ABSTRACT
The Balkan microcosm presented the British with several of the challenges which their propaganda faced in much of the world during World War II. The PWE director's later assessment reveals the most controversial aspect of British propaganda to enemy-occupied Balkan countries. Defeat in the Balkans arguably made the British more circumspect in their effort to project power and resolve. According to Richard Crossman, PWE regional director for Germany, subversion, alongside strategic bombing, were the only aspects of war at which the British achieved real pre-eminence. Moreover, the inherent contradictions of British policy towards occupied Greece and Yugoslavia as well as the relative lack of teeth vis-vis the satellite countries crippled propaganda to a serious extent. The latter holds British propaganda to Yugoslavia and elsewhere in East-Central Europe responsible for sowing disruption which in turn risked a catastrophic social collapse, something that its practitioners never contemplated in western countries, such as France or Denmark.
