President Franklin D. Roosevelt created the Office of War Information (OWI) in June 1942 to manage the dissemination of government information during World War II. Using publications, radio, and films to provide information about the nation’s war effort and to give favorable portrayals of the American way of life, the OWI also carried out some CENSORSHIP functions. Elmer Davis, a respected CBS radio broadcaster, headed the agency.
The establishment of the OWI culminated administration efforts beginning in 1939 to organize the collection and dissemination of government information. As with other aspects of war mobilization, these efforts were marked by early confusion and bureaucratic conflict before a satisfactory structure was devised. Roosevelt wanted an agency that would both provide accurate information and serve government propaganda purposes at home and abroad—and without the troubling excesses of the Committee on Public Information during World War I. Stressing the principles of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms, the OWI sought above all to convey positive images of the United States and its war aims and to inspire confidence in an Allied victory. Although the goals of truth and propaganda sometimes worked at cross purposes, and although OWI had both shortcomings and critics, the agency generally was successful in meeting its objectives.
The OWI included a Domestic Branch and an Overseas Branch. The Domestic Branch was established to provide Americans information on the war and the war effort, to motivate them to greater efforts, and to convince them of the need for a leading American role in the world. It published pamphlets such as Divide and Conquer that illuminated the threat of fascism. It also published Negroes and the War, which in favorably depicting the circumstances and contributions of African Americans provoked criticism from white southern conservatives and African Americans alike for presenting what they saw, for different reasons, as a misleading portrayal of actual conditions.
The Overseas Branch produced materials for foreign audiences that illustrated the American contributions to the war, the accomplishments of democracy, and the virtues of America’s people, institutions, and war aims. It published a magazine for overseas distribution titled Victory. This publication met opposition from its first issue, when a prominent article featured a large photograph of Roosevelt and an article portraying him and the New Deal in very flattering terms. The magazine also contrasted the New Deal with such “reactionaries” as former Republican president Herbert C. Hoover. Such OWI material, some of it distributed to GIs as well, persuaded many in the Republican Party that OWI was part of FDR’s fourth-term campaign effort for the election of 1944. It led to considerable opposition to some OWI activities in Congress.
In addition to its informational and propaganda duties, the OWI included an Office of Censorship, under Associated Press news editor Byron Price, which monitored incoming and outgoing international communications, including films, that did not fall under armed forces censorship. And the OWI’s Bureau of Motion Pictures not only produced and released its own films but also worked successfully to persuade Hollywood to portray acceptable themes in its wartime movies.
As victory over the Axis seemed increasingly likely, and the OWI thus less necessary, and as the agency provoked opposition among conservatives and Republicans, Congress cut off most Domestic Branch funding in 1943, sharply curtailing its activities, and continued to scrutinize the Overseas Branch. President Harry S. Truman dissolved the OWI at the end of the war in August 1945.
Further reading: Allan M. Winkler, The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942—1945 (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1978).
World History
