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Ako vyhrať informačnú vojnu: Príbeh muža, ktorý viedol kampaň proti Hitlerovi
Pôsobivý životopis propagandistu druhej svetovej vojny Seftona Delmera od jedného z popredných odborníkov na dezinformácie prináša ťažké otázky o povahe informácií. Čo ak nedokážeme bojovať pravdou proti lži? Dá sa vôbec vyhrať informačná vojna?
V lete 1941 Hitler ovládol Európu od Atlantiku po Čierne more. Británia sa snažila bojovať s mocnou nemeckou propagandistickou mašinériou a zdôrazňovala, že Hitlerove časté rozhlasové prejavy, ktoré sa šírili po uliciach a do domácností, sú založené na klamstvách a nebezpečných predstavách. Britské tvrdenia, že Hitler predstavuje riziko pre bezpečnosť Európy, však mali len slabý vplyv na vlny dezinformácií.
S výnimkou vysielania človeka s prezývkou der Chef, Nemca, ktorý spochybňoval nacistickú doktrínu. Mal prístup k tajomstvám vysokopostavených nemeckých vojenských funkcionárov a hovoril o vnútornej vzbure. Medzi jeho poslucháčov patrili nemeckí vojaci a občania, ale aj politici vo Washingtone, D. C., ktorí zvažovali vstup do vojny. No čo je najdôležitejšie, der Chef bol fikciou. Jeho postavu vytvoril britský propagandista Sefton Delmer, ktorý vo vojne zohral jedinečnú úlohu.
Peter Pomerantsev sa snaží vyrozprávať Delmerov príbeh a súčasne je konfrontovaný s informačnou vojnou týkajúcou sa vojny v Ukrajine a odkrýva klamstvá Vladimira Putina. Kniha Ako vyhrať informačnú vojnu nie je len príbehom Seftona Delmera, ale upozorňuje aj na podoby súčasnej propagandy a snaží sa zvrátiť priebeh informačnej vojny, ktorá formuje dnešnú realitu pred našimi očami.
Knihu preložila Mária Mlynarčíková.
Peter Pomerantsev je vedúci pracovník v Inštitúte Agora na Univerzite Johnsa Hopkinsa a v Inštitúte globálnych záležitostí na London School of Economics, kde vedie iniciatívu Arena, ktorá sa venuje skúmaniu pôvodu dezinformácií a tomu, čo s nimi súvisí. Je prispievajúcim redaktorom a publicistom v American Interest. Jeho prvá kniha Nothing is True and Everything is Possible získala v roku 2016 cenu Kráľovskej literárnej spoločnosti Ondaatje. Bola nominovaná aj na ocenenie Samuela Johnsona, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House a Gordona Burnsa.
V lete 1941 Hitler ovládol Európu od Atlantiku po Čierne more. Británia sa snažila bojovať s mocnou nemeckou propagandistickou mašinériou a zdôrazňovala, že Hitlerove časté rozhlasové prejavy, ktoré sa šírili po uliciach a do domácností, sú založené na klamstvách a nebezpečných predstavách. Britské tvrdenia, že Hitler predstavuje riziko pre bezpečnosť Európy, však mali len slabý vplyv na vlny dezinformácií.
S výnimkou vysielania človeka s prezývkou der Chef, Nemca, ktorý spochybňoval nacistickú doktrínu. Mal prístup k tajomstvám vysokopostavených nemeckých vojenských funkcionárov a hovoril o vnútornej vzbure. Medzi jeho poslucháčov patrili nemeckí vojaci a občania, ale aj politici vo Washingtone, D. C., ktorí zvažovali vstup do vojny. No čo je najdôležitejšie, der Chef bol fikciou. Jeho postavu vytvoril britský propagandista Sefton Delmer, ktorý vo vojne zohral jedinečnú úlohu.
Peter Pomerantsev sa snaží vyrozprávať Delmerov príbeh a súčasne je konfrontovaný s informačnou vojnou týkajúcou sa vojny v Ukrajine a odkrýva klamstvá Vladimira Putina. Kniha Ako vyhrať informačnú vojnu nie je len príbehom Seftona Delmera, ale upozorňuje aj na podoby súčasnej propagandy a snaží sa zvrátiť priebeh informačnej vojny, ktorá formuje dnešnú realitu pred našimi očami.
Knihu preložila Mária Mlynarčíková.
Peter Pomerantsev je vedúci pracovník v Inštitúte Agora na Univerzite Johnsa Hopkinsa a v Inštitúte globálnych záležitostí na London School of Economics, kde vedie iniciatívu Arena, ktorá sa venuje skúmaniu pôvodu dezinformácií a tomu, čo s nimi súvisí. Je prispievajúcim redaktorom a publicistom v American Interest. Jeho prvá kniha Nothing is True and Everything is Possible získala v roku 2016 cenu Kráľovskej literárnej spoločnosti Ondaatje. Bola nominovaná aj na ocenenie Samuela Johnsona, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House a Gordona Burnsa.
312 pages, Paperback
First published March 5, 2024
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About the author
Peter Pomerantsev
8 books528 followersPeter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University, and at the Institute of Global Affairs at the London School of Economics where he runs the Arena Initiative, dedicated to investigating the roots of disinformation and what to about them. He has testified on the challenges of information war to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, US Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the UK Parliament Defense Select Committee. He is a Contributing Editor and columnist at the American Interest. His first book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Prize, was nominated for the Samuel Johnson, Guardian First Book, Pushkin House and Gordon Burns Prizes.
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May 14, 2024And the award for the most misleading title goes to...
Томас Сефтон Делмер народився в Берліні в родині австралійських експатів, і його ранні шкільні роки припали на Першу світову війну з усією її ура-патріотичною мілітарною пропагандою. Він, що доти був у школі цілком своїм, раптом виявляє дві важливі речі: 1) для своїх німецьких однокласників він раптом може виявитися сраним ворогом-англійцем; 2) пропаганда спокуслива, навіть коли ти бачиш її штучність і те, що вона скерована проти тебе - вона пропонує прості відповіді на питання про те, хто ти і де твоє місце, і тобі хочеться приєднатися до цього всього угару. Завдяки знанню німецького контексту і водночас своєму межовому статусу людини, що не належить повністю до жодної спільноти, у 1930-ті він тусить на вечірках з усім майбутнім проводом Райху у статусі англійського кореспондента, а під час Другої світової організовує радіопередачі, що поширювали британські іпсо на німецького слухача.
І от що тут треба знати: він не виграв інформаційної війни - ба більше, є моменти, де шкоди від нього майже напевно було більше, ніж користі. І він не перехитрив Райх, стрьомні режими не можна перехитрити, можна тільки знищити збройно.
Якби автор визнавав це прямо й відразу, а не подавав це як історію успіху, мене менше брала б лють під час читання, бо другий сюжет цієї книжки - це про той світ, у якому живемо ми, і Померанцев явно намагається натягнути уроки, які були проваленими вже тоді, на нинішній світ як історію успіху.
Сефтон Делмер резонно вирішує, що апелювати треба до максимально широкого загалу, а не до німецьких лібералів, які вже й так на його боці, і тому вигадує для своїх трансляцій іпостась нациста, який віщає в дусі "партія погана, армія хороша, Гітлер молодець, а партійне керівництво, яке купається в розкошах, скуповуючи вілли на узбережжі, доки наші хлопчики гниють в окопах - погане". Якщо у вас теж флешбеки до месіджів "проблема Росії не в тому, що це людожерська хуйня в цілому, а в корупції й неефективності" у навальнят, то вітаю, це та сама хуйня. Хоча, загалом, основні вектори розхитування невдоволення ми спостерігаємо наживо по обидва боки фронту (думаю, якщо ті самі аргументи не звучали в часи якихось давньоєгипетських війн, то це лише через відсутність медіа) - корупція керівництва, "а з ким розважаються жінки, доки солдати на фронті" і таке інше.
Чи це зупинило війну? Ні. Чи це змусило американців іще більше вагатися, чи вступати їм у війну, бо он же німецькі радіопередачі засвідчують наростання невдоволення війною (британцям довелося пояснювати, що це їхня іпсоха)? Так. Чи це допомогло потім, після війни, реабілітовувати звитяжний і порядний вермахт на противагу до лихого гестапо? Теж так. Чому вестернери так облизують всі ці відпочатково неробочі моделі, коли бачать їх у комунікації всяких пездуз із глубінним російським народом - я не знаю, от же приклад, як ця вся фігня не спрацювала раніше, бо не може спрацювати в принципі. (До честі автора, усю цю наволоч не згадано по імені, але фреймінг у контексті нашої війни і спроби витягти з цього глобальні висновки про ефективні методи пропаганди - і те, що вибираються саме такі методи - наводить на порівняннячка дуже сильно.)
Карочє, історія цікава, але без спроб натягнути її на сучасність було би краще.
P.S. Згадала найбільш what the fuck сюжет: родичам загиблих на фронті німців британські пропагандисти писали листи щастя про те, що їхня кровиночка не від ран загинула, а йому зробили смертельний укол свої ж, щоб не лікувати від ран. Респект, звичайно, такому рівню садизму, психологічно зрозуміло, але шоб шо.
Томас Сефтон Делмер народився в Берліні в родині австралійських експатів, і його ранні шкільні роки припали на Першу світову війну з усією її ура-патріотичною мілітарною пропагандою. Він, що доти був у школі цілком своїм, раптом виявляє дві важливі речі: 1) для своїх німецьких однокласників він раптом може виявитися сраним ворогом-англійцем; 2) пропаганда спокуслива, навіть коли ти бачиш її штучність і те, що вона скерована проти тебе - вона пропонує прості відповіді на питання про те, хто ти і де твоє місце, і тобі хочеться приєднатися до цього всього угару. Завдяки знанню німецького контексту і водночас своєму межовому статусу людини, що не належить повністю до жодної спільноти, у 1930-ті він тусить на вечірках з усім майбутнім проводом Райху у статусі англійського кореспондента, а під час Другої світової організовує радіопередачі, що поширювали британські іпсо на німецького слухача.
І от що тут треба знати: він не виграв інформаційної війни - ба більше, є моменти, де шкоди від нього майже напевно було більше, ніж користі. І він не перехитрив Райх, стрьомні режими не можна перехитрити, можна тільки знищити збройно.
Якби автор визнавав це прямо й відразу, а не подавав це як історію успіху, мене менше брала б лють під час читання, бо другий сюжет цієї книжки - це про той світ, у якому живемо ми, і Померанцев явно намагається натягнути уроки, які були проваленими вже тоді, на нинішній світ як історію успіху.
Сефтон Делмер резонно вирішує, що апелювати треба до максимально широкого загалу, а не до німецьких лібералів, які вже й так на його боці, і тому вигадує для своїх трансляцій іпостась нациста, який віщає в дусі "партія погана, армія хороша, Гітлер молодець, а партійне керівництво, яке купається в розкошах, скуповуючи вілли на узбережжі, доки наші хлопчики гниють в окопах - погане". Якщо у вас теж флешбеки до месіджів "проблема Росії не в тому, що це людожерська хуйня в цілому, а в корупції й неефективності" у навальнят, то вітаю, це та сама хуйня. Хоча, загалом, основні вектори розхитування невдоволення ми спостерігаємо наживо по обидва боки фронту (думаю, якщо ті самі аргументи не звучали в часи якихось давньоєгипетських війн, то це лише через відсутність медіа) - корупція керівництва, "а з ким розважаються жінки, доки солдати на фронті" і таке інше.
Чи це зупинило війну? Ні. Чи це змусило американців іще більше вагатися, чи вступати їм у війну, бо он же німецькі радіопередачі засвідчують наростання невдоволення війною (британцям довелося пояснювати, що це їхня іпсоха)? Так. Чи це допомогло потім, після війни, реабілітовувати звитяжний і порядний вермахт на противагу до лихого гестапо? Теж так. Чому вестернери так облизують всі ці відпочатково неробочі моделі, коли бачать їх у комунікації всяких пездуз із глубінним російським народом - я не знаю, от же приклад, як ця вся фігня не спрацювала раніше, бо не може спрацювати в принципі. (До честі автора, усю цю наволоч не згадано по імені, але фреймінг у контексті нашої війни і спроби витягти з цього глобальні висновки про ефективні методи пропаганди - і те, що вибираються саме такі методи - наводить на порівняннячка дуже сильно.)
Карочє, історія цікава, але без спроб натягнути її на сучасність було би краще.
P.S. Згадала найбільш what the fuck сюжет: родичам загиблих на фронті німців британські пропагандисти писали листи щастя про те, що їхня кровиночка не від ран загинула, а йому зробили смертельний укол свої ж, щоб не лікувати від ран. Респект, звичайно, такому рівню садизму, психологічно зрозуміло, але шоб шо.
Want to read
July 16, 2024“Thirty percent of Americans claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the last presidential elections were “rigged”. Millions are sure that the “deep state” is plotting to import immigrants to vote against “real Americans” in the future. Meanwhile in Russia, the majority of people claim that the Kremlin is the innocent party in its brutal invasion of Ukraine. When Ukrainians call their relatives in Russia to tell them about the atrocities, all too often they hear their own kin parrot the Kremlin’s propaganda lines: the atrocities are faked, or false flags, or necessary in order to impose Russia’s greatness.
Across the world we see the growth of propaganda that promotes an alternative reality where black is white and white is black, and where truth is cast away in favour of a sense of superiority and ever more murderous paranoia.”
Please go read the rest of this review of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
Across the world we see the growth of propaganda that promotes an alternative reality where black is white and white is black, and where truth is cast away in favour of a sense of superiority and ever more murderous paranoia.”
Please go read the rest of this review of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler here: https://www.theguardian.com/books/202...
January 30, 2024
A masterpiece. Ever since I read his first book, Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible: The Surreal Heart of the New Russia, I have considered Peter Pomerantsev one of the most important voices on disinformation and Russian influence. And he proves me right once again.
You may be surprised that he has dedicated his forthcoming book to a virtually unknown figure from the Second World War period, but it is much more than just another history book. In almost every paragraph, you will find a disturbing connection between the era of Nazi Germany and our present-day reality.
"Hitler’s power stemmed not so much from his ability to win people over with clever arguments but by his articulating the feelings that already lay within them and taking them on an emotional journey from feeling humiliated to humiliating others,” writes Pomerantsev, and adds: “Skim through the speeches of current leaders from America to China and Russia today, and they will all play the same tunes of humiliation”.
The forgotten story of a propaganda genius allows the author to analyze the true nature of this dark craft and how to make it successful - because sometimes it can be used for good, as a tool that can save a world from true evil. But it is a devil's bargain, swollen with moral dilemmas: "This is the danger of dabbling in disinformation even in a ‘good cause’: it nurtures an environment of endless distrust that benefits authoritarian instincts."
Pomerantsev raises many important questions in this timely book - but he also offers some answers. And anyone who cares about the future of liberal democracy should read it and act on it.
Many thanks to the publisher, PublicAffairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
You may be surprised that he has dedicated his forthcoming book to a virtually unknown figure from the Second World War period, but it is much more than just another history book. In almost every paragraph, you will find a disturbing connection between the era of Nazi Germany and our present-day reality.
"Hitler’s power stemmed not so much from his ability to win people over with clever arguments but by his articulating the feelings that already lay within them and taking them on an emotional journey from feeling humiliated to humiliating others,” writes Pomerantsev, and adds: “Skim through the speeches of current leaders from America to China and Russia today, and they will all play the same tunes of humiliation”.
The forgotten story of a propaganda genius allows the author to analyze the true nature of this dark craft and how to make it successful - because sometimes it can be used for good, as a tool that can save a world from true evil. But it is a devil's bargain, swollen with moral dilemmas: "This is the danger of dabbling in disinformation even in a ‘good cause’: it nurtures an environment of endless distrust that benefits authoritarian instincts."
Pomerantsev raises many important questions in this timely book - but he also offers some answers. And anyone who cares about the future of liberal democracy should read it and act on it.
Many thanks to the publisher, PublicAffairs, and NetGalley for an advanced copy of this book.
April 29, 2024
In How to Win an Information War, Pomerantsev gives a theoretical approach a biographical twist. He focuses on Sefton Delmer, a journalist born in Berlin, who (as a fluent speaker of German and English) became the ideal person to lead Britain's black propaganda operations against the Third Reich. This book is an investigation of propaganda warfare as seen through the eyes of Delmer.
A sustained metaphor throughout the book is cabaret -- how propaganda is staged. Pomerantsev creates a lively portrait of life within the secret base near Aspley Guise. (At one point, Muriel Spark worked under Delmer and it is easy to see, having read this book, where her sense of the absurd started, also her fascination with human facades and the nature of evil). Using an awareness of the mythological Trickster figure, Pomerantsev illustrates how closely good and evil are intertwined -- how a good idea can return as a bad one, what Delmer described in his autobiography as a "Black Boomerang."
How to Win an Information War is researched meticulously. Pomerantsev is a conjuror himself and he moves effortlessly between the psychological aspects of propaganda and the dangerous wit of Delmer. His creation of the station Der Chef was truly brilliant. Here, pornography was employed (in the best tabloid manner) to draw in a German audience and persuade it of Nazi corruption and debauchery.
There are many salient passages in this book, points at which Pomerantsev relates the tactics of Third Reich propaganda to Putin's Russia. Though Putin rants about Nazis in Ukraine, many of his strategies originate with Goebbels. And the author is also correct to see the same secondary Narcissistic strategies at work in Trump's version of the USA.
This is a thoughtful book, a perceptive book, a book that ought to be read by as many as possible. It is darkly funny and shockingly tragic. The term "propaganda machine" is something of a misnomer. Delmer used human thought against human minds. At one point, he circulated a leaflet amongst German soldiers that described how to fake illness and avoid military duty. This preyed on the minds of conscripts. Pomerantsev believes that propaganda, as used by Goebbels, Putin, Trump, requires a loss of motion -- the desire to think. Belonging passively to some false idea (Trump's conspiratorial State, for example, or Putin's legendary Russia, or Hitler's Aryan wonderland) is much easier than belonging actively to personal experiences. Like Delmer, Pomerantsev's book urges the reader to think, think, think, and scrutinize.
A sustained metaphor throughout the book is cabaret -- how propaganda is staged. Pomerantsev creates a lively portrait of life within the secret base near Aspley Guise. (At one point, Muriel Spark worked under Delmer and it is easy to see, having read this book, where her sense of the absurd started, also her fascination with human facades and the nature of evil). Using an awareness of the mythological Trickster figure, Pomerantsev illustrates how closely good and evil are intertwined -- how a good idea can return as a bad one, what Delmer described in his autobiography as a "Black Boomerang."
How to Win an Information War is researched meticulously. Pomerantsev is a conjuror himself and he moves effortlessly between the psychological aspects of propaganda and the dangerous wit of Delmer. His creation of the station Der Chef was truly brilliant. Here, pornography was employed (in the best tabloid manner) to draw in a German audience and persuade it of Nazi corruption and debauchery.
There are many salient passages in this book, points at which Pomerantsev relates the tactics of Third Reich propaganda to Putin's Russia. Though Putin rants about Nazis in Ukraine, many of his strategies originate with Goebbels. And the author is also correct to see the same secondary Narcissistic strategies at work in Trump's version of the USA.
This is a thoughtful book, a perceptive book, a book that ought to be read by as many as possible. It is darkly funny and shockingly tragic. The term "propaganda machine" is something of a misnomer. Delmer used human thought against human minds. At one point, he circulated a leaflet amongst German soldiers that described how to fake illness and avoid military duty. This preyed on the minds of conscripts. Pomerantsev believes that propaganda, as used by Goebbels, Putin, Trump, requires a loss of motion -- the desire to think. Belonging passively to some false idea (Trump's conspiratorial State, for example, or Putin's legendary Russia, or Hitler's Aryan wonderland) is much easier than belonging actively to personal experiences. Like Delmer, Pomerantsev's book urges the reader to think, think, think, and scrutinize.
January 6, 2025
The author, a Ukrainian/English journalist, who lived and worked in Moscow earlier this century, attempts a biography of an Australian who played a key role in Britain’s counter-propaganda program aimed at the Germans during WWII. I write “attempts” because Pomeransev, in addition to the biography and tale of British counter-propaganda, also wants to explore Russian anti-Ukraine propaganda and FSB-funded disinformation that has been on the rise in western Democracies (including, to my chagrin, both Japan and South Korea). This is an odd mix, and since the biographical story is already muddled by (a) British intelligence in-fighting, and (b) questionable effectiveness of the information program, the overall impact of the book is weakened. However, it is an interesting tale of parts of the British counter information program that I have not heard about in any detail before, and therefore worthwhile.
May 28, 2025
A conversation of a walk while about a book I’m listening too….
A conversation yesterday about the book before my Depo today.
My focus is more improved thankfully the next day than yesterday.
Most common message on phones, hi Dad can I talk to mom
Mom is congeniality and good socialization at times. She is always laughing and yet always sad 😔 she is going through lots with her parents
Moms are awesome
I’m happy my mom is still here, I’m surprised 😮 that mt grandparents are still here. They have out lived some of there kids and It’s been challenging 😥 year for them. I think they enjoy the break from grandparents but it’s hard you know
It’s a good trait to have
In stressful situations if you can still laugh
Dads get a bad monologue or narrative
I wonder 💭 if it’s in purpose
Culture to say the least or society how it socially catalogs itself to it
You’re right in that, everyone has a mom and everyone has a dad.
Unless Lob gets its way and life is made in a test tube.
Mark twain would say nothing to the natural way.
Wouldn’t that be the turn of the century comment to say
They can make life in a test tube and have cured cancer. But the barriers in narratives and monologues is….
To make a problem to earn money when you work with it.
It’s a debt history in anthropology on ownership and slave
I wonder if a spade will ever be just a tool or something to use
America deserve trump
Yelling freedom when there not
Trump means the utter most submission of the loser to the winners
But those are button thoughts 💭
The instruction not to click the button may also make the thought of pressing it more salient, forcing people to focus on it.
Hence, the more we attempt not to think about clicking the button, the more our brain becomes fixated on the notion, making us more likely to do so.
https://www.mysosfamily.com/post/pres...
I’m proud of Canada 🇨🇦 it’s also a hit with another Albertism of danelle smith the premier of Alberta get to be a good opposition. She was elected to be opposition to federation and to control the narrative of fractured society issues.
The art of a radio host leading the sheeple. And the post sedationlist media conglomerate that are all owned and run by the wealthy sensationalist.
I don’t think that’s healthy way to look at it,
could you agree
Daniel Smith résumé reads
If it were a LinkedIn
Radio host
Controls narrative
Catalogues this and that fractured monologue to play theatrics in a cinematic drama 🎭 of who controls media controls the people.
Which I think is a lesson of insanity….
And shake my head to cause it’s just dressing the political power to authoritarianism
Taking freedom away for security purposes then when we see it’s for making a problem to work and earn money for that problem it’s….
Hegelian dialectic or Occam's Razor
How do you say is…..
Acephatic
Even he brooks mayor the jurisdiction of the MLA is a radio host. Nobody really stewarded for the position but just there to make it more stupid.
Would you want a five star leader? I would not a four star leader that once set up the country for itself. For your generations.
That’s how you’d want opposition to be associated and who you associate with is
Lying a five star leader that would set up the next generation to lead
Some of the things in politics today have been argued over for centuries
Anthropology would say history is in for repeating itself self and I sort of agree with seeing it from sadly a viral problem
Rather than a war brought one
An over population and over abundance.
Sort of could give a person a cornucopia phobia
And feel like not participating
It’s not schizophrenia that’s the issue… let due to it’s the leadership acting out movie like leadership where conspiracy theories thrive because it makes stupid people smarter
It’s just I’m worked up and should do something than keyboard warrior my way to well upset ness
We are but sand in an ocean of water 💧
As much sand as there are stars
And galaxies
It just all depends on how insignificant we really are.
A existential crisis.
Or
The existential crisis at hand 🖐️
Yet a variety rationality to computing deviation to a significant optical towers for the weight of crashing reality use in life we hold.
It’s an unbelievable power these phones 📱
I appreciate your friendship in life. Your a good friend
There’s spelling errors in this and ut won’t let me do editing the third person. To anecdotal sentence that’s incorrect grammar
Racheal harder was a friend of mine to
I have pictures of going down a river with her on n Facebook
We went to camp I would write short stories in school how she would become a MLA
I had a crush on her at bible camp and we would send letters
Her and her friend
Would be camp cooks
Kind words everyone is in a battle
No one know what’s in a persons life
Racheal the MLA for our area had a sister die very young or her friend did
I think it has something to do with her strong opinions on abortion and to control women rights
So she can traumatized the situation more for unreal experience
But that’s sadly a different story a from the Lunic in days of different thought
Man my keyboard is going crazy
I’m having a really hard time texting
I went back to voice dictating
It’s interesting who gets sick and who doesn’t get sick and moves on in life
Similarities on how people act and are dealt with
Any way this is a message while listening to this book while writing a dialog conversation with listening to the book before my injection,… then after I can focus on a sentence-paragraph write something out of a book for review purpose the next book I finished ✅
Meds help lots with my illness and I get so much more focus and can review books way better than before injections.
A conversation yesterday about the book before my Depo today.
My focus is more improved thankfully the next day than yesterday.
Most common message on phones, hi Dad can I talk to mom
Mom is congeniality and good socialization at times. She is always laughing and yet always sad 😔 she is going through lots with her parents
Moms are awesome
I’m happy my mom is still here, I’m surprised 😮 that mt grandparents are still here. They have out lived some of there kids and It’s been challenging 😥 year for them. I think they enjoy the break from grandparents but it’s hard you know
It’s a good trait to have
In stressful situations if you can still laugh
Dads get a bad monologue or narrative
I wonder 💭 if it’s in purpose
Culture to say the least or society how it socially catalogs itself to it
You’re right in that, everyone has a mom and everyone has a dad.
Unless Lob gets its way and life is made in a test tube.
Mark twain would say nothing to the natural way.
Wouldn’t that be the turn of the century comment to say
They can make life in a test tube and have cured cancer. But the barriers in narratives and monologues is….
To make a problem to earn money when you work with it.
It’s a debt history in anthropology on ownership and slave
I wonder if a spade will ever be just a tool or something to use
America deserve trump
Yelling freedom when there not
Trump means the utter most submission of the loser to the winners
But those are button thoughts 💭
The instruction not to click the button may also make the thought of pressing it more salient, forcing people to focus on it.
Hence, the more we attempt not to think about clicking the button, the more our brain becomes fixated on the notion, making us more likely to do so.
https://www.mysosfamily.com/post/pres...
I’m proud of Canada 🇨🇦 it’s also a hit with another Albertism of danelle smith the premier of Alberta get to be a good opposition. She was elected to be opposition to federation and to control the narrative of fractured society issues.
The art of a radio host leading the sheeple. And the post sedationlist media conglomerate that are all owned and run by the wealthy sensationalist.
I don’t think that’s healthy way to look at it,
could you agree
Daniel Smith résumé reads
If it were a LinkedIn
Radio host
Controls narrative
Catalogues this and that fractured monologue to play theatrics in a cinematic drama 🎭 of who controls media controls the people.
Which I think is a lesson of insanity….
And shake my head to cause it’s just dressing the political power to authoritarianism
Taking freedom away for security purposes then when we see it’s for making a problem to work and earn money for that problem it’s….
Hegelian dialectic or Occam's Razor
How do you say is…..
Acephatic
Even he brooks mayor the jurisdiction of the MLA is a radio host. Nobody really stewarded for the position but just there to make it more stupid.
Would you want a five star leader? I would not a four star leader that once set up the country for itself. For your generations.
That’s how you’d want opposition to be associated and who you associate with is
Lying a five star leader that would set up the next generation to lead
Some of the things in politics today have been argued over for centuries
Anthropology would say history is in for repeating itself self and I sort of agree with seeing it from sadly a viral problem
Rather than a war brought one
An over population and over abundance.
Sort of could give a person a cornucopia phobia
And feel like not participating
It’s not schizophrenia that’s the issue… let due to it’s the leadership acting out movie like leadership where conspiracy theories thrive because it makes stupid people smarter
It’s just I’m worked up and should do something than keyboard warrior my way to well upset ness
We are but sand in an ocean of water 💧
As much sand as there are stars
And galaxies
It just all depends on how insignificant we really are.
A existential crisis.
Or
The existential crisis at hand 🖐️
Yet a variety rationality to computing deviation to a significant optical towers for the weight of crashing reality use in life we hold.
It’s an unbelievable power these phones 📱
I appreciate your friendship in life. Your a good friend
There’s spelling errors in this and ut won’t let me do editing the third person. To anecdotal sentence that’s incorrect grammar
Racheal harder was a friend of mine to
I have pictures of going down a river with her on n Facebook
We went to camp I would write short stories in school how she would become a MLA
I had a crush on her at bible camp and we would send letters
Her and her friend
Would be camp cooks
Kind words everyone is in a battle
No one know what’s in a persons life
Racheal the MLA for our area had a sister die very young or her friend did
I think it has something to do with her strong opinions on abortion and to control women rights
So she can traumatized the situation more for unreal experience
But that’s sadly a different story a from the Lunic in days of different thought
Man my keyboard is going crazy
I’m having a really hard time texting
I went back to voice dictating
It’s interesting who gets sick and who doesn’t get sick and moves on in life
Similarities on how people act and are dealt with
Any way this is a message while listening to this book while writing a dialog conversation with listening to the book before my injection,… then after I can focus on a sentence-paragraph write something out of a book for review purpose the next book I finished ✅
Meds help lots with my illness and I get so much more focus and can review books way better than before injections.
June 16, 2024
Rather than concentrating on the current state of propaganda with a focus on Russia, Peter Pomerantsev's latest book looks back to the Second World War. He examines the work of Sefton Delmer, a British man brought up in Germany who became a journalist reporting on the Nazis for the Daily Express. In 1941 he was recruited by the Special Operations Executive to run a radio station, seeking to counter Nazi radio propaganda. The station would pretend to be broadcasting from Nazi-occupied areas of Europe and try to undermine the regime.
Delmer took a quite different approach to running his initial radio station compared with other groups in SOE, who largely tried to appeal to the rationality and idealism of their listeners. Delmer's first radio station used a character called 'der Chef', supposedly a disillusioned Prussian soldier who criticised the Nazis in obscene and contemptuous terms. This persona reminded me of Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, a conservative German condemnation of Nazism. Der Chef appealed to the curiosity and self-interest of listeners, trying to spread doubt and distrust of the Nazis:
As the tide of war turned on the Eastern Front, Delmer retired der Chef and took a different approach: a fake Nazi station with an announcer called The Sender that reproduced some official speeches for plausibility but was still obviously unofficial. This also sought to sew distrust, publicise Germany's losses, and appeal to self-interest, for example to generate panic buying. Pomerantsev examines all this in such detail because he sees in Delmer someone with an exceptional grasp of what gives propaganda its appeal. He considers this in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
Given the frightening impact that authoritarian government propaganda has on the world in 2024, it's fascinating to examine what was used to counter it eighty years ago. Pomerantsev makes no dramatic claims that Delmer won the war, vanquished Goebbels, or anything of that nature. Rather, he is looking for lessons from Delmer's work that could be relevant to information wars today. These include the key point that propaganda targets the lonely by offering a sense of identity and belonging in a chaotic and confusing world:
Alarmingly, this reminded me of the methods of US conspiracy theorists that Naomi Klein describes in Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. She points out that Naomi Wolf and her fellow conspiracists are always inviting their watchers/listeners to become part of a movement and, crucially, to take action. People who feel helpless in the face of global problems are offered stupid ways to gain control: campaigning to ban books, shunning vaccinations, buying merchandise sold by the conspiracists, etc. Unfortunately some of Delmer's lessons can be used by any propagandist. Nonetheless, Pomerantsev synthesises methods for undermining the effects of authoritarian government propaganda:
Contemplating that last paragraph, I found the eye-catching title of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler more optimistic than the content. Frankly, the truth of the world isn't very appealing to look at: the global economy is appallingly unequal, exploitative, and unjust, and is systematically destroying the environmental conditions that are required for humanity's survival. On the other hand, there are reasons to be hopeful - such as the continued rise of renewable electricity generation in spite of fossil fuel companies. Countering misinformation is certainly not easy and this book is a valuable and unusual effort at a detailed historical case study for how it has been done successfully. I was also delighted to discover that Muriel Spark worked with Delmer at SOE and wrote The Hothouse by the East River about its legacy! It's great to have some context for that mysterious novella.
Delmer took a quite different approach to running his initial radio station compared with other groups in SOE, who largely tried to appeal to the rationality and idealism of their listeners. Delmer's first radio station used a character called 'der Chef', supposedly a disillusioned Prussian soldier who criticised the Nazis in obscene and contemptuous terms. This persona reminded me of Diary of a Man in Despair by Friedrich Reck-Malleczewen, a conservative German condemnation of Nazism. Der Chef appealed to the curiosity and self-interest of listeners, trying to spread doubt and distrust of the Nazis:
The soldier sending these subversive messages was going to be 'of the old Prussian school, who would use the transmitter to give members of the organisation is caustic and salaciously outspoken views of what was going on... while being spiced with plenty of inside information. The station , in fact, would seek to be a nightly demonstration if a growing split between the conservative elements of the army and radicals of the Nazi party.'
[...]
Here was Delmer's approach in miniature: acting appalled at something that was actually titillating to his audience, while at the same time breaking the taboo on insulting the SS and deepening the rift between the party and the army, the party and the people.
As the tide of war turned on the Eastern Front, Delmer retired der Chef and took a different approach: a fake Nazi station with an announcer called The Sender that reproduced some official speeches for plausibility but was still obviously unofficial. This also sought to sew distrust, publicise Germany's losses, and appeal to self-interest, for example to generate panic buying. Pomerantsev examines all this in such detail because he sees in Delmer someone with an exceptional grasp of what gives propaganda its appeal. He considers this in light of Russia's invasion of Ukraine:
But however much Ukrainians appealed, their Russian friends, or now former friends, and relatives refused to listen to the evidence, and told their Ukrainian relatives, the ones sitting under bombardment, that they were wrong, that the evidence of shells and body parts exploding all around them was a myth, or they were exaggerating, or that the Ukrainian army was bombing its own citizens, or that if it was was happening, it was a necessity. The specific excuses could change in line with Russian propaganda that in one moment claimed that atrocities like Bucha were a fake and in the next moment celebrated Russian strikes against civilians as 'necessary'.
[...]
Did Russians really 'believe' this? That's the wrong question. We are not talking about a situation where people weigh evidence and come to a conclusion but rather one where people no longer seem interested in discovering the truth or even consider the truth as having considerable worth.
[...]
One consistent motif of the propaganda, however, was how it took away the burden of responsibility. [...] The propaganda allowed you to both relinquish responsibility and enjoy dominance. This was part of psychological deal the Kremlin offered people. You can identify yourself with the sense of supremacy, but you don't need to carry any moral burden.
Given the frightening impact that authoritarian government propaganda has on the world in 2024, it's fascinating to examine what was used to counter it eighty years ago. Pomerantsev makes no dramatic claims that Delmer won the war, vanquished Goebbels, or anything of that nature. Rather, he is looking for lessons from Delmer's work that could be relevant to information wars today. These include the key point that propaganda targets the lonely by offering a sense of identity and belonging in a chaotic and confusing world:
Delmer was always welcoming you into games where you could take back control and define yourself. The Sender involved you in a masquerade where you knew the British were behind the station, and the British knew you knew, but everyone kept up the role play because it helped reveal censored truths. You were no longer passive, submitting to the power of propaganda, one small limb in a mass, co-ordinated show - instead you had agency once more.
Alarmingly, this reminded me of the methods of US conspiracy theorists that Naomi Klein describes in Doppelganger: A Trip into the Mirror World. She points out that Naomi Wolf and her fellow conspiracists are always inviting their watchers/listeners to become part of a movement and, crucially, to take action. People who feel helpless in the face of global problems are offered stupid ways to gain control: campaigning to ban books, shunning vaccinations, buying merchandise sold by the conspiracists, etc. Unfortunately some of Delmer's lessons can be used by any propagandist. Nonetheless, Pomerantsev synthesises methods for undermining the effects of authoritarian government propaganda:
Through these four processes - creating media communities stronger than the propagandists'; breaking the propagandists' monopoly on expressing the darkest feelings; making people aware of how Nazi social roles were a ghoulish cabaret you could discard; and provoking people to behave more independently - Delmer created a distance between the German people and the Nazi propaganda. Once that distance had been opened up, he could start to communicate with them in a new way.
Delmer's aim, however, was never to replace one hate-filled political cult with a different one. The listener was not meant to worship Der Chef like Hitler. [...] Delmer always believed that people were never fully entranced by propaganda. He thought there was always another person inside us all - grounded in reality - and ready to break free of the propagandists if there was enough reason to do so. It's our job to find that reason. This process can start with the most basic self-interest and survival.
So much of contemporary propaganda is designed to make you feel overwhelmed by the amount of confusing content out there, undermine the difference between truth and lies, and through this confusion find relief by placing your faith in a leader who reduces the world into crass conspiracies. This is why fact-checks rarely work when they directly challenge a political identity. What we need to do if give people the motivation to care about truth again.
Contemplating that last paragraph, I found the eye-catching title of How to Win an Information War: The Propagandist Who Outwitted Hitler more optimistic than the content. Frankly, the truth of the world isn't very appealing to look at: the global economy is appallingly unequal, exploitative, and unjust, and is systematically destroying the environmental conditions that are required for humanity's survival. On the other hand, there are reasons to be hopeful - such as the continued rise of renewable electricity generation in spite of fossil fuel companies. Countering misinformation is certainly not easy and this book is a valuable and unusual effort at a detailed historical case study for how it has been done successfully. I was also delighted to discover that Muriel Spark worked with Delmer at SOE and wrote The Hothouse by the East River about its legacy! It's great to have some context for that mysterious novella.
Want to read
August 27, 2024This book combines brilliantly written history of British anti-Nazi propaganda in WWII and lessons and parallels that can be learnt from it that are applicable to the current war in Ukraine. Peter Pomerantsev has already provided a brilliantly devastating analysis of Putin's Russia in his 2014 'Nothing is True and Everything is Possible: the Surreal Heart of the New Russia' so his application of the past to Putin is based on extensive and direct experience. The article below, by Peter Pomerantsev, is from The Guardian, March 2nd, 2024.
"The story of the British man who took on Hitler’s information machine offers valuable insights into the fight against the rise of authoritarianism
"Thirty percent of Americans claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the last presidential elections were “rigged”. Millions are sure that the “deep state” is plotting to import immigrants to vote against “real Americans” in the future. Meanwhile in Russia, the majority of people claim that the Kremlin is the innocent party in its brutal invasion of Ukraine. When Ukrainians call their relatives in Russia to tell them about the atrocities, all too often they hear their own kin parrot the Kremlin’s propaganda lines: the atrocities are faked, or false flags, or necessary in order to impose Russia’s greatness.
"Across the world we see the growth of propaganda that promotes an alternative reality where black is white and white is black, and where truth is cast away in favour of a sense of superiority and ever more murderous paranoia. How can we defeat it? It’s easy to despair when fact checking is rejected by the millions who don’t want to hear the truth in the first place; when worthy journalism that preaches the virtues of “democracy” crumples in the face of suspicion, seeded purposefully for decades, that the media are actually “enemies of the people”.
"We are not, however, the first generation to confront the challenge of authoritarian propaganda. And as I looked for past experiences to inform our own, I discovered a British second world war media operation that managed to engage huge audiences who had been loyal to the Nazis and undermine their faith in Hitler’s regime. If we think reaching people in “echo chambers” today is tough, think about how hard it was to persuade Germans to trust the people who were literally trying to kill them.
"This campaign was led by Sefton Delmer, who as head of special operations for the Political Warfare Executive, created dozens of radio stations, newspapers leaflets and rumours, all intended to break the spell cast by Hitler’s propaganda by fair means or foul. He employed stars from the German cabaret scene, soldiers, surrealist artists, psychiatrists, forgers, spies and dissidents from across occupied Europe. Ian Fleming and Muriel Spark lent their talents to Delmer’s operations. According to declassified UK government files, which have been unearthed and organised by the historian and archivist Lee Richards, around 40% of German soldiers tuned into Delmer’s stations. An SS Obergruppenführer from Munich complained that Delmer’s stations were among the top three in the city and were causing complete havoc. Goebbels was dismayed by how effective they were.
"Delmer’s interest, however, went beyond the uniquely nasty realm of nazism. He saw the same patterns at play throughout Germany in the 20th century as well as in Britain during the first world war. And his wartime work has many lessons for us today.
The son of an Australian literature professor at Berlin University, Delmer grew up in Germany and spoke the language fluently. Australia was a dominion of the British Empire at the time, and Delmer was seen, and wanted to see himself, as British. He was 10 years old when the first world war broke out, and was bullied for being an enemy schoolchild. When he came to England in 1917, he was bullied for seeming too German, a consequence of what he described as “our British way of working up to a real crescendo of hate and fury towards the end of the war”. He would learn to play the perfect English schoolboy. But reading his memoirs I felt this bicultural childhood left him with the sense that all social roles are exactly that: roles that are there to be performed. Propaganda is successful when it gives people a satisfying part to play: someone to be, to love and hate. It also left him with an awareness of how deeply we all need to belong to a group – Delmer had found it painful to be an outsider, seen as not properly British. Until the end of his life he would remain an imperial nostalgist, performing an almost caricatured version of the Britishness he longed to be part of as a child.
"It was the performative aspect of propaganda, and the simultaneous need to belong, that struck him when he observed Hitler’s success. In the 1920s, Delmer became a star reporter for the Daily Express in Berlin. He gained behind-the-scenes access on Hitler’s election flights around Germany, where adoring crowds saluted the führer. Hitler gave people the sense of being part of a huge mass, a Volk, which appealed to many after the confusing changes of the early 20th century, when the old social order had been upended. He also gave people roles to play when the old ones had vanished: in the confusing cabaret of Weimar Germany, where identities were in flux, you knew who you were when you became a Nazi party member or an SS man. These roles were emotionally satisfying: they allowed people to submit to a strong leader, and feel strong and superior through him; they also allowed them to feel the victim, which in turn legitimised anger and cruelty to others. Some psychoanalysts who observed the rallies believed these grievance narratives gave people the chance to blame external forces for all the things they didn’t like about themselves. Orators like Hitler make us feel we can crush the voice inside of us that tells us we are not good enough, by projecting it on to others.
"Sefton Delmer broadcasts to Germany in 1941. Photograph: Kurt Hutton/Getty Images
Today’s propagandists play on the same needs. In a time of rapid economic, social and technological change it can be comforting to be part of a large, angry crowd. Online conspiracy theory communities are particularly effective at pulling together a sense of being part of a group with a secret knowledge and mission. Such media also give people a role to play in a confusing world: as a Proud Boy or a “patriot” storming the Capitol. Social media, where you are encouraged to label who you are, only exacerbates this performance. Meanwhile the allure of “strongmen” has never gone away. Whether you buy into the psychoanalytic theories, the grievance narratives work – from Trump’s crusade to Make America Great Again to Putin promising to get Russia back off its knees.
"When the second world war was declared, Delmer was dismayed by Britain’s efforts to counter Nazi propaganda. He felt that the BBC German Service was simply preaching to converted anti-Nazis. So was the other German language station the British ran, the Station of the European Revolution, which still held out hope for a democratic uprising in Germany. Much like media across the world today, which see themselves as supporting democracy and liberal values, these stations were trapped in what we sometimes label an echo chamber of like-minded people.
"Delmer wanted to break through and engage audiences that had come under the sway of the Nazis, and find the cracks that split them from the party. His first effort claimed to be a pirate radio station, hosted by a foul-mouthed German officer known simply as Der Chef. This racist patriot spewed stories about the scurrilous activities of Nazi officials, ranting about their sadomasochistic orgies. This pornography helped lure in listeners and broke taboos about insulting Nazi officials. In a more subtle way, it dramatised and mocked how nazism tapped into the psychological allure of submission and domination.
"Rather than produce moral and “rational” media, Delmer wanted to undermine the Nazi’s monopoly over people’s strongest, most violent urges. Then he turned the propaganda back on to the Nazis: “Our stories were peopled with Burgomasters, District Leaders, Local group leaders,” he explained. “We spread over them a slime of obloquy as foul as that which they themselves had spread over the Jews.”
"Delmer’s aim was not to replace one violent movement with another. Instead, he wanted to alienate people from Nazi propaganda by, as he explained to the king when he presented his work, pushing Nazi propaganda “one step further into the ridiculous”. This wasn’t quite satire – people were meant to believe Der Chef was a genuine soldier hiding somewhere inside German-held territory. And satire doesn’t always do much to undermine the hold a leader has on his followers: satirists who mock Trump or Brexit might make their own audiences feel good but don’t necessarily reach the other side.
"Delmer understood the need to engage people around their own interests rather than what you might like them to care about, and this is a lesson Ukrainian info warriors have been learning in their war with Russia. Ukraine is full of advertisers and hackers, activists and journalists all trying to reach Russian audiences.
"They buy ads on Russian pornography sites and bootleg movie portals or use cold calling software more familiar from marketing campaigns. Early on they found that “moral” content didn’t take off. When they made mass telephone calls to Russians, they found that some 80% would hang up during the first 20 seconds if the calls were about war crimes, but only 30% hung up when the call focused on their personal interests, such as a special tax they had to pay to support Russia’s newly occupied lands.
"But though Delmer’s first station was a success, with some sources in Europe even claiming it was the most listened-to station in Germany, it didn’t take long for the Nazis to work out that it was the British who were behind it. They began calling it out publicly, using it as an example of how dastardly the British propaganda was. Indeed, here is one (of many) negative lessons from Delmer’s work. Then, as now, creating “sock puppet” media – media that pretend to be one thing but are actually another – can backfire.
"As he expanded his war work, Delmer changed tactics. When he launched his most ambitious station, the Soldatensender Calais, it was still dressed up as if it were a native German military station, combining broadcasts of speeches by Nazi leaders with music and the latest news and gossip from the front that demonstrated all the lies and inequalities soldiers faced. But the aim was no longer to dupe the listener into believing this was a Nazi station – this time the audience was meant to be in on the act. As Peter Wykeham, a colleague of Delmer’s, explained, this station would “(i) afford our German customers an excuse if caught listening, (ii) enable them to justify this dubious activity to themselves”. Yet even though German listeners knew perfectly well the British were behind the station, they listened to it and trusted it. Often today we lament that people only trust the media that represent their social tribe. So how did Delmer pull it off?
"Delmer used every research tool at his disposal to understand his audience’s world. Partisan groups in France provided the latest scores from military football matches and information on the cars officers drove. Secret microphones installed in PoW camps picked up on the soldiers’ latest slang and complaints about their higher-ups. A special storage space had to be constructed for the volumes of notes held by Delmer’s archivist, the former leader of the Social Democrats in the Saar region, Max Braun. Delmer’s team had early knowledge of when the RAF would strike a German town so they could warn soldiers if the street their loved ones lived on had been hit and remind them of their right to take leave and help relatives caught under bombardment.
"Today it is so much easier to understand what people care about, even in closed societies. You can look at open-source research into corrupt procurement by local government, do sentiment analysis of social media, or use secure messaging apps that allow you to talk directly to people even in the most dangerous areas. The key is always to understand people’s conditions, and be useful to them. Delmer never talked down or lectured – instead he understood the gripes of the soldiers and made them feel part of a community that looked after their interests better than the Nazis.
"But just as important as what was broadcast was the experience of tuning in. Here was a radio programme pretending to be Nazi, which understood that its listeners knew that it wasn’t, and whose listeners tuned in because they needed the emotional and physical safety of play acting as if they thought it might be Nazi after all. If the principle of Goebbels’ propaganda was to try to entrance you, to dissolve you into the loud, angry crowd, then here was media that required you to make a series of autonomous, conscious steps to engage. Delmer’s other media, such as his leaflets to help you feign illness and defect from the front, were also designed for people to take control and be more active. He encouraged people to invent roles for themselves rather than play the ones forced on them by Nazi propaganda.
"How people think and act can be just as important as what they think when undermining the most malign propaganda. People are most susceptible to conspiracy theories, for example, when they don’t feel they have any agency or influence over their lives and rely on conspiracies to explain the world. Many are drawn to “strongmen” when they feel they can’t take back control over their lives. The real antidote to this is not plying them with facts. It’s helping to fix the underlying lack of agency.
"So what can we draw from the strange, contradictory experience of Delmer’s deeds and misdeeds? Dictators and propagandists inside democracies use hate-spreading troll farms and conspiracy-spewing cable news; target audiences according to their deepest grievances and encourage cruelty. To compete we need to develop a new generation of democratic media with the same focus, but with different values. This needs to be done at scale.
"First, such media has to match the emotional power of authoritarians. Counter-propagandists need their own visceral dramas, YouTubers and the whole spectrum of today’s channels.
"They don’t need to hide their provenance like Der Chef, though they may have to give people the necessary “cover” to watch safely if in a dangerous dictatorship. But they do need to delve into the operating theatre of our darkest desires. Think of the difference between the cult leader and the therapist. Both dig into people’s unspoken fears and needs. The cult leader, like the authoritarian propagandist, uses that insight to make people dependent on their power. The therapist helps them to become more empowered and self-aware.
"Second, we need to be much more attuned to the needs of audiences – think of media less as dispensing information and more as a social service. We are, by the looks of it, going to be in a long struggle with Russia. Now is the time to start investing in media that engage the parts of society that are critical to their war effort: workers in munitions factories or, most obviously, soldiers. It’s much easier than in Delmer’s time to obtain evidence of what they care about. Last month there was, for example, a large leak of documents from Russia’s military that showed how the leadership lies about losses on the front. The aim is not to make these people, who are often involved in war crimes, “good” – it’s to help win the war by getting them to disobey their orders.
"Third, such media need to nurture a sense of community, especially in polarised democracies where there is still a chance of displacing malign propaganda before it reaches total dominance, and where there are audiences up for grabs. Instead of experiencing power through a strongman, this community needs to empower people to act for themselves. There are many small initiatives that already pioneer this. Hearken, for example, is an online platform where users can help media choose which topics they should focus on, taking power away from aloof editors and grounding it in local needs. vTaiwan is another platform whose algorithm helps people find solutions to polarising issues by identifying common ground on which to build policies. Such examples are tiny and experimental, and need to be scaled massively.
"Sefton Delmer had as many bad lessons for us as good. But the most fundamental one is related to his sense that all social roles are somehow performed. We have a choice. We can either play the role prescribed by propagandists – which makes us dependent on them. Or we can invent media that welcome people into a relationship where they become active players.
"You can’t shove “the truth” down people’s throats if they don’t want to hear it, but you can inspire them to have the motivation to care about facts in the first place.
"The story of the British man who took on Hitler’s information machine offers valuable insights into the fight against the rise of authoritarianism
"Thirty percent of Americans claim, despite all evidence to the contrary, that the last presidential elections were “rigged”. Millions are sure that the “deep state” is plotting to import immigrants to vote against “real Americans” in the future. Meanwhile in Russia, the majority of people claim that the Kremlin is the innocent party in its brutal invasion of Ukraine. When Ukrainians call their relatives in Russia to tell them about the atrocities, all too often they hear their own kin parrot the Kremlin’s propaganda lines: the atrocities are faked, or false flags, or necessary in order to impose Russia’s greatness.
"Across the world we see the growth of propaganda that promotes an alternative reality where black is white and white is black, and where truth is cast away in favour of a sense of superiority and ever more murderous paranoia. How can we defeat it? It’s easy to despair when fact checking is rejected by the millions who don’t want to hear the truth in the first place; when worthy journalism that preaches the virtues of “democracy” crumples in the face of suspicion, seeded purposefully for decades, that the media are actually “enemies of the people”.
"We are not, however, the first generation to confront the challenge of authoritarian propaganda. And as I looked for past experiences to inform our own, I discovered a British second world war media operation that managed to engage huge audiences who had been loyal to the Nazis and undermine their faith in Hitler’s regime. If we think reaching people in “echo chambers” today is tough, think about how hard it was to persuade Germans to trust the people who were literally trying to kill them.
"This campaign was led by Sefton Delmer, who as head of special operations for the Political Warfare Executive, created dozens of radio stations, newspapers leaflets and rumours, all intended to break the spell cast by Hitler’s propaganda by fair means or foul. He employed stars from the German cabaret scene, soldiers, surrealist artists, psychiatrists, forgers, spies and dissidents from across occupied Europe. Ian Fleming and Muriel Spark lent their talents to Delmer’s operations. According to declassified UK government files, which have been unearthed and organised by the historian and archivist Lee Richards, around 40% of German soldiers tuned into Delmer’s stations. An SS Obergruppenführer from Munich complained that Delmer’s stations were among the top three in the city and were causing complete havoc. Goebbels was dismayed by how effective they were.
"Delmer’s interest, however, went beyond the uniquely nasty realm of nazism. He saw the same patterns at play throughout Germany in the 20th century as well as in Britain during the first world war. And his wartime work has many lessons for us today.
The son of an Australian literature professor at Berlin University, Delmer grew up in Germany and spoke the language fluently. Australia was a dominion of the British Empire at the time, and Delmer was seen, and wanted to see himself, as British. He was 10 years old when the first world war broke out, and was bullied for being an enemy schoolchild. When he came to England in 1917, he was bullied for seeming too German, a consequence of what he described as “our British way of working up to a real crescendo of hate and fury towards the end of the war”. He would learn to play the perfect English schoolboy. But reading his memoirs I felt this bicultural childhood left him with the sense that all social roles are exactly that: roles that are there to be performed. Propaganda is successful when it gives people a satisfying part to play: someone to be, to love and hate. It also left him with an awareness of how deeply we all need to belong to a group – Delmer had found it painful to be an outsider, seen as not properly British. Until the end of his life he would remain an imperial nostalgist, performing an almost caricatured version of the Britishness he longed to be part of as a child.
"It was the performative aspect of propaganda, and the simultaneous need to belong, that struck him when he observed Hitler’s success. In the 1920s, Delmer became a star reporter for the Daily Express in Berlin. He gained behind-the-scenes access on Hitler’s election flights around Germany, where adoring crowds saluted the führer. Hitler gave people the sense of being part of a huge mass, a Volk, which appealed to many after the confusing changes of the early 20th century, when the old social order had been upended. He also gave people roles to play when the old ones had vanished: in the confusing cabaret of Weimar Germany, where identities were in flux, you knew who you were when you became a Nazi party member or an SS man. These roles were emotionally satisfying: they allowed people to submit to a strong leader, and feel strong and superior through him; they also allowed them to feel the victim, which in turn legitimised anger and cruelty to others. Some psychoanalysts who observed the rallies believed these grievance narratives gave people the chance to blame external forces for all the things they didn’t like about themselves. Orators like Hitler make us feel we can crush the voice inside of us that tells us we are not good enough, by projecting it on to others.
"Sefton Delmer broadcasts to Germany in 1941. Photograph: Kurt Hutton/Getty Images
Today’s propagandists play on the same needs. In a time of rapid economic, social and technological change it can be comforting to be part of a large, angry crowd. Online conspiracy theory communities are particularly effective at pulling together a sense of being part of a group with a secret knowledge and mission. Such media also give people a role to play in a confusing world: as a Proud Boy or a “patriot” storming the Capitol. Social media, where you are encouraged to label who you are, only exacerbates this performance. Meanwhile the allure of “strongmen” has never gone away. Whether you buy into the psychoanalytic theories, the grievance narratives work – from Trump’s crusade to Make America Great Again to Putin promising to get Russia back off its knees.
"When the second world war was declared, Delmer was dismayed by Britain’s efforts to counter Nazi propaganda. He felt that the BBC German Service was simply preaching to converted anti-Nazis. So was the other German language station the British ran, the Station of the European Revolution, which still held out hope for a democratic uprising in Germany. Much like media across the world today, which see themselves as supporting democracy and liberal values, these stations were trapped in what we sometimes label an echo chamber of like-minded people.
"Delmer wanted to break through and engage audiences that had come under the sway of the Nazis, and find the cracks that split them from the party. His first effort claimed to be a pirate radio station, hosted by a foul-mouthed German officer known simply as Der Chef. This racist patriot spewed stories about the scurrilous activities of Nazi officials, ranting about their sadomasochistic orgies. This pornography helped lure in listeners and broke taboos about insulting Nazi officials. In a more subtle way, it dramatised and mocked how nazism tapped into the psychological allure of submission and domination.
"Rather than produce moral and “rational” media, Delmer wanted to undermine the Nazi’s monopoly over people’s strongest, most violent urges. Then he turned the propaganda back on to the Nazis: “Our stories were peopled with Burgomasters, District Leaders, Local group leaders,” he explained. “We spread over them a slime of obloquy as foul as that which they themselves had spread over the Jews.”
"Delmer’s aim was not to replace one violent movement with another. Instead, he wanted to alienate people from Nazi propaganda by, as he explained to the king when he presented his work, pushing Nazi propaganda “one step further into the ridiculous”. This wasn’t quite satire – people were meant to believe Der Chef was a genuine soldier hiding somewhere inside German-held territory. And satire doesn’t always do much to undermine the hold a leader has on his followers: satirists who mock Trump or Brexit might make their own audiences feel good but don’t necessarily reach the other side.
"Delmer understood the need to engage people around their own interests rather than what you might like them to care about, and this is a lesson Ukrainian info warriors have been learning in their war with Russia. Ukraine is full of advertisers and hackers, activists and journalists all trying to reach Russian audiences.
"They buy ads on Russian pornography sites and bootleg movie portals or use cold calling software more familiar from marketing campaigns. Early on they found that “moral” content didn’t take off. When they made mass telephone calls to Russians, they found that some 80% would hang up during the first 20 seconds if the calls were about war crimes, but only 30% hung up when the call focused on their personal interests, such as a special tax they had to pay to support Russia’s newly occupied lands.
"But though Delmer’s first station was a success, with some sources in Europe even claiming it was the most listened-to station in Germany, it didn’t take long for the Nazis to work out that it was the British who were behind it. They began calling it out publicly, using it as an example of how dastardly the British propaganda was. Indeed, here is one (of many) negative lessons from Delmer’s work. Then, as now, creating “sock puppet” media – media that pretend to be one thing but are actually another – can backfire.
"As he expanded his war work, Delmer changed tactics. When he launched his most ambitious station, the Soldatensender Calais, it was still dressed up as if it were a native German military station, combining broadcasts of speeches by Nazi leaders with music and the latest news and gossip from the front that demonstrated all the lies and inequalities soldiers faced. But the aim was no longer to dupe the listener into believing this was a Nazi station – this time the audience was meant to be in on the act. As Peter Wykeham, a colleague of Delmer’s, explained, this station would “(i) afford our German customers an excuse if caught listening, (ii) enable them to justify this dubious activity to themselves”. Yet even though German listeners knew perfectly well the British were behind the station, they listened to it and trusted it. Often today we lament that people only trust the media that represent their social tribe. So how did Delmer pull it off?
"Delmer used every research tool at his disposal to understand his audience’s world. Partisan groups in France provided the latest scores from military football matches and information on the cars officers drove. Secret microphones installed in PoW camps picked up on the soldiers’ latest slang and complaints about their higher-ups. A special storage space had to be constructed for the volumes of notes held by Delmer’s archivist, the former leader of the Social Democrats in the Saar region, Max Braun. Delmer’s team had early knowledge of when the RAF would strike a German town so they could warn soldiers if the street their loved ones lived on had been hit and remind them of their right to take leave and help relatives caught under bombardment.
"Today it is so much easier to understand what people care about, even in closed societies. You can look at open-source research into corrupt procurement by local government, do sentiment analysis of social media, or use secure messaging apps that allow you to talk directly to people even in the most dangerous areas. The key is always to understand people’s conditions, and be useful to them. Delmer never talked down or lectured – instead he understood the gripes of the soldiers and made them feel part of a community that looked after their interests better than the Nazis.
"But just as important as what was broadcast was the experience of tuning in. Here was a radio programme pretending to be Nazi, which understood that its listeners knew that it wasn’t, and whose listeners tuned in because they needed the emotional and physical safety of play acting as if they thought it might be Nazi after all. If the principle of Goebbels’ propaganda was to try to entrance you, to dissolve you into the loud, angry crowd, then here was media that required you to make a series of autonomous, conscious steps to engage. Delmer’s other media, such as his leaflets to help you feign illness and defect from the front, were also designed for people to take control and be more active. He encouraged people to invent roles for themselves rather than play the ones forced on them by Nazi propaganda.
"How people think and act can be just as important as what they think when undermining the most malign propaganda. People are most susceptible to conspiracy theories, for example, when they don’t feel they have any agency or influence over their lives and rely on conspiracies to explain the world. Many are drawn to “strongmen” when they feel they can’t take back control over their lives. The real antidote to this is not plying them with facts. It’s helping to fix the underlying lack of agency.
"So what can we draw from the strange, contradictory experience of Delmer’s deeds and misdeeds? Dictators and propagandists inside democracies use hate-spreading troll farms and conspiracy-spewing cable news; target audiences according to their deepest grievances and encourage cruelty. To compete we need to develop a new generation of democratic media with the same focus, but with different values. This needs to be done at scale.
"First, such media has to match the emotional power of authoritarians. Counter-propagandists need their own visceral dramas, YouTubers and the whole spectrum of today’s channels.
"They don’t need to hide their provenance like Der Chef, though they may have to give people the necessary “cover” to watch safely if in a dangerous dictatorship. But they do need to delve into the operating theatre of our darkest desires. Think of the difference between the cult leader and the therapist. Both dig into people’s unspoken fears and needs. The cult leader, like the authoritarian propagandist, uses that insight to make people dependent on their power. The therapist helps them to become more empowered and self-aware.
"Second, we need to be much more attuned to the needs of audiences – think of media less as dispensing information and more as a social service. We are, by the looks of it, going to be in a long struggle with Russia. Now is the time to start investing in media that engage the parts of society that are critical to their war effort: workers in munitions factories or, most obviously, soldiers. It’s much easier than in Delmer’s time to obtain evidence of what they care about. Last month there was, for example, a large leak of documents from Russia’s military that showed how the leadership lies about losses on the front. The aim is not to make these people, who are often involved in war crimes, “good” – it’s to help win the war by getting them to disobey their orders.
"Third, such media need to nurture a sense of community, especially in polarised democracies where there is still a chance of displacing malign propaganda before it reaches total dominance, and where there are audiences up for grabs. Instead of experiencing power through a strongman, this community needs to empower people to act for themselves. There are many small initiatives that already pioneer this. Hearken, for example, is an online platform where users can help media choose which topics they should focus on, taking power away from aloof editors and grounding it in local needs. vTaiwan is another platform whose algorithm helps people find solutions to polarising issues by identifying common ground on which to build policies. Such examples are tiny and experimental, and need to be scaled massively.
"Sefton Delmer had as many bad lessons for us as good. But the most fundamental one is related to his sense that all social roles are somehow performed. We have a choice. We can either play the role prescribed by propagandists – which makes us dependent on them. Or we can invent media that welcome people into a relationship where they become active players.
"You can’t shove “the truth” down people’s throats if they don’t want to hear it, but you can inspire them to have the motivation to care about facts in the first place.
June 8, 2025
Ależ to jest przeciekawa i świetnie napisana książka! Z jednej strony to historia Seftona Delmera, człowieka, który w trakcie wojny prowadził audycję radiową, która miała na celu od środka zniszczyć nazistowskie Niemcy. To nie jest historia o człowieku, który miłością i dobrym słowem pokonał Hitlera. To opowieść o tym, jak Delmer wykorzystywał kłamstwa i manipulacje (często naprawdę okrutne), by osiągnąć cel.
To też świetna książka o tym, jak działa propaganda i dlaczego do dzisiaj tak często i chętnie jej ulegamy - autor odnosi się również do obecnej sytuacji w Rosji, pokazując, że to, z czym Niemcy się uporały, wciąż tam tkwi, niezaopiekowanie i nieuleczone.
Polecam przeogromnie, czyta to się to naprawdę rewelacyjnie, a do tego jest po prostu przeciekawe.
To też świetna książka o tym, jak działa propaganda i dlaczego do dzisiaj tak często i chętnie jej ulegamy - autor odnosi się również do obecnej sytuacji w Rosji, pokazując, że to, z czym Niemcy się uporały, wciąż tam tkwi, niezaopiekowanie i nieuleczone.
Polecam przeogromnie, czyta to się to naprawdę rewelacyjnie, a do tego jest po prostu przeciekawe.
January 27, 2025
What we need to do is give people the motivation to care about truth again.
July 2, 2025
He rephrased an autobiography, added some haphazard and reductionist modern political commentary, and called it "History"...
April 6, 2025
Peter Pomerantsev is a Soviet-born British journalist of Ukrainian descent; in his 2024 book, How to Win an Information War, he writes about Sefton Delmar (1904-1979), a fellow British journalist who engaged in various 'black propaganda' schemes during the second world war. This story was fascinating, albeit frequently punctured by Pomerantsev's attempts to connect these tactics to modern-day efforts by Putin and other autocratic regimes, to the point where this distracted from the central story.
Further reading: propaganda, and counterintelligence during World War II:
The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth White and Joanne Silwa
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy
Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila
My statistics:
Book 105 for 2025
Book 2031 cumulatively
Further reading: propaganda, and counterintelligence during World War II:
The Counterfeit Countess: The Jewish Woman Who Rescued Thousands of Poles During the Holocaust by Elizabeth White and Joanne Silwa
The Secret Lives of Codebreakers: The Men and Women Who Cracked the Enigma Code at Bletchley Park by Sinclair McKay
Madame Fourcade's Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France's Largest Spy Network Against Hitler by Lynne Olson
Code Girls: The Untold Story of the American Women Code Breakers Who Helped Win World War II by Liza Mundy
Code Talker: The First and Only Memoir By One of the Original Navajo Code Talkers of WWII by Chester Nez and Judith Schiess Avila
My statistics:
Book 105 for 2025
Book 2031 cumulatively
Read
June 21, 2025I heard of this when Pomerantsev went on the Our Opinions Are Correct podcast to discuss it.
It's a vital book. First, it's a fascinating biography of Sefton Delmer, a British man born in Austria whose family was kicked back to England because of WWI. After college he returned to Germany as a reporter and got to know the culture of Nazi leadership well. During WWII, he led British radio propaganda that was broadcast into Germany. It also goes into how the life in propaganda backfired on him in key ways.
Second, it's a close examination of the ways Delmer excelled at propaganda by understanding the Germans far better than the BBC.
Third, he draws parallels to current day, in the Russia/Ukraine war especially, but also in China and the US.
In the process, he powerfully calls into question the conduct of the culture wars. In an age of rampant mis- and dis-information, this offers an alternative to the preaching-to-the-choir/meme-warfare status quo that has so clearly failed.
Is it a perfect book? No. But it needs to be read widely. I certainly plan to revisit it before too long.
It's a vital book. First, it's a fascinating biography of Sefton Delmer, a British man born in Austria whose family was kicked back to England because of WWI. After college he returned to Germany as a reporter and got to know the culture of Nazi leadership well. During WWII, he led British radio propaganda that was broadcast into Germany. It also goes into how the life in propaganda backfired on him in key ways.
Second, it's a close examination of the ways Delmer excelled at propaganda by understanding the Germans far better than the BBC.
Third, he draws parallels to current day, in the Russia/Ukraine war especially, but also in China and the US.
In the process, he powerfully calls into question the conduct of the culture wars. In an age of rampant mis- and dis-information, this offers an alternative to the preaching-to-the-choir/meme-warfare status quo that has so clearly failed.
Is it a perfect book? No. But it needs to be read widely. I certainly plan to revisit it before too long.
September 2, 2025
Central thesis: ideological attachments have more to do with belongingness than other motivators and so to influence the narrative one should appeal towards inclusion vs. attacking the merits. Truth, alas, never wins when one feels their values are attacked.
December 16, 2025
I don’t know what to make of this book. But it has given me a lot to think about.
March 22, 2024
In his fascinating book, Peter Pomerantsev shines a light on one of the unsung heroes of World War II - Ellic Howe, a brilliant propagandist who helped defeat the Nazi misinformation machine. Pomerantsev's vivid storytelling transports readers back to those dark times, deftly weaving together Howe's personal story with the larger context of the information warfare raging behind the scenes of the military campaigns.
Howe emerges as a gifted linguist and master of deception, using his wits to outmaneuver Joseph Goebbels' formidable propaganda efforts. From crafting pamphlets designed to demoralize German troops to planting misinformation that misled the Nazi high command, Howe's psychological tactics proved just as vital as military force. Pomerantsev captures the improvisational nature and high stakes of this shadow war over hearts and minds.
While sometimes getting bogged down in excessive detail, the book overall is a gripping portrayal of the indispensable role strategic communication played in the Allied victory. Pomerantsev makes a strong case that Howe's unorthodox methods cleared the way for the Allies' military successes by eroding enemy morale and morale.
By exploring this underappreciated facet of World War II, the book provides valuable lessons about the timeless importance of controlling the information space during conflicts. Although the methods have evolved, the fundamental battle over dominating the narrative rages on today. Readers will walk away with a deeper appreciation for this dimension of warfare.
Rating: 4/5 stars. A must-read for World War II history buffs and those interested in the art of propaganda and deception. Pomerantsev ensures Ellic Howe's ingenious contributions to the war effort no longer remain in the shadows.
Howe emerges as a gifted linguist and master of deception, using his wits to outmaneuver Joseph Goebbels' formidable propaganda efforts. From crafting pamphlets designed to demoralize German troops to planting misinformation that misled the Nazi high command, Howe's psychological tactics proved just as vital as military force. Pomerantsev captures the improvisational nature and high stakes of this shadow war over hearts and minds.
While sometimes getting bogged down in excessive detail, the book overall is a gripping portrayal of the indispensable role strategic communication played in the Allied victory. Pomerantsev makes a strong case that Howe's unorthodox methods cleared the way for the Allies' military successes by eroding enemy morale and morale.
By exploring this underappreciated facet of World War II, the book provides valuable lessons about the timeless importance of controlling the information space during conflicts. Although the methods have evolved, the fundamental battle over dominating the narrative rages on today. Readers will walk away with a deeper appreciation for this dimension of warfare.
Rating: 4/5 stars. A must-read for World War II history buffs and those interested in the art of propaganda and deception. Pomerantsev ensures Ellic Howe's ingenious contributions to the war effort no longer remain in the shadows.
February 29, 2024
Peter Pomerantsev wrote a fantastic biography of WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer while at the same time tying the tactics Delmer used to modern-day propaganda. Too many historians don’t tie history to the present, so five stars and a gold medal for Mr. Pomerantsev. We need to hear more about Delmer; he created Der Chef, a German who spoke up and questioned Nazis. His listeners included German soldiers and citizens, as well as politicians. Do not underestimate the power of intelligence and propaganda in winning WWII. Tactics are still being used, and most people still fall for it.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about someone I had heard a little about. Thank you, NetGalley and PublicAffairs, for an advanced copy.
I thoroughly enjoyed learning about someone I had heard a little about. Thank you, NetGalley and PublicAffairs, for an advanced copy.
July 12, 2025
It was definitely better than „everything is possible“ plus I do love to read books that are centred around a certain historical figure. Add the theme of propaganda- and here we are, my favourite cocktail.
The thing I liked most about this book - author doesn’t look for deep inner suffering of the people who do evil things.
It was a good book. But I don’t know what to say after reading it.
The main lesson can be summarised in the quote from my favourite „The first fifteen lives of Harry August“ :
«It was a reminder of the old truth that for tyranny to flourish all it required was the complicity of good men.»
The thing I liked most about this book - author doesn’t look for deep inner suffering of the people who do evil things.
It was a good book. But I don’t know what to say after reading it.
The main lesson can be summarised in the quote from my favourite „The first fifteen lives of Harry August“ :
«It was a reminder of the old truth that for tyranny to flourish all it required was the complicity of good men.»
March 11, 2025
Interesting historical account of British propaganda efforts in the second World War. I feel like it promised to draw more parallels to the modern day but fell a little short. It also touched on the successes and failures of Nazi propaganda and its effect on the German population which had an alarming amount of similarities with tactics the Trump 2 administration is currently utilizing. Would recommend if you want a really detailed account of British intelligence's part in the information war, but if you want something that can be applied today I would look elsewhere.
April 1, 2024
This is the story of Sefton Delmer who was given the job of beating the Nazis at their own information game. Delmer spent his childhood in Berlin and spoke fluent German and living in Germany in the run up to war he chronicled Hitler’s rise to power. Now during the war and back in the UK he is set up in a English country house and launches an experimental German radio station. Delmer’s goal was to undermine nazism from within, by turning ordinary citizens against their party bosses. A cast of Jewish refugees and former cabaret artists played the role of Nazis. This is a really interesting book!
August 14, 2025
З собою у відпустку я взяла книгу Пітера Помаранцева «Як виграти інформаційну війну». Поглинуло одразу. Отримала масу думок для осмислення, як герой, про якого йдеться у книзі, працював з масами та намагався витягнути їх свідомості з великої пропагандистської машини Німеччини за часів Гітлера.
І насправді, це дуже корисно не лише з точки зору історичних подій чи політичного закулісся. У контексті ведення комунікацій це доволі цікаво розібрати. Тим паче, якщо ми говоримо про залучення аудиторії та лояльності до людини чи бренду. Загалом! Усім колегам буду радити це якісне читво.
І насправді, це дуже корисно не лише з точки зору історичних подій чи політичного закулісся. У контексті ведення комунікацій це доволі цікаво розібрати. Тим паче, якщо ми говоримо про залучення аудиторії та лояльності до людини чи бренду. Загалом! Усім колегам буду радити це якісне читво.
August 10, 2024
Interesting book on how the UK created a fake German radio station during WWII to win the propaganda war. Interesting ideas about human nature and how to influence people. The connection Ukraine felt forced, even If that would.be an interesting story in and of itself.
July 2, 2025
Fascinerande. Den svenska översättningen innehöll massor av stavfel, tyvärr.
March 22, 2024
Excellent, timely writing
April 20, 2025
Intressant om propaganda, människors tankar om sig själva och att påverka grupper att identifiera sig med ”den starkaste” genom att förnedra dem och därmed ge dem rätten att förnedra andra.
Bland annat.
Bland annat.
April 3, 2024
How to Win an Information War, by Peter Pomerantsev; Public Affairs: New York; $30.00
The astounding life of Sefton Delmer shows how British propaganda was used to outwit Adolf Hitler. Using Delmer’s life as the matrix, Peter Pomerantsev, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University and highly awarded author, reveals much about the power of propaganda, and how to properly employ and contest it.
The story begins with a sad story of a lonely British boy in Berlin, whose father was employed there in the years before World War 1. Delmer couldn’t understand why his German friends became mean to him when the war broke out. Nor could he fathom why his father was arrested as an ‘enemy alien’. So we enter Delmer’s astounding breakthrough. Through years of self-reflection, during which he served as an eminently successful European correspondent for a major British newspaper, he came to realize that propaganda is not a rational duping of masses of people. Rather it is a way for lonely people to belong. Loneliness can be resolved by clever suggestion of ‘membership’ in a special crowd. It tells a sad, persecuted or failed person he can be a member of a special racial, ethnic, political or social group, just by being. He can blame outsiders, ‘others’ for all his problems. Indeed, he can employ his membership as a badge of pride, of exclusion, employment, and even of torment against those ubiquitous others who damage, defame, and ruin what was a glorious past. He can, through his group, make his country as great as it once was.
Delmer came into the British government during the Second World War. There he concocted ‘Der Chef’, a radio program which played on Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels’ own radio shows. ‘Der Chef’ broadcasters seemed to be rogue Germans, not British at all. Of course, Delmer found his method of telling a ‘near truth’, with a British viewpoint’s subtle edge, as a means of reaching convinced pro-Nazi Germans. Delmer argued you weren’t going to beat Hitler’s themes by rational point by point arguments. Nor were you going to win over ‘secret democrats’ in Germany by pretending, as one colleague did, to represent a secret pro-democracy party in Germany. Sadly, ‘Der Chef’ was cancelled due to jealousy among the British themselves, when the Chef was betrayed as a British ploy. Delmer struck again, with even more success. He became the mind behind ‘Soldatensender Calais’. This station, presenting factual war news, good music, and discussions among German soldiers, all with a secret British spin, demoralized the Germans. He knew the German soldiers knew the ‘sender’ was probably, ultimately a British scheme, but that they could listen in and pretend they didn’t know.
Pomerantsev presents his work in light of modern propaganda. Now an interviewee on major networks, Pomerantsev’s appreciation of this once successful propagandist is invaluable. He applies his various historical stories to the modern Ukraine War and other modern examples. He explains how there is a dual role in propaganda. Not only the propagandist, but the receiver of his message plays a role. The latter seeks recognition, exclusive membership, value. This receiver, the ultimate ‘believer’ in the enemy’s propaganda, may on some level know what he hears is false. Yet he believes because it justifies his often-criminal actions. Delmer figured out a way to let such a German believer act in British interests (such as surrendering, feigning illness) without requiring that he betray his previous, pro-Nazi beliefs. He simply rendered these Nazi beliefs meaningless. In the end, Delmer knew actions spoke loudest of all. He concluded his German soldiers’ wrong beliefs didn’t matter if you convinced him to take an action in your favor.
The astounding life of Sefton Delmer shows how British propaganda was used to outwit Adolf Hitler. Using Delmer’s life as the matrix, Peter Pomerantsev, senior fellow at Johns Hopkins University and highly awarded author, reveals much about the power of propaganda, and how to properly employ and contest it.
The story begins with a sad story of a lonely British boy in Berlin, whose father was employed there in the years before World War 1. Delmer couldn’t understand why his German friends became mean to him when the war broke out. Nor could he fathom why his father was arrested as an ‘enemy alien’. So we enter Delmer’s astounding breakthrough. Through years of self-reflection, during which he served as an eminently successful European correspondent for a major British newspaper, he came to realize that propaganda is not a rational duping of masses of people. Rather it is a way for lonely people to belong. Loneliness can be resolved by clever suggestion of ‘membership’ in a special crowd. It tells a sad, persecuted or failed person he can be a member of a special racial, ethnic, political or social group, just by being. He can blame outsiders, ‘others’ for all his problems. Indeed, he can employ his membership as a badge of pride, of exclusion, employment, and even of torment against those ubiquitous others who damage, defame, and ruin what was a glorious past. He can, through his group, make his country as great as it once was.
Delmer came into the British government during the Second World War. There he concocted ‘Der Chef’, a radio program which played on Nazi Propaganda Minister Goebbels’ own radio shows. ‘Der Chef’ broadcasters seemed to be rogue Germans, not British at all. Of course, Delmer found his method of telling a ‘near truth’, with a British viewpoint’s subtle edge, as a means of reaching convinced pro-Nazi Germans. Delmer argued you weren’t going to beat Hitler’s themes by rational point by point arguments. Nor were you going to win over ‘secret democrats’ in Germany by pretending, as one colleague did, to represent a secret pro-democracy party in Germany. Sadly, ‘Der Chef’ was cancelled due to jealousy among the British themselves, when the Chef was betrayed as a British ploy. Delmer struck again, with even more success. He became the mind behind ‘Soldatensender Calais’. This station, presenting factual war news, good music, and discussions among German soldiers, all with a secret British spin, demoralized the Germans. He knew the German soldiers knew the ‘sender’ was probably, ultimately a British scheme, but that they could listen in and pretend they didn’t know.
Pomerantsev presents his work in light of modern propaganda. Now an interviewee on major networks, Pomerantsev’s appreciation of this once successful propagandist is invaluable. He applies his various historical stories to the modern Ukraine War and other modern examples. He explains how there is a dual role in propaganda. Not only the propagandist, but the receiver of his message plays a role. The latter seeks recognition, exclusive membership, value. This receiver, the ultimate ‘believer’ in the enemy’s propaganda, may on some level know what he hears is false. Yet he believes because it justifies his often-criminal actions. Delmer figured out a way to let such a German believer act in British interests (such as surrendering, feigning illness) without requiring that he betray his previous, pro-Nazi beliefs. He simply rendered these Nazi beliefs meaningless. In the end, Delmer knew actions spoke loudest of all. He concluded his German soldiers’ wrong beliefs didn’t matter if you convinced him to take an action in your favor.
May 4, 2024
Dit boek begint eigenlijk al met de Eerste Wereldoorlog. Want bij het uitbreken van deze oorlog bevond Sefton Delmer, een 14-jarige Brit zich in het hol van de leeuw: Berlijn.
Al na enkele weken moeten zijn klasgenoten niets meer weten van die Engländer. Sefton Delmer ziet hier met eigen ogen hoe propaganda zich nestelt in de geesten van de Duitsers.
Deze ervaring, plus het feit dat hij (uiteraard) vloeiend Duits spreekt, helpen hem tijdens W.O. II om de nazi-propaganda te doorgronden en vervolgens zelf anti-nazipropaganda te verspreiden via hét medium van die tijd: de radio.
We zien dat propaganda eigenlijk behoorlijk "simpel" is: bij een toespraak van dictators zien we dikwijls de volgende stappen terugkeren: begin met de vernedering van "jouw volk" door anderen.
Een mooi voorbeeld hiervan is China, zij cultiveren "De eeuw van vernedering" en hebben verschillende feestdagen in het leven geroepen om dit te herdenken.
Hitler gaf dan weer de joden de schuld van alles en Poetin de Oekraïners en het westen.
Vervolgens leg je uit dat JIJ de sterke hand bent die alle problemen zal oplossen.
Sefton Delmer slaagde er (enigszins) in om deze propaganda te doorprikken. Zo deelde hij dikwijls verhalen waarin de nazi-elite prostituees bezochten, feesten gaven met een overdaad aan eten, en ondertussen geen ruk gaven om de soldaten die aan het vechten waren.
Ook deelde hij tips aan soldaten over hoe te deserteren, hoe ziektes te faken, en moedigde hij af en toe runs aan op voedselbonnen en kledij.
Dit was een zeer boeiend verhaal over de Britse inspanningen om nazi-propaganda te ondermijnen.
Al na enkele weken moeten zijn klasgenoten niets meer weten van die Engländer. Sefton Delmer ziet hier met eigen ogen hoe propaganda zich nestelt in de geesten van de Duitsers.
Deze ervaring, plus het feit dat hij (uiteraard) vloeiend Duits spreekt, helpen hem tijdens W.O. II om de nazi-propaganda te doorgronden en vervolgens zelf anti-nazipropaganda te verspreiden via hét medium van die tijd: de radio.
We zien dat propaganda eigenlijk behoorlijk "simpel" is: bij een toespraak van dictators zien we dikwijls de volgende stappen terugkeren: begin met de vernedering van "jouw volk" door anderen.
Een mooi voorbeeld hiervan is China, zij cultiveren "De eeuw van vernedering" en hebben verschillende feestdagen in het leven geroepen om dit te herdenken.
Hitler gaf dan weer de joden de schuld van alles en Poetin de Oekraïners en het westen.
Vervolgens leg je uit dat JIJ de sterke hand bent die alle problemen zal oplossen.
Sefton Delmer slaagde er (enigszins) in om deze propaganda te doorprikken. Zo deelde hij dikwijls verhalen waarin de nazi-elite prostituees bezochten, feesten gaven met een overdaad aan eten, en ondertussen geen ruk gaven om de soldaten die aan het vechten waren.
Ook deelde hij tips aan soldaten over hoe te deserteren, hoe ziektes te faken, en moedigde hij af en toe runs aan op voedselbonnen en kledij.
Dit was een zeer boeiend verhaal over de Britse inspanningen om nazi-propaganda te ondermijnen.
July 23, 2025
2.5 Stars
I learned a lot reading this book, which isn’t reflected in the rating because the author’s disorganized presentation of facts, cherry-picking details from Delmer’s memoirs to fit his narrative, and insistence upon comparing Nazi propaganda to the current Russia/Ukraine war even if he had to shoehorn it in (and he’s not wrong!) all made the read unenjoyable by the end.
I also feel like the title and sub-title are misleading and are used purposefully to pull modern readers in. There is no proof, or statement by Delmer in his memoirs from what this author presented, that he was the one (1) man to outwit Hitler. I’m more forgiving on the actual title because Delmer’s analysis and use of propaganda was a main focus of this book, but I know a marketing ploy when I see one (and I fell for it anyways).
I learned a lot reading this book, which isn’t reflected in the rating because the author’s disorganized presentation of facts, cherry-picking details from Delmer’s memoirs to fit his narrative, and insistence upon comparing Nazi propaganda to the current Russia/Ukraine war even if he had to shoehorn it in (and he’s not wrong!) all made the read unenjoyable by the end.
I also feel like the title and sub-title are misleading and are used purposefully to pull modern readers in. There is no proof, or statement by Delmer in his memoirs from what this author presented, that he was the one (1) man to outwit Hitler. I’m more forgiving on the actual title because Delmer’s analysis and use of propaganda was a main focus of this book, but I know a marketing ploy when I see one (and I fell for it anyways).
April 29, 2024
A publisher I know used to say that if you want to sell more books, put “Hitler” in the title. In this case, someone may have been taking his advice. It was not Hitler who Sefton Delmer outwitted — it was the Nazi propaganda boss Josef Goebbels.
Delmer, who was raised in Germany by a British family, took on the running of several British radio stations during the Second World War that broadcast in German to Nazi-occupied Europe, pretending to be based in Germany. His approach was not to preach to the “better angels” of the Germans, but to their self-interest. His radio broadcasts (and printed materials, which were air dropped) offered advice on how to fake illness and get out the front lines, shared gossip (some of it true, some not) about the corrupt Nazi leaders, and repeated sometimes the racist and antisemitic language of the Nazis in order to appear genuine. Did it work? Maybe.
At the same time as Peter Pomerantsev tells the story of Delmer — who I, for one, had never heard of before — he also writes about the present day, about Russian propaganda and disinformation. The point of the book — as the title indicates — is to see what lessons can be learned from Britain’s experience with countering German Nazi propaganda from the Second World War for today’s world.
On this I think the books falls a bit flat. It is not entirely class how much Delmer’s efforts contributed to the Allied victory. Nor is it obvious (to me) what lessons can be learned for today. Perhaps Pomerantsev wants to avoid too much detail in order not to give the game away.
In any event, I hope leaders of Western countries are paying attention. We also know the role played by Western media during the Cold War — including the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America — in helping to bring down the Communist regimes. There are surely lessons there as well.
Delmer, who was raised in Germany by a British family, took on the running of several British radio stations during the Second World War that broadcast in German to Nazi-occupied Europe, pretending to be based in Germany. His approach was not to preach to the “better angels” of the Germans, but to their self-interest. His radio broadcasts (and printed materials, which were air dropped) offered advice on how to fake illness and get out the front lines, shared gossip (some of it true, some not) about the corrupt Nazi leaders, and repeated sometimes the racist and antisemitic language of the Nazis in order to appear genuine. Did it work? Maybe.
At the same time as Peter Pomerantsev tells the story of Delmer — who I, for one, had never heard of before — he also writes about the present day, about Russian propaganda and disinformation. The point of the book — as the title indicates — is to see what lessons can be learned from Britain’s experience with countering German Nazi propaganda from the Second World War for today’s world.
On this I think the books falls a bit flat. It is not entirely class how much Delmer’s efforts contributed to the Allied victory. Nor is it obvious (to me) what lessons can be learned for today. Perhaps Pomerantsev wants to avoid too much detail in order not to give the game away.
In any event, I hope leaders of Western countries are paying attention. We also know the role played by Western media during the Cold War — including the BBC, Radio Free Europe and Voice of America — in helping to bring down the Communist regimes. There are surely lessons there as well.
March 25, 2025
Príbeh časti britskej propagandy počas druhej svetovej vojny, za ktorou stále Sefton Delmer. Brit, ktorý vyrástol v Nemecku a ešte pred vojnou sa často osobne stretával priamo s Hitlerom. V tomto je to fascinujúca kniha, no nemožno od nej očakávať, že sa dozviete, ako vyhrať informačnú vojnu.
Kniha je zmesou úspešných i neúspešných propagandistických pokusov a postupne predstavuje celú "Delmerovu ríšu trikov". Podstatou však je, že mnohé z nich boli rovnako odporné, ako nacistická propaganda sama a ich účinnosť je mimoriadne otázna. Z tohto pohľadu je to veľmi cenná kniha, pretože umožňuje spätný pohľad do dejín propagandy a jej (okamžitých aj dlhodobých) dopadov.
"Delmer si uvedomoval, že ľudia získavajú z propagandy uspokojenie. Čím je propaganda podlejšia, tým je často účinnejšia. Najodpornejší vodcovia získavajú stúpencov tak, že im dávajú možnosť cítiť sa ich prostredníctvom silní a ponižovať ostatných"
Kniha je zmesou úspešných i neúspešných propagandistických pokusov a postupne predstavuje celú "Delmerovu ríšu trikov". Podstatou však je, že mnohé z nich boli rovnako odporné, ako nacistická propaganda sama a ich účinnosť je mimoriadne otázna. Z tohto pohľadu je to veľmi cenná kniha, pretože umožňuje spätný pohľad do dejín propagandy a jej (okamžitých aj dlhodobých) dopadov.
"Delmer si uvedomoval, že ľudia získavajú z propagandy uspokojenie. Čím je propaganda podlejšia, tým je často účinnejšia. Najodpornejší vodcovia získavajú stúpencov tak, že im dávajú možnosť cítiť sa ich prostredníctvom silní a ponižovať ostatných"
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