“Sibs” were official rumors manufactured by the British government during World War II as a form of black propaganda and psychological warfare. The term itself is a contraction of sibilare, the Latin verb meaning "to hiss" or "to whisper".
During the war, British intelligence recognized that untraceable whispers could be used as devastating weapons to destroy enemy morale, mislead Axis intelligence, and influence neutral nations. They named these planted rumors "sibs" to evoke the image of a secret whispered or hissed into someone's ear.
1) Sib #1 (December 1940) : Driving a wedge between the German churches and the National Socialist Government of the 3rd Reich
Context : Since the German churches were the most powerful domestic opponent of the National Socialist authorities and held all human life as sacred on religious grounds, there was zero chance that the agents of Britain's pyschological warfare would not weaponize a euthanasia program implemented by their enemies. In a situation of great chemical warfare anxiety and fearmongering, the gas chamber story was almost a natural outcome. Moreover Pastor Bodelschwingh's institute had been bombed by the Royal Air Force and the Nazi authorities were making anti-British propaganda out of it. The British pyschological warriors therefore countered the future potential negative effects of this propaganda by concocting and planting the story that the Nazis themselves had killed the disabled children their own bombers had just killed at the Bethel institute in Germany.
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2) Sib#2 (October 1941) : Spreading out the mud that has stuck...
3) A rehashed atrocity story from the Great War (June 1942) : The London Daily Telegraph and the 700,000 victims of German gas chambers... again
4) More info about "sibs" :
How the "Sib" Machine Worked
The operation was highly organized and coordinated by agencies like the Political Warfare Executive (PWE) and the Underground Propaganda Committee (UPC), which met weekly in London to dream up and approve new rumors.
To be successful, a "sib" had to follow strict psychological rules:
- Untraceable: A good rumor could never be traced back to its official British source.
- Sticky: It had to be compelling enough that people would naturally want to pass it along and exaggerate it ("gain in the telling").
Famous Examples of "Sibs"
- Plausible yet False: It often mixed real elements of truth with an entirely fabricated narrative to make it believable.
The British created and distributed over 8,000 unique rumors throughout the war via secret agents, resistance networks, friendly journalists, and "black" radio stations. Some notable examples included:
- The Man-Eating Sharks: Spreading the rumor that the British military had imported man-eating sharks from Australia into the English Channel to devour any German aviators or invasion troops who fell into the water.
- The Fire Barrage: Whispering that Britain had developed a terrifying secret weapon capable of setting the surface of the sea on fire to burn up invading ships.
