Military Music – “Psychological Warfare” by Paul M. A. Linebarger

Washington, Infantry Journal Press, 1948 – First Edition

He discusses Gideon’s rout of the Midianites in Kings 7, by means of lanterns and trumpets, each lantern representing 1,000 soldiers but he really only had 300.  Psychology – the surprise of breaking the pots covering the torches coupled with loud blasts on the trumpets.

Other “promising topics” that he does not go into:

• Naval psychological warfare techniques used by the Caribbean pirates to unnerve prospective victims.
• Cortez’s use of horses as psychological disseminators of terror among the Aztecs, along with his exploitation of Mexican legends concerning the Fair God.
• The failure of Turkish psychological warfare in the great campaigns of 1683 which left the issue one of purely physical means and cost Turkey the possible hegemony of central Europe.
• The propaganda methods of the British East India Company in the conquest of India against overwhelming Indian numerical superiority.
• The preventive psychological warfare system set up by the Tokugawa shoguns after 1636, which bottled up the brains of the Japanese through more rigorous control than has ever been established elsewhere over civilized people.
• The field psychological warfare of the Manchus, who conquered China against odds running as much as 400 to one against them, and who used terror as a means of nullifying Chinese superiority.
• The propaganda of the European feudal classes against the peasant revolts, which identified the peasants with filth, anarchy, murder, and cruelty.
• The inquisition considered as a psychological warfare facility of the Spanish Empire.
• The agitational practices of the French Revolutionaries
• Early uses of rockets and balloons for psychological effect.
• The beginnings of leaflet-printing as an adjunct to field operations.

Thomas Paine’s Common Sense.

P. 26 = “What can psychology do for warfare?  In the first place, the psychologist can bring to the attention of the soldier those elements of the human mind which are usually kept out of sight. He can show how to convert lust into resentment, individual resourcefulness into mass cowardice, friction into distrust, prejudice into fury.  He does so by going down to the unconscious mind for his source materials.”

“In the second place the psychologist can set up techniques for finding out how the enemy really does feel. . . the psychologist can quiz a small cross section of enemy prisoners and from the results estimate the mentality of an entire enemy theater of war at a given period.”  (Or by analyzing enemy propaganda aimed at their own troops.)

“In the third place, the psychologist can help the military psychological warfare operator by helping him maintain his sense of mission and of proportion.”

“Finally, the psychologist can prescribe media – radio, leaflets, loudspeakers, whispering agents, returned enemy soldiers, and so forth.  He can indicate when and when not to use any given medium.”