Propaganda
Upon receiving accurate intelligence that the British were hiring Hessian mercenaries for service in America, Congress appointed a three-man committee "to devise a plan for encouraging the Hessions and other foreigners... to quit that iniquitous service." The result was a resolution, believed to have been drafted by Thomas Jefferson, offering land grants to German deserters. It was translated into German and sent among the Hessians.
Benjamin Franklin, who joined the committee to implement the operation, arranged for the leaflets to be disguised as tobacco packets to make sure they would fall into the hands of ordinary Hessian soldiers. Christopher Ludwick was dispatched by Washington into the enemy camp, posing as a deserter, to contact the Hessians and encourage them to defect. He is credited with the defection of "many hundred soldiers" from the German ranks.
In 1777, after his arrival in France, Benjamin Franklin fabricated a letter purportedly sent by a German prince to the commander of his mercenaries in America. The letter disputed British casualty figures for the German troops, arguing that the actual number was much higher and that he was entitled to a great amount of "blood money", the amount paid to the prince for each of his men killed or wounded. The prince also encouraged the officer to be humane and to allow his wounded to die, rather than try to save men who might only become cripples unfit for service to their prince.
Between 5,000 and 6,000 Hessians deserted from the British side during the war, in part because of American propaganda.
Franklin also produced a newspaper report purporting to describe the transmittal of scalps of soldiers, settlers, women and children to the Royal Governor of Canada by Britain's Indian allies. The Indian transmittal letter indicated that a certain mark on scalps indicated they were those of women who "were knocked dead or had their brains beat out."
- This article is adapted from Intelligence in the War of Independence, a publication of the Central Intelligence Agency in the public domain.
Read more about this topic: Intelligence Operations In The American Revolutionary War
Famous quotes containing the word propaganda:
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)
“The best propaganda omits rather than invents.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)