“In a total war,” argued the War Department’s Bureau of Public Relations, “words are weapons.” Phony stories that circulated throughout communities and regions were especially dangerous. “Rumor is one of the weapons employed by the enemy against the effectiveness of the Army.” Office of Facts and Figures head Archibald MacLeish warned that “Hitler thinks Americans are suckers,” and an educational periodical suggested that many rumors “are Nazi-inspired.”
While the nation’s enemies might have wished to plant rumors among Americans to damage morale, they could not have invented anything better than the rumors coming from within the country itself. Modern readers concerned about the spread of misinformation may be interested to know that this is not a recent development.
The impact of rumormongering on national morale was on President Roosevelt’s mind just days after Pearl Harbor. In his first fireside chat after the attack, he urged Americans “to reject all rumors,” noting that “these ugly little hints of complete disaster fly thick and fast in wartime.” Many of the rumors flying through the nation’s capital concerned the true extent of the damage done at Pearl Harbor and what city would be targeted next.
To stay atop the most widespread rumors and perhaps find a way to counter them, in 1942 the Roosevelt administration began systematically monitoring Americans. The Office of War Information, created by executive order on June 13, 1942, initiated the War Rumor Project, which relied on barbers, bartenders, doctors, hairdressers, police officers, and drugstore owners to eavesdrop on their neighbors and customers and report what they heard to their local OWI office. The use of such “rumor reporters” was not new; Roman emperors had appointed delatores to mingle with the general population and report back any criticisms of the emperor. The OWI’s army of “reporters,” who surreptitiously listened to offhand remarks, conversations, and idle speculation, left us a remarkable window into the darker corners of wartime America’s psyche.
The OWI set out three distinct criteria for “detecting a rumor.” The statement had to be offered as a fact, not opinion; it had to originate with a private source of information not generally available to the general public; and it had to contain a specific, rather than a general, assertion. The OWI collected these rumors in order to respond in the best way. “Ineffective replies,” the agency stated, could ultimately “increase anxieties to the point where rumors are generated on all sides.” It was “the duty of every loyal American to enlist in the campaign to prevent the development of virulent rumors.” While not every rumor could or should be answered, the OWI hoped to combat “the more prevalent” ones “by striking at their root—ignorance.” The agency felt that by quickly responding to what people were telling each other, it could make people better informed and thus better able to discount the misinformation that was spreading around them. Although the OWI would focus on the “constant preparation of informational materials,” it hoped to prevent “the community from feeling that a Gestapo is being organized.”