take measures against British airplane pilots who dropped leaflets, so that
the British and Americans relied chiefly on mortars and balloons. In Gen-
eral Pershing's headquarters, a section G-2 D was organized for "psycho-
logic" warfare, and tactical leaflets were showered on the German lines.
These included surrender passes; forms on which Germans could notify
their families that they were safe, pictures of well-fed prisoners of war in
American hands; political attacks on Kaiserism and on Prussian control of
non-Prussian Germany; leaflets, giving the German troops the correct news
of the war, when bad; and emphasis on the democratic aims of the Allies.
German profiteers and capitalists were attacked. Chief emphasis was on
food, however, since the Germans were starving, and on the fact that the
Americans had arrived in Europe in large numbers and that millions more
were coming. Post-1918 German commentators (including Ludendorff and
Hitler) blamed Germany's defeat on Allied propaganda, and credited the
Allies with effective professional propaganda. Part of the German willing-
ness to admire Allied propaganda must be discounted, since the German
admiration was based in part on an unwillingness to admit loss of the war
by military means. Nevertheless, propaganda was a major ingredient of
Allied victory in World War I.
¶17. THE INTER-WAR PERIOD. The Communists used propa-
ganda as a major weapon for achieving and consolidating their rule in
Russia, and used propaganda for the attempted subversion of "capitalist
states". This tended to identify propaganda as something which "Bolsheviks
could use, but which established governments could not counter-employ.
In tactical psychological warfare, propaganda was the main feature of
Chiang Kai-shek's preliminary unification of China; he had studied Russian
irregular warfare and psychological warfare in Moscow.
