Salv
One Too Many
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There's an interesting article in the Weekend magazine with todays Guardian newspaper about a covert British operation in the US in 1940-41 known as British Security Coordination.
At a time when there was widespread support for Nazi Germany among American industrialists (Henry Ford, Irénée Du Pont, Thomas J Watson of IBM for example), and America as a whole was decidedly isolationist, the aims of BSC were to spread negative news stories, disinformation and black propaganda about Nazi Germany. The idea was that this would paint the Nazis in a bad enough light that the American people would vote for US involvement in WW2.
An office was set up in the Rockefeller Center and estimates of the number of staff involved nationwide were as high as 3000. It ran its own radio station, WRUL, and a press agency, the Overseas News Agency (ONA) and seemed to have been very succesful, with nobody ever suspecting the extent of its work. Ultimately of course, with the attack on Pearl Harbour, BSCs activities were not needed, but it makes for a fascinating story.
At a time when there was widespread support for Nazi Germany among American industrialists (Henry Ford, Irénée Du Pont, Thomas J Watson of IBM for example), and America as a whole was decidedly isolationist, the aims of BSC were to spread negative news stories, disinformation and black propaganda about Nazi Germany. The idea was that this would paint the Nazis in a bad enough light that the American people would vote for US involvement in WW2.
An office was set up in the Rockefeller Center and estimates of the number of staff involved nationwide were as high as 3000. It ran its own radio station, WRUL, and a press agency, the Overseas News Agency (ONA) and seemed to have been very succesful, with nobody ever suspecting the extent of its work. Ultimately of course, with the attack on Pearl Harbour, BSCs activities were not needed, but it makes for a fascinating story.