Propaganda is an important tool for shaping public opinion during wartime. The United States initially resisted using propaganda, but later established two official government propaganda agencies: the Writers War Board and the United States Office of War Information (Riddle, 2016). The latter became the primary propaganda engine during World War Two. The Office of War Information used multiple media for propaganda dissemination, including the relatively new media like comic books and movies. Posters were a primary means of influencing public opinion, too. Through these different propaganda techniques, the United States government reduced the potential for anti-war sentiments, minimized dissent, and created a normative cultural environment of patriotism. The “loose lips sink ships” message is an example of how the government established norms of behavior, and also used fear as a driving emotive force behind its propaganda (Little, 2016). Propaganda posters were also designed to create a sense of community-driven war efforts, such as asking citizens to conserve or ration their food (Riddle, 2016).
In addition to the domestic propaganda used during World War Two, the American government also engaged in an even sneakier means of manipulating minds: disseminating propaganda among the enemy civilian population. The American Office of Strategic Services used what it called “black propaganda,” which was made to appear as if it originated within Germany and Italy (Little, 2016). The goal of the black propaganda included to weaken civilian support for their own governments, undermining trust, and also to spread misinformation that might mislead the enemy. As Riddle (2016) also points out, American soldiers often dropped leaflets over enemy civilian populations as a show of force, to demonstrate American might and instill fear within the populace. These various propaganda techniques might be considered manipulative, but they were effective means of influencing domestic and foreign populations.
Europe After World War II Historical Development Unification Historical Development of Unification Ideas in Europe after World War II Europe was torn to shreds by the ugly forms of national and ethnic hatred after World War II (1939-1945). Europe is geographically situated in middle of such a global power system, where failing of peace means global annihilation. After World War II, the Europeans established such a framework that can allow peace and regional
Propaganda While we may be shocked by the U.S. government's attempt to spread disinformation about the current war on terrorism, we should not be. Governments have always been less than fully forthcoming to their citizens, although they rarely admit to lying. Rather they see it as a form of propaganda, and thoroughly patriotic. Moreover, while the term "propaganda" is almost always used in a pejorative sense and as citizens of a democracy
Hitler's Ideology And Propaganda All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to." Thus wrote Adolf Hitler in Mein Kampf, while serving a prison sentence in the Bavarian capital of Munich following an aborted coup that he had attempted in the fall of 1923 -- known in history as the "The Beer Hall Putsch." Another decade was
A small but vigorous Communist party already experienced with underground work was the first to initiate clandestine operations. They set up front organizations and recruited members. By April 1942, they had recruited enough people to form a guerrilla arm called ELAS. Aris Velouchiotis, a former schoolteacher and Communist revolutionary, was the leader of this group whose goal was to harass the occupiers and wear them down. A charismatic leader with
Northrop Frye recognized this fact but believed that the satire missed its mark: It completely misses the point as satire on the Russian development of Marxism, and as expressing the disillusionment which many men of good-will feel about Russia. The reason for that disillusionment would be much better expressed as the corruption of expediency by principle (Frye 1987, p. 10). What links 1984 and Animal Farm most directly is that both
These young men were not immersed in the high modernist traditions of Virginia Woolf and T.S. Eliot: rather, they were immersed in the experience of war and their own visceral response to the horrors they witnessed. Thus a multifaceted, rather than strictly comparative approach might be the most illuminating way to study this period of history and literature. Cross-cultural, comparative literary analysis is always imperfect, particularly given the linguistic challenges
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