THE PSYCHOLOGICAL WAR
WHEN a state of war was declared last September there were some people in this country who heaved a sigh of relief—not, Heaven knows, because they desired war, but because doubt was resolved and the mind was composed for action. They realised that war as Herr Hitler understands it had already been going on in Europe for at least a year, and now it had only come into the open with its more grim realities exposed. And yet, even today, after five months, it has not come fully into the open. The Allies have taken the initiative on their side in applying the full force of the naval blockade, but still await the military action which Hitler is expected to start, and he still keeps us guessing as to when or where his blow will be delivered ; and more than that, he keeps all the neutrals guessing as to whether they are cast for the part of his next enemies, or whether they may continue to possess their souls as neutrals. None of us in the Allied countries doubts that the major battles will soon be joined, but the necessity of their coming does not alter the fact that for the first five months at least Herr Hitler has been waging a war similar to that which he was waging before —a so-called " war of nerves."
It is not altogether surprising that he should cling tenaciously to this form of war since by means of it all his former victories were won. His method con- sisted, first in performing all the actions which indicated the will to war—the building up of armies, equipment and a national war economy and fostering among his people the belief that the use of forc'e was a necessary and manly expression of national greatness. Next it consisted in frightening his victims, always with this advantage that his possible opponents disliked force whilst he was supposed to have no such scruples. To us it seems ludicrous that he and his propagandists should still think this sort of war efficacious after the Allies have accepted his challenge and, being at war, have no further threat to fear. Is it possible he still believes that he may achieve his ends by armed diplomacy, partly by wearing down his opponents' will to victory by maintaining suspense, partly by spreading doubt and confusion in the minds of neutrals and inducing them to seek his peace? Or is the talk designed to promote a belief in greater strength than he actually possesses, to hearten his own people and dishearten ours?
Hitler at least has never made the mistake of under- estimating the psychological factors in war. Whether his psychology is good or bad is not the point, which is that he recognises its importance. Total war, as the word indicates, includes everything—men, equipment, organised industry and finance, discipline, the economical application of brains, and morale. Morale, perhaps, first of all, since it presupposes all the rest—for war purposes it is the moral quality which is manifested as courage, confidence, determination to win—and there can be no determination to win without seeking the means, applying cleverness in planning, persistence in organisation, sacrifice in rejecting non-essentials. Morale rests on a state of mind. In Germany this state of mind postulates a Fiihrer who is infallible and unconquerable and leads his people, even if through tribulation, from one success to another. And since it must also rest on some general sense of the rightness of the cause—at least its rightness for Germany, Nazi propaganda has never ceased to appeal to the belief in the past wrongs of Germany, to the wickedness of her enemies, and to her inevitable destiny to be the dominant Power in Europe. Since much of this belief is illusion, it has to be sustained by a rigorous censorship and by inten- sive propaganda. Totalitarian war in Germany gives pride of place to propaganda—the propaganda which at home deludes the people about realities and creates confidence in victory, and abroad aims at magnifying the prestige of the Reich and weakening the morale of actual or potential enemies.
On the Allied side the high morale of the British and French people, manifest from the start throughout their empires, is the factor which makes us sure of victory. Here we have advantages denied to the enemy. We are not dependent on any Government to plead the rightness of our cause ; it was the consciousness of its rightness originating in the minds of the people them- selves which caused the Allies to accept the German challenge. To this belief was added confidence in our power to win, the second ingredient of the Allied will to victory. Against this has been directed the Nazi offensive in the " war of nerves," which, though perhaps expected to have its greatest results among neutrals, has doubtless also been designed to weaken the will to victory by suspense—keying us up to expectations of battle, now in Holland and Belgium, now in Sweden and Norway, now in the Balkans, now with a " secret weapon," now with all the imagined horrors of mass war in the air, all the more formidable because not experienced but ever about-to-be.
Offensives of this kind are doubtless disturbing to some minds, but obviously cannot deflect us a moment from our purpose in the war. We might suffer real harm from them if we played the enemy's game by exag- gerating in the public mind the very ideas which he wishes to exaggerate—the terrific character of this or that impending blow which we are leaving to his initia- tive, say in an attack on the Low Countries, or in a mass attack from the air. Those who expatiate at length on the horrors of the impending war without fully explaining our own resisting and striking power are playing into Hitler's hands—they make themselves the instruments of his war on minds. Not that there is any need of concealment—suppression of facts is almost as bad as panicky exaggeration. The morale on which the British will to victory depends has no counterpart in Germany—it rests on confidence that the people know the essential facts, have arrived at conclusions by free discussion, and are behind the Government in the deter- mination to pool all efforts in winning the war. The spirit of the team makes for victory. It admits of no defeatism. The reply to the alarmists waging their war of nerves is not to dwell overmuch on the alarms, but to dissipate them by leadership and action, improve the organisation, and show how the defensive is growing in strength, and how the offensive, undertaken at our oft time, will soon be the preoccupation of the enemy. In total war our minds as well as our armies must take the offensive so that it is Hitler who is left guessing how the resourceful French and Britons intend to dispose of the talkative mystery-mongers of Nazi Germany.
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