British propaganda during World War II
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British propaganda during World War II took various forms:
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[edit] Posters
[edit] Keep Mum
Originating in a 1940 campaign with the catchphrase ‘Be Like Dad, Keep Mum', the best-known image from this campaign is the 1942 poster 'Keep Mum, She's Not So Dumb' by the artist Gerald Lacoste.[1] It depicts a glamorous blonde woman reclining, and officers from each branch of the Armed Forces about her talking to each other. It is implied that the officers are talking military secrets, on the (wrongful) assumption that the woman is only a "dumb blonde" and so will not pass these secrets onto the enemy.
The campaign was issued in 1942 to all ranks, with this particular image intended for messes and other places where officers met. . At the end of May, Advertiser's Weekly noted that ‘sex appeal' had been introduced in the form of a beautiful spy, who they insisted on ‘christening Olga Polovsky after the famous song'. In June 1941 they further noted that, having covered public house talk, wayside conversations with strangers, and ‘harmless chat' with friends when on leave, the government believed they had identified ‘the major problem' at last. The campaign was to make a direct appeal along the lines of ‘Cherchez la femme', as a reminder that ‘when in the company of a beautiful woman, remember that beauty may conceal brains'. Service personnel seemed particularly ready to disclose their station and line of work.
[edit] Careless Talk Costs Lives
The best known images from this series are by Fougasse, depicting people giving away secrets in everyday situations (eg sitting on the bus, not seeing caricatures of Hitler, Goebbels and Goering sitting behind them).
[edit] Walls Have Ears
Ostensibly drama-based films such as Millions Like Us carried an overt propaganda message.
[edit] British propaganda during World War II later culture
The music magazine Careless Talk Costs Lives takes its title from one of these campaigns. In the film adaptation of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the guide gives an entry on how careless talk costs lives about midway through the credits. The entry is read as this:
| “ | It is of course well known that careless talk costs lives, but the full scale of the problem is not always appreciated. For instance, at the very moment that Arthur Dent said "I wouldn't want to go anywhere without my wonderful towel", a freak wormhole opened up in the fabric of the space-time continuum and carried his words far far back in time across almost infinite reaches of space to a distant galaxy where strange and warlike beings were poised on the brink of frightful interstellar battle. The two opposing leaders, resplendent in their black-jewelled battle shorts, were meeting for the last time when a dreadful silence fell, and at that very moment the words "I wouldn't want to go anywhere without my wonderful towel" drifted across the conference table. Unfortunately, in their native tongue this was the most appalling insult imaginable, so the two opposing battle fleets decided to settle their few remaining differences in order to launch a joint attack on our galaxy - now positively identified as the source of the offending remark. For thousands of years the mighty starships tore across the empty wastes of space and finally dived screaming on to the planet Earth - where due to a terrible miscalculation of scale the entire battle fleet was accidentally swallowed by a small dog. Those who study the complex interplay of cause and effect in the history of the Universe say that this sort of thing is going on all the time. | ” |
