ABSTRACT
The world of the twentieth century differed sharply from that of the nineteenth. The twentieth century was the age of the masses. Those who governed had the opportunity for the first time to communicate directly with those they governed. The mass-circulation newspapers, the radio, the cinema and, after the Second World War, television, created entirely new conditions of government. Contemporaries were not slow to recognise this. Those who ruled could create images of themselves, of their policies and objectives, of society and the world around them and so seek to lead and manipulate the masses. Mass persuasion became an essential ingredient of government; and the techniques of the art were seriously studied and consciously applied by elected governments and totalitarian regimes alike; the British prime minister Stanley Baldwin used the radio effectively during the General Strike of 1926 by broadcasting to the nation; President Roosevelt started his famous ‘fireside chats’; and the totalitarian leaders, Stalin, Mussolini and Hitler, put on gigantic displays that could be ‘witnessed’ by millions through the cinema. Mussolini’s and Hitler’s raucous speeches became familiar to every Italian and German; they were amplified by loudspeakers erected in public places in case anyone turned off their radio at home. Manipulation, today’s ‘spin’, became the art of politics.
