American Atrocity Propaganda

Abstract

This chapter explores the American atrocity propaganda as a psychological warfare campaign based predominantly on visual methods. After the delegations' visits, Nazi concentration camps became the most talked-about news in the United States. Germans were defeated, occupied, and subject to the whims of the occupying powers. American soldiers were baffled when civilians living nearby claimed not to have known of the existence of the concentration camps. American atrocity propaganda made the concentration camps visible and undeniable. The initial effect of atrocity propaganda in Germany is also discussed. The Cold War shaped an American foreign policy that increasingly relied on the U.S.-Western German anticommunist alliance. The Americans quickly realized, the confrontation policy was a political failure, alienating the Germans and making the Soviet military occupation look benign and sympathetic.