Knowing the Enemy: Propaganda Experts, Intelligence, and Total War (1941–1945)

Abstract

This article investigates the entangled history of the propaganda battles waged during World War II, focusing on Germany, the Soviet Union, and the United States. It asks how and to what extent these three political regimes conceptualized propaganda as a knowledge-based practice and what kind of expertise they mobilized. Although American propaganda strategists were the only ones to make use of modern social science methods as part of their activities, under the difficult circumstances of ongoing war operations, the practices of knowledge production by military intelligence did not fundamentally differ between the three countries. The war profoundly changed the way knowledge was systematically mobilized for political and military purposes, and transnational entanglements, perceptions, and observations (but also misperceptions and projections) played a crucial role in that development. This directly connects World War II developments to the emergence of a Cold War regime of producing and using scientific knowledge for strategic purposes.