The Trouble with Propaganda: the Second World War, Franco's Spain, and the Origins of US Post-War Public Diplomacy

Abstract

This paper explores the internecine conflict that characterised and undermined US propaganda toward neutral Spain in the Second World War. These tensions primarily confronted those who saw US propaganda as an ideological weapon of mass persuasion in a crusade against Fascism with those who defended that US informational and cultural operations should be subservient to traditional diplomacy, and so be limited to explaining US foreign policy and advancing bilateral friendship. In addition, the article argues that the unambiguous subordination of propaganda to diplomacy that characterised US public diplomacy during the cold war was one of the lessons learnt out of the civil war that US propagandists fought over Spain between 1941 and early 1945.