The Post-World-War II-period

After World War II the importance of propaganda still increased, on the commercial level as well as on a political level, in the era of the Cold War. The propaganda institutions of the different countries wanted their people to think the right way, which meant, the national way. In the USA the McCarthy-era started, a totalitarian system in struggle against communism. McCarthy even managed to publicly burn critical books that were written about him; and every unbeloved artist was said to be a communist, an out-law.
Cold War brought the era of spies with it, which was the perfect tool of disinformation. But the topic as a movie-genre seems still popular today, as the unchanged success of James Bond-movies show.
A huge net of propaganda was built up for threatening with the nuclear bomb: pretending that the enemy was even more dangerous than the effect of such a bomb.
And later, after the fall of the Iron Curtain, disinformation found other fields of work, like the wars of the 1990s showed us.

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Themistocles

Themistocles, a Greek politician and general, conquered the Persians in the battle of Salamis, in 480 BC. The Persians, under their King Xerxes, who were on the edge of winning the battle, got defeated by a propaganda campaign that Themistocles launched, telling the Persians that he was on their side and willing to let them win the battle; his argument was that the Greek were so busy with their quarrels that they were not prepared to fight an aggressive battle and a lot of them would change sides if the power of the Persians was shown in a short and cruel fight. In the end Xerxes got the message that parts of the Greek army were fleeing the battlefield. This disinformation lead to a wrong assessment of Xerxes, which made it easy for the Greek to win the war.

For further details see:
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/31900_Q.html

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/kitson/ESSAYS/Them.htm

http://www.eptonline.com/comptons/ceo/31900_Q...
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/kitson/ESSAYS/Them.h...
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