Yes, war has to be the easiest way to control a people - and I guess its not limited to the hot phase where you demonise your enemy because you're fighting them etc, but its then natural to build on that deception to make a peacetime control structure.
I only just really started to appreciate this, particularly in respect of ww2. When you've seen how the state lies to further its interest even in something like covid, when we have the internet and the truth can now get out, its easy to see how total their control would have been after ww2 - and how irresistible the temptation to use that.