Overview
Introduction
The Office of War Information organized American wartime communication at home and abroad. Herbert Marcuse entered its service while trying to preserve his work with the Institute for Social Research . His letters and surviving papers show the practical question he faced: how should American media describe Nazi Germany so that audiences understood both its rulers and the people living under them?[1]
A civilian information office
President Franklin Roosevelt created the OWI on June 13, 1942. The new office combined existing public information agencies and foreign information functions. The OWI operated under the President's direction. Its work included press, radio and film programs.[2][3] The White House named Elmer Davis as director in its announcement that day.[4]
The government supplied its resources. The founding order transferred staff, property and records from predecessor agencies. It also provided for transfers of available public funds, subject to decisions by the Bureau of the Budget and the President. The director could employ personnel and organize the office within available funding.[2]
This arrangement put communication inside government policy. The OWI coordinated other federal information activities, while its domestic and overseas branches used different channels and addressed different audiences. Its surviving records include radio scripts, film work, news material and correspondence about campaigns. The organization joined research to the production and distribution of information.[3]
Marcuse weighed a government job
On November 11, 1942, Marcuse described a proposed Washington job to Horkheimer . He expected to work under Leo Rosten, making suggestions about the presentation of the enemy in the press, films and propaganda. He listed resources available in government offices, including microfilmed European newspapers, shortwave broadcasts and consular reports. Access to that material was one reason the work required his presence in Washington.[1] (pp.234–235)
The offer also raised a problem for his life as a scholar. Marcuse wanted to continue theoretical work with Horkheimer in California. Pollock warned him about the Institute's finances and urged him to consider the security of government employment. In a November 15 letter, Marcuse treated the position as a contribution to the war and an investment in the future, while asking whether it would allow their common work to continue.[1] (pp.235–237)
By December 2, Marcuse reported that the appointment had been approved. He had attended a small conference on which German groups and institutions should be identified as the enemy. He wanted to remain Horkheimer's collaborator and proposed using his position to keep contact between the Institute and government offices. The letter establishes his intention to act as a link. It does not establish that every collaboration he proposed took place.[1] (pp.237–238)
A proposal for presenting Nazi Germany
A surviving undated paper gives substance to the assignment. Its editor places it between December 1942 and March 1943 and attributes it to Marcuse from its form, content and relation to his other work. The paper asked how the presentation of Germany to Americans could prepare for cooperation after the Nazis' defeat.[1]
Marcuse opposed two habits of description. Treating all Germans as Nazis could obscure potential opponents of the regime. Treating Nazism as an accidental departure could obscure the groups that sustained it. He wanted reporting to distinguish rulers, supporters, people under compulsion and active opponents. Party membership alone, he argued, could not settle those distinctions.[1] (pp.179–182)
His proposed examples drew on economic analysis. Reporting on persecution should identify the businesses that benefited from dispossession, as well as the officials who carried it out. Reporting on state controls should ask whether large corporations had gained power despite restrictions on investment and profits. These were recommendations for selecting and explaining information, with the defeat of Nazism and postwar reconstruction in view.[1] (pp.182–183)
A separate route into wartime research
Marcuse moved to the OSS Research and Analysis Branch in March 1943. That later assignment belongs to a different institution and an account of reports for government users. His OWI work concerned the representation of the enemy and the audiences who would receive it.[5]
The OWI itself ended under an August 31, 1945 order, with foreign information work transferred to the State Department.[3] Its relationship with Institute participants is a specific history of employment, analysis and communication. Whether a particular proposal shaped a broadcast, film or public response remains a question for the production and audience records.