Major Types Of Propaganda During World War II

Propaganda is the direct misrepresentation of facts that can from simply spinning an image to straight out lying to the audience. Propaganda can also can in various forms that can range from war time posters to the modern infomercial. The most important thing to be aware about with propaganda is that despite the negative connotation, all propaganda is not always ill intentioned or made to be “evil”, it is simply the misinformation an can sometimes even be necessary in dire circumstances. One of the major types of propaganda historically, was war propaganda, specifically during World War II. The posters on both sides of the war were propaganda. On the German side, there were posters that were often really harmful because they were portraying the Jewish people as less that human. This is the type of propaganda that attacks race and dehumanizes a whole section of people. On the American side of the way, there were posters that encouraged rationing and women going to work to prevent the other
side of the war from winning. This type of propaganda is a form of emotional manipulation, because it guilts people into behaving a certain way. The final main idea that propaganda is an attack on home. This idea is that there is an unknown enemy that is ready to attack and if people don’t stand together against this unknown enemy then their homes will be compromised. In propaganda there are two ways to categorize it, the source and the technique that the message relies upon to convince people. There are three different categories when it comes to the source that the propaganda comes from, these categories are black, grey and white and refer how real the source is. A white source contains accurate information and can be traced back to an identifiable source, this type of propaganda contains a narrative that is relatively close to reality, the purpose of this propaganda is to portray the presenter of the information as the “good guy”. An example of white propaganda would be a politician who is running for office, bringing up the past voting history and actions of the other candidates to prove to his constituents that they would be the better choice to vote for. Even the facts the politician is presenting are true, they are trying to put a spin on it so the other candidates look like they were in the wrong. On the other end of the spectrum there is black spectrum where both the information and the source itself have no real validity. One example of this would be tabloids, even though they contain “for entertainment purposes only” disclaimer, in small print on one page, they are notorious for spreading vicious gossip and rumors. The final category of propaganda would be grey propaganda, which lies somewhere in the middle of black and white propaganda. The validity of the source changes from source to source. With grey propaganda, there can either be a credible source with false information or there can either information that is very credible but the source can be incorrectly identified. The next way that propaganda is by the technique used to deliver the message, of which there are seven. The seven different propaganda techniques are testimonial, glittering generalities, transfer, plain folks, bandwagon, name calling, and card stacking. The technique of testimonial is the use of using well-known or respected induvial to give their recommendation. An example of testimonial would be a celebrity endorsement or an infomercial. Infomercials are the perfect example of a testimonial because especially with food based infomercials, they bring in celebrity and professional to vouch for the quality of their product. Glittering generalities is a type of propaganda is when the propaganda relies on phrases that bring forth the idea of larger concepts. Concepts that are generally drawn upon include ideas of country, home and family values. “Make America great again” evokes ideas of nostalgia and relies upon people longing for the stories their parents and grandparents told them and wanting to have and country that was never actual a reality. Transfer is the relation of associating individuals and items with larger ideas. Glittering generalities and transfer are somewhat similar but glittering generalities are more about phrases associated with ideas and transfer is more about physical objects being placed with other items, such as flags being associated with counties and logos. Brands are transfer because a swoosh represents Nike, and the logos for Coke and Pepsi are easily recognizable across the country. Plain Folks is the one type of propaganda that almost every politician in recent history as used. “I used to be a farmer”, “I understand the problems of the community”, “I just started out as a local business person” are all variations of the phrases are used to convince constituents that they are one of the people and just a regular Joe. This is not only achieved though words but also mannerisms and actions to seem less out of reach and more like a normal person (Oglesbee). Bandwagon is peer pressure on a poster in which it uses the idea that everybody else is doing it, so you should be also. Bandwagon propaganda is often used by companies to get people to purchase their products, infomercials often use this by telling them how many items they have already sold. Politicians often use this is as get more votes because “all your friends and family are already voting for me so you should too” is often the argument made. Name calling often pushes down the competition rather than building up themselves. Poor Jeb Bush is a victim of this Donald Trump and this is a perfect example of school ground name calling as a way of attacking people instead of defending the policies that make up the campaign that is supporting them. The final technique that propaganda utilizes is card stacking and is an infomercial classic. Card stacking is the act of naming all the good things about a product and showing what other products it beats out without showing any of the negative, risks, or any other products that are better than it. It is also often used in pharmaceutical commercials when they name all the positives for a medicine is the larger part of the commercial and then run through the side effects as fast as they can at the very end of the commercial and hardly ever mention the price (Oglesbee). Overall propaganda is much more prevalent in everyday life than people realize because there is the assumption the propaganda is only the wartime posters that only speak against Hitler.
However propaganda is used in everyday life and is everywhere you look and see, unfortunately companies are more worries about selling their products than they are about making sure that people are receiving accurate information about their product. Even well-meaning propaganda is in the end still misinforming people to reach their ends. Well-meaning propaganda was often used during wartimes to get people to quickly begin growing wartime gardens, carpooling, and paying attention to their rations. Even though their intentions were for the better of the country, they used fear and manipulation to get people to respond more quickly. Propaganda is a necessary evil that is often used to unnecessary extents for profit and while it is still a useful tool there needs to be a reigning in of the
use.