Tokyo Rose and Lord Haw-Haw: The History of the Axis Powers’ Most Notorious Propagandists during World War II

The subtle art of propaganda campaigns directed against one’s enemies has been a feature of war since ancient times. However, its potential for mass psychological impact created a new paradigm with the invention of modern electronic communications. Every nation involved in the Second World War, whether of the Allies or Axis, possessed an agency devoted to the mission of demoralizing and misleading the enemy, and virtually all artistic genres participated. In America, Frank Capra, director of beloved films such as It’s a Wonderful Life and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, also directed wartime films demonizing the Germanic personality. In a notable example, a training film warns young GIs that German women do not share a natural capacity for human ethics common to higher civilizations and therefore must be avoided. Theodore Geisel, beloved to Western children as Dr. Seuss, wrote stories stereotyping, demeaning, and demonizing the Japanese, complete with insulting and offensive illustrations. Radio Free Europe filled the airwaves with pro-western speech as a counter to communist expansion and diatribes about the ‘otherness’ of enemy societies.

As in virtually all wars, racism also made up a central component of the propaganda efforts going both ways between Japan and the United States in the 1940s. Racial superiority and a state of arrested evolution were ever-present themes. Leaflets were dropped on many European cities urging surrender and accentuating the hopelessness of resisting. With the honing of effective radio propaganda and the use of alien rhetorical talent, specific broadcasts from Europe and Asia targeted the rank and file of Allied soldiers fighting in every venue of the Second World War. These figures were often drawn from a pool of prisoners of war or expats disenchanted with their home countries. The mission required English speakers with a linguistic finesse and an understanding of the enemy’s source of morale and pride. In Germany, the most threatening and caustic radio personality was Mildred Gillars, known to the troops as the foreboding “Axis Sally.” William Joyce, known to the British homeland as Lord Haw-Haw, specialized in the same acidic diatribes against men and women of the western military, broadcasting from Berlin and easily heard in London. Reports over the airwaves suggested that specific family members had died back home or that male siblings had been killed in action. Wives and girlfriends were reported to be unfaithful in a soldier’s absence by agencies who claimed to be aware of such matters. Enemy assaults upon the Allies’ willingness to fight were frequently followed with fictitious reports of American, British, or other collaborators’ defeats. Dire threats were levied against those serving in specific locations, with precise military information invoked for enhanced credibility.

Despite the many national talents in artistic expression, one of the mainstays of Japan’s participation in the “thought wars” was radio. Such sophisticated programming usually left little doubt in the minds of listeners as to the allegiance of the broadcaster. However, in America’s war against Japan in the Pacific, the matter became far more complicated. At face value, the case of Iva Ikuko Toguri, later dubbed “Tokyo Rose,” seemed straightforward. Considering her relationship with the American government and subsequent imprisonment following the war, no necessity to see her motives as anything but anti-American seems apparent. However, after broadcasting regularly to all branches of American servicemen in the Pacific theater in World War II, the woman associated with the infamous nickname never used the moniker, nor had she ever heard of it.