I was intrigued and looked that up. Found this which was very interesting: Paul M.A. Linebarger mentions the theory in Psychological Warfare, Infantry Journal Press, Washington D.C., 1948. He says:
"Germans liked things done in an official and formal manner, even in the midst of chaos, catastrophe and defeat. The Allied obliged, and gave the Germans various forms of very official looking ‘surrender passes.’ One is printed in red and has banknote-type engraving which makes it resemble a soap-premium coupon."
Looks like I'd misremembered and "General Eisenhower's personal signature" was the ticket, not having a form to fill out. Sorry!
> British expert Lee Richards told me that the picture itself is propaganda. By 1943 the M unit only sent "black propaganda" into Germany and the picture is probably meant to disguise that fact and imply that they just ballooned harmless white leaflets. In fact, he adds "Looking closely at a higher resolution version of the photo you can see that just the top leaflet is the Safe Conduct, beneath it are the forged Skorpion newspapers."
"White" propaganda is when you say stuff you wrote is yours; "black" when you claim it comes from the other guys.
Linebarger goes at length into the problem of "source attribution", which, however difficult it was in the 1940s, can only be even more so nowadays.
The whole concept of bureaucracy itself is propaganda to convince you to that you have no choice but to submit to the bureaucracy's whims. "Computer says 'no'."
https://www.psywarrior.com/GermanSCP.html