World War 2 Propaganda Research Paper

Sarah Grout

Mr. Murphy

Period 5

21 November 2015

World War II: Failed Propaganda by the U.S Home Front

World War II: Failed Propaganda by the U.S Home Front

Militaristic conflict between the United States and Japan began long before the bombing on Pearl Harbor, December 7th 1941. A mere ten years earlier in 1931, tensions began to boil between the two countries when Japan invaded Manchuria and expanded further into Western Asia. When news of this invasion hit America, in an effort to stop supporting the soon-to-be enemy, President Hoover made the executive decision to put an embargo on all scrap metal and war supplies being sold to Japan at the time. The attack on Pearl Harbor followed closely behind

Leaflets were common ways of distributing propaganda to both the Japanese and the U.S citizens along with posters, drawings, and harsh speeches of destruction to come with a constant goal of dehumanizing the enemy. Although both sides used these tactics on each other, the propaganda used by the Americans was more successful in catalyzing the war. Out of this new style of war came three new branches of government clearly aimed at the propagandist war: the Psychological Warfare Branch, the Office of Civilian Defense and the Office of War Information. Both of these branches of the wartime effort were simply aimed at the American people and telling the American people why the country was at war. However, in order to distort the American perception of the war and make the Japanese seem worse than they actually were, corrupt and twisted images of the truth were circulated throughout the country. In the early 1900’s, a German-language writer known as Franz Kafka had developed a theory about human behavior when exposed to degenerate situations, such as war, mental institutions and prisons. By dropping leaflets to the Japanese public and introducing a certain Kafkaesque element to soldiers, the propaganda used by the Americans in World War II against the Japanese hastened the effect of war

Soon after the propagandist campaign and psychological war had began, the U.S government soon learned of how the psychological warfare used when morale was low was more effective than distributing surrender leaflets to an enemy with troops with a high morale (McMasters). Unlike previous wars where combat was strictly a military test of superior ammunition, defense, and armed troops, the beginning of World War II became a psychological battlefield in which a mental struggle that both citizens and soldiers fought. (Lerner). Unlike many wars and battles to come before it, WWII was the first war in which propaganda was used in such a devastating and detrimental way that conflicts after would never be fought again the same