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'Minds then hearts:' U.S. political and psychological warfare during the Korean War

Jacobson, Mark R
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1108407385

Abstract Details

2005, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
Minds then Hearts examines the U.S. military’s resistance and hostility towards psychological warfare and examines how this affected the weapon’s use during the Korean War. The conventional military rejected psychological warfare as “paper bullets” that had no place in a military focused on lethal means – blast, heat, and fragmentation, to defeat its enemies. In particular this study will examine how the inability to demonstrate conclusively the effects of psychological warfare operations added to uncertainty and skepticism over the weapon’s potential and actual impact on the battlefield. Additionally, the study explores how operational deficiencies such as a lack of resources and poor integration with combat arms created obstacles hampering the successful employment of psychological warfare against Chinese and North Korean forces. The study will also compare the Army’s efforts to use the weapon with those of the Air Force that, at times, considered strategic bombing as synonymous with psychological warfare. Further, the Chinese and Russian use of atrocity propaganda, especially the forced confessions of waging biological warfare by American prisoners, will be examined in order to demonstrate how these efforts impacted on the American military’s view of their own psychological warfare campaigns. The study acknowledges and describes the difficulties involved in evaluating the effectiveness of psychological warfare operations in general and during the Korean War. Minds then Hearts concludes that the most important obstacle to effective psywar operations was the failure of Army officers in the field to understand the potential of psychological warfare and thus, fail to integrate it properly into their combat operations. Many combat commanders saw psywar solely as an instrument designed simply to induce surrender. Psywar personnel, eager to demonstrate their worth did little to dispel this limited view. The inability of the psywar proponents to consistently provide demonstrable and tangible indicators of success meant that when forced to choose between leaflets, loudspeakers and firepower, operational leaders chose firepower. The result was that psywar proved successful only in a limited tactical sense but never created the type of operational or strategic victories sought by the weapon’s proponents.
Allan Millett (Advisor)
276 p.
psychological warfare; psychological operations; psyop; korean war; propaganda; information operations; unconventional warfare

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Jacobson, M. R. (2005). 'Minds then hearts:' U.S. political and psychological warfare during the Korean War [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1108407385

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Jacobson, Mark. 'Minds then hearts:' U.S. political and psychological warfare during the Korean War. 2005. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1108407385.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Jacobson, Mark. "'Minds then hearts:' U.S. political and psychological warfare during the Korean War." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2005. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1108407385

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

osu1108407385
5,603
© 2005, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.