Germany on the Couch: Psychology and the Development of British Subversive Propaganda to Nazi Germany

Abstract

New developments in social psychology proliferated in Britain and the USA throughout the 1930s. With the advent of war, psychology promised insight into the Nazi mind. Some war departments were particularly enthusiastic about these intellectual developments. The USA’s OSS can claim credit for bringing Frankfurt School neo-Freudianism onto the public stage. In Britain meanwhile, the Ministry of Information turned to behaviourism in order to better understand the British public. But the propagandists of the Political Warfare Executive (PWE), charged with the subversion of enemy morale, were wary of new perspectives. Psychology was valuable only so long as it was practical. For PWE, this meant that psychopathological orientations, which emphasized ahistorical German distinction, were for much of the war favoured over behaviourism or neo-Freudianism.

This article examines the role that psychology played in British subversive propaganda directed at Nazi Germany during the Second World War. Did psychology offer any answers to the ‘German problem'? And what made PWE distinct from contemporary propaganda organizations? PWE's particular engagement with psychology demonstrates the diverse and often culturally contingent ways in which psychology transitioned from the academy to the public sphere, and offers new insight into British wartime perspectives on Nazi Germany.