Since YOYA touched on this subject, let's explore it a little further. Imagine yourself as a young grunt with a rifle and your C.O. points at the enemy soldier and tells you:

• This man has a wife at home, same as you
• He has children at home, just like you;
• He wants to return to his family, as you;
• He loves his country, just like you do;
• He worships the same God as you do;
• He goes to the same church as you;
• NOW GO KILL HIM!

You wouldn't get too many soldiers to follow that kind of order, would you? It is therefore necessary to paint the enemy as different than you, and so we have this weapon, so overlooked by many armies. It was used greatly in World War II.

Let's look at some of the stories that were used as weapons that were totally untrue; but were great to pump up the troops.

• In WWI German U-Boaters raped young women to death, then fired their bodies out the torpedo tubes.
• WWII U-Boaters always machine-gunned survivors in the water for sport;
• All Germans were NAZIs;
• Germans prayed to Hitler because they hated God;
• If a young American wanted to join the US Marines, he must first murder his mother and father;
• During the campaign for Okinawa, the US Marines would cook and eat Japanese children.

The list goes on and on, but looking back we realize how stupid it was to believe any of these stories - but they WERE believed to the point of raising troops and civilians back home alike, to a frenzy of supporting their troops and their side of the War. The stories WERE believed to the point that Japanese mothers were throwing their children off the cliffs at Okinawa so they would not be eaten by the US Marines and they jumped after their children.

Wartime propaganda is a powerful weapon in a war and possibly the dirtiest weapon, as the result lingers on forever on the pages of so many history books.

Did German U-Boaters machine gun men in the water for sport? Of course not! But how many history books and articles written by magazines with editors too stupid to verify stories say they did? No US Marine ate children or murdered their parents. The stories shown here were all false but were all powerful weapons of war.