The Political Warfare Executive 1939-1945
David Garnett
St. Ermin's Press, N. Pomfret VT
Hardcover 463 pages photos $40
Review by K. L. Jamison
Britain's Political Warfare Executive (PWE) was established to motivate resistance in occupied Europe. As such it often had to promote a political agenda. It split off from Special Operations Executive, the unconventional warfare agency, early in WW II. This was not necessarily a good idea. If the political line taken by agents in the field is contradicted by the official radio broadcast, the consequences for the agent could be fatal. The book makes clear that the administrative burden of doing both was far too heavy.
Written directly after the war, the book provides both a history and lesson learned of Britain's propaganda efforts. PWE was in conflict with the BBC, the official news agency for resources and as the primary voice of Britain. It was in conflict with various governments in exile over the message sent to occupied Europe. Some exile governments were not entirely popular even before the war. Messages in support of the old government would not necessarily motivate resistance. Some exile governments, primarily De Gaulle's Free French, were of dubious legitimacy, and the message had to consider if some other leader would emerge.
Radio stations, newspapers, and leaflets were produced and attributed to an imaginative collection of groups. A few were admittedly British. Some pretended to be resistance radio stations in occupied Europe. Most either did not declare a source or pretended to be fascist stations and slipped propaganda between popular music and support for the troops. Some of the rumors thus spread were accepted as the truth after the war. The organization required accurate, timely, and detailed intelligence on occupied Europe in order to be credible.
Some propaganda messages were directed at allied troops, with a view toward smoothing interaction with foreigners. Most interesting is the history of propaganda directed at prisoners of war. Occasionally of dubious legality under the Geneva Convention on Prisoners of War, the program recruited prisoners as broadcasters, as agents, in labor battalions, or to take charge in Germany after the war. This section is of some value in the current anti-terrorist war.
A problem with the work is the frequent use of entire paragraphs of French to illustrate a point; without a translation, even when the original speaker did not use French. This is quite irritating to those of us who do not speak French. This conceit is common among French speakers, and only French speakers, who should be cursed with user manuals written in Tibetan, and not very clear Tibetan at that.
