A valuable study of how British propaganda helped to bring the US
into WW II, which shows too why such a study has been so slow to
appear. Nobody comes out of such an examination unscathed.
Americans can't feel good about an isolationism so profound that it
nearly permitted Nazi Germany to conquer Europe - or about the fact
that three months before Pearl Harbor the "Mothers of America" were
pelting the British ambassador with rotten eggs. Jews cannot be
happy about the lobbying they had to do, as late as 1940, to compel
the American Jewish Congress to endorse the Allied cause. Admirers
of FDR must cringe at the irony in Cull's report of the president's
being "infuriated" in 1939 by British indecision in response to
German aggression. The British bungled, too. The Empire's
bureaucracy put every obstacle in the way of American reporting of
the Blitz, which was largely responsible for turning the tide of
American opinion. Yet, as Cull (History/Univ. of Birmingham,
England) notes, "the cumulative achievement of the British effort
was tremendous," and he shows how the British changed their
propaganda themes during the course of the war: from "Britain Can
Take It" during the Blitz to "Give Us The Tools And We Will Do The
Job" in 1941. One is still left with the thought that the change in
American sentiment was clue less to skillful British propaganda
than to the fact that the British authorities finally allowed the
American public to know what was going on. As Eric Sevareid put it,
the secret to good press relations in London was simple: "We wanted
Hitler to lose." Cull sometimes goes beyond the evidence - as in
saying that without the American lend-lease program, 1941 would
have brought a British defeat. But this is a sensible, thoughtful,
and - in revealing the foibles of many key actors - an often
amusing book. (Kirkus Reviews)
"British propaganda brought America to the brink of war, and left
it to the Japanese and Hitler to finish the job". So concludes
Nicholas Cull in this absorbing study of how the United States was
transformed from isolation to belligerence in the years before the
attack on Pearl Harbor. From the moment it realized that all was
lost without American aid, the British Government employed a host
of persuasive tactics to draw the U.S. to its rescue. With the help
of talents as varied as those of matinee idol Leslie Howard, Oxford
philosopher Isaiah Berlin and society photographer Cecil Beaton, no
section of America remained untouched and no methodfrom Secret
Service intrigue to the publication of horrifying pictures of Nazi
atrocities - remained untried. The British sought and won the
support of key journalists and broadcasters, including Edward R.
Murrow, Dorothy Thompson, and Walter Winchell: Hollywood film
makers also played a willing part. Cull details these and other
propaganda activities, covering the entire range of the British
effort. A fascinating story of how a foreign country promoted
America's involvement in its greatest war, Selling War will appeal
to all those interested in the modern cultural and political
history of Britain and the United States.
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