Propaganda & Deception
The psychological war fought with lies, illusions and misinformation
4 facts in this category
What was "Operation Bernhard" and how close did it come to destroying the British economy?
A Nazi operation to counterfeit British currency on a massive scale — producing 8.9 million high-quality forged pound notes using Jewish prisoner labor at Sachsenhausen concentration camp
The quality was so high that the Bank of England took large denomination notes out of circulation entirely. Notes were scattered over Britain, dumped in Alpine lakes, and some circulated for years after the war. The forged notes were crafted by skilled Jewish printers who had been promised their lives in exchange.
What was Soldatensender Calais and how did it work?
A British black propaganda radio station that pretended to be a German military station, playing popular German music while weaving in demoralizing stories, fake casualty reports, and rumors about officers affairs
Run by Sefton Delmer of the Political Warfare Executive, it was so convincing that German troops believed it was a real German military station. Delmer used intelligence sources to include genuine-sounding details, giving false information an air of credibility.
Who was "Axis Sally" and what was her real impact on Allied troops?
The nickname for Mildred Gillars, an American woman broadcasting Nazi propaganda to Allied troops — surveys showed soldiers mostly found her entertaining and laughable rather than demoralizing
Gillars was paid 3,000 Reichsmarks monthly to make soldiers homesick. GIs mainly enjoyed listening as a joke, calling her Axis Sally as a term of mild affection. She was convicted of treason after the war and served 12 years in prison.
What propaganda technique did Goebbels pioneer that modern scholars call the Big Lie?
Stating a falsehood so enormous and repeating it so confidently that people assume it must be true because no one would dare invent something so monstrous
Ironically, both Hitler in Mein Kampf and Goebbels attributed the Big Lie concept to their enemies as a smear — then deployed the technique systematically. The repetition psychology they exploited has been extensively studied by modern media scholars.