British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World War Germany, National Socialism and the Political Warfare Executive Kirk Robert Graham BRITAIN AND THE WORLD Britain and the World Series Editors Martin Farr, School of History, Newcastle University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK Michelle D. Brock, Department of History, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA, USA Eric G. E. Zuelow, Department of History, University of New England, Biddeford, ME, USA Britain and the World is a series of books on ‘British world’ history. The editors invite book proposals from historians of all ranks on the ways in which Britain has interacted with other societies from the sixteenth century to the present. The series is sponsored by the Britain and the World society. Britain and the World is made up of people from around the world who share a common interest in Britain, its history, and its impact on the wider world. The society serves to link the various intellectual commu- nities around the world that study Britain and its international influence from the seventeenth century to the present. It explores the impact of Britain on the world through this book series, an annual conference, and the Britain and the World peer-reviewed journal. Martin Farr (martin.farr@newcastle.ac.uk) is General Series Editor for the Britain and the World book series. Michelle D. Brock (brockm@wlu.edu) is Series Editor for titles focusing on the pre-1800 period and Eric G. E. Zuelow (ezuelow@une.edu) is Series Editor for titles covering the post-1800 period. More information about this series at http://www.palgrave.com/gp/series/14795 Kirk Robert Graham British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World War Germany, National Socialism and the Political Warfare Executive Kirk Robert Graham School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry University of Queensland St Lucia, QLD, Australia Britain and the World ISBN 978-3-030-71663-9 ISBN 978-3-030-71664-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71664-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa- tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover image: © National Library of Scotland This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland This one’s for you, Matilda. Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the patient and generous support of Matilda, who is much smarter and prettier than me, and Edith, whose imminent arrival hastened the completion of the manuscript. Special thanks also to Andrew Bonnell, my Ph.D. supervisor and comrade, whose invisible hand marks every page. On behalf of all the graduate students at UQ’s School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, a big thank you to Judy King for her tireless jousting with university bureau- cracy on our behalf. I’m grateful to the junior researchers at the Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities, UQ, for being so welcoming and generous during what proved to be quite a productive fellowship—special thanks here to Lucia Pozzi, Elese Dowden, and Brendan Walsh. Thank you also to Richard Scully, whose feedback and support breathed new life into this project when it could easily have languished in a dusty thesis library. Thank you to David Welch and Daniel Siemens who recognized the potential for this book when I sketched out a proposal, offered some pertinent suggestions for my work, and then had some very kind words to say about the finished product. At various times over the course of this project, parts of this book were subject to blind peer review: I am enor- mously grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers at the Journal of Contemporary History and the Journal of the History of Sexuality for their excellent and thoughtful feedback—apologies again to Annette Timm for having to withdraw the article over a copyright conflict (I’m vii viii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS still kicking myself about this). I’m sure I haven’t mentioned everyone who helped bring this book into the world. It takes a village... There are also quite a few people out there doing their utmost to vandalize higher education and kill off humanities and social science research. I reserve particular loathing for the recent run of federal educa- tion ministers in Australia—there’s nothing special about them other than their visibility atop a towering dung-heap of neoliberal mediocrity that includes politicians, publishers, media personalities and overpaid university bosses. To them I say: rot and be forgotten. Praise for British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World War “Kirk Graham’s book is a valuable contribution to the origins and the understanding of British subversive propaganda in Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Focusing on the activities of the Polit- ical Warfare Executive, it demonstrates to what extent these efforts were shaped by the British elite’s deep-rooted prejudices about an authoritarian German national character and how these views even informed the first years of British occupation policy in Germany after 1945.” —Daniel Siemens, FRHistS, Professor and Chair of European History, Newcastle University, UK “This impressive and innovative study explores the activities of the Polit- ical Warfare Executive in their attempts to destabilise Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Taking a thematic approach, Graham sheds much light on British subversive propaganda, its functions and form, and the assumptions that underpinned its use. From an overall institutional analysis, Graham moves through the various biographical and cultural contexts of the propagandists, via several revealing case-studies; culmi- nating in the intellectual context and ‘logic’ of propaganda. British Subver- sive Propaganda during the Second World War is a book in which readers ix x PRAISE FOR BRITISH SUBVERSIVE PROPAGANDA DURING THE ... will not only find much new analysis, but an authoritative and up-to- date engagement with the scholarly literature. It is a valuable addition to the ‘Britain and the World’ series, as well as the broader scholarship on propaganda.” —Richard Scully, Associate Dean and Associate Professor in Modern History, University of New England, Australia Contents 1 Introduction: British Propagandists and the German Problem 1 2 The View from Woburn Abbey: The Political Culture of PWE 29 3 The Brazen Horde: British Propagandists and the Course of German History 67 4 Germany on the Couch: The Role of Psychology and the Social Sciences in the Development of Subversive Propaganda 105 5 No Man so Lecherous as the German: Nazi Perversion and German Masculinity in British Subversive Propaganda 145 6 A Rebellion Against the Divinely Appointed Order: Totalitarian Theory, Secular Religions, and Religious Anti-Fascism in British Subversive Propaganda 183 7 The Logic of Subversive Propaganda 227 8 Epilogue: Breaking Hearts and Minds 277 Bibliography 285 Index 303 xi CHAPTER 1 Introduction: British Propagandists and the German Problem 200 sharks have been sent from Australia to Britain and released in the Channel. —British subversive rumour directed at Germany, January 1941 1 This is a study of Britain’s intelligentsia and political elite, working together in the service of the state, responding to a period of crisis. During the Second World War, British organizations such as the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) waged a covert propaganda offensive against Nazi Germany. Their great hope was to undermine German morale and hasten the end of the war. Their efforts were largely in vain. Rather than a Technicolor revival of the Kiel Mutiny, German soldiers and civilians fought on to the rubble-strewn corridors of the Reichstag. Something of a consensus among historians long maintained that Allied propagan- dists were inhibited in their task by the Allied demand for Germany’s unconditional surrender, which seemingly rendered the war a fight for survival. This narrative is complicated, however, by a closer examination of the character of Britain’s propaganda organizations and the manner in which they developed an understanding of the supposed German national character. 1 The National Archives of the United Kingdom (TNA) FO 898/70, “A Note for the Consideration of the Committee” (c. April 1941). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 K. R. Graham, British Subversive Propaganda during the Second World War , Britain and the World, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71664-6_1 1 2 K. R. GRAHAM This book was conceived as a kind of double helix—two thematic threads dancing around a single question. The first thread is an archival study of British propaganda departments during the Second World War. The second thread is an exploration of the ideas that underpinned these propagandists’ efforts, a theoretically informed exegesis that draws on histories of anti-fascism, gender, religion, sexuality, psychology, and sociology, and even the history of history itself. The core question is deceptively simple: what did British propagandists think of Germany and National Socialism? With particular attention to PWE and its associated organizations (including Department EH, the BBC, and the Special Operations Exec- utive), this book tells the story of British subversive propaganda during the Second World War. British propagandists used diverse and often pecu- liar means to promote resistance against Nazi hegemony in Europe and undermine the morale of German servicemen and civilians. Their task was complicated by a surfeit of responses to Nazism circulating in Britain during the 1930s. Rather than analysing military strategy or tactics, or producing a narrative history of major campaigns, this book focuses on the genesis of PWE’s ideas about Germany and National Socialism, and the social and political context in which these ideas were developed and deployed. Partly an outgrowth of the British Foreign Office’s intelligence and publicity divisions, PWE was primarily a civilian propaganda and intel- ligence department working within the ambit of wartime military and military intelligence organizations. While mathematicians and cryptog- raphers gathered at Bletchley Park, linguists, historians, civil servants, journalists, and anti-Nazi European exiles came together at neighbouring Woburn Abbey. Together they conceived of an enemy audience suscep- tible to morale subversion. Their project produced some intriguing results and reveals as much about the intellectual currents of late-imperial Britain as it does Nazi Germany. PWE was a large and diffuse organization, a product of its func- tion and its historical moment; compartmentalized to a degree, it kept offices not just in Bedfordshire and London but also in Stockholm and Cairo. This book will not try to draw a detailed institutional picture of the organization but instead focus on the intellectual tendencies in and around the department’s German section. Formally established in September 1941, PWE was the last in a brief succession of shadowy foreign propaganda departments which had purview over all propaganda 1 INTRODUCTION: BRITISH PROPAGANDISTS ... 3 from Britain to enemy and occupied Europe. This included open, or “white,” propaganda, including the BBC European Service, and clan- destine, or “black” propaganda, which concealed its British origins and was disavowed by the government. In the realm of black propaganda, PWE launched more than forty unique clandestine radio stations and they maintained a prolific outpouring of leaflets and other printed propaganda. Throughout the war, PWE’s experts also trained secret agents in psycho- logical warfare. Later, the department’s political warfare school trained more than four hundred Allied personnel in practices such as propaganda and re-education ahead of D-Day. From 1943, PWE was enmeshed in joint Anglo-American activities, contributing personnel, intelligence, and material to the Psychological Warfare Division of the Supreme Head- quarters, Allied Expeditionary Force (PWD/SHAEF). Meanwhile, the department published soldier’s guides on the politics, culture, and history of Germany and Europe—known colloquially as “bibles”—which were issued to British officers and servicemen bound for the continent. 2 And later British policy during the occupation stemmed in part from the wartime research and experiences of these propagandists. While there is reason to doubt whether British propagandists helped to shorten the war by any significant measure, PWE was nevertheless a powerful medium of cultural influence in both Germany and Britain. Indeed, as Richard Dove argues, the PWE-controlled BBC German Service “[constituted] a virtual paradigm of British cultural and political attitudes towards the German-speaking world.” 3 PWE’s historically contingent and dynamic understanding of Germany pays further scrutiny. PWE did not exist in isolation. In the British context, it stood as a nexus between government ministries and war departments including the Foreign Office, the Ministry of Information, the Ministry of Economic Warfare, the BBC, the Special Operations Executive, the Secret Intelli- gence Service, Naval Intelligence, and Bomber Command. Significantly, the chapters that follow also explore the international collaborations and transnational cultural and intellectual tendencies that constituted British 2 Pauline Elkes, “The Political Warfare Executive: A Re-evaluation Based Upon the Intelligence Work of the German Section”, PhD Thesis, University of Sheffield (1996), 91–92. 3 Richard Dove, “Introduction”, “Stimme der Wahrheit”: German-Language Broad- casting by the BBC , ed. Charmian Brinson and Richard Dove (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2003), ix. 4 K. R. GRAHAM subversive propaganda’s broader context. Professional exchanges such as that between PWE and the American Office of Strategic Services (OSS), for example, demonstrate outside influences on departmental thinking while also illuminating the idiosyncrasies in the British perspective. Writing shortly after the war, senior propagandist Richard Crossman argued that “[p]ropaganda, to be effective, must be not only factually true, but credible...This demanded a tremendous effort of empathy , not merely feeling with the listener, but feeling into his emotions, so as to avoid statements and forms of presentations which would create hostility and suspicion.” 4 For British propagandists, the spur to empathy meant that they had to develop not just an intellectual but also an emotional understanding of Nazism’s appeal. Of course, Germany was a distant object of study, further isolated by the war, which lent itself to a degree of reductionism. Underpinning PWE’s varied operations was a tangle of axioms about the German national character. While by no means the reflection of a party programme, even the most pragmatic moments in the propaganda war speak to the cultural and social prejudices of mid- century Britain, which were only heightened by the turbulent atmosphere of political and ideological emergency. Modern propaganda organizations generally, and PWE in particular, are fascinating because they operate in a space where an intellectual and political elite can proselytize and respond to the public sphere. In the liberal-democratic Britain of the interwar period, propaganda was gener- ally regarded with suspicion; the patriotic propaganda of the First World War, replete with stories of enemy brutality and obscene stereotypes, disturbed many who came to realize that the government had lied to them about the nature of the war. Indeed, as David Welch demonstrates, many British citizens were so wary of government communiques by the time Britain was once again at war, that when they were informed of the mass murder of Jews in Nazi camps the reports were initially dismissed as yet more “atrocity” propaganda disseminated to galvanize a war-weary populace. 5 Inherited from British experiences in the First World War and fostered by a cadre of like-minded foreign service personnel, the strength 4 Richard Crossman, “Supplementary Essay”, Sykewar , ed. Daniel Lerner (New York: George W. Stewart, 1949), 336. 5 David Welch, “‘Opening Pandora’s Box’: Propaganda, Power and Persuasion,” Propa- ganda, Power and Persuasion: From World War I to Wikileaks , ed. David Welch (London, I.B. Tauris, 2014), 6. 1 INTRODUCTION: BRITISH PROPAGANDISTS ... 5 of their belief in the power of propaganda was variable and often qualified by the idea that morale subversion was a particularly effective weapon only so long as the enemy was on the back foot. At the same time, discourses throughout the interwar period pointed to the seemingly magical power of propaganda and its absolute necessity during times of conflict. As Mark Connelly et al. observe, “‘Propaganda’ was a word to conjure with in the aftermath of the Great War.” 6 The tremendous potential of propaganda took on sharper connotations in the over-heated political climate of 1930s Europe. In one sense, this is a history of the birth of the technocracy that came to define post-war Europe. Propaganda was a necessary evil: an anti-democratic bludgeon in the hands of Europe’s dictators, it could in fact act as a shield to preserve democracy so long as it was wielded by an appropriate “managerial aristocracy.” 7 Figures such as Stephen Tallents, who worked for the Empire Marketing Board before becoming Controller of Public Relations for the BBC, were convinced that this “technocratic elite” was needed “to guide and manage the ill-informed masses... deluged by the flow of information caused by advances in modern communications.” 8 For such mid-century planners, then, propa- ganda was an expression of a new elitist hierarchical model of democracy envisaged to protect democracy from itself. When war finally came, propaganda became an important weapon in Britain’s arsenal. The 1980s witnessed a debate regarding the complicated pre-war plan- ning history of Britain’s propaganda departments. 9 At stake was the ideological riddle of how an ostensibly open and democratic state came to embrace a centralized and often secretive approach to propaganda. Philip M. Taylor argued that the new Ministry of Information had been modelled on British experiences during the First World War while Ian 6 Mark Connelly, Jo Fox, Stefan Goebel and Ulf Schmidt, “‘Power and Persuasion’: Propaganda into the Twenty-First Century” Propaganda and Conflict: War, Media and Shaping the Twentieth Century (London: Bloomsbury, 2019), 4. 7 Connelly et al., “‘Power and Persuasion’: Propaganda into the Twenty-First Century”, 2. 8 Connelly et al., “‘Power and Persuasion’: Propaganda into the Twenty-First Century”, 2. 9 A brief summary of this debate appears in: Kirk Robert Graham, “Germany on the Couch: Psychology and the Development of British Subversive Propaganda to Nazi Germany” Journal of Contemporary History 54.3 (2019): 492. 6 K. R. GRAHAM McLaine suggested that inspiration came instead from Joseph Goebbels’s more recent innovations. Weighing into the debate, Temple Wilcox cast doubt on both positions. 10 He argued that Tallents, the civil servant who directed the development of MoI plans during the late 1930s, could not hope to replicate the Nazi apparatus, but, at the same time, Tallents “positively avoided all consultations with Great War veterans, since recent technological changes meant that the methods developed during 1914–18 now required considerable modification.” 11 Wilcox’s argument is certainly compelling, but evidence suggests that Tallents did in fact consult with First World War propaganda veterans including Campbell Stuart, who was later nominated as the first foreign propa- ganda chief—after Tallents was himself ousted—specifically because of his previous wartime propaganda experience. 12 Responsibility for foreign propaganda changed hands frequently, but evidence supports a quali- fied nod to Taylor’s argument. Of course, drawing on First World War experiences was problematic, as Taylor argues, because such a perspective “tended to exaggerate the role which British propaganda was believed to have played either in bringing the United States into the war on the Allied side in 1917 or in bringing Germany to her knees the following year.” 13 Little wonder that the power of propaganda took on mythical propor- tions. As the chapters that follow will demonstrate, this debate over the source of inspiration during the planning stages is rather academic. Intel- lectual engagements with the problems set by the mid-century ideological crisis and the war meant that British propagandists were inexorably drawn to long-running discourses on Germany and Europe, on mass politics and democracy, on gender, sexuality, and class. Even if Britain’s wartime foreign propaganda departments emerged sui generis, their worldview did not. 10 Philip M. Taylor, “‘If War Should Come’: Preparing the Fifth Arm for Total War 1935–1939”, Journal of Contemporary History 16.1 (1981): 34; Ian McLaine, Ministry of Morale: Home Front Morale and the Ministry of Information in World War II (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1979), 12–13. 11 Temple Wilcox, “Projection or Publicity? Rival Concepts in the Pre-War Planning of the British Ministry of Information”, Journal of Contemporary History 18.1 (1983): 103. 12 TNA FO 898/1, “Extract from the minutes of the fifth meeting of the Ministry of Information Sub-Committee, held on 14th December, 1938”; Andrew Roberts briefly discusses Stuart’s role in his introduction to David Garnett’s official history: A. Roberts, “Introduction”, The Secret History of PWE (London: St Ermin’s Press, 2002), ix. 13 Taylor, “‘If War Should Come’”, 35. 1 INTRODUCTION: BRITISH PROPAGANDISTS ... 7 Propaganda is, in essence, ethically neutral, a method of persuasive communication that may well relay distasteful content through dubious form. 14 That form depends to large degree on the historical context. During the Second World War, PWE focused its efforts across radio broadcasts, leaflet propaganda, and subversive rumours. The line between these mediums is inevitably blurred, however, as subversive campaigns often demanded a multi-media attack. Rumours, for example, might be disseminated by agents in Europe but they were also a core element of subversive broadcasting and air-dropped leaflets. All three media are discussed throughout this book, but radio does have a special place in this account, as the Second World War was certainly the first war of the airwaves. In a very real sense, radio was a democratizing medium, narrowing the distance between subject and ruler by “bringing the voices of leading statesmen... directly to the homes of citizens.” 15 Of course, this democra- tizing medium was very quickly put to anti-democratic ends. In Germany, radio was a key element in Nazi efforts to create a Volksgemeinschaft, or people’s community. Within months of coming to power, the Nazis began mass-producing an affordable medium-wave radio set—the Volk- sempfänger, or people’s receiver—to aid in their efforts to Nazify German society. The Volksempfänger was hugely popular, not necessarily because of its affiliation with the Nazis but because it brought music, drama, and light entertainment directly into people’s homes. Cheaper than commercially manufactured receivers, Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels ensured that it was available to Germans of even modest means. “By 1935,” writes Welch, Nazi control of the airwaves means that “Hitler’s speeches reached an audience of over 56,000,000.” 16 “By 1941,” writes Eric Rentschler, “65% of German households owned a 14 Welch, “‘Opening Pandora’s Box’”, 11. 15 Ulrike Jordan, “‘A Mixture of Stubborn Resistance and Sudden Surrender’: The British Media Report on the End of the War in Europe,” Conditions of Surrender: Britons and Germans Witness the End of the War , ed. Ulrike Jordan (I.B. Tauris, London: 1997), 41. 16 Welch, “Restructuring the Means of Communication in Nazi Germany”, Readings in Propaganda and Persuasion: New and Classic Essays , ed. Garth S. Jowett and Victoria O’Donnell (London: Sage, 2006), 132. 8 K. R. GRAHAM ‘people’s receiver’.” 17 The Volksempfänger was designed to be too weak to receive foreign broadcasts, but Germans soon discovered that on clear evenings they might pick up transmissions from further afield—and when British propagandists learned of this, they quickly invested in more powerful transmitters. Of course, Nazi broadcasting was also an immediate concern for British authorities. In a fascinating study of rumour-mongering in Britain precip- itated by the Lord Haw-Haw broadcasts, Jo Fox argues that “[p]ersistent rumormongering in wartime Britain was, in part, generated by popular suspicions that the authorities were withholding certain details about the course of the war [sic].” 18 Where Whitehall was seemingly tight-lipped, snippets of information woven into subversive Nazi broadcasts offered anxious Britons enough to piece together the “truth” about what was going on. It is remarkable that Nazi efforts so clearly pre-empted PWE’s later rumour-mongering strategy. As Will Studdert demonstrates through his research into the role of jazz in the propaganda war, English and German “propaganda strategies did not emerge in a vacuum but directly influenced and affected one another.” 19 The subversive dangers of the Lord Haw-Haw broadcasts were later dismissed as incompatible with the nostalgic remembrance of the “people’s war.” At the time, however, they were a cause for alarm among British authorities. British propagandists began the war with tremendous optimism about the potential for their own propaganda. And in fact, British propaganda was popular in Germany, despite the strict prohibitions placed on it by the Nazi government. The Gestapo’s own figures for BBC listeners in Germany suggest an audience of fifteen million in 1944, up from one million in 1940. 20 Interviews with German prisoners of war supported these figures, pointing to a large and engaged audience for both open and clandestine broadcasting. 21 As the war turned against the Germans, Marlis 17 Eric Rentschler, “The Fascination of a Fake: The Hitler Diaries,” New German Critique 90 (2003): 186. 18 Jo Fox, “Confronting Lord Haw-Haw: Rumour and Britain’s Wartime Anti-Lies Bureau”, Journal of Modern History 91 (2019): 79. 19 Will Studdert, The Jazz War: Radio, Nazism and the Struggle for the Airwaves in World War II (London: I.B. Tauris, 2019), 2. 20 Michael Balfour, Propaganda in War, 1939–1945: Organisations, Policies, and Publics, in Britain and Germany (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1979), 96. 21 TNA FO 898/65, CSDIC, “German Morale” (21 July 1943). 1 INTRODUCTION: BRITISH PROPAGANDISTS ... 9 Steinert writes, “[m]ore and more Germans began listening to foreign radio; no one admitted listening, but there were animated discussions about how Englishmen were allowed to tune into German stations.” 22 Despite this hard-won audience, British efforts did not seem to produce desiderata. Several years of middling results tempered their enthusiasm, but subversive operations continued to expand even in the final months of the war. This book suggests that the ongoing commitment to subver- sive propaganda was bound to ideas about German national character and the advent of fascism that had developed during the interwar period and were later conditioned by the social milieu of PWE itself. The epigraph to this introduction—an almost whimsical British-authored rumour meant to undermine the morale of Luftwaffe crews—hints at the occasional divorce between the British understanding of their German audience and any external reality. But, as studies of the Ministry of Informa- tion have shown, even propagandists addressing their own countrymen at times “framed [propaganda] as if for an alien people.” 23 The propa- gandists’ perspective on Germany was more than merely a reflection of wartime chauvinism. As James Chapman observes, “like other aspects of government, the direction of propaganda policy has often exposed ideo- logical tensions, institutional differences and personal rivalries.” 24 This is certainly true of PWE. While PWE was relatively politically heterogeneous for a war department (it even weathered criticism for being uncommonly left-wing), it was still an outgrowth of British officialdom, bearing all the hallmarks of elite mores and institutional prejudices. Mid-century stereotypes were not limited to Germany, of course. According to an instructor at PWE’s political warfare school, the Dutch were humourless, the Belgians had pluck, and “Norway [was] a country of middle classes,” but a Norwegian who drank was “a labouring type of man.” 25 The coded prefix for PWE’s clandestine Italian language 22 Marlis G. Steinert, Hitler’s War and the Germans: Public Mood and Attitude During the Second World War , ed. and trans. Thomas E.J. de Witt (Athens, OH: Ohio UP, 1977), 207. 23 McLaine, Ministry of Morale , 21–22. 24 James Chapman, “‘War’ Versus ‘Cultural’ Propaganda: Institutional and Ideological Tensions Over the Projection of Britain During the Second World War”, Propaganda, Power and Persuasion: From World War I to Wikileaks , ed. David Welch (London, I.B. Tauris, 2014), 80. 25 TNA FO 898/99, Lecture Notes, “The Norwegian Way of Life” (c. 1944).