Between Ourselves: Letters as Propaganda in the Second World War

This paper examines some of the letters and letter-books published during the Second World War to argue that they constitute an unusual, hitherto unconsidered, form of propaganda. This was not organised state propaganda, though of course letter were censored for security purposes. Rather, the sudden fashion for publishing patriotic letters in pamphlets, newspaper columns, published correspondences, anthologies and on radio programmes, exemplified a much more diffuse form of persuasion which resulted from the willing cooperation of the media and literati with the Allied governments. Well outside the direct policies of the Ministry of Information, editors, writers and publishers supported the government stance that the war was not only inevitable but just. The letters that they published took this as their central theme.