4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent study of a fascinating topic, January 24, 2007
This review is from: Political Indoctrination in the U.S. Army from World War II to the Vietnam War (Studies in War, Society, and the Military) (Hardcover)
Dr. Christopher S. DeRosa of Monmouth University provides an important contribution to the study of civil/military relations with this first ever published monograph on Army Troop Information and Education (I&E). While the services during the thirty years covered in his investigation always described themselves as "explainers" rather than "persuaders," DeRosa claims that the management of opinion always lay at the heart of each program. (xi) The basic problem facing the Army, however, was "how to go about indoctrinating soldiers with an exclusively tailored set of opinions when the freedom to hold and express different opinions stood so high among the propagandists' and soldiers' core political values." (14)
DeRosa begins his examination of WWII political indoctrination efforts with an examination of a Guide to the Use of Information Materials. In it the Army urged its officers to remember that the first principle of American information was truth as it outlined the themes and methods needed for wartime propaganda. "Indoctrination of Hatred" should be considered a practical training issue and not a moral one, according to the authors of the guide, in order to prepare the soldier to not just be willing but to be even "anxious to work bodily destruction upon the enemies of his country."(16) The author provides a thorough analysis of Capra's Why We Fight series that includes particularly valuable responses to the series from veterans compiled by the Military History Institute at Carlisle Barracks in Pennsylvania.
The richest material is found in DeRosa's anaylsis of military political indoctrination during the early Cold War. According to the author, during this period when the American public embraced a peacetime military of unprecedented size, the army expanded its information programs to not only communicate with its personnel but to also include civilians. He sees the service's attempts to influence soldier opinion during the Korean Conflict as relatively modest. But following the war, DeRosa claims that political indoctrination efforts increased dramatically as the Army reacted defensively to criticism that it had done too little to prepare its recruits for ideological warfare. The author's careful survey of the era's anti-communist materials, which often were laced with religious undertones, is truly the book's greatest strength. In no other source will students of the cold war find such a complete analysis. DeRosa's chapter on Maj. Gen. Edwin A. Walker's notorious "Pro-Blue" program that incorporated materials from the John Birch Society is the best treatment of the subject that I have seen. The author claims that the Army had great difficulty during the Vietnam War indoctrinating its men and women because the public, troubled that the conduct of the war did not reflect their values, rejected the "comparatively superficial anticommunist indoctrination that justified the war."(256)
Well written and with an impressive bibliography, I highly recommend Political Indoctrination in the U.S. Army: From WWII to the Vietnam War, to any student of the history of the Cold War or scholars interested in American civil/military relations. It well deserves 5 stars. Dr. Lori Bogle, United States Naval Academy
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