People aren’t any different today, but what has changed is the media. I’ve often wondered how WWII would have been perceived if there had been 24/7 news channels bringing back visceral images from every battle? Back in WWII days, the American media could also be counted on to aide in the propaganda effort. Roosevelt was a cripple, but a nod and a wink kept images of him in his wheelchair out of the press. Reporters in war zones saw their job as being ancillary/support for the troops, helping win the war by sending the ‘good news about our boys overseas’ back home. Today, journalists don’t see themselves as part of the war effort, but as some dispassionate ‘overseer’, reporting the truth whether it helps the cause or not.
Can you imagine CNN on Iwo Jima, showing thousands upon thousands of U.S. corpses strewn on the ground? Can you imagine the handwringing, the demands for investigations, the second-guessing that would have gone on after every battlefield defeat? Hell, a training exercise in the run-up to D-day killed hundreds of men. How would that play out on CNN today? How long would we be treated to front-page headlines and congressional investigations over that? Hell, when the 3rd infantry stopped in Iraq for a day because it had outrun its supply lines, the media was just about ready to throw in the towel and declare defeat.
And can you imagine the second-guessing that would go in among the chattering classes over U.S. strategic decisions? Japan bombs Pearl, the Germans declare war, and we’re fighting in North Africa??? Huh? And what happened to the Philippines? MacArthur should be cashiered!
I imagine it wouldn’t take too much hand-wringing and constant news of failures before the people would start saying, “What’s so bad about the Japanese anyway? They don’t want to destroy us, they just want their own ‘sphere of influence’. Isn’t that what every country wants? Are we so different? And anyhow, isn’t it our fault for choking off their trade? Maybe it’s time to start looking at what’s wrong with America!”
Well Sam Stone… imagine if the German press had questioned the invasion of the Sudentenland, Austria and Poland ? Its darn horrible when information is available to citizens… it might not help to make things seems clear cut and heroic for sure though.
Yes, but Germany being a dictatorship, that wasn’t going to happen. So perhaps a better question is,
“Can democracies fight and win all-out wars when their media has the effect of sapping the will to fight, while the enemy’s media is a propaganda arm of their government?”
I have to question your premise here. I doubt that Japan and Germany expected the war to go the way it did. Japan, for example, hoped that the war would be quick and decisive. They wanted the U.S. to be forced to negotiate with them quickly, and hoped that Pearl Harbor would destroy the Navy. Since the carriers were not in port, however, it was not the total success they hoped for.
Germany also believed they could beat the Soviet Union quickly, and before the Russian winter made combat difficult. They might have actually succeeded if they hadn’t made so many mistakes at Stalingrad.
So is it your contention that in order for a democratic state to conduct a war the news has to be sugar coated? Is that all such states or just the US? And how does your contention square with the plain fact that the general populace of London and other British cities during WWII were under no illusions whatever as to the true nature of warfare and didn’t decide that mayber Germany under Hitler wasn’t so bad? After all, all he wanted was space for Germans to live in and to unite all German speaking people under one roof.
The usual claim is that true and acurate news is essential to the proper functioning of self-government. Do you dispute that as a principle in general or just for the US people and media?
In regards to the assertion that modern people are too weak and decadent to fight I remember reading about the infamous occasion when Oxford (?) college in the UK passed the motion, “This House would not fight for King and Country” (or words to that effect) in the mid-1930’s. Flashforward a few years and thats exactly what they were doing.
Exactly. All this bluster about how wonderful we were back in the good old days ignores the history. The charge against the British and French of the 1930’s is that they were so reluctant to fight that they appeased Hitler. The US stood by while Germany overran France and subjected Britain to punishing air raids, only entering the war after being attacked by Japan and having war declared by Germany. Hardly the actions of a people determined to save humanity from dictators.
People now don’t look so bad. That is if your standard is willingness to go to war.
In wartime? NO. True and accurate has to take a backseat to the survival of your country.
If some investigative reporter had discovered that Patton wasn’t really preparing an invasion of Europe from Calais, do you think he would be right to print it? Do you think the government would have been wrong to stop him from printing it?
When Doolittle bombed Japan, do you think it would have been right for some journalist to write an expose showing that the military was lying about their strike capabilities, and in fact the mission was a grossly-extended one-off done for propaganda purposes?
WWII was rife with disinformation, often aided and abetted by journalists who agreed to suppress information or even write lies if it would help the war effort.
Is this problematic? Of course. Is it dangerous? Of course. But really, what is the alternative? To make your country an open book for the enemy to read? To telegraph all your military moves? To be forced to operate without the advantage of surprise or deception?
Neat change of subject. The post of yours I responded to had nothing to do with the media not divulging details of military operations and deceptions. It was all about Roosevelt being crippled, casualties on Iwo Jima, McAurthur being cashiered because of losses etc. Go back and read it.
And as a matter of fact, as to McAurthur and the Philippines it was widely and correctly reported at the time that thousands of prisoners had been taken in Bataan and that McAurthur had been caught sound asleep like everyone else and had been taken out of Bataan by PT boat without there being public demand for his ouster.
It was also widely reported that Eisenhower and the US command was out to lunch as to German activities before the Ardennes offensive, that US casulaties and losses were high and that the Germans had rolled over an entire US infantry division.
And you neatly ignored the British experience during the Blitz. Your theory of media disinformation on difficulties being required in order to keep the population from losing heart would mean that their media would have had to keep secret from them the things that were happening to them personally.
I’m actually doing an assignment that has some relevance to this discussion. Recent research suggests that:
The media is not, overall, negative with regard to military activities (“But contrary to views widely held among elite military officers, the major daily newspapers do not generally portray the armed forces in a harsh light. Content analyses over a period of six months discovered ratios of positive to negative stories in excess of two to one.”)
Civilians are not averse to casualties (and hence war, I guess), as long as they are confident the US will win.
Interesting, I thought. This is the article discussing the issue:
Feaver, P.D. & Kohn, R.H. (2000). The gap: Soldiers, civilians and their mutual understanding, The National Interest, 61: 29 - 37
If anyone is interested in a copy of the article, email me.
And I think a number of posters here are excessively confident in the American people. Americans, despite all the bullshit we’re served here, are like other people. The main goal of the overwheming majority of the population would be to find a way to protect and feed themselves and their families in a disrupted environment/warzone. Firing a automatic weapon at a tank (and being killed as a result) won’t put bread in your children’s stomach, and when your whole neighborhood (including your house) will be at at risk of being leveled as the result of insurection actions and you will be considering having to dig up the bodies of your relatives from the ruins, maybe you’ll reconsider your strong support for say insurection and pray that they choose some other place to fight the invaders.
I do not doubt that there would be people actually fighting. But the notion that the american people, due to some cultural specificity, would rise like one man and fight for freedom is just an untested myth that I’ve no reason to assume to be true. As for the argument about some american people stockpiling weapons…well…there are many countries in the world where weapons are widely available and who have a more obvious (and tested) “warrior culture” (say, Afghanistan).
As for people stating that they would take arms/ join the resistance, I just don’t take their word for it. People just don’t know how they would actually react in exceptionnal and dangerous circumstances. When you’ll have actually entered a house in fire to rescue a stranger, then only I’ll believe you’re able to do so. In time of crisis, armchair warriors turn into cowards (or more simply, as I said, are too busy protecting/feeding/sheltering themselves and their loved one to consider fighting) and cowards into heroes (and both categories are likely to turn into monsters/butchers, as proven so many times…that’s the most depresing part) . Until you really proved yourself, I’m going to consider these comments as just words. Meaningless words.
I wasn’t around at the time, so perhaps you can tell me - did newspapers and reels of the time show American war dead? Were there newspaper editorials criticizing military decisions? Editorials questioning the war effort itself, and suggesting the U.S. couldn’t win? Were there editorials demanding to know why the U.S. had inferior aircraft and tanks at the start of the war? Were battlefield failures subject to scrutiny? Did ex-generals write op-eds claiming that the current generals were either incompetent or being ordered to do stupid things by the civilian leadership?
“Of course the people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism, and exposing the country to greater danger.”
Herman Goering at the Nuremberg trials
Still rings true in my books.
Yes. Life magazine showed pictures of dead Marines floating in the water at Tarawa. The pictures of the destruction at Pearl Harbor were shown over and over. However, there wasn’t as much close up footage of casualties as in the case of Vietnam.
There certainly were about Pearl Harbor. MacArthur was criticized by some for what they saw as an abandonment of the troops on Bataan. Stories circulated that he had spent most of his time while he was still in the Philippines in the tunnels on Corregidor Island. In fact he was referred to by some as"Dugout Doug." The charges weren’t true but they were made.
No.
As a matter of fact there was a Senate committee chaired by Harry Truman that examined failures in military equipment and procurement and its finding were reported.
Eisenhower was criticized both in the US and publicly by Montgomery for lapses in judgement that allowed the Germans to surprise us in the Ardennes in late 1944. The defeat of US troops in Kassarine Pass in North Africa was criticized.
I could agree that in a live or die scenario that reporters should avoid damaging war efforts… but who defines if its about survival ? Who defines if its a “real” war ?
This is where we end up having those War on Iraq disagreements. One side thinks its a war for survival and therefore warrants torture and media falling in behind. The other side sees it as primarily political and therefore the media should be scrutinizing even more.
Well the British are fighting for survival… Americans were fighting against German domination in a sense. US mainland (now Homeland) wouldn’t have been attacked for a decade or more, if ever in fact.
Why do you suppose they changed? Because they just woke up one morning with different attitudes, or because they found that their old rah-rah attitudes had been exploited by the people in power?
My answer is the latter, and that points the finger of blame squarely at the political establishment.
Yes, there is some validity to this. However the Pearl Harbor attack left the US Navy in pretty bad shape. The surrender at Bataan pretty much wiped out the US land combat forces in the Pacific. The early Japanese successes took away all of our forward naval and other logistical bases leaving only Pearl Harbor which needed a lot of repair. In addition the source of vital raw materials such as rubber quickly disappeared. For the first six months of the war the news was pretty bad. The only things we had going for us at the time was anger over what was regarded as a cowardly attack accompanied by determination to get back at them and the great distance from our enemies.
I took the time to give the best answer I was able to Sam Stone’s questions even though hypotheticals are not all that interesting to me. The question as to what would have happened it things had been different is really impossible to answer because nobody knows and nobody has another comparable situation for reference.
I don’t think it is useful to compare WWII and the attitude of the US populace then as compared with Vietnam. At least it isn’t useful without a lot of caveats as to differences in the two cases. The situations were not even remotely equivalent.