--- title: Robert Bruce Lockhart url: https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/robert-bruce-lockhart/ description: 5 verified quotes from Robert Bruce Lockhart, Chairman and later Director-General of the Political Warfare Executive (1941 to 1945), with sources. section: FRAME --- ![Illustration: a split dossier collage contrasting a 1950s intelligence briefing room with an analog newsroom monitoring wall.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-then-and-now.jpg) [Quotes](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/) · United Kingdom # Robert Bruce Lockhart Chairman and later Director-General of the Political Warfare Executive (1941 to 1945) · United Kingdom On the regime page: [Churchill wartime government](https://propagandaarchive.org/regimes/churchill-government/#robert-bruce-lockhart) 5 quotes, oldest first. [Filter with other speakers](https://propagandaarchive.org/quotes/#speaker=robert-bruce-lockhart). 1. > “Physical separation, however, made effective control impossible, and the B.B.C. was able to assert a virtual independence. Chaos was therefore inevitable, and the three organisations were constantly at loggerheads. Indeed, during this period there was more political warfare on the home front than against the enemy.” — 1947 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Lockhart's memoir, published in 1947, describes the arrangement of British propaganda bodies in 1940: the Ministry of Information, the Department of Propaganda to Enemy and Enemy-Occupied Countries (at Woburn) and the BBC's European Services. He wrote for the Political Intelligence Department and, from 1940, was the British liaison with the Czechoslovak government in London. — R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning (Putnam, London, 1947), p. 96 [Source](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526666) 2. > “The new Government, overwhelmed with more serious problems, made a patchwork attempt to remedy this state of affairs. The Department for Enemy Propaganda was put under the control of Dr. Dalton, and Rex Leeper was appointed as the official in charge. The change was for the better, but it was only a half-measure. Dr. Dalton's main job was at the Ministry of Economic Warfare. Rex Leeper had also two jobs, for he remained as Head of the Political Intelligence Department. As far as policy was concerned, the Foreign Office had the last word on foreign propaganda. There was therefore duality of offices and of control from the start.” — 1947 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Lockhart recalls the summer of 1940, when the Churchill government placed the propaganda department for enemy and occupied countries under Hugh Dalton, the Minister of Economic Warfare. The Political Warfare Executive, which Lockhart later led, was formed in August 1941. — R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning (Putnam, London, 1947), pp. 96-97 [Source](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526666) 3. > “But in that autumn of 1940 the propaganda situation was almost tragic. There was an abundance of real talent at Woburn but the inability of propaganda to disturb the tide of German military successes did not increase the department's prestige, although at that time the task was, in fact, hopeless. And when the raids came, the peaceful security of Bedfordshire invited criticism by Londoners. It was freely given, and Whitehall wits and even the Press made allusions to "Leeper's Sleepers".” — 1947 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Lockhart describes the Woburn department in autumn 1940, during the Blitz, when Londoners criticised a propaganda department housed in Bedfordshire. — R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning (Putnam, London, 1947), p. 98 [Source](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526666) 4. > “Requests and refusals to publish leaflets were to continue until the end of the war. I had an open mind on the subject, but the Cabinet maintained the ban on the ground that publication would provoke acute controversy in the House of Commons and that Goebbels would make propaganda capital out of the criticisms and suggestions. There was some force in the argument. The whole country was divided on the question of a "hard line" or a "soft line" to the Germans in our propaganda, and, wisely in the beginning, if perhaps not so wisely towards the end, Mr. Churchill never allowed the subject to be debated. The propagandists themselves had little say in the matter. In war-time, propaganda is the handmaid of strategy and foreign policy and has to conform to official rulings.” — 1947 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Lockhart describes the refusal, from the start of the war, to publish in Britain the text of the leaflets dropped over Germany. The Commons questions of November 1941 and July 1942 on leaflet publication were answered by the Minister of Information. — R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning (Putnam, London, 1947), pp. 55-56 [Source](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526666) 5. > “I make no defence of our propaganda at this stage. But the plain truth is that propaganda is, or should be, always easy for the winning side and always difficult for the losing side.” — 1947 · Book Verified (secondary source) — Lockhart comments on the criticism of British propaganda in the first months of the war, after a cartoon in the Evening Standard contrasted Goebbels's efficiency with the work of the Ministry of Information. — R. H. Bruce Lockhart, Comes the Reckoning (Putnam, London, 1947), p. 59 [Source](https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.526666)