Talk:Loose lips sink ships

Re Seagrams

Re replacing the Ad Council with Seagrams (that is. "The phrase was used in posters made by the Seagram Distillers Corporation as part of that corporation's contribution to the National Victory Effort><ref>{{cite web |url=http://digital.hagley.org/cdm/singleitem/collection/p15017coll3/id/50/rec/3 |title= Loose Lips Sink Ships (1942-1945) |author= Seymour L. Goff (Ess-ar-gee or Essargee) |date= 1941-5|work= |accessdate= October 28, 2012}}</ref> and was used on posters by the United States Office of War Information.<ref name="pp"/>", I dunno about that. There were several posters that used the phrase. Did Seagram's design them all? Don't know. I don't want to say "some posters were made by Seagram" because maybe they did make them all. At any rate, it was Seagrams that paid for the printing (and maybe for the design, and the distribution), but I don't know how important that is; it was under the aegis of the Office of War Information. And I don't think that Seagram's coined the phrase, I think that the Ad Council did. Willing to be educated on the matter, but the ref given is not sufficient to answer these questions. Herostratus (talk) 06:47, 7 April 2013 (UTC)

Clean up the reference Page

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:%22In_popular_culture%22_content Please Read this great wiki article about cleaning up this page. - AH (talk) 03:44, 5 July 2018 (UTC)

D'Ann Campbell et al

@Rjensen:, you're wanting to put this passage into the article:

This type of poster was part of a general campaign of American propaganda during World War II to advise servicemen and other citizens to avoid spreading rumors--or truths--containing bad news that might hurt morale. Historian D'Ann Campbell argues that the purpose of the wartime posters, propaganda, and censorship of soldiers' letters was not to foil spies but, "to clamp as tight a lid as possible on rumors that might lead to discouragement, frustration, strikes, or anything that would cut back military production.

As to D'Ann Campbell, let's see... she's not bluelinked and isn't eligible, having written just the one "relatively brief"1 book (and that might be it, since I believe she's retired). She taught at Culver–Stockton College which is a college (not university) in outstate Missouri. She held an executive post at Montana State University Billings, and she was seconded to the Air Force Academy for a year, which is a good thing. She does have a PhD, from the University of North Carolina. Her book was published by Harvard University Press, which is a good thing.

So the thing about historians is, they search for a new angle on stuff. Of course they do, and that's fine. It's their job, and one reason we value them; they do research and hope to come up with a novel thesis -- The Industrial Revolution really started in the 17th century! The Battle of Adrianople wasn't very important after all! The Huegonauts were strongly influenced by Unitarianism! that sort of thing. It's fine to advance and add to thinking about history in this way. Why even write a book if its just going to rehash what's already been written. Anyway, that's what Campbell has done I think: "other scholars, Campbell argues, have paid far too little attention to women's own perceptions. They have been too quick to see in women's wartime activities the inchoate beginnings of the feminist revolution of the 1960s and after. (That is from this review. The "other scholars [have not seen what I have discovered]" is a flag of this sort of thing. Maybe she is right (I'm sure she has valid points at least), but it sounds like she might be an outlier. We prefer to mostly go with the mainstream.

Anyway, so per D'Ann Campbell we have that the posters were to "frighten people into not spreading... truths containing bad news that might hurt morale..."

So now it seems like we are saying in this article that, at least arguably, the posters ostensibly were saying "If you know when the next convoy is sailing, don't talk about it" but what they are really saying is "if you heard that we had heavy casualties at Kasserine Pass [or whatever], talking about that will sink the 'ship' of our morale, so you'd better keep your mouth shut if you know what's good for you, capice?" These are two very different things.

I'm skeptical about this thesis, but whether or no, we have the exact same passage in American propaganda during World War II where it belongs, if it belongs anywhere, so I'd like not to have it in this short specific article about a specific idiom. Herostratus (talk) 05:17, 24 November 2018 (UTC)

Were there lots of German spies everywhere in US & UK? not at all

Let's not assume there were lots of German and Japanese spies all over the place in the US and UK in ww2. nope--they rarely existed and then were watched by FBI and British agencies. (spies did exist in Latin America.) See David Kahn, Hitler's spies: German military intelligence in World War II (Macmillan, 1978) esp pp 6-7. Sanford Ungar, FBI (1976) p 105. also look at Double-Cross System -- the British MI5 controlled all but one of the German agents. In the US, the FBI pretty much destroyed German spy effectiveness. German spies sent the secrets they discovered to Berlin via a double agent whose messages were edited by the FBI. see https://books.google.com/books?id=VnQduXa4JdoC&pg=PA59 According to A Century of Spies: Intelligence in the Twentieth Century (1995) By Jeffrey T. Richelson "the legacy of German World War II human intelligence operations was largely one of defeat and disaster" p 139 ff for details. According to The German Fifth Column in the Second World War (1953) by Louis De Jong p 217: "Sebold was the only German agent who was in radio contact with Germany. As a result, the central figures of all the other German espionage systems in America were instructed to get in touch with him for transmitting their reports. All of them were arrested by the FBI during the last four days of June, 1941." Rjensen (talk) 08:07, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I'm sure all that is true. But the Ad Council (and all the other actors in the chain of ordering, creating, and disseminating these posters) couldn't know that. I would also think that FBI couldn't be sure they had everything under control -- if they didn't, how would they know.

Anyway for important matters like information hygiene in a world war, belt and suspenders is recommended. People like to demonstrate importance by blabbing about stuff they know that most people don't. It's just not a good look. It's not helpful to the war effort certainly. This is why a lot of countries had posters like this.

So IMO these posters were appropriate to their stated purpose, even if (as is quite possible) they did not, in the event, accomplish anything useful or save one ship. Herostratus (talk) 18:46, 25 November 2018 (UTC)

I cited RS stating that the FBI was confident it found all the spies. Likewise FDR. They were sure because to get info to Berlin a spy had to use radio and ALL high-powered radio transmissions were monitored. In 1945 the German records were seized and there were no new spies--FBI was right....ditto MI5 in Britain. The posters were metaphorical -- some of them had Hitler/Tojo etc riding in a car to show you that unnecessary trips help Hitler/Tojo (ie they hurt the economy). "Ad Council" is not an expert on spies but you cite zero sources on ads or rumors--you're imagination is too active here--please find & read some RS. You are misreading this Loose Lips poster: it never mentions spies. it says loose lips will bring disaster. The sinking ship is a metaphor of disaster (in fact poorly constructed US ships sometime did sink in storms.) Rjensen (talk) 11:23, 27 November 2018 (UTC)

OK skipped over the FBI spy confidence thing, sorry.

To be honest I'm somewhat in awe of your credentials, so I'm inclined to go along with what you say (even tho we're not supposed to give much deference to personal expertise). If you support Campbell that matters... to me at least.

I remain personally skeptical... I'd like to see some supporting material from the actual actors (people in the Ad Council etc.) in preference to after-the-fact forensic analysis, and I think a matter of the left hand not knowing what the right hand was doing is probably in play here (I assume that the FBI played it's cards close to the chest, and the Ad Council didn't know any of this).

But OK. I withdraw my objection to the material, I guess. Herostratus (talk) 20:33, 29 November 2018 (UTC)