The parallel propaganda battle for the minds of people outside Europe and the United States was also fought on radio and television. Three areas were of outstanding importance: Africa, the Middle East and the Far East. Both the Warsaw Pact and the Allied powers sought from the outset to use television to prove one central point to the people of these areas — that their side was winning. There was no time to go into the question of the rights and wrongs of the struggle. What was going to influence the attitudes of Africa and the Middle East and Far East was above all which side they thought was going to win. Soviet propaganda concentrated on constant radio reports of the success of their attacks, supported by television news pictures of their forces in action — and winning. Allied propaganda was much the same, except that the message they had to convey was not one of victorious advances but of successful resistance. Every day that the Russians were held away from the Rhine was a propaganda gain of the utmost value, for it dented the image of Soviet invincibility.
In this propaganda struggle the Allies were possessed from the outset of superior resources, both technical and human. The addiction of the peoples of Western Europe and America to television in the pre-war years now proved a boon. It had given Western Europe, and above all Britain and the United States, an efficient worldwide infrastructure for the swift transmission of television pictures, via satellite, all over the globe. The structure designed to meet the world’s hunger for pictures of European football, and news, was ideal for international propaganda. Every day, in peacetime, international newsfilm agencies, together with Eurovision and the other international television bodies, had been transmitting, chiefly from centres in London, New York, San Francisco and Madrid, a steady stream of programme material. Thousands of technicians were trained for this work and accustomed to doing it. The Allies could draw, therefore, on the hundreds of television camera teams, almost all now equipped with lightweight, highly portable ENG cameras, who worked for the many television stations of the West. When the fighting broke out the American networks operated from their relatively secure base in the United States as a united body, pouring out to the rest of the world a flood of material gathered by the camera teams of all the Allied countries.
Three aspects of the battle for Europe received particularly vivid coverage. First there was the operation of the transatlantic air bridge. Day after day the television screens of the world showed the endless stream of transport aircraft bringing in and discharging into Europe men and war material from the seemingly limitless resources of the United States. Second, West German cameramen provided, with great courage and day after day, much dramatic footage of German resistance to the invaders, seen at its most spectacular along the line of the River Lippe. Not only were there shots of close combat, at once terrifying and moving, but interviews with the German infantry which left no doubt as to the strength of their morale and their great determination. Third, similar coverage was provided of the fighting through of the CAVALRY convoys at sea. No fewer than five cameramen lost their lives in this operation, for camera crews had been stationed on many of the escort craft and major transports, and others flew with maritime aircraft. Though there was considerable footage of the sinking of Allied vessels, this added a note of convincing veracity to the recording of the arrival of the bulk of the convoy. Culminating, as the work of these cameramen did, in scenes of troops moving away from the quayside in France, depleted perhaps but very formidable, this highly important battle was shown to the outside world as the victory which it was. In the field of peaceful electronics, the electronics of television, the Western technical superiority was to prove almost as important as its superiority in the electronic technology of the battlefield.
