Political Warfare Executive

Political Warfare Executive (PWE), a British secret service devoted to propaganda and subversive warfare, formally set up in September 1941 after fourteen months' bitter wrangling between several government departments, open and secret. Most of its staff came from SO1, the propaganda branch of SOE, into which, in turn, they had moved in 1940 from a semi-secret department of the foreign office, usually called EH after Electra House on the Thames embankment where it had worked in 1938–9. Sometimes EH was called CS, after the initials of Sir Campbell Stuart its head, who returned to business in Canada soon after SOE was formed.

PWE had three political masters at once, an unusual but (as it turned out) not quite unworkable arrangement. They were, in order of importance, the foreign secretary, Anthony Eden, who decided policy (when he had time); the minister of information, Brendan Bracken, who ran administration and day-to-day detail; and the minister of economic warfare, Hugh Dalton, and then Lord Selborne, who had some influence on policy and helped with transport. For cover, PWE used the political intelligence department of the foreign office (PID); it even used PID's writing-paper, which has frequently confused historians.

The service's first executive head was a diplomat, Reginald ( ‘Rex’) Leeper (1888–1968), who moved back to diplomacy in 1943. In March 1942 another figure, also nominally a diplomat but with journalistic capacities as well, Robert Bruce Lockhart (1887–1970) was put in over Leeper's head; he had been the first British representative in the USSR, while the Bolshevik revolution raged, and had charm as well as a capacity for leadership. In 1939, EH had moved its main base to the Duke of Bedford's seat at Woburn, some 60 km. (40 mi.) north-west of London; there most of PWE's staff remained. A few of them found it necessary to return to London, and worked in Bush House, Aldwych, beside the offices of the BBC that worked into Europe: contacts between PWE and the BBC were constant and necessary. While the last word always rested with the speaker actually in front of the microphone, PWE had a large say in forming the outlines of BBC broadcasts into occupied territory. In the second half of the war, PWE helped to formulate such directives as the British issued through this channel to assist the course of actual operations; before then, its tasks were to spread news of how the war was actually going, to keep alive a spirit of resistance, and to counter the daily assertions of Goebbels on Berlin radio. It had in fact a dual role: to influence German opinion against the Nazis, and to influence opinion in occupied countries against the Germans.

PWE was always aware that the BBC's broadcasts were an invaluable source of news for the clandestine press, to which it sometimes afforded more direct help. A few PWE agents were sent into western Europe, usually through SOE channels, to assist or even to found clandestine newspapers; in times of crisis, they could sometimes arrange for supplies of newsprint and printer's ink to be parachuted in.

Official programmes put out by the BBC were classified as white propaganda; PWE was also much involved in clandestine broadcasting, classified as black, notably through the work of Sefton ( ‘Tom’) Delmer (1904–79), a gifted Daily Express journalist, and of the equally gifted D. H. McLachlan (1908–71) of The Times. It has never been possible to measure how much impact their two stations had.

Equally, no useful measurements have ever been made of the effectiveness of PWE's other main channel of seeking to influence opinion, the dropping of leaflets from the air either over Germany, or over German- or Italian-occupied territories. In the US Army, where PWE's work was termed psychological warfare, still more attention was paid to leaflet-preparation and dropping.

More secretly, thanks to a printing accident PWE was also able to forge German official documents, and try to distribute them. In 1934 the Monotype Corporation had won an international competition to provide new sets of Gothic type for every German government department, and had kept a set of them. This set was shown by chance to Ellic Howe, then a sergeant-major at Anti-Aircraft Command HQ, who at once saw the possibilities. He moved to PWE, where he not only manufactured bogus pamphlets, but produced German Kennkarten (identity papers) indistinguishable from genuine ones: a valuable gift to other secret services.

The maverick R. H. S. ( ‘Dick’) Crossman (1907–74) played an influential and sometimes useful role in PWE, mainly in its German section, which he headed for over two years; he was close to Eisenhower's elbow during the Normandy landings in June 1944 (see OVERLORD).

Laughter is a great weapon against tyrants; PWE helped to mobilize it by passing on Churchill's gibes against Mussolini and Hitler, and by light-hearted commentaries on the occasional idiocies of German and Italian propaganda. Moreover, Goebbels had arranged for a twice-daily communique to be sent out to the whole of the German press; of which, by a communications accident, PWE twice daily obtained a copy. This enabled Delmer and other broadcasters to provide such intimate details of current life inside Germany as to persuade their listeners either that they were broadcasting from inside that country, or that the British were miraculously well informed.

In the early Western Desert campaigns, PWE operated a few front-line propaganda units, armed with megaphones, to try to persuade Italian troops to desert. These came under G. L. Steer, who had distinguished himself as a Times reporter during the Spanish Civil War. The rest of PWE's effort in the Near and Middle East became over-entangled with staff intrigues in Cairo, and was of slight effect.

Mountbatten, never one to discount publicity, made sure that PWE had every opportunity it wanted in the Far East; but the scarcity of wireless receiving sets in occupied areas, and the extra difficulties of oriental languages, made PWE much less effective in Asia than it was in Europe.

M. R. D. Foot

Bibliography

Balfour, M. , Propaganda in War 1939–1945 (London, 1979).
Howe, E. The Black Game (London, 1980).
Young, K. (ed.), The Diaries of Sir Robert Bruce Lockhart (London, 1980).