One of the key strategies was to boost the public’s morale and to censor the magazines, newspapers, letters, radio and television broadcasts. The reason for doing this was so that the British people did not know how many people were being killed by the German bombers, and so they didn’t see the worst of the destruction going on around them. News reports were vague missing out details of mass destructions, pictures of the dead and the number of casualties. The journalists would also make the British defenses appear to be a lot better and more successful than it ever was. Most reports were uplifting and encouraging concentrating on how well people were coping with the bombs, and the numbers of enemy planes that we had shot down. Though the BBC accepted censorship, its Director, General Lord Reith, complained at one point that people were tuning into Berlin because there was so little real news at home. English language broadcasts were made by William Joyce, nicknamed ‘Lord Haw Haw’. Joyce was executed after the war as a traitor.
The British public needed something to give them a break from the grimness of life and in a pre-television age, they would go to the cinema. Before the films a newsreel was shown with images of the war. These were edited by the censor to highlight British victories or at worst brilliant retreats from the jaw of defeat, showing the German planes being destroyed and interviews with British soldiers, promoting them as heroes. People would leave the cinema feeling very patriotic and proud of their country’s pilots and soldiers. The reality was that many British lives and homes were lost which affected many families. Most of the great film, radio and stage stars made programs to boost the morale of both civilians and troops. People took comfort from comedians who made jokes about wartime hardships but also made fun of Hitler and the Nazis.
The Government created eye-catching posters and memorable slogans promoting the propaganda to boost morale, provide information and get people involved in the war effort. Such slogans were ‘careless talk cost lives’ and ‘keep mum she’s not so dumb’. Posters often used the image of Churchill and his speeches as one way of inspiring the British and giving them a sense of common purpose. A poster that was designed by Abram Games intended to raise morale and show a vision of a better more modern future built on the ruins of war-damaged buildings, was banned by Winston Churchill who thought that the image of a sickly child and a bombed out building would adversely affect the troops morale.
In fact all wartime propaganda made good use of the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. There is no doubt that he was a Great War time leader. However, the way in which newspapers, newsreels and the BBC reported him made him an almost legendary figure. Winston Churchill became Prime Minister in 1940 and was excellent at writing and making speeches. He wanted to make everybody feel they were ‘all in it together’ and that this was a ‘total war’. ‘Total war’ meant that every person had a part to play and could all make an important contribution to the war effort. From growing vegetables in the garden, to working in a factory producing weapons, everyone was doing their bit to help Britain become a stronger country and to win the war.
The combination of controlling the information to highlight the positives whilst suppressing the negatives, as well as involving everybody, ensured that the British built up an enduring spirit to support the war effort. Keeping the British morale up was key in this and the propaganda and the censorship were the main reasons the morale was maintained. If the morale was to drop, people might have started slacking in their jobs which would have brought everyone down and affected the whole country.
