The tall short-wave antennae of Zeesen, Tokyo and Rome are beamed not only at certain areas of the earth. They are beamed at the delicately balanced human mind. To the bewilderment, corruption, terrorization of that target, crews of cold theorists and insulting riffraff have devoted themselves for years. In their war, as in the braver war waged by fighting men, the U.S. is now a formidable opponent—and is being attacked with every trick in the book.
The general pattern of attack had emerged by last week. As ever, the Axis radio searched for the chinks between friendly peoples, insinuated between them its calculated lies, its bacilli of rumor. The British were told that U.S. admirals secretly rejoiced at the sinking of the Prince of Wales and Repulse. The Americans were told to resent the British command of Far Eastern land forces. Disappointment was encouraged among the Chinese.
The Japanese radio, devious by habit and well coached by the Nazis, could boast several propaganda exploits. It cut in on the Far Eastern beam of California's KGEI to give phony "flashes" on the "bombing" of San Francisco. It presented an American "Lady Haw-Haw" to inform America of the "annihilation" of the U.S. fleet. Last week it fished for U.S. listeners by promising to announce the names of prisoners "as soon as they are available" —i.e., in driblets, to keep the audience tuned in.
The tactics of radio warfare are becoming familiar to the U.S. A lucid account of the subject appeared last week,† written by a 25-year-old analyst who had been in the radio melee with earphones on as a staff member of the Princeton Listening Center. He explained why the Axis radio has spent so much money and effort broadcasting by short wave to a country where "nobody" listens (best estimate of U.S. short-wave audience on any given day: 150,000). Biggest reason: to feed slogans and rumors to Axis agents, who spread them.
He told of the world's great short-wave stations now in Nazi hands: of the powerful Amsterdam radio, well heard in the Netherlands East Indies, which had been pumping out tales of U.S. weakness, Jap might for months before war broke in the Pacific; of Radio Falange in Madrid and Radio Vichy, whose assignment is to revile Yankee culture and Yankee "imperialism" for Latin American ears; of Radio Saīgon, now an instrument of Jap propaganda in Southern Asia.
On Axis technique he had interesting observations; how the innocent press of the world plays the Axis game by employing "terror symbols" systematically used by the Axis radio: words like "annihilated," "total," "paralyzing," etc. How "the use of absurd exaggerations and fantastic assertions is an essential part of the German strategy. It removes to a large extent the stigma attached to propaganda by giving to it an appearance of ballyhoo"—i.e., something which the U.S. radio audience has long been conditioned to accept good-humoredly.