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Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
Yarrow
Selling a New Vision of America to the World
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print
Propaganda
✣ Andrew L. Yarrow
I
n both World War I and World War II, the U.S. government felt
compelled to explain itself—its war aims, its foreign policy more generally,
and even its conception of what the United States stood for as a country—to
foreign audiences. Not until the Cold War began, however, did the United
States develop a large-scale, permanent capacity for foreign propaganda (or
“public diplomacy”). The new programs were intended to curb the spread of
Communism and win economic and military allies by disseminating messages
in a variety of media to discredit Communism and extol the virtues of the
United States.
What were these virtues, and what, if anything, do they say about how
elites conceived of America’s image in the late 1940s and 1950s? Although
U.S. Cold War propaganda efforts have usually been depicted as aimed at defending the “American way of life,”1 scholars have devoted less attention to
how U.S. print propaganda messages changed or how these shifting emphases
1. Laura A. Belmonte, “Defending a Way of Life: American Propaganda and the Cold War, 1945–
1959,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Virginia, 1996; Laura Belmonte, “Selling Capitalism,” in Staging
Growth: Modernization, Development and the Global Cold War (Amherst: University of Massachusetts
Press, 2003); Wilson P. Dizard, The Strategy of Truth: The Story of the U.S. Information Service (Washington, DC: Public Affairs Press, 1961); Lynn B. Hinds and Theodore O. Windt, Jr., The Cold War as
Rhetoric: The Beginnings, 1945–1950 (New York: Praeger, 1991); Walter L. Hixson, Parting the Curtain: Propaganda, Culture, and the Cold War, 1945–1961 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1997); David
F. Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, 1945–1953 (Columbia, MO:
University of Missouri Press, 2000); Frank A. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: United States Foreign
Policy and Cultural Relations, 1938–1950 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1981); Gary D.
Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda: The BBC and VOA in International Politics, 1956–64
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1996); Gary D. Rawnsley, ed., Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s (New
York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999); Ronald I. Rubin, The Objectives of the U.S. Information Agency: Controversies and Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1966); Charles A. Thomson and Walter H. C. Laves, Cultural
Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1963); and USIA Alumni
Association, United States Information Agency: A Commemoration—Telling America’s Story to the World,
1953–1999 (Washington, DC: U.S. Information Agency Public Liaison Ofªce, 1999).
Journal of Cold War Studies
Vol. 11, No. 4, Fall 2009, pp. 3–45
© 2009 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute
of Technology
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reºected U.S. ofªcials’ evolving images of their country and its most salient
and valued features. Scholars of the Cold War have described the multiple
messages imparted by U.S. propaganda agencies and have discussed explicit
policy changes such as Harry S. Truman’s Campaign of Truth, the various directives requiring radio broadcasts to emphasize factual reporting, and the internal debates about the efªcacy of different messages.2 Thus far, however, no
one has examined the more signiªcant underlying philosophical shift evident
in print propaganda—from the liberal idealism of the late 1940s to the messages centering on American prosperity and abundance, or what came to be
called “people’s capitalism,” in the mid-to-late 1950s.
Although myriad messages were conveyed throughout the period—from
America’s liberal idealism to the horrors of Communism—scholars such as
Walter Hixson and Laura Belmonte have noted the use of propaganda messages about U.S. abundance. But they have not evaluated the extent to which
these messages gained in prominence during Dwight Eisenhower’s administration in the mid-to-late 1950s as the quantity and tone of printed materials
shifted from an emphasis on America’s idealism to its high, broad-based, and
technology-driven standard of living. Nor have they explored how the messages dovetailed with others disseminated within the United States by business, political, media, and educational leaders.
Propaganda is generally deªned as persuasive communication intended
to appeal to a target audience’s latent beliefs or, with more difªculty, to
change their beliefs and actions. This broad deªnition could include advertising, political campaigning, and even education. Propaganda generally connotes communication aimed at a foreign audience and has a partisan dimension that, although not necessarily untrue, presents a subject only in its best
light. The term “propaganda” acquired pejorative connotations because of its
approving use by Nazi, Soviet, and other totalitarian regimes—a usage implying that the messages were lies or distorted. The more neutral deªnition laid
out above is the one used in this article. Theories of propaganda—including
those of Gustav Le Bon, Harold Lasswell, Edward Bernays, Walter Lippmann, Jacques Ellul, and Cold War–era propagandists—have often paralleled
ideas about how opinion is shaped in general.3
During the Cold War and more recently, the term “public diplomacy”
2. The suppressed 1953 study of objectives of U.S. propaganda found signiªcant divisions within
USIA regarding the agency’s objectives and messages. This was a transitional time in the history of
U.S. propaganda efforts and a time when the propaganda apparatus was being attacked by Senator Joseph McCarthy and his followers.
3. Walter Lippmann, Public Opinion (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1922), pp. 25–27; Harold Lasswell, “The Function of the Propagandist,” International Journal of Ethics, Vol. 38, No. 3 (April
1928), pp. 258–268; Edward L. Bernays, Crystallizing Public Opinion (New York: Boni & Liveright,
1928); Edward L. Bernays, Propaganda (Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1928); Jacques Ellul,
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Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
has been used as either a more expansive or a more anodyne synonym for propaganda. As a more expansive term, it includes not only printed and broadcast materials but also foreign exchange programs, exhibitions, and cultural
programs. These activities gained great salience during the Cold War as the
United States sought to win the hearts and minds of those behind the Iron
Curtain, counter Soviet propaganda about the wonders of Communism and
the evils of the United States, and defeat the Soviet bloc without resorting to
the horriªc option of “hot” war.
U.S. propaganda must be seen in the larger context of U.S. Cold War
policies. The early years of the Cold War, during the Truman administration,
saw not only deepening suspicion and fear of Iosif Stalin’s Soviet Union, the
USSR’s control over the East European countries, and the Communist triumph in China in 1949, but also varying degrees of “hot war” during the
Greek civil war, the Berlin blockade, and the Korean War. This was also a
time when the United States worked to solidify its sway in Western Europe
through the Marshall Plan, the establishment of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organization (NATO), and overt and covert operations to maintain friendly,
anti-Communist governments. The Truman Doctrine, enunciated in March
1947, emphasized “containment” of Communism while describing the standoff in the stark terms of democracy versus ruthless dictatorship. The Eisenhower and Kennedy years witnessed contradictory tendencies. Eisenhower’s
secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, publicly called for the “rollback” of
Communism and “liberation” of the Soviet bloc, but Eisenhower recognized
that Stalin’s death provided an opening for peaceful coexistence and a war of
ideas instead of armies and missiles. Tensions were reduced through face-toface meetings between U.S. and Soviet leaders, who were ready to move beyond the hostility of the Stalin period. Yet, events such as the Soviet hydrogen
bomb explosion, the suppression of the 1956 Hungarian revolution, the U-2
spy plane incident, the Cuban missile crisis, and the advent of a stepped-up
economic and technological competition after the launching of Sputnik,
hardly signaled a superpower détente. U.S policies designed to counter the
Soviet Union naturally helped to shape the content of U.S propaganda.4
The U.S. messages also must be seen in the context of Soviet propaganda
and the battle for the hearts and minds of Europeans, less-developed counPropaganda: The Formation of Men’s Attitudes (New York: Vintage Books, 1965); and Jacques Ellul,
The Technological Society (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1967), pp. 370–371.
4. John Lewis Gaddis, The United States and the Origins of the Cold War, 1941–1947 (New York: Columbia University Press, 1972), pp. 353–361; John Lewis Gaddis, The Cold War: A New History (New
York: Penguin, 2005); Melvyn P. Lefºer, A Preponderance of Power: National Security, the Truman Administration, and the Cold War (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1992); and Melvyn P. Lefºer
and David S. Painter, eds., Origins of the Cold War: An International History (New York: Routledge,
2005).
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tries, and European overseas colonies on the verge of independence. Soviet
propaganda emphasized the inevitable triumph of Communism, the “contradictions” of capitalism that would lead to its collapse, and the alleged misery of working-class, poor, and marginalized populations such as AfricanAmericans. The main propaganda battleªeld of the late 1940s and early
1950s was in Europe, as the United States sought to ensure that Western Europe would remain non-Communist and the Soviet Union tried to exploit
and fan anti-Americanism. By the mid-1950s, however, the main front for
propaganda was the Communist world itself and the nonaligned countries of
the Third World.
Yet foreign policy was not the only context for changes in propaganda
messages. Domestic concerns and messages disseminated by politicians, media, business leaders, educators, and others for domestic consumption also
framed what information and ideas about the United States were disseminated to the world. These opinion leaders spoke of a “new era” of “people’s
capitalism,” or a “changed America” that had conquered the business cycle,
producing a country in which “everybody’s rich.”5 The idea that a new chapter of American history (and of the history of capitalism) had dawned was a
frequent subject of news reports, political speeches, business communications, and even elementary and secondary school curricula, particularly after
the Korean War.
But what was the driving force behind the new paradigm of America as a
land of classless, rising abundance? Why did this new paradigm emerge when
it did, and why did it triumph?
The paradigm was ostensibly an apolitical and upbeat message that could
unite Americans, patching over the bitter social divisions not only of the
1930s but of the preceding half century. The message was the answer to the
“social question” that had plagued the United States since the early days of industrialization, from the 1877 railroad strikes to the Flint sit-down strike of
1936–1937. The aim was to undercut the appeal of socialism, turning it on
its head. The rising incomes of the postwar mixed economy showed that the
social needs of most Americans could be met and promised that remaining social problems such as poverty could be solved. For business executives, the image of a prosperous, growing America helped them reclaim the power and esteem they had lost during the Great Depression. For Cold Warriors, the idea
that the United States had beaten the Soviet Union at its own game—provid5. “Is a New Era Really Here?” U.S. News & World Report, 20 May 1955, pp. 21–23; “People’s Capitalism,” House Beautiful, November 1956, p. 226; “Changed America,” Business Week, 6 June 1953,
pp. 101–104; and “Everybody’s Rich in the U.S.,” U.S. News & World Report, 26 October 1956,
pp. 27–32.
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Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
ing “classless abundance for all”—was far more palatable than simply comparing the throwweights of nuclear arsenals.
The alignment of a more capitalism-friendly New Deal liberalism, a more
Keynesian and consumer-oriented business community, and popular desires
for the good life helped this new set of beliefs gain traction. Of major importance was the new inºuence of economists in American politics and culture.
From a small, marginal profession in the 1920s with little inºuence on public
policy and the American public, the economics profession—its expertise,
its ideas, and its language—was enthusiastically embraced by policymakers
and the American people after World War II. For economists and those in
thrall to their presumed omniscience, the suggestion that economic growth
could be managed and facilitated was extremely seductive. Economists’
inºuence was direct, in the form of books and articles, and indirect, through
their impact on political, business, and labor leaders, and via the press and educators.6
At the same time, many Americans on both left and right increasingly
worried about the country’s commitment to freedom and individual liberty.
The anti-Communist campaigns of the late 1940s and McCarthyism in the
early 1950s led many liberals and others to wonder about the American commitment to free speech, due process, and other basic civil liberties. The Birmingham bus boycott, lunch-counter sit-ins, the 1958 Little Rock confrontation, books such as Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944),7 and the
brutal response to freedom riders in the early 1960s spurred growing numbers
of whites to realize that America’s professed commitment to “freedom and justice for all” had been an empty promise for blacks and perhaps others as well.
The reemergence of feminism, with Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique
(1963),8 only added to this sense that freedom and equality were not yet at
hand. At the same time, by the late 1950s, as Daniel Bell and others spoke
about “the end of ideology,” many American ideals seemed either dated,
overly intellectual, too burdened with caveats, or not unique to the United
States. Internationally, some Americans were sensitive to European and Third
World criticisms—stoked by Soviet propaganda—of “American imperialism”
and began to wonder whether their country was truly on the side of freedom
6. “The words ‘economic growth,’ previously unknown to most economists much less to ordinary
Americans, entered the national consciousness” in the postwar era, according to Robert Heilbroner
and Aaron Singer, The Economic Transformation of America (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich,
1977), p. 322.
7. Gunnar Myrdal, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy (New York:
Harper & Brothers, 1944).
8. Betty Friedan, The Feminine Mystique (New York: W. W. Norton, 1963).
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in Latin America, Southeast Asia, and elsewhere. For some liberals, the “national liberation” and decolonization movements of the 1950s and 1960s had
usurped America’s claim to be at the champion of world freedom. Likewise,
some conservatives questioned whether the United States remained true to
time-honored principles of individual liberty. The growth of government
since the New Deal caused some to fear that the country was heading toward
1984-like socialism and was well along the “road to serfdom.”9 The idea that
“American freedoms,” including free enterprise, were threatened became an
increasingly insistent theme among conservative intellectuals, business leaders, politicians, and popular commentators.
These converging cultural changes and worries necessitated an alternative, consensual national identity and ideology. Into this vacuum stepped
America’s supposedly unique political and economic system and “way of life”
predicated on unparalleled, measurable, and rising abundance.
Key business, advertising, and media ªgures such as Paul Hoffman, William Benton, Edward L. Bernays, C. D. Jackson, Henry Luce, T. S. Repplier,
and Edward R. Murrow played leading roles in shaping and disseminating the
propaganda message of the United States as the abundant society. Business organizations and individual corporations—including the Committee for Economic Development (CED), National Association of Manufacturers (NAM),
the Advertising Council, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Time Inc., Standard Oil of New Jersey, General Motors (GM), AT&T, International Business
Machines (IBM), Monsanto, and Sylvania—embarked on massive efforts to
spread this new paradigm of abundance. Upward of $100 million a year was
spent by business organizations and individual businesses on public relations,
employee relations, and advertising to present their messages about how a certain conception of free enterprise and an expansive conception of abundance
were essential U.S. qualities.10 They contributed directly to the effort with
9. Joseph Schumpeter’s Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy (New York and London: Harper &
Brothers, 1942) and Friedrich von Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom (London: G. Routledge & Sons,
1944) were particularly inºuential among many postwar conservatives, although they remained a
more isolated minority until the latter decades of the 20th century.
10. Robert Grifªth, “The Selling of America: The Advertising Council and American Politics, 1942–
1960,” Business History Review, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Fall 1983), pp. 388–412, esp. 402–403. In aan October 1946 memorandum, the NAM’s National Industrial Information Committee unabashedly explained its public relations task: “Business is faced with greatest selling job it has ever faced—the job of
selling the solid beneªts of the American Way to the American people against the competition of the
glittering promises of the Collectivist way.” See “The Public Relations Program of NAM,” NAM Records, 1917–1970, Accession 1411, Series I, Box 110, in Hagley Museum and Library, Wilmington,
DE (hereinafter referred to as Hagley). Although other business organizations such as the CED and
Advertising Council—and even the NAM a decade or so later—took the more nuanced view that the
task was more about selling the wonders of American abundance than about relentlessly bashing any
hint of Communism or New Deal/Fair Deal “collectivism,” this statement captured an important as-
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Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
written materials such as the CED’s Economic Growth in the United States
(1958); the Advertising Council’s “Miracle of America” (1950), “Future of
America” (1954), and “Promise of America” (1960) campaign materials; and
the NAM’s “New Dimension for the American Dream” (1956), “Americade”
traveling exhibition, and 10-year TV series, “Industry on Parade (1950–60).11
Individual companies such as General Motors and General Electric not only
produced their own publications, such as GM’s “Design for Prosperity”
(1950), but contributed products for trade-fair exhibits and spokesmen for
free enterprise such as the young Ronald Reagan. In addition, magazine articles from Fortune and Life, as well as reprints of Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s
Digest, and other magazine pieces, were made available by Time Inc. and
other publishers eager to support the Cold War message of American abundance.12
The brainchild of Commerce Secretary Jesse Jones, Paul Hoffman,13 Wilpect of the postwar business community’s efforts to inºuence American public opinion. Similarly, the
U.S. Chamber of Commerce launched a “Program for American Opportunity through Advertising”
in 1947, working with the Advertising Council’s two constituent organizations to burnish the image
of business. As early as 1941, in a 67-page booklet, “It’s a Favorable Wind . . . Sail with It,” the Chamber declared: “Business cannot make friends or meet the threats that surely will materialize when the
present emergency is over, without making its own approach to the public mind.” See U.S. Chamber
of Commerce, “It’s a Favorable Wind . . . Sail with It,” Chamber of Commerce Records, Accession
1960, Series II, Boxes 17 and 15, in Hagley.
11. CED, “Economic Growth in the United States: Past and Future” (1958); Advertising Council,
“Miracle of America” (New York, 1948), in James M. Lambie, Jr., Records, 1952–1961, Box 12,
Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library (DDEL), Abilene, KS; “New Dimensions for the American Dream” and “Americade,” NAM Records, 1917–1970, Accession 1411, Series XVI, Box 219, in
Harry S. Truman Library (HSTL), Independence, MO. See also, for example, Reels 117 (5 January
1953), 453 (20 June 1959), and 479 (19 December 1959), in “Industry on Parade Collection, 1950–
1960,” No. 507, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC
(hereinafter referred to as National Museum).
12. “What a Country!” Fortune, October 1956, pp. 126–130; “The American and His Economy:
About Our $1,300,000,000,000 Economy,” Life, 5 January 1953, pp. 7–100; “Boom Time,” Life,
4 January 1954, pp. 6–11; “Luckiest Generation,” Life, 4 January 1954, pp. 27–29; “Wizards of the
Coming Wonders,” Life, 4 January 1954, pp. 92–94; “The Good Life: From 1890–1975—Leisure of
the Classes and the Masses,” Life, 28 December 1959, pp. 12–185; “The Fabulous Fifties: America
Enters An Age of Everyday Elegance,” 2 October 1956 (cover); “If Our Pay Envelopes Are Fatter Now,
It’s because Workers Produce More,” Saturday Evening Post, 3 April 1954, pp. 7, 22, 46, 76; “America’s
Vast New Leisure Class,” Reader’s Digest, January 1954, pp. 12–14; “Fresh View of Capitalism,”
Reader’s Digest, July 1956, pp. 137–138; “Continuing Revolution in the U.S.,” Reader’s Digest, August
1955, p. 72; “Second U.S. Revolution That Shook All Mankind,” Life, 13 July 1959, pp. 28, 94–96
(reprinted in Reader’s Digest, October 1959, pp. 37–40); “Our Gadgets Set Us Free,” Reader’s Digest,
August 1953, pp. 33–34; and “What Marxism Promises, U.S. Capitalism Delivers,” Reader’s Digest,
February 1957, pp. 173–174.
13. Hoffman, the president of Studebaker, was an enormously inºuential ªgure in shaping postwar
beliefs about the United States and its economy. In addition to being a driving force behind the CED,
Hoffman was a key leader of the Advertising Council, and later president of the Ford Foundation, one
of several major foundations that led the propagation of these ideas. Hoffman also was the domestic
administrator of the Marshall Plan, a policy initiative that the CED played a major role in selling to
the U.S. business community.
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liam Benton,14 and Beardsley Ruml,15 and dating to 1939, the CED was incorporated in 1942 as a way to “enlist the services of the best brains from our
universities and business” to solve “the problems of how high productive employment could be attained and maintained in a free society.”16 The CED issued a ºurry of book-length “Research Reports” and shorter “Statements on
National Policy” after the war, distributed hundreds of thousands of copies of
the several dozen booklets that it produced each year, and placed editorials in
hundreds of newspapers and got its research quoted in thousands of articles
each year. The CED was a cofounder of the Joint Council on Economic Education, which promoted economics education in America’s public schools.
From 1959 to 1973, the CED collaborated each year with the Saturday Review in publishing extensive, multi-article annual issues on differing aspects of
the U.S. economy.
The Advertising Council reinforced CED-like ideas among the broader
U.S. population in a series of sophisticated and massive “public service” advertising campaigns in the late 1940s and 1950s. For example, the Council
distributed more than 1.1 million copies of a free booklet, “The Miracle of
America,” which was reprinted in Look, in a half million copies of Scholastic in
March 1950, and six million times in scores of company magazines. Among
the Council’s most successful efforts to shape public attitudes were its “Our
American Free Enterprise System” series and its push in the mid-1950s to
rebrand the American economic system as “people’s capitalism.”17
In 1948 alone, the NAM produced ªve short ªlms that were seen by
2.5 million high school students and workers, distributed 2.5 million pamphlets such as “Free Enterprise” and “Our Material Progress,”18 issued
1,275 press releases, submitted 45 articles to magazines and newspapers, produced 26 ªfteen-minute episodes of It’s Your Business for ABC Radio, and
placed advertisements in mass-circulation publications such as Life and the
14. Benton not only was a cofounder of the prominent advertising agency Benton & Bowles but was a
vice president of the University of Chicago, a Truman administration appointee, publisher of the Encyclopedia Britannica, a delegate to several United Nations agencies, and a Democratic senator from
Connecticut from 1949 to 1953.
15. Ruml, while still a dean at the University of Chicago in the late 1930s, organized the American
Economic Council that, among other things, produced a radio show called the University of Chicago
Roundtable. Sol Hurwitz (ex-CED president), telephone interview, 13 April 2005.
16. James T. Howard, Improving Economic Understanding in the Public Schools (Washington, DC:
CED, 1950), p. 17.
17. Advertising Council, “The American Roundtable Discussions on People’s Capitalism” (1957); and
Advertising Council, “Condensed Record of a Round Table Discussion on the Basic Elements of a
Free, Dynamic Society Held under the Sponsorship of the Advertising Council at the Hotel WaldorfAstoria, 16 April 1951,” pp. 3, 51.
18. Colleen Ann Moore, “The National Association of Manufacturers: The Voice of Industry and the
Free Enterprise Campaign in the Schools, 1929–1949,” Ph.D. Diss., University of Akron, 1985,
pp. 659, 661, 663.
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Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
Saturday Evening Post.19 The NAM became extremely active in the 1950s economics education movement, distributing an annual catalog of its “Educational Aids for High Schools” and producing a multimedia curriculum unit
called “How Our Business System Operates,” used by 3.5 million students
during the early 1950s. The most ambitious NAM public relations effort of
the 1950s was its weekly television show, Industry on Parade, which it
coproduced with the National Broadcasting Corporation (NBC) from 1950
to 1960. The program appeared on 270 stations by 1957 and was shown in
schools and distributed by the United States Information Agency (USIA) in
33 countries. The series had a breathless tone featuring the wonders of American industry, the cornucopia of new products always becoming available to
Americans, the wizardry of scientists and technicians in facilitating rising
abundance, and the good citizenship of the American corporation.20
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce—which, like the NAM, had begun
public-communications efforts before World War II—developed the “Program for American Opportunity” campaign in the late 1940s to explain the
“American enterprise system” and ensure that Americans believed in its principles, because “our standard of living and freedom are the envy of the world.”
The Chamber organized workplace meetings and publications to win over
employees and produced booklets, radio spots, ªlms, and “economic discussion workbooks” to “organize and conduct a successful program for developing spokesmen for the American Free Enterprise System.”21 By the mid-tolate 1950s, the Chamber’s magazine, Nation’s Business, with a circulation of
750,000, and endless pamphlets and ªlms depicted an America that was rich
and getting richer and whose bounty was dependent on free markets and wise
businessmen.
Similarly, ªnancial reporting not only grew enormously during the postwar era but changed from a dry recitation of stock quotes and company earnings and puff pieces on businessmen and companies to broader stories about
the national economy and the implications of economic trends for ordinary
19. “NAM Salesletter,”17 January 1949, in NAM Records, 1917–1970, Accession 1411, Series I, Box
110, in Hagley; and Moore, “The National Association of Manufacturers,” pp. 715–716, 731–732.
20. NAM, “Industry on Parade Collection, 1950–1959, #507,” in National Museum. For an overview
and index of the collection, see Susan B. Strange and Wendy Shay, “Industry on Parade Film Collection: History” (National Museum, 2001), available online through the Archives Center of the National Museum website, at http://americanhistory.si.edu/archives/d4507.htm.
21. “Program for American Opportunity through Advertising” (1947), “Your American Opportunity
Program” (1948), “Let’s Take the Offensive” (1950), and “Economic Discussion Group Workbook:
How to Organize and Conduct a Successful Program for Developing Spokesmen for the American
Free Enterprise System” (1956), “Industry on Parade Collection, 1950–1960, #507,” Boxes 17–18,
21, in National Museum. The last project in this list included a series of seventeen pamphlets and
tapes to structure 1- to 2-hour public meetings on such subjects as “Progress and Prosperity” and “The
Ethics of Capitalism.”
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Yarrow
Americans. Business reporters and editors recognized that the big story of the
postwar decades was America’s dramatic economic growth and mass prosperity and the changes that these were bringing about in American society. Longtime Fortune editor Hedley Donovan recalled: “It is hard to remember, now
that we have had so much of it for decades, what a big story prosperity
was. . . . We analyzed and celebrated the American boom—in prose, photography, paintings even, and of course in tables and diagrams and charts.”22
Liberally larded with economic statistics, articles regularly heralded new
“records” being set, as if U.S. economic progress were the national sport to be
tracked by elaborate box scores. As Council of Economic Advisers (CEA)
Chairman Walter Heller (or his headline writer) wrote in Life in March 1961,
the “Economy Is Like a Regular .300 Hitter.”23 Commentators spoke of a
“new era” of “people’s capitalism” or a “changed America” that had conquered
the business cycle—an America where “everybody’s rich.”24 As Daniel Bell
later commented, Henry Luce’s magazines preached the gospel of a productive new capitalism to business and the middle class, and Reader’s Digest
played a similar role for lower middle-class in small-town America.25 Fortune
published four widely read multi-issue special reports,26 each including a
number of lengthy articles. These special reports were quickly turned into
books, and the magazine’s 25th anniversary issue in 1955 mixed economics
and sociology to speculate about American life in 1980 in articles such as
“The American Breakthrough,” “The New Economy,” and “The “Fabulous
Future.” Another weighty, yet breathless series began in October 1956 with a
long, graph-laden article called simply “What a Country!”
Other business publications such as The Wall Street Journal and Business
Week, as well as news magazines such as Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News &
World Report echoed these themes, and mass-circulation magazines—Look,
the Saturday Evening Post, Reader’s Digest, and Ladies Home Journal—took a
similar tack, domesticating the economy. They transformed economic concepts such as output growth and productivity, as well as government policies
22. Hedley Donovan, Right Places, Right Times: Forty Years in Journalism, Not Counting My Paper
Route (New York: Holt, 1989), p. 136.
23. Walter Heller, “Economy Is Like a Regular .300 Hitter,” Life, 10 March 1961, pp. 24–25. For
those not familiar with baseball analogies, a hitter who consistently has a batting average of .300 is regarded as a star player.
24. “Is a New Era Really Here?” pp. 21–23; “People’s Capitalism,” House Beautiful, p. 226; “Changed
America,” Business Week, 6 June 1953, pp. 101–104; and “Everybody’s Rich in the U.S.?” pp. 27–32.
See also “Perpetual Prosperity: Is the Business Cycle Out?” The Nation, 29 January 1955, pp. 96–98;
Sumner Slichter, “Have We Conquered the Business Cycle?” The Atlantic, May 1955, pp. 51–55; and
“The Boom-Bust Cycle: How Well Have We Got It Tamed?” Business Week, 3 November 1956,
pp. 176–178.
25. Daniel Bell, The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism (New York: Basic Books, 1976), p. 76.
26. Todd May, telephone interview, 21 July 2004.
12
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
and business objectives, into housewife-friendly topics such as “The Fabulous
Fifties: America Enters an Age of Everyday Elegance.”27 As Life said in 1954,
“Never before, so much for so many.” Look, six years later, added, “No people
in history ever had it as easy, or so good.”28
Indeed, from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, business executives, journalists, and other domestic opinion shapers increasingly linked U.S. greatness
and “identity” with quantitatively deªned prosperity. As economics assumed a
newly prominent role in American thinking, the messages that were conveyed
about the core qualities of “Americanness” shifted to economic virtues such as
the country’s high, rising, and broadly diffused standard of living and its economic dynamism and growth. This occurred as economic ideas and an economic style of thinking competed with older political and moral lenses and
languages for viewing society. Economics increasingly became a principal lens
through which Americans understood and deªned their country.
A historically new conception of the United States as an “abundant society” emerged from the late 1940s on. Such ideas—including the notion that
American supremacy and exceptionalism were founded in the country’s
wealth, productive capacities, and economic growth; that economics, wealth,
and consumption were the principal measure of social value; that optimism
and thinking about the future were deªned in economic terms; that the language of growth, prosperity, free enterprise, and consumption increasingly
supplemented the language of political liberalism and religion; and that individual psychological fulªllment and meaning were to be found in prosperity,
growth, and consumption—had antecedents in the late 1920s and early
1940s and began to gain traction in the late 1940s but did not come into their
own as a leading vision of the United States until after the end of the Korean
War.
This article takes account of these foreign-policy and domestic contexts
in examining how the shift in print propaganda messages can be traced in materials developed and disseminated by the U.S. Information Agency and its
precursors from the late 1940s. The article also considers the messages presented at overseas trade fairs, an initiative that began in the mid-1950s, and
presents an overview of U.S. propaganda efforts during the early Cold War.
The article then focuses on U.S. propaganda magazines and pamphlets from
the late 1940s and 1950s, as reºected in three magazines—Amerika, a Russian-language monthly published for Soviet audiences from 1945 to 1952,
27. “The Fabulous Fifties” (cover); and “If Our Pay Envelopes Are Fatter Now, It’s because Workers
Produce More,” pp. 7, 22, 46, 76.
28. “The Changing American Market,” Fortune, p. 13; “U.S. Growth: Our Biggest Year” (cover), Life,
4 January 1954; and “How America Feels as It Enters the Soaring Sixties,” Look, 5 January 1960,
pp. 11–12.
13
Yarrow
when vigorous Soviet efforts to obstruct distribution induced the United
States to stop publication; Free World, a magazine sent to East Asia that began
publishing in English and various Asian languages in 1952; and America Illustrated, a Russian-language monthly published for three-and-a-half decades beginning in 1956—as well as the many pamphlets, comic books, and other
printed material intended for overseas audiences. A concluding section assesses the content of the print propaganda and its signiªcance.
Although political and philosophical ideals of liberty, democracy, and
freedom continued to be widely touted during this period, print propaganda
increasingly focused on more materialistic “virtues,” such as the high and rising standard of living and the country’s economic dynamism and growth.
This shift occurred in the decade starting in the late 1940s, with a transitional
period that lasted from about 1952 to 1955. Changes in the messages and images that the United States sent to the world in magazines and leaºets
reºected the broader shift in messages about national self-image being conveyed at home.
Like any unique source material used in constructing or buttressing a
larger argument, U.S. print propaganda between the late 1940s and 1960 has
its ºaws. Many pitfalls arise when analyzing and drawing conclusions from
U.S. propaganda. By deªnition, propaganda is to some extent designed to ªt
what different audiences are believed to want to hear at particular times. Although global, one-size-ªts-all messages were the modus operandi, U.S. propagandists occasionally were sensitive to the fact that certain types of messages
played better in East Asia or the Arab world than in the Soviet bloc or Latin
America. In addition, propaganda, by deªnition, is not disinterested communication; it is intended to inºuence foreign audiences and, indirectly, foreign
governments. Consequently, messages may be chosen for what is seen to be
most inºuential.
Propaganda—often seen as a form of “psychological operations” in a
larger war for “hearts and minds”—is also often reactive. Messages may say as
much about an adversary’s propaganda or opinion leaders’ image of their
country as about the sender’s. Therefore, if the Soviet Union emphasized
technological or economic achievements, the United States reasonably might
be expected to emphasize its own accomplishments in these spheres. As the
adage has it, one often becomes—or acquires aspects of—what one opposes.
Moreover, different propaganda media and techniques are conducive to
different types of messages. Radio broadcasts, which must ªll up 168 hours of
airtime each week, are especially suited to a steady diet of news, entertainment, and light features, whereas pamphlets obviously focus on single subjects. The Voice of America (VOA), the nominally private Radio Free Europe
and Radio Liberty, which were secretly ªnanced by the U.S. Central Intelli14
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
gence Agency, and USIA’s television service offered a much broader picture of
postwar America than did print propaganda. News reporting generally aimed
to be “objective,” with in-depth features on all aspects of U.S. political, cultural, and economic life. In addition, American entertainment—from jazz to
classical music—not only was ideal for broadcast but was rightly seen as a key
selling point for the United States. Jazz was immensely popular on VOA and
served as a way of culturally selling America as a “hip,” multiracial society.
Trade shows and exhibits lent themselves to displays of material goods
much more than to abstract ideas, and exchanges or visitors’ programs were
intended to demonstrate the host’s good will. Magazines occupied an intermediate ground, with less news than radio but a greater range of subject matter and themes than either pamphlets or trade shows could convey. Magazines
were usually aimed at literate elites and those with sufªcient political “pull” or
savvy to obtain copies that Communist censors tried to suppress. Thus, magazines, pamphlets, and trade shows were especially likely to reºect the shift in
messages toward portraying America as a paradise of classless, consumer
abundance.
Propaganda, like any type of foreign policy, is also subject to a variety of
domestic political pressures. These may include changes in administration
and politically appointed leadership, pressures from Congress and other constituencies, and cultural inºuences.
Nonetheless, propaganda also must have consistency. Broad, common
themes were present in U.S. messages, whether destined for Moscow or Manila—a consistency that reºected broader policy directives. The connections
between such policy directives and domestic politics or, more broadly, domestic culture were more tenuous. Yet because propaganda is supposed to reºect
national values and valued qualities, messages sent abroad generally must be
seen to conform to widely held beliefs within the culture.
U.S. Propaganda Efforts
The United States was a reluctant latecomer to the international propaganda
business, long eschewing propaganda as something practiced solely by totalitarian states. By the 1930s, the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, and even Great
Britain recognized the value of ongoing international information campaigns.29 After the Second World War, the Truman administration success29. Moscow ªrst used radio propaganda in 1929. Britain launched its BBC Empire Service in 1932.
The Nazis began regular international radio broadcasts in 1938. By contrast, America’s short-lived
Committee on Public Information (CPI) during World War I, led by George Creel and staffed by people ranging from Walter Lippmann to Edward Bernays, sought “to make a world of friends and well-
15
Yarrow
fully argued that sharing information promoted peace and that a permanent
information service was necessary.30 The VOA radio network, established in
1942 and broadcasting in 40 languages by the time Japan surrendered, was
preserved after the war.31 Other limited public diplomacy activities were consolidated in the State Department’s Ofªce of International Information and
Cultural Affairs in 1946.32 The beginning of the Cold War in 1946–1947 resulted in the institutionalization and sweeping expansion of U.S. propaganda
efforts, with the ªrst broadcasts to the Soviet Union beginning in February
1947.
Even at this stage, however, intense domestic disputes continued about
the propriety, goals, and content of U.S. propaganda. Many questioned
whether a democracy, which by deªnition permitted divergent opinions,
should be disseminating a single “line” about America.33 Truman, Eisenhower, John F. Kennedy, and ofªcials at the public diplomacy agencies bewishers for the United States.” Rawnsley, Radio Diplomacy and Propaganda, p. 7. Similarly, the equally
ephemeral Ofªce of War Information under Elmer Davis in World War II was seen as a wartime need
established largely in response to the much more developed propaganda activities of America’s wartime
adversaries. The United States occasionally engaged in other efforts to present itself to the world prior
to the late 1940s—such as its displays at the 1892 Columbian Exposition and other world’s fairs and
through the activities of private foundations such as the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace—but these were episodic at best.
30. Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, p. 24; and Richard D.
KcKinsey, Interview with Edward W. Barrett, 9 July 1974, in Edward W. Barrett Oral History Files,
HSTL (hereinafter referred to as Barrett Interview, 9 July 1974).
31. Dizard, The Strategy of Truth, pp. 70–71.
32. Immediately after the war, Truman placed the information services under the Interim International Information Service of the State Department, under Archibald MacLeish. See Ronald I. Rubin,
The Objectives of the U.S. Information Agency: Controversies and Analysis (New York: Praeger, 1966),
pp. 107–108.
33. Belmonte, “Selling Capitalism,” pp. 109–112. In 1946, U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union
Averell Harriman argued that the United States should tout its virtues rather than attack the Soviet
government. His successor, Walter Bedell Smith countered that the United States should unequivocally denounce the Soviet dictatorship. Indeed, propagandists and their political masters were torn
between combating “Commie lies” and attacking “Soviet slave labor,” and touting the virtues of
American freedom and democracy or, increasingly, America’s prosperity, economic growth, and “classlessness.” Senator McCarthy accused America’s propaganda apparatus of being inªltrated with Communists, whereas others argued that it was not anti-Communist enough and too honest about American faults. Others debated whether public diplomacy should be targeted solely at leaders and elites in
other countries or aimed at mass audiences. Still others, including congressional leaders such as Senator Lyndon Johnson, questioned the effectiveness of U.S. propaganda and whether the funds appropriated were a waste of money. Secretary of State George Marshall, for one, opposed the idea of U.S.
propaganda, arguing that “the important thing is to have people believe implicitly what we say.”
Quoted in Thomson and Laves, Cultural Relations and U.S. Foreign Policy, p. 64. See also Paul
Hoffman, Peace Can Be Won (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951), p. 135; Leo Bogart, “A Study of
the Operating Assumptions of the U.S. Information Agency,” The Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 19,
No. 4 (Winter 1955–56), pp. 369–379; Dwight D. Eisenhower, Waging Peace: The White House Years,
A Personal Account, 1956–1961 (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1965), pp. 136–138; and Richard T.
Davies, “The American Commitment to Public Propaganda,” Law and Contemporary Problems,
Vol. 31, No. 3 (Summer 1966), pp. 452–457.
16
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
lieved in the efªcacy of U.S. propaganda in recalibrating attitudes about the
United States behind the Iron Curtain and globally.34
In 1946, after seeing the extent of anti-Americanism (“notably in the economic area”), a joint congressional committee recommended that the government assume a larger propaganda role.35 This push, together with the deterioration in U.S.-Soviet relations by 1947, spurred Congress to pass the
Smith-Mundt Act in January 1948 to “promote better understanding of
the United States,” bringing VOA under the State Department’s new Ofªce
of International Information and Educational Exchange with a considerably
expanded budget and staff.36 The legislation called for funding and disseminating information about the United States through publications, print, and
broadcast media, motion pictures, and information centers.
In the late 1940s, U.S. information policy leaders successfully argued that
the United States should take the high road, presenting a “full and fair” version of the facts in response to the “lies” of Soviet propaganda.37 Truman’s
34. Harry S. Truman, “Statement by the President on the Voice of America,” 5 April 1951, in John T.
Woolley and Gerhard Peters, The American Presidency Project, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/
?pid?14053 (hereinafter referred to as TAPP, with corresponding URL); Eisenhower, Waging Peace,
pp. 132, 637; “Policy Statements,” Agency History Program Subject Files, Box 5, Record Group (RG)
306 (Records of the United States Information Agency), in U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); and “The Eisenhower Statement of the USIA Mission,” in Agency History Program Subject Files, Box 5, RG 306, in NARA; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks to the Staff of the
U.S. Information Agency,” 10 November 1953, in TAPP, http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid
?9758; Dwight D. Eisenhower, “Remarks at Ceremony Marking the Tenth Anniversary of the SmithMundt Act,” 27 January 1958, in TAPP online:at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid?11196;
John F. Kennedy, “Remarks on the 20th Anniversary of the Voice of America,” 26 February 1962, in
TAPP online:at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid?9075; and John F. Kennedy, “Remarks Recorded for the Opening of a USIA Transmitter in Greenville, NC,” 8 February 1963, in TAPP online:
at http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid?9551. See also Barrett Interview, 9 July 1974; “Memo
from Karl Ettinger to John Sherman, Nov. 25, 1951,” Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 1, Staff
Member and Ofªce Files, in HSTL; “Memorandum from Mallory Browne to the Director, Feb. 12,
1952,” Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 3, Staff Member and Ofªce Files, in HSTL; USIA
Alumni Association, United States Information Agency: A Commemoration—Telling America’s Story to
the World, 1953–1999. n.d., p. 30; L. John Martin, “Effectiveness of International Propaganda,” Annals of the Academy of Political and Social Science, November 1971, pp. 61–70; and Wilson Dizard, Jr.,
“Telling America’s Story,” American Heritage, Vol. 54, No. 4 (August/September 2003), pp. 41–48.
However, scholars and propagandists themselves have questioned how to gauge the effectiveness of a
publication, a broadcast, or other propaganda. Many scholars believe that exposure and the familiarity
created by propaganda generally lead to more positive views in target audiences and that messages that
appeal to the aspirations or deeper values of an audience tend to be most effective.
35. Barrett Interview, 9 July 1974.
36. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 5; and Thomson and Laves, Cultural Relations and U.S. Foreign
Policy, pp. 66–67.
37. Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battles, pp. 74–76; Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas, pp. 170, 149; and Hinds and Windt, The Cold War as Rhetoric, p. 146. This approach
partially reºected an older, idealistic faith in the power of the truth and represented continuity with
World War II norms for VOA programming, which, in turn, took many of its cues from the professed
objectivity of the older BBC. At the same time, the United States attempted to use the newly created
UNESCO to carry a U.S.-inºuenced message of freedom and democracy to the world in the late
17
Yarrow
“Campaign of Truth,” launched in the spring of 1950, reinforced the juxtaposition of America as the bastion of freedom, democracy, and civil liberties
with a Soviet Union characterized by tyranny and slavery. Less than a month
after Senator Joseph McCarthy’s pivotal February 1950 speech in Wheeling,
West Virginia, in which he alleged widespread Communist inªltration of the
U.S. State Department, Truman called for much more aggressive propaganda
efforts. “We must make ourselves known as we really are.”38
With these words, Truman and the liberal Democrats he had appointed
as assistant secretaries of state overseeing the information programs—William
Benton and Edward Barrett—committed U.S. propaganda to highlight
America’s democratic ideals and deªned the ideological battle of the Cold War
as one between “freedom and human dignity versus slavery and tyranny.”39
Benton, a cofounder of the Benton & Bowles advertising agency, who was
also head of Encyclopedia Britannica and an inºuential early CED leader,
helped establish the United Nations Educational, Scientiªc, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the Fulbright program while assistant secretary of
state from 1945 to 1949. He brieºy served in the Senate and was defeated
largely because of a vicious smear campaign by McCarthy. As a senator,
Benton helped win some of the early postwar appropriations for U.S. propaganda.
Barrett, who had served in the Ofªce of War Information during World
War II and was a Newsweek editor before and after his government service,
was assistant secretary from 1950 to 1952. He sought to beef up VOA programming, making ªlms with actors such as Henry Fonda, Rock Hudson,
and Ronald Reagan for foreign distribution, as well as producing text for overseas editorial writers. A Psychological Strategy Board (PSB) was set up in
1951 to coordinate the propaganda activities of various agencies. Ofªcial
funding for overseas information activities was doubled in 1951–1953 to
$170 million, and stafªng was increased from 7,500 to 13,000. Howland
1940s. The Truman Doctrine, enunciated in March 1947, cast the Cold War as a struggle between
“freedom” and “slavery.” Indeed, some have argued that the reason that New Deal and Democratic
Party liberals bought into the Cold War in the late 1940s had less to do with national security arguments than with it being a ªght for fundamental democratic principles.
38. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas, p. 73; and Krugler, The Voice of America and the Domestic Propaganda Battle, p. 96.
39. Edward Barrett, Truth Is Our Weapon, (New York: Funk & Wagnall’s Co., 1953), p. ix; Barrett Interview, 9 July 1974; “Report on Social Science Research in Cold War Operations,” 11 April 1952,
Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 3, in HSTL; Memorandum by Mallory Browne to the Director, 2 February 1952, Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 3, in HSTL; and Michael Nelson, War
of the Black Heavens: The Battles of Western Broadcasting in the Cold War (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997), p. 60. Eisenhower and Benton also urged the creation of an independent propaganda agency, calling for a “Marshall Plan of ideas.”
18
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
Sargeant, who later ran Radio Liberty, served after Barrett, from 1952 to
1953.40
These themes of U.S. democracy opposing Communist “slavery” in the
name of “freedom” were mirrored in the inºuential April 1950 explication of
U.S. Cold War objectives, NSC 68. The document, approved by the National
Security Council (NSC), spoke of defending “our society’s principles of freedom, tolerance, the importance of the individual, and the supremacy of reason.”41 At the same time that U.S. ideals were to be highlighted, U.S. propaganda was given license to wage vigorous attacks on the policies, beliefs, and
accomplishments of the Soviet Union and other Communist states.
The early 1950s, however, were trying and confusing times for U.S. propagandists. McCarthy’s anti-Communist crusade pushed the Truman administration toward a more aggressive posture. But the senator from Wisconsin
also charged that VOA and the USIA—established by President Eisenhower
in 1953 to consolidate propaganda activities—had been inªltrated by Communists.
When Eisenhower created the USIA under the authority of the SmithMundt Act, all information programs except educational exchanges were
brought under the aegis of the new agency and separated from the State Department. He also established an interagency Operations Coordinating
Board, which absorbed Truman’s PSB and brought together Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), NSC, USIA, State Department, and other representatives. Theodore Streibert was appointed the USIA’s ªrst director (he served
until 1956), and a private National Committee for an Adequate Overseas Information Program, headed by the public relations Edward L. Bernays, was
established to advise the agency. Eisenhower was a strong supporter of the
U.S. propaganda effort, calling its value “incalculable” and urging that government support be “generous.”42
A long-suppressed 1953 study of the objectives of U.S. propaganda
found deep divisions over several issues—whether to focus on countering Soviet propaganda or to “tell the truth” about the United States, whether to ªght
Communism or make people more friendly toward the United States,
whether to serve as a “mirror or show window” for the United States and, if a
40. Barrett Interview, 9 July 1974; “The Voice of America,” 4 April 1952, Psychological Strategy
Board Files, Boxes 1 and 3, HSTL; and Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, pp. 48, 58–59.
41. Rawnsley, ed., Cold War Propaganda in the 1950s, p. 13.
42. Eisenhower, Waging Peace, pp. 132, 637; “Operations Coordinating Board,” September 1955,
Historical Program Subject Files, 1953–2000, Box 2, RG 306, in NARA; Eisenhower, “Remarks to
the Staff of the U.S. Information Agency”; and Eisenhower, “Remarks at Ceremony Marking the
Tenth Anniversary of the Smith-Mundt Act.”
19
Yarrow
“show window,” which themes to portray. The 1953 study found that USIA
staff members suggested projecting themes that Americans are “nice, generous, democratic, freedom-loving, spiritual, cultured, successful economically,
and peaceful.” At the same time, they were ambivalent about emphasizing
America’s material wealth, thinking that materialism might be equated with
immorality or invite envy rather than admiration.43
McCarthy’s attacks and other Republican criticisms of VOA as ineffective
led to massive budget cuts in 1953 and a decline in morale. A March 1953 directive called for VOA broadcasts to stop directly countering Soviet propaganda and return to “straightforward, factual, [and] forceful” reporting. Efforts to “roll back” Communism were put on the back burner after Stalin’s
death in 1953, Khrushchev’s post-1956 liberalization, and the ªasco of the
1956 Hungarian uprising during which some Hungarians apparently believed
that the United States would come to their support.44
However, the supposedly private Radio Free Europe (RFE), which was
launched with CIA funding on May Day 1951 under the aegis of Gen. Lucius
Clay’s Crusade for Freedom, and Radio Liberation (later renamed Radio Liberty), established in 1953, broadcast a more stridently anti-Communist message to the Soviet bloc.45
43. Eisenhower established the President’s Committee on International Information Activities under
William Jackson immediately after taking ofªce. See U.S. President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad Records, Box 26, in DDEL; C. D. Jackson Papers, Box 62, in DDEL; and Leo Bogart,
Premises for Propaganda: The United States Information Agency’s Operating Assumptions in the Cold War
(New York: Free Press, 1976), pp. 4, 12, 16, 69–90. This study was not published commercially until
23 years later. However, the administration’s ambivalence about emphasizing America’s material
wealth, noted by Belmonte, clearly changed in the mid-to-late 1950s. See Belmonte, p. 334.
44. Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 83; and Peter Grose, Operation Rollback: America’s Secret War behind the Iron Curtain (Boston: Houghton Mifºin Company, 200), pp. 188, 206, 211.
45. See Sig Mickelson, America’s Other Voices: The Story of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty (New
York: Praeger, 1983); Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 3, in HSTL; C. D. Jackson Papers, Box
79, in DDE Library; Nelson, War of the Black Heavens, pp. 55–56; and Gene Sosin, Sparks of Liberty:
An Insider’s Memoir of Radio Liberty (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999),
pp. 2, 16. RFE, which claimed to be supported by “millions” of individual donations, had 1,100 employees based in Western Germany, broadcast aggressively anti-communist messages tailored to each
of the Soviet satellites, and also distinguished itself from VOA by seeking a popular, rather than a more
intellectual audience. The National Committee for a Free Europe also used balloons to drop millions
of anti-communist leaºets in Eastern Europe in the early 1950s. It was only in the early 1970s that the
CIA funding of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty was acknowledged. Allen W. Dulles, Eisenhower’s CIA Director, was the driving force behind both stations, which regularly denounced “the system of terror, forces, and all forms of slave labor” behind the Iron Curtain. C. D. Jackson—a longtime Time Inc. executive who was publisher of Fortune and later Life and was brieºy an Eisenhower
speechwriter and special assistant for international affairs—headed the Free Europe Committee,
which ostensibly supported Radio Free Europe. Jackson believed that the same messages about the
American system advocated by his boss, Henry Luce, and colleague John Jessup, were ideal for selling
the United States overseas. The American Committee for Freedom of the Peoples of the Soviet Union,
or Amcomlib, also was led by journalists such as Reader’s Digest senior editor Eugene Lyons and Time
Inc. vice president Allen Grover.
20
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
Only with the eclipse of McCarthyism in the mid–1950s did the USIA
begin to grow. Under Director Theodore Streibert, the agency inaugurated a
campaign to deluge Communist countries with magazines, pamphlets, exhibits and trade fairs, radio and TV shows, and sports teams and other delegations. By the late 1950s, the USIA had 1,200 overseas information ofªcers
and libraries in 162 foreign cities, and was distributing millions of pamphlets
and magazines (including Free World to Asia and America Illustrated to the Soviet Union), showing educational ªlms to millions of non-Americans, and
had mounted dozens of large-scale trade fairs.46
The tension between honest reporting and putting America’s best face
forward continued into the early 1960s as Kennedy’s USIA director, Edward
R. Murrow, proclaimed that “the truth must be our guide, but dreams must
be our goal.”47 The Kennedy administration upgraded the propaganda function by placing Murrow on the NSC. This signaled a recognition that U.S.
propaganda needed to be more closely tied to overall foreign policy and that
political decision-making needed to consider the propaganda consequences of
policy decisions. In addition, in 1963 the USIA’s mission was restated from
“informing” to “inºuencing” public attitudes in other nations.
From Liberal Idealism to “People’s Capitalism”
During the late 1940s, idealism about American identity was fueled and reinforced by a number of factors. The country had successfully led a world war
to destroy fascism and bring the blessings of freedom and democracy to Europe and Asia. It had led efforts to create in its own image a United Nations as
the linchpin of a rational, democratic world order. It was the benevolent benefactor helping to rebuild a destroyed Europe and Japan. In the early stages of
the Cold War, the Truman Doctrine posed the struggle as one between Communist “terror” and “oppression” and a U.S. “way of life based on the will of
the majority, distinguished by free institutions, representative government,
46. Theodore Streibert Oral History and U.S. President’s Committee on Information Activities
Abroad, Box 14, DDE Library; Dizard, The Strategy of Truth, pp. 58, 60, 96; Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 138; Robert H. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty: Exhibiting American Culture Abroad in the 1950s
(Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1997); and Nelson, War of the Black Heavens,
pp. 58–59, 101–102. George Allen, who headed the agency during the last three years of the Eisenhower administration, put increased emphasis on cultural programming after the ªrst U.S.-Soviet cultural agreement was signed in January 1958. Likewise, Henry Loomis, who ran VOA from 1958 to
1965, emphasized objective, credible reporting.
47. USIA Alumni Association, United States Information Agency: A Commemoration, p. 30; and Historical Collection: Biographic Files Relating to USIA Directors and Other Senior Ofªcials, 1953–
2000, Box 15, RG 306, in NARA.
21
Yarrow
free elections, guarantees of individual freedom, freedom of speech and religion and from political oppression.”48 Moreover, despite political setbacks for
the more liberal wing of the New Deal coalition, many Americans looked
fondly on Roosevelt’s idealistic vision of a polity girded by his “Four Freedoms.”
The liberal, or more idealistic, view of the Cold War did not succumb to
a more hard-edged Realpolitik until after the consolidation of Soviet rule in
Eastern Europe in the late 1940s, the 1949 Berlin airlift, the 1949 “fall” of
China, the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950, and the subsequent rise of
McCarthyism. However, the national image projected by opinion leaders in
the late 1940s was deªned by more than the deepening conºict with the Soviet bloc. Against this backdrop, America’s written propaganda of the late
1940s should be considered.
One of the best sources of written propaganda during this period is
Amerika, the glossy, Russian-language monthly magazine published for Soviet
distribution by the State Department’s Ofªce of International Information
and Cultural Affairs (USIA’s precursor) from late 1945 to 1952. The magazine and its successor, America Illustrated, are good proxies for U.S. print propaganda because the money invested and production values of both magazines were unusually high, and they were aimed at the heart of the
Communist empire, the Soviet Union. Both had glossy color front and rear
covers, with a dozen or more feature articles.
Although the 55 issues of Amerika did not have a set format or quota of
certain types of stories, the generally 72-page, 11-by-14-inch magazine featured varying combinations of stories about American political institutions,
leaders and history, American arts and culture, a proªle of a state or region,
and Americana, with a smattering of other subjects. A content analysis of 157
articles in fourteen representative issues reveals that 43 percent were devoted
to upbeat, Reader’s Digest–style stories about American life, ranging from fashion, sports, and hobbies to motherhood, games, and holidays. A striking 26
percent were devoted to the arts, pointedly asserting that the United States
had a vibrant cultural life. About 12 percent focused on America’s democratic
traditions and ideals. Another 14 percent addressed science and technology
topics, ranging from advances in medicine to atomic energy. Just 6 percent
were devoted to economic topics, and, with two or three exceptions that took
a bigger-picture look at the nation’s economy, these tended to focus on particular industries.49
48. Quoted in Hinds and Windt, The Cold War as Rhetoric, p. 146. These were themes with which
Benton and Barrett were particularly comfortable. See Psychological Strategy Board Files, Box 3, in
HSTL; and Barrett Interview, 9 July 1974.
49. Publications about the United States, 1945–1999, Entry 1053, America Illustrated Magazine,
22
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
The 74-page issue no. 10, published in 1946, is a good illustration.
Stories describing and emphasizing U.S. ideals and political institutions included “The Making of a Law in the U.S. Congress,” a proªle of “George
Washington, Father of His Country” by Henry Steele Commager, and Truman’s address to the United Nations. Cultural stories, which always loomed
large—perhaps out of a sense of idealism, perhaps from a sense that Russians
in the USSR were particularly interested in the arts and scholarship—included stories about Tanglewood, the John Lomax Archive of American Folk
Song, U.S. business patronage of the arts, and anthropologist Margaret Mead,
as well as a Faulkner short story. Stories that can be classiªed as Americana included features on the American drugstore, the Boy Scouts, and an ice show.
Articles on a progressive school in Illinois, U.S. airplane engineers, the mass
production of men’s suits, and the affordable “Small House” go somewhat beyond the rubric of “Americana” to subtly emphasize particular virtues of
American life—its liberal and diverse educational system, its technological capabilities, its industrial capabilities, and, in a modest way, the economic wellbeing of its citizens. Additional articles on chess in the United States and Russian language training in American schools seem geared to Soviet citizens’ interests.50
Liberal Idealism
An eclectic mix of subjects broadly characterized most issues of Amerika from
1946 to 1952. However, what is most striking is the emphasis given to Ameri1945–1952, Boxes 40–41, RG 306, in NARA (hereinafter referred to as America Illustrated Archive,
with appropriate box number).
50. “The Making of a Law in the U.S. Congress,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 4–9, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “George Washington: Father of His Country,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946),
pp. 38–41, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “President Truman’s Address at Opening of General
Assembly of the United Nations, October 23, 1946,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 2–3, in America
Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “Tanglewood: Music Center in the Mountains,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946),
pp. 10–11, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “John Lomax and the Folk Songs of America,”
Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 47–49, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “Margaret Mead: Student of Primitive Societies,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 22–25, in America Illustrated Archive, Box
40; William Faulkner, “Two Soldiers,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 66–69, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “The American Drugstore,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 58–61, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 40; “Boy Scouts of America,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 18–21, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 40; “Theater on Ice,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 16–17, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “The Winnetka Schools,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 36–37, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 40; “Flying High,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 50–53, in America Illustrated Archive,
Box 40; “Factory Production of Men’s Suits,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 42–46, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “The Small House,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 26–31, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “The Soviet Union in American Education,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946),
pp. 70–72, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; and “Chess,” Amerika, Issue 10 (1946), pp. 62–65,
in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40.
23
Yarrow
can political ideals and principles. These articles in Amerika took various
forms. The processes and institutions of American democracy were a recurrent subject. From 1946 to 1951, seven articles appeared that described how
Congress, the courts, and the presidency functioned in the United States.51
Another 1951 article presented a broad paean to the American system called
“The Strength of Democracy.” The authors described how “in a democracy,
ideas compete, and democratic society constantly absorbs and digests the best
ideas, responding with the necessary changes to meet economic, social and
political needs.” They added, “And democracy means friction—a state of
fruitful tension between freedom and order, cooperation and protest.”52
America’s great political leaders and their beliefs were another common
feature. The emphasis was heavy on the country’s Founders and their ideals,
with articles on Washington, Jefferson, James Madison, and Benjamin Franklin. Abraham Lincoln was the only later ªgure to be proªled.53 A 1947 biography of Jefferson proclaimed, “Many of the rights and privileges Americans enjoy today stem directly from the wisdom and foresight of Thomas Jefferson.”
Jefferson’s ideas were also described in a 1946 article on the Declaration of Independence.54
America’s freedoms were also the subject of a number of speciªc articles.
Freedom of the press, freedom of worship, free scientiªc inquiry, and civil
rights were subjects of six articles from 1946 to 1951. Two articles extolled
“the story of journalism in a free society,” and another described John Peter
Zenger’s “ªrst major victory for a free press in the American colonies.”55 The
freedom of worship story focused on Roger Williams, whom the author described as “the ªrst American to organize a political community based on absolute political liberty.” The article went on to say that “more than 100 years
51. These included such articles as “Making of Law in the U.S. Congress”; “The Role of the Courts,”
Amerika, Issue 14 (1946), pp. 2–7, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41; “John Marshall and the
Powers of the U.S. Supreme Court,” Amerika, Issue 14 (1946), pp. 7–9, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41; “Small Town Lawyer,” Amerika, Issue 14 (1946), pp. 10–13, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 41; “Electing a President,” Amerika, Issue 23 (1948), pp. 2–11, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41; “The Little Parliaments,” Amerika, Issue 40 (1950), pp. 2–9, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 41; and “A Congressman Is Elected,” Amerika, Issue 53 (1951), pp. 2–11, in America
Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
52. “The Strength of Democracy,” Amerika, Issue 55 (1951), p. 40, in America Illustrated Archive,
Box 41.
53. “George Washington: Father of His Country”; “Abraham Lincoln,” Amerika, Issue 12 (1946),
pp. 25–29, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “Benjamin Franklin: Citizen and Scientist,”
Amerika, Issue 20 (1947), pp. 10–12, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “James Madison,”
Amerika, Issue 26 (1948), frontispiece, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40.
54. “The Fourth of July,” Amerika, Issue 12 (1946), p. 72, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40.
55. See, for example, “Newspapers in America,” Amerika, Issue 13 (1946), pp. 2–4, and “A City
Daily—The Indianapolis Star,” pp. 4–7, in America Illustrated archive, Box 40; “Glimpses of American
History,” Amerika, Issue 40 (1950), pp. 48–49, in America Illustrated archive, Box 41.
24
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
later, his ideas on liberty of conscience, separation of church and state, and
representative government were incorporated into the Declaration of Independence.”56 Freedom of thought and inquiry were described as American
virtues in an article by scientist Robert Oppenheimer, who argued that
scientiªc progress was predicated on a “tolerant, open-minded and cooperative community of men.”57 The nation’s commitment to civil rights for all—a
subject on which the Soviet Union frequently attacked the United States—
was presented in an article on “The Negro in American Life.”58
The U.S. global role in promoting democracy and freedom also was frequently emphasized. Not only were early issues in 1946 and 1947 oriented to
articles on the heroic war effort, but at least four features about U.S. activities
in the United Nations appeared in Amerika in the late 1940s.59
One of the most interesting presentations of American ideals can be
found in the most elaborate series ever produced for the magazine—a 7-part,
73-page series called “A Brief Survey of American History,” which appeared in
issues 24–30 in 1948 and 1949. In part one, the article discussed “the interplay between the varied ideas, customs, and national characteristics of these
European peoples and the environment of the new country [that] resulted in
a vigorous, pioneering mode of life which was uniquely American.” While
emphasizing American individualism, the article traced the origins of “free
public education, the principle of religious liberty, freedom of the press, and
popular representation.” The second article in the series deªned the American
Revolution as being about the country’s abiding principles of “individual liberty, dignity, and self-government.”60
The emphasis in Amerika on describing the United States in terms of its
56. “Roger Williams,” Amerika, Issue 45 (1950), pp. 28–29, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
57. Robert Oppenheimer, “Science and Freedom,” Amerika, Issue 53 (1951), pp. 14–15, in America
Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
58. “The Negro in American Life,” Amerika, Issue 50 (1951), pp. 2–15, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
59. Early articles on the United Nations included “President Truman’s Address at the Opening of
General Assembly of United Nations”; “The U.N Builds Its Home,” Amerika, Issue 33 (1949),
pp. 50–53, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41; “The World Health Organization,” Amerika, Issue
44 (1950), pp. 2–6, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41; and “The United Nations Builds,”
Amerika, Issue 45 (1949), pp. 2–9, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
60. “A Brief Survey of American History Part 1,” Amerika, Issue 24 (1948), pp. 2–13, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “A Brief Survey of American History Part 2,” Amerika, Issue 25 (1948),
pp. 38–49, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “A Brief Survey of American History Part 3,”
Amerika, Issue 26 (1948), pp. 63–71, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “A Brief Survey of American History Part 4,” Amerika, Issue 27 (1948), pp. 28–35, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “A
Brief Survey of American History Part 5,” Amerika, Issue 28 (1948),, pp. 18–27, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 40; “A Brief Survey of American History Part 6, Amerika, Issue 29 (1949), pp. 40–49, in
America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; and “A Brief Survey of American History Part 7,” Amerika, Issue
30 (1949), pp. 48–59, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40.
25
Yarrow
political principles was mirrored in some of the pamphlets and booklets produced by American propagandists in the early 1950s for distribution elsewhere in the world. For example, “The March of Freedom,” a 1952 booklet
developed by the advertising agency McCann-Erickson, featured the cover
image of a hand clenched to a torch, and described the Declaration of Independence and the UN Declaration of Human Rights as the culmination of a
“march of freedom” that began with Hammurabi’s code. “Liberty in the
Thought of Three Great Men” (1951) paired Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt
with Juarez, Bolivar, or San Martin—depending on the Latin American target
audience—with Franklin Roosevelt declaring, “freedom means the supremacy
of human rights everywhere.” A rather turgid “Primer for Americans” (1952),
which was printed in Arabic, French, Spanish, and Hungarian, listed 41 rights
and principles gleaned by ad agency Young & Rubicam from America’s
founding documents, the golden rule, and common sense.61
At the same time that many pamphlets and articles extolled America’s
democratic virtues in the early 1950s, many also directly and scathingly attacked Communism as the antithesis of American freedom. Titles included
“Inside Soviet Slave Labor Camps” (1953), “It’s a Great Life Comrades”
(n.d.), “Magniªcent Accomplishments of the Soviets” (1951), “Proof of
Guilt” (n.d.), “Proof of Soviet Slave Labor” (1953), “Swindled by the Communists” (1953), and “Red Star over Asia” (1952), whose cover featured a Stalin-like ªgure with a hammer-and-sickle insignia on his sleeve bludgeoning a
man lying on his back.62
Although American freedoms—and their purported opposite in the form
of Soviet Communism—loomed large in U.S. propaganda of the late 1940s
and early 1950s, how were economic subjects treated during this period? The
number of economic stories in Amerika paled in comparison to the number of
articles about U.S. political principles, the homey beneªcence of American
life, or even the arts—as well as in comparison to the number of economic
stories that appeared in the late 1950s in America Illustrated.
Signiªcantly, the articles in Amerika adopted a pre–consumer society focus on U.S. industry rather than looking at the dimensions or consequences
61. Pamphlets and leaºets produced from 1953 to 1960, Boxes 5, 7, Entry 1252, RG 306-99-008, in
NARA.
62. These hard-hitting attacks on Communism and the Soviet Union were produced for foreign consumption during a period when the most virulent attacks on Communism were taking place domestically. During the heyday of McCarthyism from 1950 to 1953, U.S. readers were treated to more articles demonizing the Soviet Union and Communism in Reader’s Digest than during any other period in
the magazine’s long history. See Joanne P. Sharp, Condensing the Cold War: “Reader’s Digest” and American Identity (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2000), p. 84.
26
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
of mass prosperity. These few industry articles included ones on packaging,
transportation, telephones, and steel.63
Nonetheless, broader articles about U.S. economic conditions did appear—albeit rarely, and more toward the end of the period. On two or three
occasions, high and rising living standards were mentioned. One of the ªrst
articles, “Economic Stability in the United States,” discussed the government’s responsibility for individual “security” and economic “stability.”64 The
implication was that Americans enjoyed economic security but not prosperity.
Similarly, an article on “Workers’ Wages and the Cost of Living, 1950–51”
defensively described how “weekly wages have kept pace with the rising cost
of living” at a time of “cutbacks necessitated by the increased defense
efforts.”65
More intriguing are three articles that appeared in 1950 and 1951,
which—for the ªrst time—began to tout America’s “high standard of living”
and a variant of capitalism that was creating an allegedly “classless society.” All
three describe America’s new prosperity, its foundations in a new capitalism
that emphasized business-labor collaboration, and a narrowing of class lines.
For example, a Frederick Lewis Allen essay reprinted from Harper’s described
changes in American life in the century since 1850, noting “how conveniences totally lacking 100 years ago are taken for granted today, [and] how
the gap between rich and poor, in living standards and cultural patterns, has
narrowed.”66 Another article, with the provocative title, “American Labor and
the Classless Society,” emphasized the harmonious partnership between business and labor: “Under capitalism as it has developed in America, both business and labor unions see increased production and the ever wider distribution of goods as the most essential ingredients of a successful economy; both
recognize the fallacy of Marx’ class-struggle formula as applied to American
capitalism.” Yet, the author harkened back to American political principles to
explain the economy’s success: “The American Revolution and the government it gave rise to made possible an orderly evolution toward a society in
which the individual has an opportunity to develop according to his talents
63. “Packaging,” Amerika, Issue 14 (1946), pp. 62–72, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; “Transportation and Progress,” Amerika, Issue 17 (1947), pp. 2–9, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40;
“Person to Person,” Amerika, Issue 20 (1947), pp. 2–9, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40; and
“Steel,” Amerika, Issue 30 (1949), pp. 2–9, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40.
64. “Ensuring Stability in the United States,” Amerika, Issue 15 (1947), pp. 2–6, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 40.
65. “Workers’ Wages and the Cost of Living, 1950–51,” Amerika, Issue 55 (1951), pp. 15–19, in
America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
66. Frederick Lewis Allen, “The Big Change,” Amerika, No. 49 (1951), pp. 2–11, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
27
Yarrow
and achievements.”67 Neither article elevated prosperity to be a deªning characteristic of mid-twentieth-century American life—instead seeing it as a consequence of America’s political system and of a long economic and political
evolution.
In contrast, a 1950 article by economist Robert Heilbroner stands out in
foreshadowing the frequent celebratory articles about high and rising living
standards that begin to appear in U.S. propaganda in the mid-1950s.
Heilbroner used the familiar journalistic convention of ªrst describing how
national living standards had risen (by 40 percent since 1939, with wages up
by 75 percent) and then describing how that translated into the life of “factory worker John Winters” and his family. Noting that the United States was
more prosperous than ever, he emphasized:
Such facts document the greatest economic well-being America has ever known.
Perhaps the most striking feature of this postwar prosperity is that it is more
widely and evenly shared than ever before: there are fewer rich, fewer poor, and
more people in the middle. This in turn has broadened mass markets, thus giving a new stability and strength to the economic system of the United States.68
The Transition
The shift to propaganda messages focusing on American prosperity began to
get under way early in the Eisenhower administration, in 1953 and 1954,
after the Korean War and the worst of McCarthyism had ended, and as
propagandists at the newly formed USIA started to pull back from the strident anti-Communism characteristic of 1950–1954. Amerika stopped publishing after 1952 because of Soviet efforts to stop circulation, and its successor magazine for the Soviet Union, America Illustrated, did not begin
publishing until four years later, after the political climate improved in the
wake of Iosif Stalin’s death and Nikita Khrushchev’s liberalization.69 During
these transition years, a key source of written propaganda was Free World,
USIA’s magazine geared to “the free nations of Asia” that began publishing in
1952. This 46-page, 8-by-10-inch, black-and-white monthly was put out by
the USIA Operations Division and printed in Manila. Unlike Amerika or
67. Frederick Martin Stern, “American Labor and the Classless Society,” Amerika, Issue 54 (1951),
pp. 20–21, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
68. Robert Heilbroner, “Wages and Prices in the United States,” Amerika, Issue 46 (1950), pp. 2–7, in
America Illustrated Archive, Box 41.
69. Yale Richmond, Cultural Exchange and the Cold War: Raising the Iron Curtain (University Park:
Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003).
28
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
America Illustrated, all but one or two of the articles each month were about
East Asian subjects. Covers regularly featured color photos of Asians in some
sort of “native” dress.
Each issue, however, also included at least one feature story about the
United States and one other U.S.-focused article, usually about a prominent
American. These ranged from stories about Henry Ford and Alexander Graham Bell to baseball player Roy Campanella. Early articles such as “The
Meaning of American Labor Day” contrasted American workers’ “high wages
[and] good working conditions” with the “slave laborers behind the Iron Curtain.” “How a U.S. Labor Union Works” described how “unions help create a
strong democracy.”70 Whereas these articles touted Americans’ ability to “live
decently,” they did not yet revel in the country’s growing abundance, and
their arguments were still couched in terms of the sharp contrast between
American democratic ideals and the evils of Soviet oppression.
Transitional articles also appeared in 1954. Discussions of American liberties still appeared alongside articles about American prosperity, and discussions of abundance often were couched in terms of its underpinnings in
American political freedoms. For example, the article “America 1900–1950:
Fifty Years Brings New Concept of Good Living for Everyone” described the
country’s transformation during the preceding 50 years in terms of “the goal
of American democracy” being a “better life and equal opportunity for all.”
“Social Welfare in the United States” spoke of U.S. beneªcence in idealistic
terms: “As did their forefathers, Americans today rally to the aid of those in
need. . . . Americans are good neighbors—to the family across the street, and
to the friends across the seas.” In both stories, Americans’ economic wellbeing was still largely described as a function of a political system founded on
ideals of freedom, democracy, and equality.71
Articles emphasizing American freedoms still predominated. A 1954 issue of Free World printed a statement by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles
describing U.S. policy as “loyal to . . . the truths expressed in the Declaration
of Independence” and a speech by Vice President Richard Nixon during a recent Asian trip, titled “We Are All Brothers in Our Hearts,” emphasizing
American “liberties.” A remarkable story on the Brown v. Board of Education
decision, titled “The Greatest Success Story in the World,” celebrated how “at
70. “The Meaning of American Labor Day,” Free World, Vol. 2, No. 10 (1953), pp. 42–45, Free World
Archive, RG 306, in NARA (hereinafter referred to as Free World Archive); and “How a U.S. Labor
Union Works,” Vol. 3, No. 3 (1954), pp. 34–37, in Free World Archive.
71. “America 1900–1950: Fifty Years Brings a New Concept of Good Living for Everyone,” Free
World, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1954), pp. 21–24, in Free World Archive; and “Social Welfare in the United
States,” Free World, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1954), pp. 12–15, in Free World Archive.
29
Yarrow
no time in the history of the world have a people risen from slavery to equal,
responsible citizens and free men in 89 years.”72
Also commonly appearing in Free World were testimonials by Asian visitors to the United States. Two 1955 articles show that such items were intended to convey American ideals. “So This Is America!”—the story of a visitor from Saigon—gushed, “This is America where many cultures have been
translated to ªnd freedom.” In the next issue, a Filipino student wrote in “I
Was an American for Three Months”: “Democracy [is] something they cherish like a rare treasure. To them democracy is synonymous with America itself.”73
However, just as Heilbroner’s Amerika article foreshadowed a change of
tone, a 1954 article by CED leader and Studebaker chairman Paul Hoffman,
titled “Mutual Capitalism—An American System,” suggested a new way of
deªning America to the world. Picking up a theme that had been gaining currency among liberal opinion leaders in the early-to-mid-1950s, Hoffman
wrote,
One of the deep sources of America’s strength and prosperity that is too little understood both at home and abroad is the unique character of our economic system. . . . It is a new kind of capitalism that beneªts everybody, not just the capitalists. . . . In our mutual capitalism, decisions are made by the many, rather than
the few. . . . There are few have-nots in America . . . [and] most of us are property owners.74
Hoffman, who also headed the Economic Cooperation Administration
that oversaw the Marshall Plan, argued in a 1951 book for a more aggressive
propaganda effort based on a “crystallized” “free world doctrine.” Although
he began by rooting this doctrine in Christ’s Sermon on the Mount and the
Declaration of Independence, he quickly turned to the key selling-point—
“the new, socially conscious capitalism which, in the United States, has been
developed to an extent which the world as a whole little understands; a system
based on widespread ownership, diffusion of initiative, decision and enterprise and an ever-widening distribution of its beneªts.” The heart of the message was that all would be right with the world, and the Cold War would be
72. John Foster Dulles, “A Spirit of Justice,” Free World, Vol. 3, No. 4 (1954), p. 42, in Free World Archive; and “The Greatest Success Story in the World,” Free World, Vol. 3, No. 12 (1954), pp. 2–5, in
Free World Archive.
73. “So This Is America,” Free World, Vol. 4, No. 9 (1955), pp. 32–33, in Free World Archive; and
Ramon A. Cruz, Jr., “I Was an American for Three Months,” Free World, Vol. 4,No. 10 (1955),
pp. 28–31, in Free World Archive.
74. “Mutual Capitalism—An American System,” Free World, Vol. 3, No. 5 (1954), pp. 12–15, in Free
World Archive.
30
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
won, if everyone had a high and rising standard of living as in the United
States.75
People’s Capitalism
Just as business organizations and the media had begun to talk about a
“changed America” and a new capitalist system roughly after the Korean War,
the idea that the United States embodied a “new” capitalism clearly had begun to take root in U.S. propaganda by the mid-1950s. Pamphlets such as
“Meet Some Americans at Work,” “Consumer Capitalism in Action” (1953),
and “The Structure of the American Economy” (1955)—of which millions of
copies were distributed—reºect this change.76 Whereas the former pamphlet
emphasized, still somewhat defensively, that U.S. capitalism had evolved “far
beyond the classical conception of that economic system,” the latter proclaimed, “A new economy is evolving in the U.S. which has no parallel anywhere in the world” either in “magnitude” or in “structure.”77 Although the
ideas had gelled by 1955—as politicians and journalists began to speak effusively of the qualitative and quantitative changes in the American economy—
the propagandists still needed a catchy name for this new order of things.
Although some opinion leaders like Hoffman and New York Stock Exchange President Keith Funston had been batting around the term in the
early 1950s, in 1955 Advertising Council leader T. S. Repplier provided
USIA director Streibert with the outlines of a “people’s capitalism” campaign
that would include print, broadcast, and trade fairs.78 Repplier had spent
much of 1955 evaluating U.S. propaganda efforts on the ground and had
concluded that they were too fair and balanced, too vague, and too focused on
Soviet negatives. What was needed, he concluded, was clear, inspirational ideals that would appeal to the world’s people.79
“Our propaganda “needs to sharpen its ideas” and counter the “unpleasant odor” that the term “capitalism” has in much of the world, Repplier wrote
75. Hoffman, Peace Can Be Won, p. 141.
76. Belmonte, “Selling Capitalism,” p. 113.
77. Pamphlets and leaºets produced between 1953 and 1960, Boxes 2, 8, Entry 1252, RG 306-99008, in NARA.
78. James M. Lambie, Jr., Records, 1952–61, Boxes 17, 23, 31, 38, in DDEL; C. D. Jackson Papers,
Box 95, in DDEL; Hixson, Parting the Curtain, p. 133. Repplier headed the Advertising Council from
its wartime incarnation as the War Advertising Council in 1942 until 1966. The Ad Council maintained close relations with the Truman and Eisenhower administrations, running massive domestic
“public-service” campaigns and frequently advising White House ofªcials on foreign and domestic information policy—what would come to be called, by 2000, “message.”
79. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, p. 49.
31
Yarrow
to Eisenhower. “There still exists an urgent need to make clear that a new economic system has been born—a system which gives more beneªts to more
people than any yet devised—a system I should like to call ‘People’s Capitalism.’” In many ways, the campaign grew out of domestic Ad Council campaigns such as its “American Economic System” and “Future of America”
campaigns in the late 1940s and early 1950s.80
The name played off the Communist use of “people’s” and was also intended to counter Soviet attacks on “Wall Street capitalism.” In “People’s
Capitalism: Man’s Newest Way of Life,” which he wrote to accompany a trial
propaganda exhibition at Washington’s Union Station in February 1956,
Repplier wrote that the United States had accomplished what the Communists only promised: equal comforts and beneªts for workers and bosses.81
“People’s capitalism” had many enthusiasts in high places—from President Eisenhower and Henry Luce to Defense Secretary Charles Wilson, Treasury Secretary George Humphrey, and Commerce Secretary Sinclair Weeks,
as well as among prominent journalists.82 A few critics derided the idea. In a
famous article, “The Nylon War,” the sociologist David Riesman poked fun
at the idea that the United States would win the Cold War by bombing the
USSR with consumer goods.83
From 1956 to 1960, pamphlets, articles, and trade fairs extolling American “people’s capitalism” inundated every country USIA could reach. As the
trend in Figure 1 shows, the new theme became the dominant message of
U.S. propaganda in the late 1950s. A good overview of these ideas can be seen
in a Free World three-part series that appeared in late 1956 and early 1957 and
was tied to the ªrst of USIA’s “people’s capitalism” exhibitions that toured various foreign cities.84 The ªrst part of the series, titled “A New Name—‘Peo80. James M. Lambie, Jr., Records, 1952–61, Boxes 17, 23, in DDEL; Charles Jackson Files, Boxes
15, 16, in HSTL.
81. James M. Lambie, Jr., Records, 1952–61, Box 31, DDEL.
82. Fortune described the transformation to “popular capitalism” in 1951. The phrase “people’s capitalism” became popular a few years later. See “Fresh View of Capitalism,” Life, 9 April 1956, p. 58, reprinted in Reader’s Digest, July 1956, pp. 137–138; “People’s Capitalism,” The New York Times, 15
February 1956; “U.S. Capitalism Seen as Ideal for the World,” The New York Times, 24 November
1956; “People’s Capitalism: This Is America,” Collier’s, 6 January 1956, p. 74; “The People’s Capitalism,” House Beautiful, November 1956, p. 226; “People’s Capitalism,” Nation, 25 February 1956,
p. 151; and “People’s Capitalism?” The New Republic, 20 October 1962. The New York Times mentioned “people’s capitalism” 105 times between 1945 and 1965, although most references came in the
mid-to-late-1950s.
83. David Riesman, “The Nylon War,” in Individualism Reconsidered and Other Essays (Glencoe, IL:
Free Press, 1954).
84. “A New Name—’People’s Capitalism’ in America” [part 1], Free World, Vol. 5, No. 10 (1956), in
Free World Archive; “A New Name—’People’s Capitalism’ in America” [part 2], Free World, Vol. 5, No.
11 (1956), in Free World Archive; and “Classless Capitalism,” Free World, Vol. 6, No. 1 (1957), in Free
World Archive.
32
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
Fig. 1. Comparative content of articles in Amerika (1952–1956) and America Illustrated
(1956–1960).
ple’s Capitalism’ in America,” began with a bold assertion: “‘People’s capitalism’ is a term which accurately describes the economic system under which
166 million Americans enjoy the highest standard of living in the world today—a system that has been fabulously successful in beneªting not the few,
but the many.”
Gushing with superlatives, this was a far cry from the cautious depiction
in the late 1940s of the U.S. economy providing “security” and “stability.” Instead, the article—like many others to come—combined three principal features to make its case: an almost Soviet-like recitation of statistics, the story of
an “average American,” and ºorid, Panglossian language implying that America was on the verge of becoming the promised land. Average American “Ed
Barnes” was shown playing with his three children in his ªve-room house,
while his wife shops above a caption saying that they “use only 29 percent of
their income on the vast array of foods found in the markets.” The article
went on to explain that “Mr. Barnes is a capitalist because it is his invested
capital, and that of millions like him, that industry uses.”85
85. “A New Name” [part 1].
33
Yarrow
The second article hammered home that people’s capitalism was producing both a consumer’s and a worker’s paradise: “Competition [has] provided
dream homes and powerful automobiles and labor-saving machines that are
in the price range of the majority . . . [and is also producing] better working
conditions, higher wages, and shorter hours.”86
Finally, in “Classless Capitalism,” the third installment in the series, the
author asserted that the new capitalism has brought “a time in history when
men are equal as never before.” Not only are they equal, but they are prosperous as never before because “items formerly considered luxuries leap overnight
into the category of necessities.”87
A 1957 pocket-size brochure, “People’s Capitalism,” which was also published as a supplement to Free World and reprinted in a number of languages
during the next few years, captured the essence of the new ideology: “Capitalism in America is something new under the sun. . . . People’s capitalism—far
from creating progressive poverty—has spread wealth ever more widely
among Americans.” Noting the decline in the work week from 70 hours in
1900 to 40 in 1956, the brochure went on to say that the work week
may become still shorter in the not distant future. Meanwhile, an hour’s work
produces more and at a higher rate than ever before. . . .
People’s capitalism, by reducing the number of very rich and very poor, has
produced a very large, growing middle class; the so-called “class struggle” has lost
its meaning in the United States. . . . The prosperity of the United States has all
but removed want as a major social problem and leisure time increases steadily.88
While recognizing that “many problems remain to be solved . . . the dynamism and ºexibility of the American economy are conducive to improvements and peaceful change.”89
Free World’s formulaic Asian visitor stories also shifted from an emphasis
on U.S. freedoms to U.S. prosperity, as can be seen in a 1959 article by an Indian man. In “The Common Man in America,” he wrote that Americans are
“brought up on a religion of work, output and productivity. . . . [They] exert
themselves to the utmost to make money and live well, [yet] curiously
enough, they do not believe in amassing great wealth.”90
Nowhere are these themes more evident than in the pages of America Illustrated during the late 1950s. Launched in 1956 as a result of an October
86. “A New Name” [part 2].
87. “Classless Capitalism.”
88. “People’s Capitalism,” Pamphlets and leaºets produced between 1953 and 1960, Box 6, Entry
1252, RG 306-99-008, in NARA.
89. Ibid.
90. “The Common Man in America,” Free World, Vol. 7, No. 10 (1959), in Free World Archive.
34
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
1956 U.S.-Soviet accord, this expensive, full-color, Life-magazine-style
monthly was described by one former USIA ofªcer as making “Vogue look
cheap.” America Illustrated, a 62-page magazine printed on 11-by-14-inch
heavy color stock paper, cost taxpayers $2.92 per copy in the late 1950s.
About 50,000 copies were sent to the Soviet Union each month. Its editors’
mission statement in the ªrst issue described the magazine as being about how
Americans “live, work, and play,” and many articles were reprinted from popular U.S. magazines such as Collier’s, Life, Look, Reader’s Digest, and The Saturday Evening Post.91
What most differentiated its overall content mix from that of Amerika in
the late 1940s and early 1950s was the new and frequent appearance of articles on Americans’ high and rising livings standards and the smaller number
of stories on U.S. political beliefs and institutions. Stories on the arts and
Americana continued to ªgure prominently, and articles about U.S. science
and technology were more common than in the earlier magazine. A content
analysis of 106 articles in eight issues from 1956 to 1960 reveals that although
35 percent were still devoted to stories about American life ranging from a
boy and his cat to the traditions of Thanksgiving, 19 percent were now devoted to economic subjects, and 22 percent focused on how technology was
making American life more abundant. The arts still accounted for 20 percent
of articles, but stories on American political and philosophical ideals now
made up just 3 percent of the total.
A number of articles took up the larger message about America’s new capitalism and remarkable growth, reveling in statistical superlatives and breathless descriptions of the fruits of the new abundance. Proªles of well-off “average Americans” and stories about the many consequences of prosperity, such
as the ability to take vacations, were especially common in America Illustrated.
Through such articles, themes about America’s high living standards, impressive economic growth, and new, classless capitalism were conveyed.
The lead article in the ªrst issue, “America Today,” reºects this changed
emphasis: “The fabulous march of 20th century technology and science has
led to the most abundant and stable economy the country has ever known. It
has wrought deep social changes in community and family living, in increased
freedom and increased responsibility so far-reaching it is only beginning to be
understood.” The same issue included three other articles on high U.S. living
standards—a proªle of an oil worker whose family lives “in a comfortable
house that Lou built himself,” a story on American farmers’ “production mir91. John Melby, Foreign Affairs Oral History Project, Association for Diplomatic Studies and
Training, Washington, DC, 16 June 1989: Interview, William E. Hutchinson, 10 August 1989; and
America Illustrated Archive, Box 47.
35
Yarrow
acle,” and a feature on “Vacation Time,” describing how “most people take a
trip.”92
Among the average Americans proªled in the magazine was “Joe
Giacoletto, a certiªed mechanic and shop steward” whose progress “Up the
Labor Ladder” was evidence of the “system of job advancement worked out
by management and labor at many American plants to give ambitious young
workers an opportunity to get ahead.” Another story looked at three San
Francisco workers who go home when “The Day’s Work Is Done” to “a place
in the country for Jim, a city apartment for Keith, [and] a sunsprayed suburban hillside for Martin.” Yet another proªle paired a bookstore manager and a
steelworker who “each has achieved, in substantial measure, the good life as
they see it.”93
Unlike Amerika, whose economic articles tended to focus on industry,
America Illustrated included many stories about how American “people’s capitalism” was creating prosperity and touching people’s everyday lives. “Revolution in the Kitchen” described how the American housewife spent “less than
half the time in the kitchen than her mother did a generation ago, yet her
family is getting a better-balanced diet and a bigger and better variety of foods
than ever before.” The cornucopia of consumer goods was featured in articles
such as “City of Stores for the Suburbs,” which described America’s new shopping centers, offering “a vast variety of goods and services to satisfy the whole
family’s needs,” and “Shopper’s Paradise,” which told of the miracles of the
modern American department store. America’s abundance of leisure was highlighted in “Leisure in a Changing Society.” Vacation opportunities were
touted in articles on “Vacation Time,” “Boats for Everyone,” and “Second
Homes for Family Vacations.” An article on “Teenagers’ Economics” told of
“the billions of dollars pouring into their hands every year,” and “Assembly
Line Home-Building” boasted that standardized construction “gives the
homeowner a better house at a lower price.” In addition, regular articles about
U.S. fashion, home decorating, and new car models contributed to the image
of America as the consumer’s paradise. Several late 1950s articles celebrated
the facts that Americans could buy twice as much food as 30 years before, that
the population had 61 million phones, and that Americans had so much leisure that long and varied summer vacations were commonplace.94
92. “Vacation Time,” America Illustrated, No. 1 (1956), p. 56, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 47.
93. “Up the Labor Ladder,” America Illustrated, No. 37 (1959), pp. 47–49, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50; “The Day’s Work Is Done,” America Illustrated, No. 26 (1958), in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 49; “Three Ofªce Workers at Home,” America Illustrated, No. 26 (1958), p. 37, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 49; and “Four Family Budgets,” America Illustrated, No. 29 (1959), p. 12,
in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50.
94. “Revolution in the Kitchen,” America Illustrated, No. 17 (1957), p. 34, in America Illustrated Ar-
36
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
Bigger-picture articles about America’s remarkable economic growth were
especially common by the end of the 1950s. “Ten Amazing Years” and “Decade of Growth” offered gushing descriptions of America’s advances on every
imaginable indicator—from “medicine and automation” to “rising worker’s
wages and family income, increased farm productivity, higher school enrollment, stronger old-age protection, and wider automobile ownership.” In “Ten
Amazing Years,” the author reported that
a backward look over the past decade in America reveals striking changes—
surging population and employment, new production levels, advances in medicine and automation. . . . This picture of a vigorous United States, drawn in text
and charts, shows how the restless energy that has characterized the American
people continues to ªnd and conquer new frontiers of economic and social wellbeing.95
“Facts about the U.S. Income” asserted that “the redistribution of income
is a signiªcant fact of American life today.” The 1959 article went on to claim
that “taxes make the accumulation of great wealth difªcult, labor legislation
has improved the bargaining position of workers, and steadily rising income
levels have been accompanied by a shorter work week and a wide variety of
supplementary beneªts, paid by employers and government.96
The scope of Americans’ abundance—and the government-business partnership to achieve it—was elaborated on in “Facts about U.S. Labor’s Supplementary Beneªts.” The author declared that “the American worker’s rising
standard of living is not based on higher wages alone. Increasingly, in the past
20 years, it has been buttressed by a whole new group of beneªts and
chive, Box; “Leisure in a Changing Society,” America Illustrated, No. 40 (1959), p. 2, in America Illustrated Archive, Box; “Vacation Time,” America Illustrated, No. 1 (1956), p. 56, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box; “Boats for Everyone,” America Illustrated, No. 35 (1957), p. 6, in America Illustrated Archive, Box; “Teenagers’ Economics,” America Illustrated, No. 26 (1958), p. 53, in America Illustrated
Archive, Box 49; “Assembly Line Home Building,” America Illustrated, 38 (1959), pp. 56–61, in
America Illustrated Archive, Box 49; “Second Homes for Family Vacations,” America Illustrated, No.
47 (1960), pp. 27–31, in America Illustrated Archive, Box; “About Telephones: 65,000,000 of Them,”
America Illustrated (Polish edition), No. 6 (June 1959), pp. 139–144, in America Illustrated Archive,
Box 49; and “The ‘Family Vacation,’” America Illustrated (Polish edition), No. 7 (August 1959),
pp. 116–122, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 49.
95. “Ten Amazing Years,” America Illustrated, No. 16 (1957), p. 2, in America Illustrated Archive, Box
48; and “Facts about the United States: Decade of Growth,” America Illustrated, no. 46 (1960),
pp. 16–17, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50. See also “The Changing American Society,” America Illustrated, No. 48 (1960), pp. 2–7, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50and “The 1960s: A Forecast of the Technology,” America Illustrated, No. 48 (1960), pp. 34–39, in America Illustrated Archive,
Box 50.
96. “Facts about the U.S. Income,” America Illustrated, No. 33 (1959), p. 6, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 49.
37
Yarrow
protections,” including paid vacations and holidays and various insurance and
welfare programs.97
In “The Changing American Society,” Fortune writer Robert Seligman
drove home the message that the United States had achieved the Communists’ purported goal of classless abundance:
The traditional concept of class divisions has become totally inaccurate. In contemporary America, occupations distinctions are blurred, incomes increasingly
cluster at the middle range, and families of diverse social and economic backgrounds are ever freer to choose their styles of living. . . . No longer burdened
with the struggle for economic survival or rankling under invidious social distinctions, more and more Americans have the security and leisure to experiment
more freely in taste and idea.98
Against this assortment of articles on U.S. living standards, growth, and
the new people’s capitalism, America Illustrated treated older themes and messages about American democracy and freedom only occasionally. A three-part
series by Clinton Rossiter on the branches of government appeared in 1957,
and an article on Congress appeared in 1960, but such articles were far less
frequent in the pages of America Illustrated than in its predecessor, Amerika.
Moreover, stories on speciªc freedoms, such as freedom of the press or religion, and broader essays on democracy or freedom—which were common in
Amerika—were nowhere to be found in its successor. Similarly, other than a
150th-birthday portrait of Lincoln in 1959, America Illustrated eschewed articles on America’s political heroes or the country’s history.99 Instead of the ideals-ªlled seven-part U.S. history featured in Amerika, readers of America Illustrated would discover a country in which every worker was a capitalist, had a
comfortable home, sent his children to college, took vacations, perhaps had a
boat or vacation home, and had a multitude of things to buy. To the extent
that freedom was discussed—and it was—it was largely in the context of describing the freedoms that enabled America to prosper and the freedoms
made possible by prosperity.
Another signiªcant indication of the shift in emphasis in U.S. propaganda during these few years can be seen in the subtly different conclusions to
97. “Facts about the U.S. Labor’s Supplementary Beneªts,” America Illustrated, No. 37 (1959),
pp. 50–52, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50.
98. “The Changing American Society,” America Illustrated, No. 40 (1960), pp. 2–7, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50.
99. Clinton Rossiter, “Role of the President,” America Illustrated, No. 6 (1956), p. 13, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 48; Clinton Rossiter,”Congress of the United States,” America Illustrated, No. 16
(1957), p. 34, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 48; Clinton Rossiter, “Supreme Court of the United
States,” America Illustrated, No. 17 (1957), in America Illustrated Archive, Box 48; Dennis S. Feldman,
“150th Anniversary,” America Illustrated, No. 29 (1959), p. 2, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50;
“Congress at Work,” America Illustrated, No. 40 (1960), p. 22, in America Illustrated Archive, Box 50.
38
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
a 1953 edition and a 1957 edition of a 50-page comic book, “A Picture Story
of the United States.” This comic book went through huge, multilingual
print runs for distribution to Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. The
ªrst edition ends with the idealistic creation of the United Nations and concludes: “This story has been one of quest . . . quest for opportunity, material
happiness, quest for better ways of doing things, and above all, quest for freedom, freedom of mind and spirit, for all men are created equal in the sight of
God.” Four years later, the 1957 edition concluded with a story about America’s “economic transformation,” in which “92 percent own real estate” and
workers are “enjoying the fruits of people’s capitalism.” The ªnal line again
mentions the “quest for more opportunity, material well-being and better
ways of doing things,” as well as the need to make “freedom secure,” but it no
longer talks about the “quest for freedom,” “freedom of mind and spirit,” or
all men being created equal.
A host of pamphlets produced during the late 1950s, with hundreds of
thousands of copies printed in a multitude of languages, repeated these
themes. The thrust of “American Capitalism: The Economic Progress of a
Free People” (1956) was that exploitative capitalism in the United States had
given way to a new capitalism in which workers, management, and government cooperate to foster high production as well as “meet the needs of all
members of society, and provide the opportunities for real personal growth
and recognition.”100 The average American citizen-”capitalist” like Thomas
Brackett lives well: He owns property, has savings and public-private provision for old age, is able to send his children to college, enjoys increasing leisure, and can buy “hundreds of new products at reasonable prices.”
Lest anyone should think that these developments were not signiªcant,
“The American Consumer: Key to an Expanding Economy” (1960) approvingly quoted French observer André Siegfried describing the new American
economy as “surely one of the great achievements in the history of mankind.”101 Reprising the argument from his book, People of Plenty, David Potter
provided, in “The American Economy” (1960), an only somewhat less grand
100. “American Capitalism: The Economic Progress of a Free People,” Pamphlets and leaºets produced between 1953 and 1960, Boxes 1–9, Entry 1252, RG 306-99-008, Records of the United States
Information Agency, in NARA. “American Capitalism” and “People’s Capitalism” were printed for
Asian distribution between 1956 and 1958. Other pamphlets included “The People: The Real Sinews
of the U.S. Economy,” printed in Spanish and English in 1956; “Primer of the American Economy,”
printed in English and Spanish in 1958; “Thomas Brackett: American Capitalist,” printed in 1957;
“The American Economy: Prospects for Growth to 1965 and 1975,” printed by McGraw-Hill in
1958; “The American Consumer: Key to an Expanding Economy,” printed in 1960; and “The American Economy,” a 28-page essay written by historian David Potter. See Pamphlets and leaºets produced
from 1953 to 1960, Boxes 1–9, RG 306-99-008, Entry 1252, Records of the United States Information Agency, in NARA.
101. “The American Consumer: Key to an Expanding Economy” (1960), Pamphlets and leaºets pro-
39
Yarrow
historical patina:”When Americans saw that for the ªrst time the possibility
of having more than enough to go around was a reality and not a dream, they
set themselves another goal which ªtted well with the goal of democracy. This
was the goal of creating a rich economy with a wide distribution of material
beneªts.”102
Trade Fairs
The idea that abundance was the chief selling point of the United States led to
the raft of trade fair exhibitions on American life that were shipped to cities
around the world from the mid-1950s until the early 1960s. Amid much concern that the Soviet Union was besting the United States in the propaganda
war of the early 1950s, Eisenhower won passage of a Special Emergency Fund
in 1954 under which the government would partner with corporations to exhibit their wares as well as the new American image.103
The Department of Commerce, Department of State, and USIA collaborated with major U.S. companies, the NAM, and leading designers on scores
of these fairs that were much more about selling an appealing vision of
the United States than about selling cars for General Motors or appliances
for General Electric. After participating in ªfteen such fairs in 1955 under
this “emergency” authority, Congress passed the International Cultural Exchange and Trade Fair Act in late 1956 to demonstrate “the contributions being made by the United States economic and social system toward a more
peaceful and fruitful life for its own people and other people throughout the
world.”104
A prototype exhibit explicitly based on the theme of people’s capitalism
was displayed in Washington, DC, where AFL-CIO leader George Meany
spoke of the inseparability of “material abundance” and freedom in America.105 During the months and years ahead, the trade fair program was
duced between 1953 and 1960, Boxes 1–9, RG 306-99-008, Entry 1252, Records of the United States
Information Agency, in NARA.
102. David Potter, “The American Economy” (1960), Pamphlets and leaºets produced between 1953
and 1960, Boxes 1–9, RG 306-99-008, Entry 1252, Records of the United States Information Agency,
in NARA.
103. U.S. President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad Records, 1959–61, Box 14, in
DDE Library.
104. Cited in Claudio Gonzales-Chiaramonte, “What Is Americanism Anyway? Exporting an American Identity,” paper presented at Dickinson College, 7–9 April 1999; and “The U.S.A. Goes to the
Fair,” Reader’s Digest, December 1955. Roy Williams, a NAM vice president, said that the fairs would
give foreign audiences “a new realization of what free enterprise in a democracy really means.”
105. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, p. 52.
40
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
ratcheted up at fever pitch. In 1960, 97 exhibits were sponsored in 29 countries, where they were seen by an estimated 60 million people.106
Most of these exhibits featured a model American home equipped with
the latest appliances, as well as ªlms and displays of other consumer goods.
Lawnmowers, color televisionss, juke boxes, synthetic fabrics, and even free
blue jeans, Pepsi, and cornºakes became the ambassadors of the American
way of life at “people’s capitalism” exhibitions as far aªeld as Bogotá in late
1956, Kabul, Poznañ, and Moscow. An entire U.S.-style supermarket was installed at a 1957 Zagreb fair. Child-oriented exhibits at the 1957 Barcelona
and Milan fairs and the 1958 Brussels fair emphasized the link between an
abundant economy and healthy, happy children.107 The connection between
abundance, technology, and domesticity was emphasized in the fairs’ appliance-bedecked kitchens. Frequent fashion shows were used not only to juxtapose svelte U.S. models with their more matronly Soviet counterparts but also
to demonstrate that America’s wealth allowed all of its people to enjoy the latest fashions. A monthly publication at the 1958 Brussels fair, together with an
exhibit on the New York Stock Exchange, expressly paired the voting machine
and the stock exchange as the twin expressions of democracy.108
The degree to which trade fairs became the object of intense Cold War rivalry was particularly evident in the cases of the 1958 Brussels fair and the
paired 1959 U.S. exhibition in Moscow and Soviet exhibition in New York.
In the months leading up to the Brussels fair, U.S. policy and media circles
discussed at length which Cold War adversary would have the more appealing
pavilion.
As a result of this highly publicized “battle of Brussels,” the U.S. government poured resources into the U.S. exhibition. Architect Edward Durrell
Stone designed a huge circular pavilion, Monsanto installed a “House of Tomorrow” like the one that had recently opened at Disneyland, a Children’s
Creative Center was built, and Fortune magazine sponsored a controversial exhibit on America’s “Unªnished Business.” This exhibit, developed at the time
of the Little Rock segregation battles, was intended to note that the United
States still faced racial problems but that blacks were making economic and
political progress. Designed by Fortune art director Leo Lionni, and conceived
by the unlikely trio of Victor Reuther, Walt Rostow, and Henry Luce, the exhibit won praise from European visitors but was shut down within a matter of
106. Ibid., p. 15; and U.S. President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad Records, 1959–
61, Box 14, in DDE Library.
107. Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, pp. 63, 65, 113, 123, 147.
108. Ibid., pp. 156, 169.
41
Yarrow
days by the State Department under pressure from Southern U.S. legislators.109
The best known example of U.S. trade-fair diplomacy and the use of the
people’s capitalism argument in the Cold War came with the 1959 American
National Exhibition in Moscow—made famous by the Nixon-Khrushchev
“kitchen debate.” The Moscow exhibition, made possible under an executive
cultural agreement that also facilitated a parallel Soviet display in New York’s
Coliseum, was open in late July and early August in Sokolniki Park. Organized by the USIA and Commerce Department, with signiªcant input from
Assistant Secretary of Commerce and former NAM president Harold
McClellan, the U.S. pavilion was a huge geodesic dome designed by Buckminster Fuller—an icon of overseas displays of U.S. abundance through Expo
’67 eight years later in Montreal. The exhibition included short ªlms on the
American workday by Charles and Ray Eames and on American leisure by
Billy Wilder, fashion models enacting lavish American weddings and casual
American barbecues, endless technology, and free Pepsi that generated long
lines of curious, thirsty Russians.110
The centerpiece was a prefabricated $14,000 ranch house contributed by
Long Island developer All-State Properties and furnished by Macy’s and General Electric. The house was displayed as the average American’s palace of
comfort and technology. The home featured an RCA Whirlpool “miracle”
kitchen, a robot cleaner, foods from General Mills and General Foods, and a
home workshop.
In the often-told story, Nixon and Khrushchev toured the exhibit together. Nixon then delivered a speech, “What Freedom Means to Us,” in
which he said little about American rights and liberty and instead emphasized
the “extraordinarily high standard of living” in the United States and the
achievement of “prosperity for all in a classless society.” Khrushchev—who
had vowed to surpass the United States economically by the late 1960s—
shared Nixon’s mindset that the Cold War would be won by the system most
effective in bringing material abundance to the most people. As the two men
paused in the model kitchen, Nixon proudly argued that the kitchen’s cornucopia of consumer goods—emblematic of the general abundance of the
United States—was the essence of the American way of life; that democracy
meant the ability to choose from limitless goods made available by the free
109. Ibid., pp. 181–188.
110. Karal Ann Marling, As Seen on TV: The Visual Culture of Everyday Life in the 1950s (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1994), pp. 246–248.
42
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
market; and that the United States had advanced to a new level of freedom:
freedom from long, arduous work for the worker and housewife alike.111
Although Khrushchev pledged peaceful coexistence with the United
States and the Soviet newspaper Izvestiya lambasted the American pavilion—
asking, “What is this—a national exhibit of a great country, or a branch department store?”112—Nixon easily “won” the kitchen debate for his country.
Whether the the Soviet Union or the United States was setting the terms,
those terms were all about success in providing broad-based abundance—and
the United States, with its “people’s capitalism,” was the hands-down winner.
Domestic U.S. media frequently covered the trade shows as examples of
the United States putting its best face forward. Life often featured photo
spreads on these shows. A 25 May 1957, New York Times story reported that
an exhibit in Ceylon told of the “growth of the middle-income group in the
United States and . . . the great advances in American productivity, . . . [and
that] without laying it on thick that Karl Marx was wrong so far as the U.S.
was concerned, instead of the rich getting richer and the poor poorer, almost
everybody became a ‘capitalist’ in some form.”
The NAM-produced TV show Industry on Parade in 1959 gushed about
the “pattern of advantages never before enjoyed in all world history by so
many.” Rhetorically asking what these “advantages” were, the show surveyed
American homes, clothing, highways, foods, and leisure and concluded,
“First, comes to mind the material—the tangible things. . . . Abundance is the
best description—a word easier said than demonstrated to the people of other
nations.”113
Conclusion
Why did U.S. print propagandists come to believe that the country’s chief virtue or selling point was its economic prowess and prosperity rather than its
111. U.S. Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, 1958–1960 Vol. X, pt. 1; U.S.
President’s Committee on Information Activities Abroad Records, 1959–61, Box 14, DDE Library;
Marling, As Seen on TV, pp. 243, 277; Eric Foner, The Story of American Freedom (New York: W. W.
Norton & Co., 1998), p. 271; and Haddow, Pavilions of Plenty, pp. 214–17. The PR man for the display was later Nixon speechwriter and New York Times columnist William Saªre. Nixon declared that
the best book about America to give the Soviets was the Sears catalog. Cited in Lawrence B. Glickman,
Consumer Society in American History: A Reader (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999), p. 8.
112. Marling, As Seen on TV, pp. 243. Yet, as Jackson Lears and others have noted, the kitchen debate
expressed the idea that “the American way of life [was] equated with the American ‘standard of living.’” Richard W. Fox and T. J. Jackson Lears, The Culture of Consumption: Critical Essays in American
History, 1880–1960 (New York: Pantheon, 1983), p. ix.
113. Industry on Parade Film Collection, Reel 453, 20 June 1959, RG 0507, in National Museum.
43
Yarrow
“older” freedoms? Why did this change occur by the late 1950s? Why did
such views wane thereafter?
Propaganda reºects both domestic considerations on the home front and
propagandists’ beliefs about what is perceived to be most inºuential and appealing to target foreign audiences. Business, media, and other opinion leaders had recognized the need for a new version of “Americanism” that could
play both outside and inside U.S. borders. Given the universal claims of
Communist ideology, the United States needed to project its own universal
ideology during the Cold War.
Why democracy and civil liberties were no longer seen to be enough and
needed to be supplemented or downplayed in favor of the new economic “virtues,” is explained by largely domestic causes. The liberal idealism of the New
Deal was eclipsed by a more centrist “growth coalition” that redeªned and
narrowed the differences between liberals and conservatives over domestic
policy.114 At the same time, business prestige was restored, and its outlook and
priorities gained a central place in national thinking. The excesses of
McCarthyism, and the attendant pressures for political conformity, may well
have undermined American faith in the country’s commitment to freedom
and fundamental liberties. The sheer reality of U.S. economic growth contributed to a sort of self-satisªed national elation. In response to this expanding prosperity, a growing chorus of economists, journalists, and politicians began to argue that a new form of capitalism was emerging in the United States
and that postwar economic growth was bringing about a qualitative transformation of the country. Ideas that economists were beginning to broach at the
beginning of the 1950s about economic growth, mass consumption, and the
roots of abundance began to appear in a ºood of popular articles by the midto-late 1950s.
At the same time, the Cold War and Soviet propaganda undoubtedly
inºuenced U.S. print propaganda and Americans’ attitudes about what was
important. In many ways the United States was a follower when it came to
propaganda, at least in the early stages of the Cold War. The relentless “materialism” of Soviet propaganda, with its emphasis on Soviet economic achievements, clearly led the United States to respond in kind, particularly after the
early 1950s policy dictates to hit back hard and respond with the “truth.” To
the degree that Soviet propaganda had a salience for Americans—even
through a highly critical lens—it may well have led many American opinion
shapers to see economic achievements as being of greater importance.
114. See Alan Wolfe, America’s Impasse: The Rise and Fall of the Politics of Growth (New York: Pantheon
Books, 1981), pp. 22–28; Godfrey Hodgson, America in Our Time (New York: Vintage Books, 1976);
and Robert M. Collins, More: The Politics of Economic Growth in Postwar America (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2000).
44
Changing Messages in Early U.S. Cold War Print Propaganda
The more thoughtful—and more grandiose—observers of these changes
in American life began to situate mass prosperity and “new capitalism” in the
familiar context and tropes of American exceptionalism. In other words, U.S.
abundance and the purportedly new and unique economic system that had
brought it about were what made the United States exceptional and, at the
same time, showed that it was a “chosen” land.
Thus, as the older bases for American exceptionalism—its pioneer/
frontier character and its commitment to the ideals of 1776—had come to
look less relevant or exceptional in a time far removed from the frontier and
when democracies could be found in many parts of the world, new grounds
for exceptionalism took their place. The United States still saw itself—and
told the world that it was—a beacon for others to follow, but now the guiding
light was less the democratic, individualistic freedoms than the notion that
America’s economic system provided a model of “modernization” for others to
follow to prosperity.
However, the messages about American abundance that continued to
“sell” domestically well into the 1960s had largely run their course by the time
that Murrow took over USIA. Propagandists recognized that such messages
were often seen as gloating and shallowly materialistic and hence counterproductive in the relatively poor dictatorships of the Communist world.115
Yet, the shift in U.S. propaganda in the mid-to-late 1950s mirrored the
debates among opinion leaders about how they should view and understand
their country. As a consequence, the virtues of the United States as an abundant society—virtues Americans increasingly saw at home—were the same
ones that its propagandists were conveying to the world by the late 1950s.
115. In a 1964 memorandum, Theodore Sorensen expressed concern that American propaganda simultaneously showed Americans as too “materialistic” and also was too honest about the economy not
growing as fast as might be desired. Memorandum by Theodore Sorensen, Agency History Program
Subject Files, Box 5306, RG 306, in NARA.
45