, and Salazar of Portugal for inspiration in opposing the rise of Liberalism in America.  Then there was the Kirkpatrick doctrine which provided cover for the Right to cozy up with authoritarian governments such as Pinochet, South Africa, El Salvador, and Argentina.  

In 1989, the Soviet Union collapsed and the Right lost a major focus.  Patrick Buchanan started the charge of the new "Old Right" back to isolationism that puts America first leading to a fight between neoconservatives and paleoconservatives that is still going strong.  He voiced strong opposition to George H. W. Bush in regard to the Gulf War, to the U.S. sending troops to Bosnia, and was warmly embraced by Russian presidential candidate Vladimir Zhirinovsky for his stance on Jews.  Then came 9/11 and the launch of the War on Terror.  In George W. Bush, the neocons had a champion to try out their ideas in Afghanistan and then Iraq.  The ultimate failure of the neocon plans provided the opportunity for the paleocons to come roaring back in the unlikely person of Donald J. Trump who made no secret of his love of authoritarians such as Vladimir Putin.  Even Putin's invasion of Ukraine in flagrant defiance of treaties that Russia has signed has not slowed the love of dictators found in the Right today.  It is amazing/appalling how many people have fallen in love with a nostalgic picture of a time that never was.

Jacob Heilbrun provides a very detailed schooling on the love for authoritarians that seem crafted into the DNA of the conservative Right in America.  So if you want to know the background to the news stories of today, take the time to read America Last.

Running up the Score!

Bruning, John R.  Race of Aces: WWII's Elite Airmen and the Epic Battle to Become the Master 

        of the Sky.  New York: Hachette Books, 2020.  ISBN: 9780316508629

An Ace!  For airmen and the public, an ace is someone to look up to and admire.  They had mastered simultaneously flying and fighting and managed to bring down at least 5 enemy aircraft.  The Red Baron was a famous German ace of World War I who is best known now for fighting Snoopy.  But being an ace was no easy task since only bout 5% of all World War II fighter pilots managed to get 5 confirmed "kills."  However, in the Southwest Pacific, General Kenney inspired the Fifth Air Force to chase down WWI ace Eddie Rickenbacker's record of 26 enemy planes as a way to boost morale.  This book tells the story of many who participated in the race for this crown.

John Bruning opens the book with General Kenney checking out the state of the Fifth Air Force based in New Guinea which was getting pounded by Japanese Air Force while the Japanese Army was approaching the few bases still operational.  He needed fighting spirit and better planes than the P-39 Aircobras and P-40 Warhawks he had.  What he got was the Lockheed P-38 Lightening, a twin engine fighter that could out-dive and out-run the current Japanese planes.  Then he started getting pilots such as Richard Bong, Gerald Johnson, and Tommy McGuire.  These pilots and a host of others managed to turn the tide against the Japanese, but at a cost of living in a jungle environment at the end of a very, very long supply chain.  The pilots of the Fifth Air Force strove to match and then beat Rickenbacker's record of 26 enemy planes.  This race cost lives and ended a few careers as pilots became obsessed with being the top ace. In the end, Richard Bong came out on top with 40 enemy planes shot down. Looking back, the race to be the top ace was cursed as only one top contender lived a long life after the war.  

If you have an interest in air combat or the Southwest Pacific Theater in World War II, you will want to read Race of Aces!  John Bruning brings you to the front lines of combat and provides all the thrills you desire.