Psychological Operations | It's a Writing Life

Safe Conduct Pass

One of the most effective pieces of propaganda that came out of the Office of War Information (OWI) was the Safe Conduct Pass leaflet, which guaranteed safekeeping for the captured German soldiers. These passes were shot off of airplanes in non-exploding containers and drifted to land like leaves from a tree.

The concept of safe passage documentation was not new, having first been recorded in biblical times. In the middle ages, when a Christian wanted to travel to the Holy Land through an Islamic run territory, they needed transit papers to ensure safe travel to Jerusalem. At the Geneva Convention of 1929, a specific effort was made to revise the rules of the treatment of prisoners of war, especially in relation to eliminating reprisals and collective punishments.

The Safe Conduct Pass in World War Two was produced by the OWI-SHAEF Psychological Warfare Division working in close conjunction with their British counterpart. Early in the war, the British, Russians and French were all distributing surrender leaflets, but there was no uniformity to them, and some of the rules were not the same depending on who produced them. Once the United States was involved in the war, and after the collective British and American effort, a uniform and official Safe Conduct Pass was created. Continue reading “Safe Conduct Pass”

A Love Affair with Radio [Part 3] – ABSIE

My mother’s nearly ten-year career – from the late 1930s through most of the 1940s – had a strong information / radio theme (see Part 1 – A Lifetime Passion and Part 2 – The Roots of the VOA of this series). One of those pieces was the American Broadcasting Station in Europe (ABSIE), which was set up as a station by the U.S. Office of War Information (OWI) in collaboration with the BBC, to counter Nazi propaganda, and to have a unique American voice in Europe. The seven ABSIE Country Desks broadcast eight hours of programming each day from London, targeting their respective country-specific audiences. Launched in the months leading up to D-Day, it ended fifteen months later – just ninety days after victory in Europe.

As a member of the OWI French Desk, mom began working to help launch ABSIE soon after she arrived in London in early 1944 – as they helped prepare for the imminent invasion of Europe. ABSIE was to be America’s big propaganda ‘gun,’ run as a complement to the Voice of America (VOA), but having its own mission to support the military goals of the Allied invasion of France. The ABSIE copy was specifically designed to raise doubt in the German psyche as to the sense of continuing an un-winnable war. ABSIE was also to be the authoritative voice that would inform people in occupied areas on how to be prepared for the coming invasion. Continue reading “A Love Affair with Radio [Part 3] – ABSIE”

My Research Quest

One of my interests in writing my yet-to-be published book, The French Desk – A Brooklyn Gal’s Journey into Wartime Propaganda, has been to tell the story of my mother’s life experiences before she was married. During WWII, she worked for the Office of War Information from October, 1942 – August, 1945. I always felt the propaganda work she was involved with had a very interesting side, and one that I did not read about or see portrayed in books and movies all that much.

My other idea was to present the story from someone who was not way up, or even up, in the chain of command. As a Katherine Gibbs trained executive secretary, who happened to be a college graduate with a year of study abroad and fluency in French for good measure, my mother was qualified for more than secretarial work which is exactly what happened.

Dr. Jerry Bruner (1936) – Source: Wikipedia

Still only in her mid-twenties, she was moved from Clerk-Stenographer upon hiring to Junior Research Analyst to Junior Field Rep to Assistant Field Rep to Chief of the Speakers Bureau at the USIS in Paris within a two-year time frame.

After reading all the letters, I thought her personal experiences were interesting enough. Really, a book could be written about all that. But I liked the angle of the propaganda work and thought the combination would be a fun read. Little did I understand what I was taking on.

One of my earliest outreaches was to Dr. Jerome Bruner, an American Psychologist who had worked with Continue reading “My Research Quest”