The War of Words: Psychological Warfare in a Foreign Language

Abstract

From the outset of the war, a key task for the British authorities was that of persuasion, psychological warfare, arguing to the occupied populations of Western Europe that, despite all appearances to the contrary, the enemy had not definitively won, that the fight would be continuing. Countering the messages which the occupiers themselves were mediating to occupied Europe, promoting alternative Allied interpretations, and ‘speaking to the others’ in an effort to (in twenty-first-century parlance) win hearts and minds, was vital both in morale terms and as a strategic contribution to winning the whole war. Inevitably, this particular battleground, that of propaganda and persuasion, was one in which the major weapon was to be language, a ‘war of words’ (Briggs 1995: 3). This chapter considers the linguistic dimensions of this psychological warfare in two different contexts. Firstly, what were the language implications of broadcasting to occupied Europe from outside the continent, from Britain itself, and secondly, what happened when psychological war was being conducted ‘on the ground’, during military operations to liberate and occupy?