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

301 Pages·1995·21.92 MB·English

by  Nicholas John Cull

Selling War
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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
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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
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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