Operations against troops must be based on the objective military situation. Suffering and exertion increase realism; plain soldiers are not apt to be talked over by propaganda unless the propaganda is carefully cued to their actual situation. All propaganda should be based on fact; propaganda to troops must be based not merely on fact, but must show shrewd appreciative touches of understanding the troops' personal conditions. Propaganda is not much use to a nation undergoing abject defeat, for the troops on the victorious side will be buoyed up by the affirmation of victory from their own eyes.
Troop propaganda must therefore aim at eventual willing _capture_ of the individual--not at surrender by his individual initiative. It must implant the notion that he may eventually be trapped, and that _if_ that happens he should give up. The propaganda must not meet the soldier's loyalty in a head-on collision but must instead give the enemy soldier the opportunity of rationalizing himself out of the obligations of loyalty ("true loyalty requires survival and therefore surrender"). The steps, therefore, needed for good propaganda to actual combat troops include the following:
first, the notion that the enemy soldier may have to surrender as his side loses or retreats ("other [named] units have surrendered, with so-and-so many men; you will have to, too");
second, themes which make the enemy soldier believe that an all-out effort is wasted or misapplied;
third, the idea that he or his unit may find themselves in a hopeless situation soon;
fourth, identifying the next authentically bad situation with the "hopeless" situation;
fifth, concrete instructions for the actual surrender.[42]
[Illustration: _Figure 52: Basic Types: Troop Morale._ Leaflets may be aimed at (1) morale, (2) news, (3) action. Morale leaflets neither communicate news nor call for specific action. Rather, they pave the way for action. Many of the previous illustrations have been of this type. This one is a troop morale leaflet used by the puppet Free India Army on their own men, who were discouraged by the self-evident lack of matériel and numbers. (Singapore, about 1944.)]
=Morale Operations.= Morale operations in the black field are, for the American record, still a closed book. German black operations against the French included such enterprises as sending French soldiers letters from their home towns telling them that their wives were committing adultery or were infected with venereal diseases, or calling out names and unit designations to French troops facing them in the Maginot Line, or giving away mourning dresses to women who would wear them on the streets of Paris, or intercepting telephone communications in the field and giving confusing or improper orders.