Charles Douglas Jackson

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Charles Douglas Jackson (born March 16, 1902 in New York ; † September 18, 1964 there ), better known as CD Jackson or CDJ , was an American specialist in psychological warfare during the Second World War , later special advisor to President Dwight D. Eisenhowers .

Jackson graduated from Princeton University . He began his career in the private sector and worked for Time Magazine from 1931 . In 1940 he became one of Henry Luce's deputy directors at Time Inc. and president of the Council for Democracy , which he founded , the interventionist counterpart to the America First Committee .

Second World War

During the war in 1942/43 he represented the United States Office of War Information (OWI) as special advisor to the US ambassador to Turkey. He was then deputy chairman of the " Psychological Warfare Branch " in the AFHQ and later the same in the Psychological Warfare Division of the SHAEF . In 1943 he directed the OWI's leaflet and news activities at the AFHQ in Algiers . 1944-45 he worked for the PWD as a partner of the British Political Warfare Executive in London. Both activities served the Allied efforts to mobilize the population of the conquered areas against the Axis powers . In the last phase of the war he headed the Allied Information Service .

In 1945 he and Robert A. McClure demonstrated shrunken heads and lampshades made from human skin to the Weimar population in the Buchenwald concentration camp for PWD as evidence of National Socialist crimes . The scene was captured for propaganda purposes in a short film by Hanuš Burgers (with Billy Wilder ); the script published two days later in the New York Times using the same wording.

Cold War

From 1945 to 1949 Jackson was Managing Director of " Time-Life International " and then became the editor of Fortune . He served as President of the National Committee for a Free Europe in 1951/52. Together with John Jay McCloy and Allen Welsh Dulles , he founded Radio Free Europe and developed a plan to "liberate" Eastern Europe, while Dulles was also working on the internal cohesion of Western Europe at ACUE . After the re-election of Eisenhower, whose campaign speeches Jackson had written among others, he was appointed special advisor to the president on international affairs in 1952. He was a member of the 24-member Operations Coordinating Board (OCB), an executive body of the National Security Council . At the 9th UN General Assembly he appeared as a US diplomat.

Together with Harold Stassen and Drew Pearson , Jackson organized in August 1955 the dropping of 10 million leaflets by means of balloons behind the Iron Curtain in order to "strengthen the morale of the non-communist population" and the "spiritual resistance up to the day of liberation". When it came to the Hungarian uprising in the following year, meanwhile 14 million leaflets were thrown monthly , Eisenhower rejected supporting "bombs over Budapest" and pushed Jackson back, who insisted on military intervention. The rollback policy was abandoned.

In the Lebanon crisis of 1958 Jackson advised Eisenhower again and wrote his speeches after Sherman Adams and John Foster Dulles left the presidential office, but left the Eisenhower administration disappointed because of their "inaction" in the same year. From this point on, Time Magazine supported John F. Kennedy's election campaign . From 1960 Jackson directed Life Magazine until his death . His last headline was “ Vietnam, Our Next Showdown .” In an editorial series on Khrushchev and communism .

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ cf. Article Ilse Koch
  2. ↑ "Die Todesmühlen / Death Mills", Germany, USA 1945, Information Control Division (ICD)
  3. ^ "Nazi Death Factory Shocks Germans on a Forced Tour". Gene Currivan, NYT, April 18, 1945
  4. ^ Wiesen Cook, Blanche: "First Comes the Lie: CD Jackson and Political Warfare," Radical History Review # 31, (1984), Duke University Press
  5. ↑ Jackson Papers 1931-1967 , ibiblio
personal data
SURNAME Jackson, Charles Douglas
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American publicist
DATE OF BIRTH March 16, 1902
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH September 18, 1964
Place of death New York City