Mind Games: The Pertinent Presence of Psychological Warfare

The moment we come across the word ‘war’, we create a mental image of fallen bloodies, broken landscapes, strewn blood, and an air of imminent destruction. While the majority of war discourse has been centered around the physical action of engaging in violence, there is another equally (if not more important) domain of warfare which is raising its important, yet manipulative head. It is incorrect, however, to presume that psychological warfare as a concept is of recent origin. It has been around for almost as long as wars have existed, which is (virtually) forever. What has changed now is the attention and literature being diverted towards this discourse. Before we get to the specifics, let us understand what psychological warfare actually is.

According to encyclopedia Britannica, psychological warfare is..

The use of propaganda against an enemy, supported by such military, economic, or political measures as may be required.

Put simply, it is the several tools employed by a contending side to demoralize the enemy, emotionally attack them, break their resolve to fight, and manipulate their beliefs. Following the same line of thought, psychological warfare (or psywar) is also used to strengthen the resolve and grit of one’s own troops and men by various forms of positive reinforcements and favourable brainwashing.

As residents of a world that is witnessing unimaginable forms of propaganda in our social, cultural, political and economic realms, it is not difficult to understand what an effective and quite frankly, mind-blowing tool this can be, if employed in the correct manner. Though it is difficult to pin an origin date for psywar, it has shown its presence from the time of the Babylonian and the Mongolian Empire. The terrorizing Mongol king Genghis Khan was known to have ordered each soldier to carry three lit torches, instead of one, to mislead the enemy into thinking the Mongolian Army was three times its actual size. Another strategic move was launched by Persian Forces in the Battle of Pelusium in 525 B.C where they held cats as hostages to deter the Egyptians from attacking as they held a religious belief that it was immoral to harm cats. With advances in the modern age, psywar techniques have transitioned from the specific ones mentioned above to more widespread strategies targeting whole masses. This has been assisted tremendously by the birth of the radio, television, newspapers and other forms of consumable media.

Any discussion on world warfare will be left incomplete without covering the two, havoc-wreaking, costly, and irreversible World Wars. These Wars ushered unprecedented change, changed the population dynamics of communities, and rendered some great nations incapable. Incidentally, it was also during the Second World War when psychological warfare was formally inducted into the troops on both the Allied Forces and the Axis Powers. While Hitler openly and enthusiastically engaged with the techniques of psywar, Great Britain was more hesitant to do so. Though they adopted these illegitimate techniques as well, they primarily relied on the United States for the execution of the same. The application of psychological tools and techniques in WW2 relied on two basic premises:

1. How can individual fears be manipulated?

2. How can the stresses of war be systematically increased?

One of the most commonly used tools during this period was the dissemination of leaflets, either by air dropping or by artillery firing. These leaflets were used to psychologically target the enemy’s insecurities. Most of them depicted a scenario of marital infidelity which aimed to make the soldiers feel insecure about their wives and girlfriends back home. It was meant to make the soldiers restless and uneasy about being away, attempting to distract them from their goal, demoralize them and possibly make them abandon their posts. The texts on these leaflets were in first person, making the soldier feel that it was him who was directly being addressed.

Continuing with the leaflet propaganda, another method was distributing pornographic leaflets depicting female figures in an arousing, sexual manner that would serve the sole purpose of making the soldier feel he was missing out on the ‘better things’ in life by agreeing to fight this War on such difficult fronts. A total of approximately 6,000,000,000 leaflets were distributed over the European continent by aircraft or shelling during leaflet operations, which began when the Royal Air Force dropped leaflets over Kiel on September 3-4, 1939, and continued on an increasing scale until the unconditional surrender of Germany in May 1945.

In the 1940s, the radio was the most accessible form of entertainment and news available to the common man. Unsurprisingly, it became a potent tool for wartime propaganda as well. Radio propaganda worked on the basis of biased news reports and selective reporting. These were cleverly constructed in a way that fuelled the ‘us v/s them’ divide. In Nazi Germany, propaganda tools were directed to defeat the pro-British sentiment, attacking capitalists and, ostracizing the Jews. Japan became famous for the “Tokyo Rose” broadcast music, led by broadcaster, Iva Toguri, which put across false information of Japanese Military victories to discourage the Allied Forces. Similarly, Germany employed the Axis Sally broadcast, conducted by Mildred Gillars to advance its own propaganda vehicle.

Propaganda was not limited to communication channels. It found its place in other forms of media- cartoons, movies, plays, posters- as well. World War 2 is replete with examples of the subtle ways in which every citizen felt that the War was personal, the fight was personal, and the loss, too, was personal.

The 1942 Hollywood film Mrs. Miniver glorified Britain’s resolve to fight. The film ends with a powerful call (presumably to the people of Britain):

"This is the people's war. It is our war. We are the fighters. Fight it, then. Fight it with all that is in us, and may God defend the right."

A ubiquitous poster in America depicted a monster with two heads- one Nazi and one Japanese, clutching the Statue of Liberty in its hand. Beside it, a hand holds a wrench labelled ‘Production’, which the Americans believed was key to winning the war. Cartoon networks were not too far behind in this propaganda battle as well. Warner Brothers sent Popeye and Bugs Bunny to fight the Japanese, while Disney released a short showing Donald Duck incapacitating Hitler with a ripe tomato.

Leaders’ speeches during the turbulent War period had effects that went beyond just addressing the masses. Using trained psychologists and understanding the science behind people’s minds, these leaders crafted their speeches in a way that would play on the most delicate parts of the listener’s brain. They played on the patriotic sense by asking all men to rise to action when the country needed them. They played on female fears by narrating instances of a whole population wiped away because their men did not rise to the call of the nation. They used visual imagery to reinforce the atrocities of their enemies and relied on positive semiotics to depict the ‘virtuous’ and negative ones to show the ‘evil’. To the unsuspecting civilian, this aforementioned leader, whether it was Hitler, Mussolini or Churchill, was a messiah in disguise. They believed that he had come to restore the bruised pride of their land. He was going to give them a larger share of food on their plate, he was going to send their children to a better school and he was going to vanquish their country’s enemies. So why shouldn’t they, as proud citizens of their country, do their small part and help him? By tactfully drawing in the masses with their words, the top brass of the War succeeded immensely in turning public opinion in their favour.

World War 2 was fought over a long time span. Physical exhaustion and damage had already flooded most of the world and most countries faced an inevitable draining of their national treasury. However, the mind was at a crossroads at this point. Any minute mental impact, if targeted at the right population, would help the facilitator achieve their goal, both positive and negative ones.

Today, only the nature of warfare has changed but it has knit itself very closely with our global fabric. In a world where practically everyone has access to digital media or a similar communication channel, you can only imagine the extent to which psychological warfare sits amidst us, albeit in a modified form.

Most times, we even fail to realize that we’re consuming it. And that is the most potent tool of psychological warfare- our inability to defend ourselves against its effect. Hereafter, every War fought in any corner of the World will involve two battles- one at the battlefront and the other in people’s thoughts.