Your search for: subjects:"World War 1939 1945 Propaganda"

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's classic The Great War and Modern Memory remains one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. In its panoramic scope and poetic ...

Winner of both the National Book Award for Arts and Letters and the National Book Critics Circle Award for Criticism, Paul Fussell's classic The Great War and Modern Memory remains one of the most original and gripping volumes ever written about the First World War. In its panoramic scope and poetic intensity, it illuminated a war that changed a generation and revolutionized the way we see the world. Now, in Wartime, Paul Fussell turns to the Second World War, the conflict in which he himself fought, to weave a more intensely personal and wide-ranging narrative. Whereas his former book focused primarily on literary figures, here Fussell examines the immediate impact of the war on soldiers and civilians. He compellingly depicts the psychological and emotional atmosphere of World War II by analyzing the wishful thinking and the euphemisms people needed to deal with unacceptable reality; by describing the abnormally intense frustration of desire and some of the means by which desire was satisfied; and, most importantly, by emphasizing the damage the war did to intellect, discrimination, honesty, individuality, complexity, ambiguity, and wit. Of course, no book of Fussell's would be complete without serious attention to the literature of the time. He offers astute commentary on Edmund Wilson's argument with Archibald MacLeish, Cyril Connolly's Horizon magazine, the war poetry of Randall Jarrell and Louis Simpson, and many other aspects of the wartime literary world. In this stunning volume, Fussell conveys the essence of that war as no other writer before him has.

"British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job." So concludes Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was transformed from isolationism to belligerence in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. From the ...

"British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job." So concludes Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was transformed from isolationism to belligerence in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. From the moment it realized that all was lost without American aid, the British Government employed a host of persuasive tactics to draw the US to its rescue. With the help of talents as varied as those of matinee idol Leslie Howard, Oxford philosopher Isaiah Berlin and society photographer Cecil Beaton, no section of America remained untouched and no method--from Secret Service intrigue to the publication of horrifying pictures of Nazi atrocities--remained untried. The British sought and won the support of key journalists and broadcasters, including Edward R. Murrow, Dorothy Thompson and Walter Winchell; Hollywood film makers also played a willing part. Cull details these and other propaganda activities, covering the entire range of the British effort. A fascinating story of how a foreign country provoked America's involvement in its greatest war, Selling War will appeal to all those interested in the modern cultural and political history of Britain and the United States.

A startling omission from the extensive literature on the Pacific events of World War II is an analysis of Allied psychological operations. In this work Allison B. Gilmore makes a strong case for the importance of psychological warfare (psywar) in this theater, countering the usual view of fanatical ...

A startling omission from the extensive literature on the Pacific events of World War II is an analysis of Allied psychological operations. In this work Allison B. Gilmore makes a strong case for the importance of psychological warfare (psywar) in this theater, countering the usual view of fanatical resistance by Japanese units. Gilmore marshals evidence that Japanese military indoctrination was not proof against demoralization and the survival instinct.

The Pacific War was particularly brutal, racist on both sides, and often fought without regard to so-called civilized norms of warfare. Yet Gilmore offers her study as "the story of how psywar personnel attempted to convince Japanese and Americans alike that their assumptions about the other were misleading and counterproductive". To do so, she focuses on combat propaganda -- activities conducted in support of military operations and intended to demoralize Japanese combatants -- and examines the objectives of the psywar campaign. She outlines the process by which propaganda was created, evaluates the policies that guided that creation, and offers criteria for judging the relative success of these efforts. The work also examines the Imperial Army's training, the strengths and weaknesses of Japanese morale, and the Allies' attempts to exploit the Japanese military structure and ethos.