This research paper deals with the ethical issues involved with the use of propaganda in wartime by totalitarian and democratic governments. No nation can be expected to wage war with one hand tied behind its back, but ethical issues of the most profound nature are raised any time propaganda is used in such a manner as to promote atrocities such as genocide or wanton destruction of human life, especially among non-combatants. Regimes which fail to control the excesses of war fever may be guilty of crimes against humanity and, in the case of democratic regimes, a betrayal of their basic values. Jacques Ellull goes too far when he says that ethics play no part in the use of propaganda in war, but he is correct historically in the sense that propaganda has frequently been used in an ethically neutral sense to support clandestine or other military actions necessary in the defense of a nation's survival or other fundamental interests. Propaganda as psychological warfare inherently involves attempts to manipulate, distort or falsify the truth, but must be kept within reasonable limits or it can become counter-productive for the nation concerned and contribute, in the case of democratic governments, to a longer-term erosion in their fundamental integrity and the viability of democracy itself.
Propaganda has been variously defined. Taylor offers the following succinct and ethical neutral definition: "a process for the sowing, germination and propagation of ideas" (2). He says that "there is no real point . . . in making moral judgments concerning whether propaganda is a 'good' or 'bad' thing; it merely is" (8). Ellul expresses a similar thought when he says that "whoever handles this instrument can be concerned solely with effectiveness" (x). He says that propaganda by its very nature "is . . . an enterprise for perverting the significance of events and of insinuating false motives" and "must mask [its] true intentions" (58-59). Taylor sa...