Propaganda

Abstract

The issue of propaganda was paramount in Italo-British interactions and played an essential role in shaping the image that Italians had of the British. The British set up their propaganda organisations well before the actual landing in Sicily and kept nurturing them for the whole duration of the Italian campaign and afterwards. The UK was well aware of the need for foreign language propaganda in Europe once the war started and constantly increased its efforts in disseminating it. Over the course of the war, nearly 1.5 billion British leaflets were dropped over Europe, and the BBC transmissions reached a total of 295 hours weekly by May 1945. Complementing this ‘white’ (or open) propaganda, clandestine radio stations, printed material and disseminated rumours were provided by the ‘black’ or subversive propaganda.

However, despite these efforts, the results attained by British propaganda in Italy are contradictory if we consider the image that the Allies (and especially the British) were able to project of themselves. In the end, the British struggled to build the image of liberators and were largely unsuccessful in doing so. Several problems prevented them from really being able to attain their goals. Some of the difficulties the British encountered were internal to their propaganda machine, like the lack of coordination and how propaganda was structured and delivered. Others were external, and the British had little to no control over them, like competition with Soviet and American propaganda or neo-fascist counter-propaganda. These issues led to a general problem of self-representation, as the British could not project the image of liberators they wanted for themselves and instead were forced into the representation ‘enforced’ by the Italians. This problem arguably was one of the cornerstones of the long-lasting narrative of a rapacious and ruthless British attitude towards Italy.