‘Banned wherever truth is banned’: allied airborne propaganda, cultural information warfare, and targeting Nazi Germany with ‘news’ from the sky (1944-1945)

Abstract

This article explores notions of ‘truth’ and ‘factuality’ in war news, transnational aerial propaganda campaigns, and the persuasive techniques used by U.S. military propaganda troops during World War II. By drawing on underutilized archival materials, this study shows how Allied propagandists used airborne leaflet propaganda as tools of cultural information warfare after D-Day to reach, influence, and lower people’s morale on the German home front, and to demoralize combatant soldiers by pressuring them to surrender. Analysis of propaganda leaflets and newspapers reveals iconographic and ideological representation of Allied perceptions of ‘truth’, overt sexist portrayals of women as a propaganda weapon, and how these materials crossed national borders and bypassed physical censorship. The findings rest on a historical analysis of primary records, including more than one thousand propaganda leaflets, airborne newspapers, unpublished correspondence from military officials, U.S. public opinion questionaries, and other materials disseminated over wartime Germany.