Your homes will be destroyed, your family killed': the US has dropped millions of war propaganda leaflets but do they work?

"For over a century, the United States military has been dropping propaganda leaflets in deliberate psychological operations, or psyops, to achieve success in war. But the key question behind the effort remains unanswered: does it even work? In 1918, the US released more than 3m leaflets behind enemy lines by plane and hydrogen balloon. To their delight, they found the leaflets helped erode morale and unit cohesion among the Germans in the first world war. Or so the story goes."

"Between 1942 and 1945, much of this effort was coordinated through the Office of War Information. The dropping of propaganda leaflets continued not just in the second world war but in every major war the US has been involved in since. Thanks to Khajistan, a New York-based digital archive group, many of these leaflets are now on display in an interactive exhibit titled Office of War Information (OWI) at Pioneer Works in Brooklyn."

"Since 2022, Khajistan, which preserves art, words, and media from forgotten or silenced communities, from the Indus to the Maghreb, has collected hundreds of propaganda leaflets from US wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, along with a collection of leaflets dropped on Japan during the second world war. While the official narrative is that psyop leafleting is hugely successful, internal documents reveal a complicated picture."

"One example is a now declassified 1971 report from the US air force that challenged psyops' putative successes in Vietnam. In that war, the amount of paper falling from the south-east Asian skies was immense. From 1968 to 1971, the US and the south Vietnamese government dropped about 5bn leaflets a year over Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, the report says, dispensing them by the handful in 0-2Bs [a type of aircraft] or dumped wholesale in loads"

The United States has used propaganda leaflets for more than a century as part of psychological operations to influence enemy morale and cohesion. Early accounts claim that large-scale leaflet drops in World War I helped weaken German morale and unit cohesion. During World War II, coordination occurred through the Office of War Information, and leaflet dropping continued in later major US wars. A digital archive group has collected hundreds of leaflets from conflicts including Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, and also gathered World War II leaflets dropped on Japan for an interactive exhibit. Official claims of success are contrasted by internal documents, including a declassified 1971 Air Force report questioning psyops effectiveness in Vietnam. The report describes extremely large leaflet quantities dropped over Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos between 1968 and 1971.

Read at www.theguardian.com