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Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American "Neutrality" in World War II PDF

301 Pages·1995·21.92 MB·English
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Selling War This page intentionally left blank S E L L I NG WAR The British Propaganda Campaign Against American "Neutrality" in World War II NICHOLAS JOHN CULL New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford University Press Oxford New York Athens Auckland Bangkok Bogota Bombay Buenos Aires Calcutta Gape Town Dar es Salaam Delhi Florence Hong Kong Istanhul Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madras Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi Paris Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1995 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cull, Nicholas John. Selling war: the British propaganda campaign against American "neutrality" in World War II / Nicholas John Cull. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-508S66-3 (Cloth) ISBN 0-19-511150-8 (Pbk.) 1. World War, 1939-1945—Propaganda. 2. Propaganda, British—United States—History—20th century. 3. World War, 1939-1945—United States. 4. Neutrality—United States. I. Title. D810.P7G7248 1995 940.54'88— dc20 94-5614 2 4 6 8 9 7 53 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper For my family and Gloria Emerson This page intentionally left blank Acknowledgments My chief debt is to Philip M. Taylor of the University of Leeds, who in- spired me as an undergraduate and supervised my graduate research. I also owe much to my other teachers at Leeds, especially Roy Bridge, Professor David Dilks, Nicholas Pronay, Owen Hartley and the late Graham Ross; to Professor Donald Cameron Watt of the London School of Economics, for his numerous helpful comments, and to my col- leagues in the School of History at the University of Birmingham. For finance I am grateful to the British Academy, to the Harkness Fellow- ship program of the Commonwealth Fund of New York, and to the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Foundation. For help on the tortuous road to publication, I am grateful to Professor Henry Winkler—a gen- erous reader—and my editor at Oxford University Press, Nancy Lane. I am indebted to the Departments of History and Religion, and the Program in Afro-American Studies at Princeton University for their hospitality during the American phase of this research, and par- ticularly to Arthur N. Waldron, now of the U.S. Naval War College, Newport, R.I., whose friendship and intellectual enthusiasm sustained me through my bleaker months. I have learned much from my fellow scholars particularly Anthony Aldgate, Ben Alpers, Susan Brewer, Angus Calder, David Carrasco, Robert Cole, David Culbert, Fred Inglis, Fred Krome, Tom Mahl, C. J. Morris, Thomas Troy, and John Young. I am grateful to Harold Evans of Random House, for his encouragement, for employing me as a research assistant, and for allowing some por- tions of that research to appear here. The most enjoyable and productive moments of my research have most certainly been my contacts with the survivors of the war years, es- pecially Joan and Geoff Galwey, the late Graham Ilutton, John and Brenda Lawler, Hermione MacColl, Peggy Macmillan, Leonard Miall, Janet Murrow, and Chaim Raphael, who were particularly generous with their time, encouragement, and hospitality; also the late George Ball, Sir Maurice Bathurst, Sir Isaiah Berlin, Wallace and Peggy Carroll, Alistair Cooke, Walter Cronkite, David Daiches, Lionel Elvin, Douglas viii Acknowledgments Fairbanks, Jr., George Forrest, Gizelda Fowler, the late Lord Harms- worth, Lady Harmsworth, Heather Harvey, Sir William Hayter, Robert Heaney, the late Denis Hennessy, Alger Hiss, Harry Hodson, the late Lord Inchyra, Anne King-Hall, Larry Lesuour, the late Drew Middleton, Helen Milbank, Richard Miles, H.G. Nicholas, Jim Orrick, Dick Pear, Lord Perth, Peggy Ratcliffe, James Reston, Wendy Reves, the late Eric Sevareid, Lord Sherneld, Val Stavridi, Frank Thistlethwaite, Ann Thorns, and Stanley Wilson; and to "Mitch" Mitchell and the other wit- nesses with whom I corresponded. I am grateful to Sir Edward Gazalet, Lord Lothian, Lord Holder- ness, the Honorable Hector McDonnell, and Lady Caroline Peake for permission to consult and where necessary to quote from private papers in their possession; to the National Film Board of Canada for permission to quote from documents written by its wartime director, John Grierson; to Turner Entertainment and Castle Ilill Productions for permission to reproduce stills from films in their copyright, and to Margaret Gale and the staff of the British Information Services in New York for providing copies of some of the more interesting documents in that organization's archive. The material in this work taken from the BBC Written Archives Centre is copyrighted and appears by kind permission. I owe much to the staff of the PRO at Kew and of Princeton University's Firestone and Mudd Libraries for all their help, to Verne Newton and his staff at the Roosevelt Library in Hyde Park, New York; to John Taylor and the staff at the National Archives in Washington, D. C.; to Jo Baggins and the staff of the photographic and film sections of the Imperial War Museum in London; to Ben Hopkins at the Hulton- Deutsch collection in London; to Debbie Goodsite at the Bettmann Archives, New York, and to Dr. Janusz Cisek at the Josef Pilsudski Institute in New York. The work would have been impossible without extensive traveling and I must thank numerous hosts, especially Clayton Messalt of Madison, Wisconsin, who opened his home to me on the slightest of connections. I also owe a special debt to friends on both sides of the Atlantic, especially Clive Kennedy, Paul Evans, and Kate Morris in Britain; to Victor Anderson, Helen Cho, Catherine Fasbender, Ken Ilalpern, Richard Kaye, Eric Lowery, Gregory Murphy, Stephanie Sheerin, and IIu Ying in Princeton; and to Judith Farbey, who knows both worlds. I owe much to David Williamson, who read several drafts of this work and in the process patiently taught me to write again, and to Elizabeth Moodey, a supportive friend and a wonderful proofreader. The encouragement and friendship of Gloria Emerson have been beyond price. Finally, I am indebted to my parents (also valiant proof- readers), grandparents, and sister, Hilary Cull, for their support throughout. All judgments and errors are my own. Contents Terminology, xi Abbreviations, xiii Introduction, 3 1 The Gathering Storm: Britain's American Propaganda Policy, 1937 to 1939, 5 Britain's Dilemma: Britain in American Opinion, 1919 to 1937, 6 Foundations: British Propaganda in the United States, 1919 to 1937, 10 The Awakening: British Planning, 1937 to 1938, 13 Preparing for the Worst: Britain's American Propaganda Policy, September 1938 to September 1939, 21 2 To War with Words: British Propaganda in the United States during the Phoney War, September 1939 to May 1940, 33 The United States and the Phoney War, 34 Fighting the Phoney War in London: The Mol and the BBC, 38 Fighting the Phoney War in the United States: The British Embassy and the British Library of Information, 57 The Development of American Opinion and British Policy, 61 3 Their Finest Hour: Projecting the Battle of Britain, May to September 1940, 69 American Opinion in the Summer of 1940, 72 Lord Lothian's War: New Initiatives, May to August 1940, 75 Duff Cooper's War: New Initiatives in London, May to August 1940, 83 The Battle of Britain and the Destroyer Deal, 88 4 "London Can Take It": British Propaganda and the Blitz, September to December 1940, 97 The Overture: Preparing for the Blitz, 99 "This Is London": The Go-projection of the Blitz on Britain, 103 The Impact of the Blitz: American Sympathy and Its Limits, 109

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"British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job." So concludes Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was transformed from isolationism to belligerence in the years before the attack on Pearl Harbor. From the m
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