Italian soldiers in Sicily want to surrender, why not?

In World War II, the performance of the Italian army on the battlefield was not only poor in combat literacy, but also almost collapsed, causing many jokes and being dubbed "the pig teammate of the German army". Little known is that this is also due to the psychological warfare of the allied forces, especially the landing campaign in Sicily, which has brought this tactic to the extreme.

In fact, psychological warfare is not a new tactic. From the beginning of the war, there has been the shadow of psychological warfare, but the warring parties have different degrees of attention. Since the outbreak of World War II, the allied forces have attached great importance to psychological warfare in order to break down opponents' fighting spirit, reduce casualties and speed up the campaign process, and established the psychological warfare department.

And regard it as an important task related to the overall situation of the campaign. In order to cooperate with the landing in Sicily, the psychological warfare department once again demonstrated their fruitful propaganda work, telling Italian soldiers through leaflets that they should not make unnecessary sacrifices for Germany, do not be "scapegoats", and surrender with leaflets, so that safety can be fully guaranteed.

The headache is that leaflets are easy to make. How to "distribute" leaflets to opponents in a large area and accurately? It is the most important thing in the psychological warfare department at present. Airdrop was the first method they thought of, but the effect was very poor, especially at an altitude of 10,000 meters, which actually deviated from the target by nearly 100 km, and only 3% of the leaflets were delivered accurately.

Major Monroe of the propaganda squadron thinks that the main reason for inaccurate delivery is the height problem, and he has improved the delivery. When the container containing leaflets was dropped from the plane and dropped to about 800 meters above the ground, the container exploded automatically and the leaflets were accurately scattered on about 5 square kilometers of land. The Monroe Bomb was born.

Therefore, the Allies specially set up a special airdrop team consisting of 12 planes to be responsible for the airdrop mission of Monroe bomb. In order to expand the publicity effect, they came up with various delivery methods and even invented the use of artillery shells to launch leaflets. However, officers and men are not optimistic about psychological warfare, nor do they believe that these colorful pieces of paper can make the other side surrender.

It is too much trouble to bring these leaflets to the troops who perform harassment tasks behind enemy lines; Artillery is unwilling to launch "useless duds"; Pilots in charge of airdrops often complain; Even some generals scoffed at this. Montgomery once said, "My troops don't need propaganda cars, what I need are planes, cannons and tanks."

But in the battle of Sicily, everyone was deeply impressed by this "paper bomb".

1943 in July, when the allied forces landed in Sicily, a large number of leaflets were also placed on the positions of the Italian army. Very war-weary Italian officers and soldiers seemed to see "a bright light in the dark", and they surrendered to the allies with leaflets. In other words, these leaflets became their "surrender books".

Under the attack of allied forces, the propaganda effect of leaflets is more obvious. At first, dozens of Italian officers and soldiers surrendered, and later hundreds of people took the "surrender book" and ran to the allied side to surrender. But there are still some Italian troops who have not chosen to surrender, not because they are brave, but because the number of allies is limited and there are no leaflets.

Once, two Italian soldiers who surrendered were anxious to find an American officer. He said that there were still more than 60 people in their company who wanted to surrender, but they were afraid to come because there was no "surrender". After hearing this, the US military officers laughed and immediately sent someone to bring the "surrender book" and brought all these people. They all expressed their gratitude

This scene completely surprised the allied officers and men. In their view, with the strength of the Italian army, it is no match for the Allies, but it is not so "expected" to surrender. Where is this army? It's a mob. But front-line officers and men like leaflets more and more, because they can solve the battle without firing a shot.

Even senior generals were impressed by the role of leaflets. Montgomery personally ordered the troops to launch "paper bombs" at each other's positions, because the more opponents who surrendered, the greater the credit. Patton, not to be outdone, ordered his subordinate troops to publicize every time they arrived in a town, and then consider attacking.

Through leaflets, the Allies accepted the surrender of hundreds of Italian soldiers in Sicily. As an officer in the psychological warfare department said, "distributing leaflets is almost as deadly as air strikes ..."; Some soldiers even thought: "Sicily was not captured by planes or cannons, but by' paper bombs'!"

Since then, psychological warfare has become the most effective weapon of the Allies. It not only saved the lives of many allied soldiers, but also completely disintegrated the opponent's fighting spirit psychologically and accelerated the battle process. During the whole World War II, the Allies distributed about 65.438+0.5 billion copies of leaflets or other publicity materials, and the monthly consumption of paper used for printing leaflets was as high as 65.438+0.40 tons.

However, psychological warfare is a special means to serve the war, and it does not have the ability to complete military and campaigns alone. It needs one party to have obvious advantages in military strength and conform to the historical trend and general trend politically; On the other hand, if soldiers have no fighting spirit, the war will fail. This is a necessary condition to win psychological warfare, otherwise it can only be a daydream.

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References: World War II

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