The dirty war of Sefton Delmer

There is an obvious problem with trying to judge who ‘won’ a propaganda war. Unlike its physical counterpart, there is virtually no real-world evidence either way, and everyone involved has spent years learning how to spin, manipulate and outright lie about reality to try to shape it into what they want. As a result, it remains the conventional wisdom – among those who think of such things, at least – that despite their eventual and total defeat in the second world war, it was the Nazis who won the propaganda war of their era.

Fake letters from dead German soldiers to their parents reported thatthey had survived, deserted and were now safe

British efforts at demoralisation and appealing to the better nature of German citizens or soldiers were often naff, and where they weren’t, they were hampered by the government’s insistence on ‘unconditional surrender’ from Germany, with no carve-outs – long said to be one of the best propaganda tools to keep Germans unified behind the Nazi party.