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PWE Shoulder Title | |
_Peewit_shoulder_patch.jpg) The shoulder badge or title, showing apeewit, was worn on the left sleeve of uniformed members of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) during WWII. | |
| Predecessor | SO1 |
|---|---|
| Successor | Political Intelligence Department |
| Established | 1941 |
| Founded at | Great Britain |
| Dissolved | 1945 |
DuringWorld War II, thePolitical Warfare Executive (PWE) was a British clandestine body created to produce and disseminate bothwhite andblack propaganda, with the aim of damaging enemymorale and sustaining the morale of countries occupied or allied with Nazi Germany.[1]
The Executive was formed in August 1941, reporting to theForeign Office. The staff came mostly from SO1, which had been until then the propaganda arm of theSpecial Operations Executive. The organisation was governed by a committee initially comprisingAnthony Eden (Foreign Secretary),Brendan Bracken (Minister of Information) andHugh Dalton (Minister of Economic Warfare), together with officialsRex Leeper andDallas Brooks, andRobert Bruce Lockhart as chairman (and later Director General).Roundell Palmer (the future 3rd Earl of Selbourne) later replaced Dalton when he was moved to becomePresident of the Board of Trade.Ivone Kirkpatrick, an advisor to theBBC and formerly a diplomat in Berlin, also joined the committee, while Leeper left to become British Ambassador to Greece.
PWE included staff from theMinistry of Information, thepropaganda elements of theSpecial Operations Executive, and from theBBC. Its main headquarters was atWoburn Abbey with London offices at the BBC'sBush House. As the Political Warfare Executive was a secret department, when dealing with the outside world it used the cover namePolitical Intelligence Department (PID).
AfterD-Day most of PWE's white propaganda staff transferred to thePsychological Warfare Division (PWD/SHAEF) ofSHAEF.
At the end of World War II PWE were tasked with the re-education of Germanprisoners of war. As with different types of propaganda, PWE used the same 'white', 'grey', and 'black' classifications for German POWs. Prisoners classed as 'black' were considered dangerous ardent Nazis, with anti-Nazis classed as 'white' and regular non-political soldiers classed as 'grey'.[2]
Activities of the PWE included distributing covert propaganda ranging from broadcasts to loudspeaker operations to lower morale and encourage desertion,leaflet drops, and underground publications in occupied countries, running rumour campaigns and creating forgeries, among others.[3]
The main forms of propaganda were in the form of radio broadcasts and printed postcards, leaflets and documents. PWE created a number of clandestine radio stations includingGustav Siegfried Eins,Soldatensender Calais andKurzwellesender Atlantik.[4]
In order to deliver itssubversive messages, PWE also disseminated information on events in Germany and the occupied countries, gathering intelligence from other services and agencies, includingPOW interrogations, and newspapers obtained from occupied countries, and bombing raid photo analysis. This last source was used to broadcast lists of streets (and even individual houses) that had been destroyed and on occasion to mock up faked "real time" reports of the German media.[5]
Some of PWE's activities were controversial, such as impersonating deceased German soldiers and sending food parcels to their families with pacifist messages on their behalf. Later,Sefton Delmer, who ran British black propaganda radio stations during the war, quipped that although family hopes to see their loved ones were false, the ham was real.[6]
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