censorship

censorship, both of the press and of post, telephone, and telegraph, is automatic in police states. It was applied with rigour in all the Axis powers throughout the war, and was regarded in all of them as a necessary measure of state security. In the USSR it was applied with equal severity. The newspapers in all these countries printed only what government wanted, when government wanted each item to appear; no one who opposed the regime could safely say so, in print, in manuscript, or by telephone. Radio broadcasts were just as firmly under control.

The UK and its empire also imposed censorship, though more mildly. Movements of warships, troops, and military aircraft were no longer reported in the press—in peacetime they had been, regularly. Newspapers sent war correspondents to report on each campaign; they were given plenty of facilities, but not shown secret equipment, and they sent their dispatches through service censors, who might delete anything they thought helpful to the other side. Government did not take over the BBC, but had a comfortable understanding with it. The French made similar arrangements until the fall of France; Pétain's regime was more stringent.

The letters home of British servicemen were censored by their junior officers, whose own letters were liable to chance censorship at base. Letters, from civilians and serving men alike, going overseas were channelled through a central censorship bureau in Liverpool, where random inspection produced a certain amount of useful intelligence, most of it on the state of home morale. Here, and in many other censors' offices, letters were often as a matter of routine criss-crossed with an X of brush-strokes intended to develop any secret ink; if hidden messages did appear, the letter was at once whisked off to the security authorities, as evidence that spies might be at work.

No one with any sense ever supposed that telephone calls or telegrams or cables were private. The near-monopoly of Cable & Wireless over the world cable system provided the British Admiralty with much valuable intelligence.

In the USA, censorship was regarded as unconstitutional, in principle; informal arrangements were satisfactorily made for war correspondents at the fighting fronts, and Congress approved some degree of censorship of serving men's letters.

M. R. D. Foot