The Paris Gun ( German : Paris-Geschütz / Pariser Kanone ) was a type of German long-range siege gun , several of which were used to bombard Paris during World War I . They were in service from March to August 1918. When the guns were first employed, Parisians believed they had been bombed by a high-altitude Zeppelin , as the sound of neither an airplane nor a gun could be heard. They were the largest pieces of artillery used during the war by barrel length, and qualify under the (later) formal definition of large-calibre artillery . Also called the " Kaiser Wilhelm Geschütz " (" Kaiser Wilhelm Gun"), they were often confused with Big Bertha , the German howitzer used against Belgian forts in the Battle of Liège in 1914; indeed, the French called them by this name as well. They were also confused with the smaller " Langer Max " (Long Max) cannon, from which they were derived. Although the famous Krupp -family artillery makers produced all these guns, the resemblance ended there.
80-574: As military weapons, the Paris Guns were not a great success: the payload was small, the barrel required frequent replacement, and the guns' accuracy was good enough for only city-sized targets. The German objective was to build a psychological weapon to attack the morale of the Parisians, not to destroy the city itself. Due to the weapon's apparent total destruction by the Germans in the face of
160-410: A Propaganda Agency at Wellington House. A distinguished body of literary talent was enlisted for the task, with its members including Arthur Conan Doyle , Ford Madox Ford , G. K. Chesterton , Thomas Hardy , Rudyard Kipling and H. G. Wells . Over 1,160 pamphlets were published during the war and distributed to neutral countries, and eventually, to Germany. One of the first significant publications,
240-434: A few inches off would cause a great variance in the velocity, and with it, the range. Then, with the variance determined, the additional quantity of propellant was calculated, and its measure taken from a special car and added to the regular charge. After 65 rounds had been fired, each of progressively larger caliber to allow for wear, the barrel was sent back to Krupp and rebored with a new set of shells. The shell's explosive
320-573: A general strategy to mislead German high command as to the date and location of the invasion, which was obviously going to happen. Planning began in 1943 under the auspices of the London Controlling Section (LCS). A draft strategy, referred to as Plan Jael, was presented to Allied high command at the Tehran Conference . Operation Fortitude was intended to convince the Germans of a greater Allied military strength than
400-538: A heavy cost, in that the target population sooner or later recognizes them as propaganda and discredits the source. He writes, "This is one of the few dogmas advanced by Sykewarriors that is likely to endure as an axiom of propaganda: Credibility is a condition of persuasion. Before you can make a man do as you say, you must make him believe what you say." Consistent with this idea, the Allied strategy in World War II
480-400: A high velocity that each successive shot wore away a considerable amount of steel from the rifled bore. Each shell was sequentially numbered according to its increasing diameter, and had to be fired in numeric order, lest the projectile lodge in the bore and the gun explode. Also, when the shell was rammed into the gun, the chamber was precisely measured to determine the difference in its length:
560-525: A letter of challenge on the main mosque and set fire to the alcaicería before withdrawing. In 1574, having been informed about the pirate attacks previous to the Battle of Manila , Spanish captain Juan de Salcedo had his relief force return to the city by night while playing marching music and carrying torches in loose formations, so they would appear to be a much larger army to any nearby enemy. They reached
640-456: A longer range, and with a substantially higher rate of fire. The unfinished Iraqi super gun would also have been substantially bigger. The Paris Gun shells weighed 106 kg (234 lb). The shells initially used had a diameter of 216 mm (8.5 in) and a length of 960 mm (38 in). The main body of the shell was composed of thick steel, containing 7 kg (15 lb) of TNT . The small amount of explosive—around 6.6% of
720-482: A man-made object, so high that gunners, in calculating where the shells would land, had to take into account the rotation of the Earth. For the first time in warfare, deadly projectiles rained down on civilians from the stratosphere". This reduced drag from air resistance, allowing the shell to achieve a range of over 130 kilometres (81 mi). The unfinished V-3 cannon would have been able to fire larger projectiles to
800-469: A new long-range gun, although there was initial press speculation on the origin of the shells. This included the theory they were being fired by German agents close by Paris, or even within the city itself, so abandoned quarries close to the city were searched for a hidden gun. Another possibility was that German forces had penetrated the front line, but authorities realized that such heavy artillery could not be moved and emplaced so quickly. The press reported
880-698: A replacement for the Paris Gun—which was specifically banned under the Versailles Treaty . This work eventually led to the V-2 rocket that was used in World War II . Despite the ban, Krupp continued theoretical work on long-range guns. They started experimental work after the Nazi government began funding the project upon coming to power in 1933. This research led to the 21 cm K 12 (E) , a refinement of
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#1732780237269960-422: A streamlined, lightweight, ballistic cap and the side had grooves that engaged with the rifling of the gun barrel, spinning the shell as it was fired so its flight was stable. Two copper driving bands provided a gas-tight seal against the gun barrel during firing. The Paris gun was used to shell Paris at a range of 120 km (75 mi). The gun was fired from a wooded hill (Le mont de Joie) near Crépy , and
1040-501: A target audience's value system, belief system, emotions , motives , reasoning , or behavior . It is used to induce confessions or reinforce attitudes and behaviors favorable to the originator's objectives, and are sometimes combined with black operations or false flag tactics. It is also used to destroy the morale of enemies through tactics that aim to depress troops' psychological states. Target audiences can be governments , organizations , groups , and individuals , and
1120-518: A tight hold on propaganda efforts for its people. The Chinese government also utilizes cognitive warfare against Taiwan . The Centre interarmées des actions sur l'environnement is an organization made up of 300 soldiers whose mission is to assure to the four service arm of the French Armed Forces psychological warfare capacities. Deployed in particular to Mali and Afghanistan, its missions "consist in better explaining and accepting
1200-536: A turntable. The original breech of the old 38 cm (15 in) gun did not require modification or reinforcement. Since it was based on a naval weapon, the gun was manned by a crew of 80 Imperial Navy sailors under the command of Vice-Admiral Maximilian Rogge, chief of the Ordnance branch of the Admiralty. It was surrounded by several batteries of standard army artillery to create a "noise-screen" chorus around
1280-404: Is capable of protecting against psychological aggression since it cannot be legally adjudicated. "Here the propagandists is [sic] dealing with a foreign adversary whose morale he seeks to destroy by psychological means so that the opponent begins to doubt the validity of his beliefs and actions." According to Boaz Ganor , terrorism weakens the sense of security and disturbs daily life, damaging
1360-436: Is not just limited to soldiers. Civilians of foreign territories can also be targeted by technology and media so as to cause an effect on the government of their country. Mass communication such as radio allows for direct communication with an enemy populace, and therefore has been used in many efforts. Social media channels and the internet allow for campaigns of disinformation and misinformation performed by agents anywhere in
1440-786: Is responsible for PSYOP efforts. The center is subordinate to the Cyber and Information Domain Service branch alongside multiple IT and Electronic Warfare battalions and consists of around 1000 soldiers. One project of the German PSYOP forces is the radio station Stimme der Freiheit (Sada-e Azadi, Voice of Freedom), heard by thousands of Afghans . Another is the publication of various newspapers and magazines in Kosovo and Afghanistan , where German soldiers serve with NATO . Tuileries Garden Too Many Requests If you report this error to
1520-578: Is rooted in the Chinese Stratagems outlined by Sun Tzu in The Art of War and Thirty-Six Stratagems . In its dealings with its rivals, China is expected to utilize Marxism to mobilize communist loyalists, as well as flex its economic and military muscle to persuade other nations to act in the Chinese government's interests. The Chinese government also tries to control the media to keep
1600-603: The Report on Alleged German Outrages of 1915, had a great effect on general opinion across the world. The pamphlet documented atrocities , both actual and alleged, committed by the German army against Belgian civilians. A Dutch illustrator, Louis Raemaekers , provided the highly emotional drawings which appeared in the pamphlet. In 1917, the bureau was subsumed into the new Department of Information and branched out into telegraph communications, radio , newspapers, magazines and
1680-644: The Croats and Slovenes . It had a significant effect on the final collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Army at the Battle of Vittorio Veneto . Aerial leaflets were dropped over German trenches containing postcards from prisoners of war detailing their humane conditions, surrender notices and general propaganda against the Kaiser and the German generals . By the end of the war, MI7b had distributed almost 26 million leaflets. The Germans began shooting
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#17327802372691760-506: The Lydian king Alyattes by fattening up a pair of mules and driving them out of the besieged city. When Alyattes' envoy was then sent to Priene, Bias had piles of sand covered with wheat to give the impression of plentiful resources. This ruse appears to have been well known in medieval Europe: defenders in castles or towns under siege would throw food from the walls to show besiegers that provisions were plentiful. A famous example occurs in
1840-523: The Mongolian Empire in the 13th century AD employed less subtle techniques. Defeating the will of the enemy before having to attack and reaching a consented settlement was preferable to facing his wrath. The Mongol generals demanded submission to the Khan and threatened the initially captured villages with complete destruction if they refused to surrender. If they had to fight to take the settlement,
1920-606: The Munich Agreement . After the outbreak of World War II in 1939, the British set up the Political Warfare Executive to produce and distribute propaganda. Through the use of powerful transmitters , broadcasts could be made across Europe. Sefton Delmer managed a successful black propaganda campaign through several radio stations which were designed to be popular with German troops while at
2000-639: The North Africa campaign . Mock hardware was created for Bodyguard ; in particular, dummy landing craft were stockpiled to give the impression that the invasion would take place near Calais . The Operation was a strategic success and the Normandy landings caught German defences unaware. Continuing deception, portraying the landings as a diversion from a forthcoming main invasion in the Calais region, led Hitler into delaying transferring forces from Calais to
2080-782: The Sandinista government in Nicaragua . The CIA used psychological warfare techniques against the Panamanians by delivering unlicensed TV broadcasts. The United States government has used propaganda broadcasts against the Cuban government through TV Marti , based in Miami, Florida . However, the Cuban government has been successful at jamming the signal of TV Marti. In the Iraq War ,
2160-597: The US , Russia , and China . In 2022, Meta and the Stanford Internet Observatory found that over five years people associated with the U.S. military, who tried to conceal their identities, created fake accounts on social media systems including Balatarin , Facebook , Instagram , Odnoklassniki , Telegram , Twitter , VKontakte and YouTube in an influence operation in Central Asia and
2240-654: The 8th-century legend of Lady Carcas , who supposedly persuaded the Franks to abandon a five-year siege by this means and gave her name to Carcassonne as a result. During the Granada War , Spanish captain Hernán Pérez del Pulgar routinely employed psychological tactics as part of his guerrilla actions against the Emirate of Granada . In 1490, infiltrating the city by night with a small retinue of soldiers, he nailed
2320-590: The German bombardment. Between 320 and 367 shells were fired, at a maximum rate of around 20 per day. The shells killed 250 people and wounded 620, and caused considerable damage to property. The worst incident was on 29 March 1918, when a shell hit the roof of the St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church , collapsing the roof onto the congregation then hearing the Good Friday service. A total of 91 people were killed and 68 were wounded. There
2400-409: The German gun's range as about 62 miles (100 km), which amazed American ordnance officers, and the shells as 240 millimetres (9.4 in), compared to the 17 inches (430 mm) caliber of heavy German siege shells. The previous world distance record was German bombardment of Dunkirk from 22 miles (35 km), while the best American gun had a range of 19 miles (31 km). Experts thought that
2480-756: The German newspapers, was distributed via airborne leaflets by the French. The Central Powers were slow to use these techniques; however, at the start of the war the Germans succeeded in inducing the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire to declare 'holy war', or Jihad , against the Western infidels . They also attempted to foment rebellion against the British Empire in places as far afield as Ireland , Afghanistan , and India . The Germans' greatest success
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2560-473: The German weapon might be a product of the Škoda Works . Three emplacements for the gun were located within days by the French reconnaissance pilot Didier Daurat , the path of the shells which landed in Paris having revealed the direction from which they were being fired. The closest emplacement was engaged by a 34 cm railway gun while the other two sites were bombed by aircraft, although this failed to interrupt
2640-679: The Germans. One spare mounting was captured by American troops in Bruyères-sur-Fère, near Château-Thierry , but the gun was never found; the construction plans seem to have been destroyed as well. Under the terms of the Treaty of Versailles , the Germans were required to turn over a complete Paris Gun to the Allies, but they never complied with this. In the 1930s, the German Army became interested in rockets for long-range artillery as
2720-608: The London Controlling Section, chartered in 1942 under the control of John Bevan. Clarke pioneered many of the strategies of military deception. His ideas for combining fictional orders of battle, visual deception and double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war, for which he has been referred to as "the greatest British deceiver of WW2". During the lead-up to the Allied invasion of Normandy , many new tactics in psychological warfare were devised. The plan for Operation Bodyguard set out
2800-683: The Middle East. Their posts, primarily in Arabic, Farsi and Russian, criticized Iran, China and Russia and gave pro-Western narratives. Data suggested the activity was a series of covert campaigns rather than a single operation. In operations in the South and East China Seas, both the United States and China have been engaged in " cognitive warfare ", which involves displays of force, staged photographs and sharing disinformation. The start of
2880-457: The Mongol generals fulfilled their threats and massacred the survivors. Tales of the encroaching horde spread to the next villages and created an aura of insecurity that undermined the possibility of future resistance. Genghis Khan also employed tactics that made his numbers seem greater than they actually were. During night operations he ordered each soldier to light three torches at dusk to give
2960-711: The Paris Gun design concept. Although it was broadly similar in size and range to its predecessor, Krupp's engineers had significantly reduced the problem of barrel wear. They also improved mobility over the fixed Paris Gun by making the K 12 a railway gun . The first K 12 was delivered to the German Army in 1939 and a second in 1940. During World War II, they were deployed in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region of France; they were used to shell Kent in Southern England between late 1940 and early 1941. One gun
3040-644: The Paris Gun reached a speed of 1,640 m/s (5,904 km/h; 5,381 ft/s; 3,669 mph). The distance was so far that the Coriolis effect —the rotation of the Earth—was substantial enough to affect trajectory calculations. The gun was fired at an azimuth of 232 degrees (southwest) from Crépy-en-Laon , which was at a latitude of 49.5 degrees north. Seven barrels were constructed. They used worn-out 38 cm SK L/45 "Max" 17,130 mm (674 in) long gun barrels that were fitted with an internal tube that reduced
3120-457: The Paris Gun, was found by advancing US troops at the beginning of August, on the north side of the wooded hill at Coucy-le-Château-Auffrique , some 86 kilometres (53 mi) from Paris. The gun was taken back to Germany in August 1918 as Allied advances threatened its security. No guns were ever captured by the Allies. It is believed that near the end of the war they were completely destroyed by
3200-582: The US involvement in the Vietnam War was unjust and immoral. A typical broadcast began as follows: How are you, GI Joe? It seems to me that most of you are poorly informed about the going of the war, to say nothing about a correct explanation of your presence over here. Nothing is more confused than to be ordered into a war to die or to be maimed for life without the faintest idea of what's going on. The CIA made extensive use of Contra soldiers to destabilize
3280-510: The United States also used tapes of distorted human sounds and played them during the night making the Vietnamese soldiers think that the dead were back for revenge. The Vietcong and their forces also used a program of psychological warfare during this war. Trịnh Thị Ngọ, also known as Thu Hương and Hanoi Hannah , was a Vietnamese radio personality. She made English-language broadcasts for North Vietnam directed at United States troops. During
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3360-795: The United States used the shock and awe campaign to psychologically maim and break the will of the Iraqi Army to fight. In cyberspace, social media has enabled the use of disinformation on a wide scale. Analysts have found evidence of doctored or misleading photographs spread by social media in the Syrian Civil War and 2014 Russian military intervention in Ukraine , possibly with state involvement. Military and governments have engaged in psychological operations (PSYOP) and informational warfare (IW) on social networking platforms to regulate foreign propaganda, which includes countries like
3440-529: The Vietnam War, Ngọ became famous among US soldiers for her propaganda broadcasts on Radio Hanoi. Her scripts were written by the North Vietnamese Army and were intended to frighten and shame the soldiers into leaving their posts. She made three broadcasts a day, reading a list of newly killed or imprisoned Americans, and playing popular US anti-war songs in an effort to incite feelings of nostalgia and homesickness, attempting to persuade US GIs that
3520-555: The action of French forces in operation with local actors and thus gaining their trust: direct aid to the populations, management of reconstruction sites, actions of communication of influence with the population, elites and local elected officials". The center has capacities for analysis, influence, expertise and instruction. In the German Bundeswehr , the Zentrum Operative Kommunikation
3600-466: The basic aspects of modern psychological operations ( PsyOp ), has been known by many other names or terms, including Military Information Support Operations ( MISO ), Psy Ops, political warfare , "Hearts and Minds", and propaganda . The term is used "to denote any action which is practiced mainly by psychological methods with the aim of evoking a planned psychological reaction in other people". Various techniques are used, and are aimed at influencing
3680-420: The battle for world opinion ; they had one of the world's most reputable news systems, with much experience in international and cross-cultural communication, and they controlled much of the undersea communications cable system then in operation. These capabilities were easily transitioned to the task of warfare. The British also had a diplomatic service that maintained good relations with many nations around
3760-428: The big gun so that it could not be located by French and British spotters. The projectile flew significantly higher than projectiles from previous guns. Writer and journalist Adam Hochschild put it this way: "It took about three minutes for each giant shell to cover the distance to the city, climbing to an altitude of 40 km (25 mi) at the top of its trajectory. This was by far the highest point ever reached by
3840-436: The caliber from 380 mm (15 in) to 210 mm (8 in). The tube was 31 metres (102 ft) long and projected 13.9 m (46 ft) out of the end of the gun, so an extension was bolted to the old gun-muzzle to cover and reinforce the lining tube. A further, 6 m (20 ft) long smooth-bore extension was attached to the end of this, giving a total barrel length of 37 m (121 ft). This smooth section
3920-439: The capital were suspended due to demand. The initial assumption was these were bombs dropped from an airplane or Zeppelin flying too high to be seen or heard, or perhaps an " aerial torpedo ". Within a few hours, sufficient casing fragments had been collected to show that the explosions were the result of shells, not bombs. By the end of the day, military authorities were aware the shells were being fired from behind German lines by
4000-623: The cinema. In 1918, Viscount Northcliffe was appointed Director of Propaganda in Enemy Countries. The department was split between propaganda against Germany organized by H.G Wells, and propaganda against the Austro-Hungarian Empire supervised by Wickham Steed and Robert William Seton-Watson ; the attempts of the latter focused on the lack of ethnic cohesion in the Empire and stoked the grievances of minorities such as
4080-702: The city unopposed. During the Attack on Marstrand in 1719, Peter Tordenskjold carried out military deception against the Swedes. Although probably apocryphal, he apparently succeeded in making his small force appear larger and feed disinformation to his opponents, similar to the Operations Fortitude and Titanic in World War II. The start of modern psychological operations in war is generally dated to World War I . By that point, Western societies were increasingly educated and urbanized, and mass media
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#17327802372694160-471: The details of the gun's design and capabilities were considerably clarified. The gun was capable of firing a 106-kilogram (234 lb) shell to a range of 130 kilometres (81 mi) and a maximum altitude of 42.3 km (26.3 mi)—the greatest height reached by a human-made projectile until the first successful V-2 flight test in October 1942. At the start of its 182-second flight, each shell from
4240-495: The early Qin dynasty and late Eastern Zhou dynasty in 1st century AD China, the Empty Fort Strategy was used to trick the enemy into believing that an empty location was an ambush, in order to prevent them from attacking it using reverse psychology . This tactic also relied on luck, should the enemy believe that the location is a threat to them. In the 6th century BCE Greek Bias of Priene successfully resisted
4320-563: The final Entente offensives, its capabilities are not known with full certainty. Figures stated for the weapon's size, range, and performance varied widely depending on the source—not even the number of shells fired is certain. In the 1980s, a long note on the gun was discovered and published. This was written by Dr. Fritz Rausenberger (in German), the Krupp engineer in charge of the gun's development, shortly before his death in 1926. Thanks to this,
4400-609: The first shell landed at 7:18 a.m. on 23 March 1918 on the Quai de la Seine , the explosion being heard across the city. Shells continued to land at 15-minute intervals, with 21 counted on the first day. On the first day, fifteen people were killed and thirty-six wounded. The effect on morale in Paris was immediate: by 27 March, queues of thousands had started at the Gare d'Orsay and, at the Gare Montparnasse, ticket sales out of
4480-463: The illusion of an overwhelming army and deceive and intimidate enemy scouts. He also sometimes had objects tied to the tails of his horses, so that riding on open and dry fields raised a cloud of dust that gave the enemy the impression of great numbers. His soldiers used arrows specially notched to whistle as they flew through the air, creating a terrifying noise. Another tactic favored by the Mongols
4560-402: The leaflet-dropping pilots, prompting the British to develop unmanned leaflet balloons that drifted across no-man's land . At least one in seven of these leaflets were not handed in by the soldiers to their superiors, despite severe penalties for that offence. Even General Hindenburg admitted that "Unsuspectingly, many thousands consumed the poison", and POWs admitted to being disillusioned by
4640-446: The propaganda leaflets that depicted the use of German troops as mere cannon fodder . In 1915, the British began airdropping a regular leaflet newspaper Le Courrier de l'Air for civilians in German-occupied France and Belgium. At the start of the war, the French government took control of the media to suppress negative coverage. Only in 1916, with the establishment of the Maison de la Presse, did they begin to use similar tactics for
4720-459: The public use of " cognitive warfare " as a clear movement occurred in 2013 with China's political rhetoric. Most modern uses of the term psychological warfare refer to the following military methods: Most of these techniques were developed during World War II or earlier, and have been used to some degree in every conflict since. Daniel Lerner was in the OSS (the predecessor to the American CIA) and in his book, attempts to analyze how effective
4800-402: The purpose of psychological warfare. One of its sections was the "Service de la Propagande aérienne" (Aerial Propaganda Service), headed by Professor Tonnelat and Jean-Jacques Waltz , an Alsatian artist code-named " Hansi ". The French tended to distribute leaflets of images only, although the full publication of US President Woodrow Wilson 's Fourteen Points , which had been heavily edited in
4880-438: The real battleground for nearly seven weeks. The United States ran an extensive program of psychological warfare during the Vietnam War . The Phoenix Program had the dual aim of assassinating National Liberation Front of South Vietnam (NLF or Viet Cong ) personnel and terrorizing any potential sympathizers or passive supporters. During the Phoenix Program, over 19,000 NLF supporters were killed. In Operation Wandering Soul ,
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#17327802372694960-578: The real invasion force. At the same time Operation Titanic involved the RAF dropping fake paratroopers to the east and west of the Normandy landings. The deceptions were implemented with the use of double agents, radio traffic and visual deception. The British " Double Cross " anti-espionage operation had proven very successful from the outset of the war, and the LCS was able to use double agents to send back misleading information about Allied invasion plans. The use of visual deception, including mock tanks and other military hardware had been developed during
5040-523: The resonating projections of his orations for effect. Germany's Fall Grün plan of invasion of Czechoslovakia had a large part dealing with psychological warfare aimed both at the Czechoslovak civilians and government as well as, crucially, at Czechoslovakia's allies. It became successful to the point that Germany gained the acquiescence of the British and French governments to the German occupation of Czechoslovakia without having to fight an all-out war, sustaining only minimum losses in covert war before
5120-551: The same time introducing news material that would weaken their morale under a veneer of authenticity. British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made use of radio broadcasts for propaganda against the Germans. Churchill favoured deception; he said "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies.". During World War II, the British made extensive use of deception – developing many new techniques and theories. The main protagonists at this time were 'A' Force, set up in 1940 under Dudley Clarke , and
5200-410: The target country's capability to function. Terrorism is a strategy that aims to influence public opinion into pressuring leaders to give in to the terrorists' demands, and the population becomes a tool to advance the political agenda. According to U.S. military analysts, attacking the enemy's mind is an important element of the People's Republic of China 's military strategy. This type of warfare
5280-444: The use of mass propaganda to influence the minds of the German population in the decades to come. By calling his movement The Third Reich, he was able to convince many civilians that his cause was not just a fad, but the way of their future. Joseph Goebbels was appointed as Propaganda Minister when Hitler came to power in 1933, and he portrayed Hitler as a messianic figure for the redemption of Germany. Hitler also coupled this with
5360-476: The various strategies were. He concludes that there is little evidence that any of them were dramatically successful, except perhaps surrender instructions over loudspeakers when victory was imminent. Measuring the success or failure of psychological warfare is very hard, as the conditions are very far from being a controlled experiment. Lerner also divides psychological warfare operations into three categories: Lerner says grey and black operations ultimately have
5440-502: The weight of the shell—meant that the effect of its shellburst was small for the shell's size. The thickness of the shell casing, to withstand the forces of firing, meant that shells would explode into a comparatively small number of large fragments, limiting their destructive effect. A crater produced by a shell falling in the Tuileries Garden was described by an eyewitness as being 10 to 12 ft (3.0 to 3.7 m) across and 4 ft (1.2 m) deep. The shells were propelled at such
5520-437: The world, in contrast to the reputation of the German services. While German attempts to foment revolution in parts of the British Empire , such as Ireland and India , were ineffective, extensive experience in the Middle East allowed the British to successfully induce the Arabs to revolt against the Ottoman Empire . In August 1914, David Lloyd George appointed a Member of Parliament (MP), Charles Masterman , to head
5600-444: The world. Since prehistoric times, warlords and chiefs have recognized the importance of weakening the morale of their opponents. According to Polyaenus , in the Battle of Pelusium (525 BC) between the Persian Empire and ancient Egypt , the Persian forces used cats and other animals as a psychological tactic against the Egyptians, who avoided harming cats due to religious belief and superstitions. Currying favor with supporters
5680-472: Was available in the form of large circulation newspapers and posters. It was also possible to transmit propaganda to the enemy via the use of airborne leaflets or through explosive delivery systems like modified artillery or mortar rounds. At the start of the war, the belligerents, especially the British and Germans, began distributing propaganda, both domestically and on the Western front . The British had several advantages that allowed them to succeed in
5760-818: Was captured by Allied forces in the Netherlands in 1945. A parody of the Paris Gun appears in the Charlie Chaplin movie The Great Dictator . Firing at the Cathedral of Notre Dame , the "Tomanians" (the fictional country that represented Germany) succeed in blowing up a small outhouse . The destruction of the St-Gervais-et-St-Protais Church inspired Romain Rolland to write his novel Pierre et Luce . Psychological weapon Psychological warfare ( PSYWAR ), or
5840-509: Was catapulting severed human heads over city walls to frighten the inhabitants and spread disease in the besieged city's closed confines. This was especially used by the later Turko-Mongol chieftain. The Muslim caliph Omar , in his battles against the Byzantine Empire , sent small reinforcements in the form of a continuous stream, giving the impression that a large force would accumulate eventually if not swiftly dealt with. During
5920-407: Was contained in two compartments, separated by a wall. This strengthened the shell and supported the explosive charge under the acceleration of firing. One of the shell's two fuzes was mounted in the wall, with the other in the base of the shell. The fuzes proved very reliable as every single one of the 303 shells that landed in and around Paris successfully detonated. The shell's nose was fitted with
6000-644: Was in giving the Russian revolutionary, Lenin , free transit on a sealed train from Switzerland to Finland after the overthrow of the Tsar . This soon paid off when the Bolshevik Revolution took Russia out of the war. Adolf Hitler was greatly influenced by the psychological warfare tactics the Allies employed during World War I, and attributed Germany's defeat in the conflict to the effects this tactics had on German troops. He became committed to
6080-413: Was intended to improve accuracy and reduce the dispersion of the shells, as it reduced the slight yaw a shell might have immediately after leaving the gun barrel produced by the gun's rifling . The barrel was braced to counteract barrel drop due to its length and weight, and vibrations while firing; it was mounted on a special rail-transportable carriage and fired from a prepared, concrete emplacement with
6160-441: Was no firing between 25 and 29 March, when the first barrel was being replaced; an unconfirmed intelligence report claimed that it had exploded. Barrels were probably changed again between 7–11 April and again between 21–24 April. The diameter of the later shells increased from 21 to 24 cm (8.3 to 9.4 in), indicating that the used barrels had been re-bored. A further emplacement, later identified as specifically designed for
6240-457: Was predominantly one of truth (with certain exceptions). In Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes , Jacques Ellul discusses psychological warfare as a common peace policy practice between nations as a form of indirect aggression. This type of propaganda drains the public opinion of an opposing regime by stripping away its power on public opinion. This form of aggression is hard to defend against because no international court of justice
6320-476: Was the case, through fictional field armies , faked operations to prepare the ground for invasion and "leaked" misinformation about the Allied order of battle and war plans. Elaborate naval deceptions (Operations Glimmer , Taxable and Big Drum ) were undertaken in the English Channel. Small ships and aircraft simulated invasion fleets lying off Pas de Calais, Cap d'Antifer and the western flank of
6400-684: Was the other side of psychological warfare, and an early practitioner of this was Alexander the Great , who successfully conquered large parts of Europe and the Middle East and held on to his territorial gains by co-opting local elites into the Greek administration and culture. Alexander left some of his men behind in each conquered city to introduce Greek culture and oppress dissident views. His soldiers were paid dowries to marry locals in an effort to encourage assimilation . Genghis Khan , leader of
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