The German Reichsominator attributes the method to which the media should give 60% of the information in the interests of the enemy and 40% of their own misinformation. We checked whether Goebbels really came up with such tactics.

The principle that will be discussed in recent years is very often mentioned in the Russian -speaking media. That's what about him Writes The famous director and journalist "Radio Liberty" Yuri Veksler:

“This method consists in creating the media, which 60% of their information give in the interests of the enemy. But, thus earned his trust, the remaining 40% use for extremely effective due to this confidence in disinformation. During World War II there was a radio station listened to the anti -fascist world. It was believed that she was British. And only after the war it turned out that in fact it was Goebbels radio station, which worked according to the “40 to 60” principle developed by him. ”

The description of the method is also found in the book of 2016 “The charm of totalitarianism. Totalitarian psychology in post -Soviet Russia ", in the article of the overseas magazine American Thinker (True, the authorship of the Russian -speaking journalist), in the network encyclopedia "Tradition" And a lot of where else.

Most Russian references to “40 to 60” contain a reference to the words of Vladimir Yakovlev-a famous Russian journalist and media manager, founder of the Kommersant newspaper and a popular Internet magazine "Snob". That's full text His articles, replicated not only by the media, but also dozens, if not hundreds of reposts in social networks. In his entry, Yakovlev talks about five methods of propaganda (“rotten herring”, “inverted pyramid”, “big lies”, “40 to 60”, “absolute obviousness”), which he studied at the Military Department of the journalism faculty of Moscow State University in the “completely secret” environment. Goebbels Yakovlev mentions only in connection with one technology (“40 to 60”), and at the end notes that he could continue the transfer - the training went for a whole year, and the list of methods is quite large.

This article was first published on the Mulbabar resource at the address sguschenka.squarespace.com. At the beginning of 2014, Yakovlev emigrated from Russia to Israel, and a year later announced On the collection of $ 50,000 for launching “media capable of stopping the escalation of hatred” on the Kickstarter crowdfunding website. As follows from the project data on the site, it was supported by about 500 people. And now, in mid -May 2015, the first mulbar swallows appeared: Yakovlev’s column about propaganda methods, an interview with Boris Grebenshchikov, an essay on Leo Zilber and other texts. The main goal of his project, which did not last long, Yakovlev called the transformation of "madmen back into people." Under the "madmen", Yakovlev understood precisely just the victims of state propaganda. Today this resource is not available.

It is important to note that before the article of Yakovlev, traces of any references to the “40 to 60” method (with or without Goebbels) in the Russian-speaking segment of the Internet are absent. Search in English in sources until 2015 also does not lead to anything, unless you can find out about compensation about in the same popular way Preparations of coffee. But what about Goebbels? Was there something similar in his arsenal?

Of course, propaganda, in particular using radio, was a very effective remedy during World War II. Both sides used a large arsenal of funds to campaign and misinformation. The name of William Joyce, the British, who had been telling the victories of the Nazi troops from Hamburg, was shrouded in a halo of dubious fame, the name of William Joyce. By data BBC, his programs regularly listened to 9 million British, or 30% of the adult population. That's just Joyce and his radio station did not pretend to be the enemy: “Says Germany, says Germany. On the air of the radio broadcast of the Reich from Hamburg through the transmitter in Bremen and the DXB transmitter. Next, you will hear the news in English. ”

Sefton Delamer, a native of Berlin, acted somewhat closer to the Yakovlev principle, who from 1941 to 1945 headed several German -language propaganda radio stations broadcasting from Britain. Before the war, Adolf Hitler once spoke about Delater as his beloved foreign journalist, which did not prevent the latter in September 1940 to recruit the British. The transmission concept organized by the network of the network was to undermine Hitler and the NSDAP in every possible way, disguising formally under ardent supporters of Nazism. Patriotic pathos alternated with misinformation, so skillfully that Joseph Goebbels himself in November 1943 delightedly recorded in your diary:

“The station performs a very smart propaganda work, and from what is broadcast on the air, we can conclude that the British know for sure that they destroyed [their bombing] in Berlin, and what is not.”

Of course, German propagandists used similar rather obvious techniques (avoiding absolute lies, like absolute truth), but no information that Joseph Goebbels was the theoretician of such tactics (and even more so stopped his choice on the ratio of 60:40), no. Historical papers, his diaries and books on disinformation theory are silent about this.

Thus, the “40 to 60” method is the invention of either Vladimir Yakovlev himself or the compilers of a “textbook with a blue lubricated stamp of a special unit”, which he wrote about in his sensational publication, or one of their predecessors.