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Office of War Information Photos of Polish Students 1942

Cold War Radio Museum
September 1, 2016

The Office of War Information (O.W.I.), established by Executive Order No. 9182 of June 13, 1942, was the WWII-era domestic and foreign propaganda agency of the U.S. Executive Branch reporting only to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt but essentially making its own decisions. The Voice of America which belonged to the Office of War Information originally did not have this name and was initially a propaganda outlet for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt administration, broadcasting anti-Nazi propaganda as well as propaganda in support of Stalin and the Soviet Union. Only a few years after the end of World War II, VOA started to criticize Soviet Russia and contributed, along with Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, to the eventual fall of the Soviet Union and its empire in Eastern Europe.

The names, “Voice of America” or “VOA,” were not commonly used during World War II. These overseas shortwave radio programs were then placed in the Overseas Branch of the O.W.I. They were often referred to by O.W.I. senior managers and others as “propaganda” or “psychological warfare” broadcasts. Among its many propaganda activities overseas and in the United States, the O.W.I. produced pamphlets and films justifying the illegal internment camps for Americans of Japanese ancestry after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

The Office of War Information also engaged in domestic propaganda and in often illegal censorship of some of the U.S. domestic media. The main targets of O.W.I.’s domestic censorship and intimidation were ethnic radio stations and newspapers in the United States. Some Polish-American media reported on Soviet atrocities, such as the then-secret Soviet execution in 1940 of over 15,000 active and reserve Polish military officers who were taken prisoner by the Soviet NKVD secret police in the autumn of 1939. These executions are known as the Katyn Massacre. O.W.I. also tried to censor media reports on Soviet arrests and deportations of millions of Polish citizens, Russians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians, Crimean Tatars and others. These Soviet repressions resulted in mass starvation, illnesses and countless deaths from executions, lack of medical care and hard labor.

These facts relating to the Soviet Union were being suppressed by the O.W.I. and in Voice of America broadcasts because Stalin became a U.S. ally against Germany after Hitler had attacked Soviet Russia in 1941. September 1 marks the anniversary of the outbreak of World War II in 1939 with Nazi Germany’s attack on Poland. It was followed by the occupation of eastern Poland by the Soviet Union. The Red Army entered on September 17, 1939 under the terms of the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, also known as the Hitler-Stalin Pact, signed in Moscow by Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia on August 23, 1939.

The refugee Polish students who attended the International Student Assembly in Washington, DC in September 1942 were recording radio programs for O.W.I./VOA most likely to offer what turned out to be a false hope of U.S. support for Poland’s independence after the war and possibly to encourage anti-Nazi resistance in German-occupied part of Poland.

In 1942, the Soviet Union still maintained diplomatic relations with the Polish Government in Exile in London. The Polish Embassy in Washington was most likely involved in facilitating the travel of these Polish students to Washington and their O.W.I-Voice of America recordings.

After the Soviet Union broke diplomatic relations with the Polish Government in Exile in April 1943 following the German discovery of the graves of massacred Polish officers in the Katyn Forest, O.W.I. and its Voice of America broadcasters restricted their cooperation with the Polish Embassy in Washington and intensified the cover-up of Soviet atrocities. Despite evidence to the contrary and urgings from the U.S. State Department to exercise caution, VOA wartime broadcasters blamed the Katyn massacre squarely on the Germans. One of such broadcasts for U.S. and foreign audiences, was written and recorded by O.W.I. director Elmer Davis. Some of the wartime O.W.I. Polish employees and VOA broadcasters were communists and Soviet sympathizers who after the war began working as propagandists for the Soviet-dominated communist regime in Poland.

When the young Polish students were recording their broadcasts in Washington, the fate of the Polish officers murdered on the orders of Stalin and the Soviet Politburo was still a mystery. The Voice of America did not start to report more truthfully about Katyn until after the war following the departure of some of the Soviet sympathizers and the cooling off of U.S.-Soviet relations. Even then, VOA reports on the Katyn massacre were periodically censored, but not as fully as when VOA was part of the O.W.I. during the war. President Truman abolished the Office of War Information by Executive Order No. 9608 on August 31, 1945 and transferred the Voice of America to the State Department.

What happened to some of these Polish students after the war is not known. The vast majority of Polish refugees who found themselves in the West during the war did not return to communist-ruled Poland. The first name of the young woman in the photograph above is Krystyna judging by the nametag she is wearing. Her last name cannot be fully deciphered, but it appears to start with “Strze.” The names of some of the students were misspelled in O.W.I. and Library of Congress records and captions.

Corporal Kazimierz Dziedzioch seen in some of the photographs was 15 years old in 1939, according to an article about him in the Polish Wikipedia. He escaped from Poland to the West and lied about his age to join the Polish Army in France. In 1940, he fought in Norway, where he was wounded by a German bomb. One of his legs was amputated above the knee. In 1942, he received the highest Norwegian military medal Krigskorset med Sverd. The Polish Government in Exile sent him to the United States to recover his health, finish his education, and promote the cause of independent and democratic Poland. As a member of the propaganda unit of the Polish Army, he participated in several O.W.I./Voice of America radio programs. After the war he remained in the United States, changed his name to Casimir D. Bernard and worked for IBM. He died in New York in 2007.

President Roosevelt recorded a message in connection with the International Student Assembly and held a reception for the international students at the White House which would have been broadcast by the O.W.I. overseas through the Voice of America programs although officially they were not yet called Voice of America broadcasts.

One of the students President Roosevelt met was Corporal Dziedzioch. As reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) on September 3, 1942, Nazi racial theories and the post-war status of Palestine were expected to be among the questions debated at the International Student Assembly which opened at American University in Washington, D.C. According to the JTA report, 28 nations were to be represented at the gathering by 300 students.

In his September 3, 1942 broadcast to the International Student Assembly, President Roosevelt said:

“In Norway and Holland, Belgium and France, Czechoslovakia and Poland, Serbia and Greece, there is a fighting spirit that defies the harsh oppression, the barbarous cruelty and terrorism of the Nazis. Although disarmed, the unconquerable people still strike at their oppressors. Although forbidden to know the truth, they listen at the risk of their lives to radio broadcasts from afar; and, by word of mouth and by secret newspaper passed from one patriot to another, they still spread the truth. When the time comes for these peoples to rise, Hitler’s New Order will be destroyed by the hands of its own victims.

Today the embattled youth of Russia and China are realizing a new individual dignity, casting off the last links of the ancient chains of imperial despotism which had bound them so long.”

In his speech, President Roosevelt also made a number of promises and predictions that turned out to be empty as a result of the agreements he and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill made later with Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin during their wartime conferences in Tehran and Yalta.

“This is a development of historic importance. It means that the old term, “Western Civilization,” no longer applies. World events and the common needs of all humanity are joining the culture of Asia with the culture of Europe and of the Americas to form, for the first time, a real world civilization.

In the concept of the Four Freedoms, in the basic principles of the Atlantic Charter, we have set for ourselves high goals, unlimited objectives.

These concepts and these principles are designed to form a world in which men, women and children can live in freedom and in equity and, above all, without fear of the horrors of war. For no soldiers or sailors, in any of our forces today, would so willingly endure the rigors of battle if they thought that in another twenty years their own sons would be fighting still another war on distant deserts or seas or in far-away jungles or skies.

We have profited by our past mistakes. This time we shall know how to make full use of victory. This time the achievements of our fighting forces will not be thrown away by political cynicism and timidity and incompetence.

There is still a handful of men and women, in the United States and elsewhere, who mock and sneer at the Four Freedoms and the Atlantic Charter. They are few in number; but some of them have the financial power to give our enemies the false impression that they have a large following among our citizenry. They play petty politics in a world crisis. They fiddle with many sour notes while civilization burns. These puny prophets decry our determination to implement our high concepts and sound principles. And the words of these little men of little faith are quoted with gleeful approval by the press and radio of our enemies.”

 

Photos

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Delano, Jack, photographer. Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. Delegate from Poland. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009820/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Delano, Jack, photographer. Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. Delegate from Poland. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009873/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Nichols, Dan, photographer. Washington, D.C. Foreign students at the international student assembly recording short talks in their native language to be broadcast by shortwave, after censorship by the OWI Office of War Information, to Nazi-held territory. Corporal Dziedzioch of Poland, eighteen years old. He spoke from the military standpoint. He lost his leg in the Narvik raid with the British and wears the decoration for heroism on his shoulder. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009762/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Nichols, Dan, photographer. Washington, D.C. Foreign students at the international student assembly recording short talks in their native language, to be broadcast by shortwave, after censorship by the Office of War Information OWI, to Nazi-held territory. Yolande Dankowier and Corporal Kazimierz Dziedzioch of Poland checking over their talks before recording. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009781/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Nichols, Dan, photographer. Washington, D.C. Foreign students at the international student assembly [before or after] recording short talks in their native language, to be broadcast by shortwave after censorship by the Office of War Information (OWI), to Nazi-held territory. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/owi2001009784/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Parks, Gordon, photographer. Washington, D.C. International student assembly. Wang Yung, a Chinese movie actress, and Corporal Kazimierz Dziedzioch, a delegate from Poland. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009742/PP/. (Accessed September 01, 2016.)

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Parks, Gordon, photographer. Washington, D.C. International student assembly. Wang Yung, a Chinese movie actress, and Corporal Kazimierz Dziedzioch, a delegate from Poland. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009743/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Delano, Jack, photographer. Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. Delegate from Poland addressing the assembly. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009585/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

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Delano, Jack, photographer. Washington, D.C. International youth assembly. General view. Sept, 1942. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001009843/PP/. (Accessed August 31, 2016.)

Office of War Information

The Office of War Information (OWI) was created in June 1942 during World War II as a propaganda and psychological warfare agency of the Executive Branch, targeting both domestic and foreign audiences. Its director, Elmer Holmes Davis, reported directly to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. The OWI Overseas Branch included the Voice of America (VOA) radio broadcasts, which were strongly pro-Soviet throughout the war, with any negative news about the Soviet Union censored out. These OWI radio broadcasts were not commonly referred to as Voice of America or VOA programs during the war, but the Voice of America name was eventually adopted.

Congress viewed the Office of War Information with great suspicion and often criticized it for attempts to censor U.S. media, its pro-Soviet propaganda at home and abroad, mismanagement, and questionable quality of its programs. OWI also had a few supporters, mainly among the most pro-Soviet members of Congress. Because of numerous controversies, President Truman abolished the OWI by executive order on August 31, 1945, and placed VOA within the State Department. The Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 tried to address some of the abuses of the wartime OWI and VOA management. The legislation put restrictions on propaganda by the Executive Branch in the United States and tried to prevent the hiring of foreign agents as VOA broadcasters by requiring strict security clearances for VOA personnel.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s, VOA was viewed as less than fully effective in countering Soviet propaganda. This led to the establishment of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberation (later renamed Radio Liberty) in the early 1950s, under the covert management of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The move to the State Department and the departure of the pro-Soviet OWI staff shortly after WWII helped establish some journalistic credibility for VOA during the Cold War. In 1953, VOA was again moved to the newly established United States Information Agency (USIA).

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Smith, Roger, photographer. New York, New York. Murals at the American-Soviet war exhibition, designed by the OWI Office of War Information and installed in the Museum of Science and Industry. June 1943. Image. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/owi2001030188/PP/. (Accessed September 02, 2016.)

The OWI slogan about the Soviet Union and the United States in June 1943 read: “TWO COUNTRIES YOUNG ENOUGH TO DARE ATTEMPT EQUALITY AMONG MEN.”

From the BUDGET FOR THE FISCAL YEAR 1945 – WAR SUPPLEMENT

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OFFICE OF WAR INFORMATION

The domestic and foreign war information functions of the Government, exclusive of Central and South America, were assigned to the Office of War Information by Executive order issued June 13, 1942. The scope of this authority as to domestic information was redefined by the National War Agencies Appropriation Act, 1944. As a result, the program of the Domestic Branch of the Office of War Information has been contracted and redirected. The program of the Overseas Branch is still expanding, under the impetus of intensified military activities both in Europe and the Far East.

Office of the Director and Management Services.—This unit is responsible for overall policy direction and management of the Office of War Information. Although the 1945 estimate reflects some decrease in workload, because of the transfer of functions to the Division of Central Administrative Services, this decrease is largely offset by a small increase in the workload of management planning and operating services.

Domestic Branch.— By action of Congress, all production was eliminated from the program of the Domestic Branch, and its function became one of consultation and advice. The primary objective of this program is to prevent conflicts and overlapping in the war information campaigns of all Government agencies, and to enlist the support of the radio, motion picture, book and magazine, and specialized press industries in support of these campaigns. A small staff is also provided to review and to eliminate unnecessary Government informational publications, and to service OWI and the Government as a whole with press clippings, public informational surveys, and a central public inquiries activity. The program for 1945 contemplates a continuation of these activities at the level established at the end of fiscal year 1944. The decrease in the 1945 budget is accounted for by the elimination of funds included in the 1944 appropriation for the liquidation of certain activities.

Overseas Branch.— The program of the Overseas Branch includes information activities in allied and neutral countries and psychological warfare activities which are carried on in conjunction with the military forces of the United States. The purpose of the information activities is to present facts about the contribution of the United States to the war. The psychological warfare activities cover pre-invasion, actual combat, and post-invasion phases. For the accomplishment of its objectives, the Office of War Information uses publications, radio, motion pictures, exhibit displays, and other media, with an organization of outposts abroad as distribution centers. The entire increase in the 1945 estimate in comparison with the 1944 appropriation is to provide for the psychological warfare program that is being developed in conjunction with the military. This program is expected to require a considerable expansion of production in the United States as well as greatly accelerated activities abroad. The information program in allied and neutral countries is being maintained at the 1944 level.

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