phrase there derived the term fifth column to designate active clandestine
operators. Unlike the espionage agent, the fifth columnist seeks to take an
active part in the war. He may perform sabotage, instigate rebellion, launch
whispering campaigns, prepare for an uprising. The spy has two main jobs:
to find fact; to communicate it. The fifth columnist has one job: to make
trouble. Whenever Hitler's war of nerves against the democracies struck
at morale, the morale was already readied for his blow. His agents sowed
dissension throughout Europe and--to a lesser degree--the rest of the world.
One of their main functions was black propaganda. This was not Nazi propa-
ganda except in the sense that the Nazis paid for it and expected to benefit
by it. It might be any kind of propaganda which heated up the controversies
in the anti-Nazi camps. It might take the form of anti-Nazism, provided it
did so in such a way as to defeat its purpose. Many of its instruments were
unconscious of its Nazi origin. In the early part of World War II, the situa-
tion was complicated by the fact that the Communist clandestine operatives
had the same short-range goals as the Nazis: discredit of the capitalist
democracies, denunciation of the imperialist war, and so forth. With the
entry of the Soviet Union into the war, the Communist propaganda line
shifted over to support of anti-Nazi military operations.
The fifth column is considered to have made a major contribution
to the fall of France. In Norway, a minority of ultra-patriotic fanatics
under Vidkun Quisling helped the Germans occupy the country. The tactics
of the fifth column cannot be summarized: they involved cutting communi-
cations, telephoning false orders, destruction of bridges, calling of strikes,
and anything else which would work certain mischief. (Popular writers,
since the invention of the atomic bomb, have predicted that a major duty of
future fifth columns will be the concealment of atomic bombs in enemy terri-
tory. If these were radio-sensitive, one dash on the right wavelength would
send the enemy cities white-hot into the stratosphere.)
123. POLITICAL WARFARE. Political warfare in World War II
was more obvious and less effective than in World War I. Many countries
had two governments (India, France, Holland, the Philippines); some even
had three (Jugoslavia, Poland). Appeals for support of these governments
were made by every available propaganda means. The United Nations some-
times had the government-in-exile (Norway, Holland, Luxembourg); sometimes
the Axis had it (Provisional Government of Free India). The three-cornered
character of political warfare arose from the presence of rival democratic
and Communist governments, both on the United Nations side. The chief
lesson learned by all participants was the fact that when a country is occu-
pied, a certain percentage of the population, however small, is going to
show improper private ambition and volunteer to serve the enemy; the con-
querors, far from having to prepare quisling governments in advance, were
almost universally embarrassed by the different cliques of traitors who
volunteered to serve the occupying powers.
10
