I've been reading Rodric Braithwaite's Moscow 1941: A City and Its People at War, a remarkable history of a very difficult time. One of the passages in the book that particularly caught my attention depicts the contrast between the USSR and the UK wartime government communications with their own civilians.

The end of Chapter Five: The Russians Fight Back tells of Soviet writer Konstantin Simonov's confusing glimpses of the early days of the German invasion of the Soviet Union. He potrays that time of the first six months of the war in in his novel The Living and the Dead (Живые и мертвые - Zhiviye i Mertviye). When he looked through Soviet archives of that period, he saw numerous disasters not reported in the Soviet press, such as the huge losses of the Red Air Force.

Simonov could never finally decide where the boundary lay between neccessary and unnecessary secrecy. He felt some sympathy for the authorities, who had to manage the news as the Red Army suffered one disaster after another. He himself felt unable to tell even his closest friends in Moscow what he had seen at the front. [...] He would have perhaps sympathised with the Home Office official in wartime London who wrote:

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The people must feel that they are being told the truth. Distrust breeds fear much more than knowledge of reverses. The all-important thing for publicity is to achieve is the conviction that the worst is known. [...] The people should be told that this is a civilian's war, a People's War, and therefore they are to be taken into the Government's confidence as never before.
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But he would probably also have shared that official's conclusion: "It is simpler to to tell the truth and if a sufficient emergency arises, to tell one big thumping lie that will then be believed."

[Home Office official quoted from Juliet Gardiner's Wartime Britain 1939-1945 (London, 2004)]

The British official's views echoes somewhat Winston Churchill's statement: "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

A key factor, however, is how often should the 'bodyguards" be employed before they lose their effectiveness.

Another effect of overusing lies as bodyguards for truth is the devluation of truth as people start to view true statements as deception.

For an interesting essay of the use of deception in wartime, see When a bodyguard of lies was possible" at the American Thinker.

A personal note about reading this book...

As I've been reading Moscow 1941, I cannot help but think of Al Stewart's song Roads to Moscow.  It is one of my favourite songs. As I read corresponding parts of the history, I keep hearing lines from the song such as:

They crossed over the border the hour before dawn.
Moving in lines through the day.
Most of our planes were destroyed on the ground where they lay.
Waiting for orders we held in the wood - word from the front never came.
[...]
In the footsteps of Napoleon the shadow figures stagger through the winter.
Falling back before the gates of Moscow,
Standing in the wings like an avenger.
And far away behind their lines the partisans are stirring in the forest.
Coming unexpectedly upon their outposts, growing like a promise
You'll never know, you'll never know.
Which way to turn, which way to look, you'll never see us,
As we're stealing through the blackness of the night.
You'll never know, you'll never hear

J.D. Abolins