Total war to total diplomacy: The Advertising Council, domestic propaganda and Cold War consensus

Early in World War II the American advertising industry formed the Advertising Council, an industry association dedicated to informing and mobilizing the nation. The Council oversaw the creation and presentation of massive advertising campaigns supporting the war. It also coordinated the media's use of those messages in editorials and radio broadcasts. Further, the Council acted to influence the nation's elite opinion leaders and draw them together behind the war policies. The Council correctly believed that this public service would end the threats to the industry posed by the nation's wartime economic mobilization and the older, still lingering, threats of the New Deal years.; After the war, the Council continued its operations and the government continued to rely on it. Early postwar Council campaigns promoted public acceptance of internationalism and the Cold war. It sought to maintain the wartime's domestic cooperation to ensure that depression would not return. These activities made it an essential part of American policymakers actions to ensure that the nation did not turn its back on its international responsibilities.; Through the study of the Council, the connections between the depression, the New Deal, the success of the war-inspired corporatist economy and the Cold War become clearer. Council campaigns illustrate why the public came to reject isolationism, the nation's traditional foreign policy, and supported the Cold War. Study of the planning and design of the campaigns show what motivated the Council's business backers to endorse internationalism and how the government explained and presented its policies. In late 1947 the Council successfully recruited American labor leaders as part of its constituency. Council activity displays the unions concerns and motives for joining in the war-inspired cooperation of the early Cold War years.