book reviews and summaries, comments, analysis
This book is pleasant and easy to read, long on stories but quite weak on analysis. The reader finds himself always wanting more meat, more fiber, on PSYWAR operations, but Pease' book doesn't provide it. It was a challenge in Korea to taylor psywar messages to an uneducated, illiterate and underfed enemy. The text focuses on Psywar efforts prior to, during, and shortly after allied attacks.
Throighout most of the war the allies underestimated the propoganda value of enemy deceptions, especially in the international arena. Nor did the allies take the initiative in exploiting enemy shortcomings to greatest PSYWAR advantage. For example, it was quite clear by early 1951 that smallpox, lice, typhus, and other infectious diseases were rampant among the Chinese and NKPA's freezing, malnourished forces. The choice should have been clear: publicize and exploit this information by accusing the communists of neglect of their own troops or, even further, of biological experiments run amok. They did not. The Communists promptly siezed the gauntlet and threw it back in our face; accusations of 'germ warfare' by UN forces rang out at panmunjom and in conferences for years afterwards.
The PSYWAR operations achieved varying degrees of success, often it was difficult to measure. On the UN side, operation MOOLAH-- offering $50,000 to the first Russian pilot to defect with a MiG15-- cleary scared Soviet pilots out of the skies, even if no MiG15 was flown to South Korea until after the war was over. On the communist side, use of POW infilitrators at Koje-do and elsewhere to riot and protest caught UN officials sleeping. UN forces consistently, and naively, underestimated the willingness and cunning by which communists manipulate facts and lies in their favor. Fifty years later, we continue to do so.