Thanks to Hollywood, I have always assumed that military propaganda targeting enemy civilians or combatants is just a formality of war with little to no practical purpose. But I’ve been reading about PSYOPS lately, and I‘m impressed by the amount of effort that the U.S military has actually invested in creating propaganda to demoralize the opposing side or persuade them to surrender.
Some operations were highly creative, including sophisticated leaflets with culturally-specific symbolism, loudspeaker broadcasts that played off of local superstitions, fabricated religious prophecies spread by allies in the target region and even images projected into enemy skies.
I can only assume we have evidence that this class of tactics is effective, and I’m wondering if there were any military operations - by any country - where such techniques played a key role in securing victory. If so, which ones? If not, why waste the energy?
I can speak some about the leaflets and broadcasts the Allies used on a starving German Army at the end of World War 1. The leaflets and such have unique psychological effects depending on the individual.
I read somewhere that almost all the soldiers who would surrender individually were often outcasts or had a poor relationship with their unit. The individual men who would sneak over to Allied lines to desert were the ones who were not cohesive group members.
When there were larger surrenders- it often would be a group decision. That is platoon of German soldiers would be out of food, hungry, demoralized, but still decide that they were going to give up to the Allies as a unit, collectively.
With the situation at the end of World War 1, you can argue that it was not just the psychological operation, but rather the psychological operation exacerbating very real existing problems.