̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - psychological warfare

World War II bombing associated with resilience, not ‘German Angst’

cjb250 — Fri, 23 Jun 2017 16:00:25 +0000

Germans have been stereotyped as being industrious and punctual, but also as being more likely to be anxious and worried, a phenomenon described as ‘German Angst’. Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt, widely regarded as one of Germany’s leading post-war intellectuals, once claimed, “ ̽��ֱ��Germans have a tendency to be afraid. This has been part of their consciousness since the end of the Nazi period and the war”.

This personality type is characterised by high levels of neurotic personality traits (more likely to be in a negative emotional state), as opposed to traits of openness, agreeableness, extraversion, or conscientiousness, which together make up the ‘Big Five’ personality traits. It has been suggested that the heavy bombing of German cities in World War II, and the resulting destruction and trauma experienced by residents, may have been a contributory factor in this proposed higher incidence of neurotic traits.

In a study published this week in European Journal of Personality, an international team of researchers from the UK, Germany, USA, and Australia, analysed the neurotic personality traits and mental health of over 33,500 individuals across 89 regional German cities that experienced wartime bombing, and investigated whether people in cities that experienced higher levels of bombing were more likely to display neurotic traits. ̽��ֱ��researchers measured neurotic traits using the Big Five Inventory personality test as part of an online questionnaire, and focused on measures of neuroticism, anxiety, and depression.

“If the idea of ‘German Angst’ is true, then we’d expect people from cities that were heavily bombed during the war to be more anxious and less resilient to new stresses such as economic hardship,” says study author Dr Jason Rentfrow from the Department of Psychology, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. “Ours is the first study to investigate this link.”

̽��ֱ��researchers found that in fact, residents of heavily bombed cities were less likely to display neurotic traits, suggesting that wartime bombing is not a factor in German Angst. ̽��ֱ��results indicate that residents of heavily bombed German cities instead recorded higher levels of mental resilience and were better able to cope in times of stress.

“We’ve seen from other studies that when people experience difficulties in life, these can provide them with a broader perspective on things and perhaps make more trivial stresses seem unimportant,” explains Dr Rentfrow. “It’s possible that this is what we are seeing here.”

̽��ֱ��researchers also looked at how Germany compared to 107 other countries for neurotic traits, to see whether there really was evidence of ‘German Angst’. They found that Germany ranks 20th, 31st, and 53rd for depression, anxiety, and neuroticism respectively. Additionally, other countries that have experienced significant trauma due to warfare, such as Japan, Afghanistan, and Vietnam, also did not score highly for neurotic traits, further suggesting that such traumatic events are not associated with increased neuroticism.

“Germany didn’t stand out as high in anything resembling angst compared with other countries, which suggests that maybe this stereotype of ‘German Angst’ isn’t entirely valid,” says Dr Rentfrow. “Clearly we need to be careful about national stereotypes.”

̽��ֱ��researchers emphasise that their findings show only an association, and that this data does not show whether more severe bombing caused greater mental resilience, or whether other factors were at play.

Although this research may have implications for other war-torn countries, including the current situation in Syria cities, the study did not investigate potential neuroticism or resilience in these countries, so no wider conclusions can be drawn from this data.

Study participants filled out online questionnaires provided by the global Gosling-Potter Internet Project, including 44 questions to assess their personality and mental state. Of the sample, just under 60% were female and the mean age was 30 years old. Almost all (96%) of the respondents were White/Caucasian while just under one in three (30%) had a bachelor’s degree or higher, and overall the sample was broadly representative of the populations of the cities assessed. Although the researchers tried to control for the movement of people between different cities, there were limitations with the data available from the online survey and so this movement may have affected the results.

̽��ֱ��data also could not tell whether increased resilience was associated with a recent event, or whether it was associated with an event from many years or even decades ago. However, there is broader literature to support the notion of traumas increasing resilience in individuals, and more research in this area would shed further light on the relationship and potential mechanisms at play.

Experiencing traumatic events may be associated with greater mental resilience among residents rather than causing widespread angst, suggests a study published this week that investigated the effect of World War II bombing on the mental health of citizens in German cities.

Maybe this stereotype of ‘German Angst’ isn’t entirely valid

Jason Rentfrow

Imperial War Museum

A house in Darmstadt destroyed by an Allied bombing raid.

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PsyWar during the Malayan Emergency

tdk25 — Tue, 26 Feb 2013 12:34:00 +0000

̽��ֱ��Malayan Emergency of 1948-1960 is widely regarded as having involved the most successful British counter-insurgency (COIN) campaign in history. Similarly, it also included one of the most successful British psychological warfare operations ever undertaken. This important aspect of the COIN campaign, however, has only been examined in a handful of studies – something which remains true more broadly of British psychological warfare efforts throughout the period of imperial decolonisation and the Cold War.

In this seminar paper (originally given on Friday, 22 February, 2013), Thomas J. Maguire provides an insight into how psychological warfare played an increasingly important part in the largest British counter-insurgency operation of the decolonisation era.

Psychological warfare was conceived as a potential “force multiplier” which would reinforce other counter-insurgency strategies and tactics employed against the communist Malayan National Liberation Army (MNLA). It targeted the insurgents’ morale and sought to induce surrenders and defections, while creating dissent, division and instability in their ranks. It was, therefore, intended to both remove insurgents from the battlefield and hasten a greater supply of intelligence.

Maguire explains how, after a relatively ineffective start, the Federation Government psychological warfare strategy became more systematic and refined from about 1950 onwards, eventually playing an important part in the insurgents’ defeat. ̽��ֱ��talk shows how ‘psychological intelligence’ was collected, analysed and disseminated – in particular through the careful interrogation of surrendering enemy personnel. Using this intelligence, the Government information services constructed a number of influential propaganda themes and utilised a variety of techniques to disseminate finished productions, most notably by dropping over 400 million leaflets over the jungle during the course of the conflict.

̽��ֱ��paper also highlights the broader political and cultural context in which psychological operations took place, showing how they influenced British strategy and contributed to the Emergency’s outcome.

̽��ֱ��seminar is part of the regular Cambridge Intelligence Seminar organised through the Faculty of History and the Department of Politics and International Studies (POLIS) at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. It is chaired by Prof. Christopher Andrew (Corpus Christi), an expert in the international relations sub-field of intelligence and security studies. Prof. Andrew’s extensive list of publications include the recent and much-vaunted ̽��ֱ��Defence of the Realm: the Authorized History of MI5 (2009).

Thomas J. Maguire (Gonville & Caius) is a PhD candidate in POLIS. This paper forms part of a chapter on interrogation and psychological warfare in the forthcoming publication, Simona Tobia & Christopher Andrew (eds), Interrogation in War and Conflict. ̽��ֱ��principal focus of his research is British and American psychological warfare and counter-subversion in early Cold War Southeast Asia. His broader research interests lie within the fields of intelligence and security studies, psychological warfare, and the Cold War.

As part of the Intelligence seminars run by the Faculty of History, Thomas J. Maguire examines how psychological warfare contributed to Britain's counter-insurgency campaign in Malaya from 1948 to 1960.

Intelligence on kills would be supplied for follow-up operations publicising insurgent losses

Thomas Maguire

Credit: UK Department of Information.

Leaflet dropped on Malayan insurgents, urging them to come forward with a Bren gun and receive a $1,000 reward.

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Inside Hitler’s mind

bjb42 — Fri, 04 May 2012 00:01:46 +0000

A secret analysis of Adolf Hitler’s mental state which was drawn up by British Intelligence in April 1942 has been uncovered by a researcher, having apparently lain unread since the war.

̽��ֱ��document was found among a collection of papers belonging to the family of Mark Abrams, a social scientist who worked with the BBC’s Overseas Propaganda Analysis Unit and the Psychological Warfare Branch, during World War II. Written just as the war was starting to turn against Hitler, it shows that British analysts had noticed signs of developing paranoia in his speechmaking and – chillingly – a growing preoccupation with what he called “the Jewish poison”.

̽��ֱ��paper came to light after Dr Scott Anthony, who is working on the history of public relations at the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge, began tracking down Abrams’ peers and relatives. Abrams, who died in 1994, was a pioneer of market research and opinion polling. He was the man responsible for the ABC1 classification system, famously predicted the rise of the teenager in 1959 and was a key figure in Harold Wilson’s modernisation of the Labour Party.

Marked “Secret”, the analysis was commissioned by Abrams at a time when his analytical talents were needed for the war effort. ̽��ֱ��document itself was written by J. T. MacCurdy, a Cambridge academic working alongside him. Anthony has spoken to experts on both Nazi Germany and the history of psychology, but nobody appears to have known about this report until now.

“At the time that it was written, the tide was starting to turn against Germany,” Anthony said. “In response Hitler began to turn his attentions to the German home front.”

“This document shows that British Intelligence sensed this happening. MacCurdy recognised that, faced with external failure, the Nazi leader was focusing on a perceived ‘enemy within’ instead – namely the Jews. Given that we now know that the Final Solution was commencing, this makes for poignant reading.”

Overseas Propaganda Analysis began in 1939 and was later linked to the Psychological Warfare Division. Each week, its staff produced an analysis of all overseas broadcasts in Germany and occupied Europe.

Abrams, already a world-renowned expert in the analysis of public opinion, believed that transcripts of the broadcasts could be close-read for propaganda and intelligence purposes. In an interview with his grandson, recorded in the 1980s and also included in the materials Anthony has helped the university acquire, he explained that doing so could reveal “latent content” – hidden, and almost subconscious insights into the enemy’s state of mind. By 1942, this highly successful technique was feeding directly into the work of Allied counter-propagandists.

This analysis was one such exercise, covering a radio speech Hitler had given on April 26, 1942. According to its opening lines, the aim was “to reconstruct, if possible, what was in Hitler’s mind when he composed and delivered the speech. Its content would presumably reflect his morbid mental tendencies on the one hand and special knowledge available to him on the other.”

MacCurdy refers to an earlier report in which he had spotted three such “morbid tendencies”, classifying these as “Shamanism”, “Epilepsy” and “Paranoia”. ̽��ֱ��first, a term of MacCurdy seems to have borrowed from anthropology, referred to Hitler’s hysteria and compulsion to feed off the energy of Nuremberg Rally-style audiences. By now it was in decline, and his report refers to the “dull flatness of the delivery”.

̽��ֱ��other two tendencies were, however, developing. “Epilepsy” referred to Hitler’s cold and ruthless streak, but also a tendency to lose heart when his ambitions failed. MacCurdy thought the outcome of Operation Barbarossa, which had stalled the previous winter, had exposed this fatalism, and he wrote that Hitler’s speech betrayed “a man who is seriously contemplating the possibility of utter defeat.”

Most alarming, however, was Hitler’s growing paranoia. By this, MacCurdy meant the Nazi leader’s “Messiah complex”, in which he believed he was leading a chosen people on a crusade against an Evil incarnate in the Jews. He felt that this was starting to become a dominant tendency in Hitler’s mind. ̽��ֱ��paper notes an extension of the “Jew phobia” and says that Hitler now saw them not just as a threat to Germany, but as a “universal diabolical agency”.

̽��ֱ��timing of such an analysis could not have been more prescient. Weeks before the speech, senior Nazis had set plans in motion for the Final Solution – an intensification of the mass extermination of Jews.

Neither MacCurdy nor Abrams could have known the appalling repercussions Hitler’s mental state was to have, but they clearly saw it in development. “Hitler is caught up in a web of religious delusions,” MacCurdy concluded. “ ̽��ֱ��Jews are the incarnation of Evil, while he is the incarnation of the Spirit of Good. He is a god by whose sacrifice victory over Evil may be achieved. He does not say this in so many words, but such a system of ideas would rationalise what he does say that is otherwise obscure."

An archive of documents about Abrams’ life and work is held by the Churchill Archives, ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge. Mark Abrams’ family are adding the original copy of the psychoanalysis to this collection, which means that it will be available to researchers for the first time. Anthony has speculated that Abrams, who was of Jewish parentage, might have held on to his copy because of his background.

Anthony’s research will attempt to unravel the contribution Abrams made to the construction of social knowledge. “ ̽��ֱ��story of his life and work reveals something of the changing ways in which public opinion has been weighed and measured, about the methods by which British democracy has tried to aggregate and respond to the demands of the electorate and by doing so has shaped some of the demands they were attempting to reflect,” he said. “This wartime work was obviously for a very specific purpose, but the growth of advertising agencies and market research after the war meant that many of the lessons learnt in the war would be applied, and built on, in the post-war period.”

A secret report, previously unknown to historians, shows how British Intelligence was tracking Hitler’s growing preoccupation with “the enemy within” on the eve of the Final Solution.

British Intelligence sensed this happening. Faced with external failure, the Nazi leader was focusing on a perceived ‘enemy within’ instead – namely the Jews.

Scott Anthony

Dominic Abrams / Churchill Archives, Cambridge.

An extract from the original psychoanalysis.

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