How to Win an Information War

From one of our leading experts on disinformation, the incredible true story of the complex and largely forgotten WWII propagandist Sefton Delmer - and what we can learn from him today.

Summer 1941, Hitler and his allies rule Europe from the Atlantic to the Black Sea. But inside Germany, there is a notable voice of dissent, Der Chef, whose radio broadcasts skilfully question Nazi doctrine. What listeners don't know is that Der Chef is a fiction, a character created by the British propagandist Sefton Delmer.

As Peter Pomerantsev uncovers Delmer's fascinating lost story, he is called into a wartime propaganda effort of his own: the global response to Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

Review

How to Win an Information War covers important topics, not least Pomerantsev's reflections on the future of propaganda in a digital world and how the enduring aim of propaganda (to give a sense of belonging) are dark arts being exploited by Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump in our own era. ― Independent

Pomerantsev is an unparalleled tour guide of our post-truth world. -- GARY KASPAROV

The author notes - just as the reader may do - structural similarities between Hitler's speeches and those made by Trump and Putin . . . Where does that leave us? Most controversially, with a refutation of our usual liberal piety. So Pomerantsev asserts that we should not trust in a "marketplace of ideas" where the "best" information will somehow win out if we just publish it. Success means engaging people who are resistant to what we want to say. ― Financial Times

Both history and a rallying cry . . . an illuminating guide to the nature and possibilities of propaganda. Written with palpable urgency, it cements the author's reputation as one of the leading experts in information warfare [...] it even manages to strike a tentative note of optimism [...] good can prevail of over evil once again. Only, we must all muster our intelligence and creativity. ― TLS

Brilliant [...] most timely [...] spare but gripping prose [...] This is a wonderful book whose appearance
could not be more timely nor its message more urgent.

― The Jewish Chronicle

Lively and elegant [...]This is Pomerantsev's third book about propaganda (after Nothing Is True and Everything Is Possible and This Is Not Propaganda), all vividly reported, well researched and crisply argued. ― Times

How to Win an Information War succeeds brilliantly in shedding light on the first question that Pomerantsev sought to answer: namely, what makes people susceptible to the blindness that propaganda can create? But the book's real importance lies in the fact that it ultimately fails to provide the answer to his second question: how might people be induced to break out of it? ― Irish Times

About the Author

Peter Pomerantsev is a Senior Fellow at Johns Hopkins University, where he studies contemporary propaganda and how to defeat it. His first book, Nothing is True and Everything is Possible, won the 2016 RSL Ondaatje Prize and was nominated for the Guardian First Book Award, Pushkin Prize, Baillie Gifford Prize and Gordon Burn Prize. His second, This is Not Propaganda, won the 2020 Gordon Burn Prize. His essay on authoritarian propaganda, 'Memory in the Age of Impunity', won the 2022 European Press Prize. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.