So it seems that childhood favorite author AA Milne, who created all of the wonderful “Winnie the Pooh” stories (along with some of my favorite childhood poems), also spent some time in World War I writing propaganda for a secret British military intelligence unit. And that this is only known to us because Milne broke the rules and brought his work home, where it escaped destruction after the war. This has apparently upset a number of people, as it also upset Milne at the time. Some of the articles appearing over the last few days are branding him a “spy” for this work – which is technically incorrect.
In today’s parlance, he’d have been referred to as a “defense contractor.” As in today’s hearts-and-minds campaigns in Afghanistan and elsewhere (think mine awareness and weapons amnesty programs in the former Yugoslavia), most modern militaries conduct some form of “influence” activities, by creating culturally appropriate media content to elicit desirable attitudes and behavior. Entire companies have been created to support such efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq, and despite granting access to secret military programs, no one ever called them “spies.” Well, maybe the Taliban have. But they call everyone spies.
The real difference between what Milne and his colleagues did in WWI and what we do today is that most Western militaries limit their influence efforts to “adversary” audiences. And it’s usually very transparent – in NATO, for example, it is obligatory to disclose the author or sponsor of the material being disseminated – making it little more than what we would call marketing. In the U.S. military, for a number of years it was forbidden to use the internet for information operations, because the primary consumer at the time was likely to be a U.S. citizen.
In Milne’s time, it was common to employ the same tactics to boost morale among one’s own troops. In addition, there were concerns at the time that mounting casualties would increase war fatigue, leading to secret efforts to paint a rosier picture than existed on the ground. For these reasons, apparently, a number of the propagandists employed in this effort felt immense guilt at having sent their young countrymen to their deaths.
To learn more about AA Milne’s World War I propaganda efforts, check out this article.
Update: Even better, order the illustrated e-book, now available on Amazon for the Kindle (thanks to the author Jeremy Arter, who pointed it out to me via Twitter!)
