U.S.-Propaganda in World War I Whereas the British propaganda institution, called the Wellington House (situated in the USA) was working secretly, the U.S.- version, the CPI (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p. 183) was not hiding at all. Its most important issue was to explain its own people why the USA was fighting that war in Europe. The idea spread was that it was a just war, a war that had to be fought to rescue all people, even the Germans, from their political system. For this issue the Germans were divided into two groups, the emperor and the soldiers on the one side, being portrayed as beasts, and the German people, presented as the victims of the first ones. Propaganda tends to be as effective as bombs in wartime. With words alone there is no way of winning a war but loosing by words or loosing because of a lack of propaganda-words is easy. See the German example in World War I. Defamation is an important tool of disinformation, which is especially chosen for destroying the good reputation of a competitor or enemy. In this respect information can turn into a more destructive tool than ordinary weapons. War needs propaganda for moral reasons (justification), too, for the soldiers in the battlefields (they need to feel that their nation is appreciating their sacrifice) and for nationalism.

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Two Examples of Disinforamtion in the Eastern Bloc In the USSR manipulation of the population was one of the big tasks for the government. But manipulation got even further, for example when the English expert John Maynard came back from a visit in the Ukraine in 1933, he told about poverty but not about hunger. In fact he did not have seen anyone starving as the Soviets just showed him the things they wanted to show. Maynard was involuntarily used to spread Soviet disinformation. As a person from the West, the Western media tended to believe him. A nearly humorous variety of disinformation was ordered by Nicolae Ceausescu in the 1980s. It was a very cold winter and too little heating material was available. Therefore Ceausescu made a law that TV-forecasts-weather-forecasts were not allowed to talk about temperatures below 15° Celsius. Like this he hoped to keep the population quiet.

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retouch The retouch is the simplest way to change a picture. Small corrections can be made through this way. A well-known example is the correction of a picture from a Bill Clinton-visit in Germany. In the background of the photograph stood some people, holding a sign with critical comments. In some newspapers the picture was printed like this, in others a retouch had erased the sign. Another example happened in Austria in 1999: The right wing party FPÖ had a poster for the Parliamentarian elections which said: 1999 reasons to vote for Haider. Others answered by producing a retouch saying: 1938 reasons to not vote for Haider (pointing to the year 1939, when the vast majority of the Austrians voted for the "Anschluss" to Germany).

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