The First World War was the first war in which the mass media played a significant part.
Introduction
During World War One, propaganda was employed on a global scale. Unlike previous wars, this was the first total war in which whole nations and not just professional armies were locked in mortal combat. This and subsequent modern wars required propaganda to mobilise hatred against the enemy; to convince the population of the justness of the cause; to enlist the active support and cooperation of neutral countries; and to strengthen the support of allies.
Propaganda for Patriotism and Nationalism
By Dr. David Welch
Emeritus Professor of Modern History
Honorary Director of the Centre for the Study of War, Propaganda and Society
University of Kent
Overview
What kind of propaganda techniques were utilised during the World War One? Professor Jo Fox provides fascinating insights into this topic, using unique historical sources from the British Library’s collection and other archival footage.
How did both sides go about depicting the enemy and why did propagandists balance terror and humour? How was gender used as a propaganda technique and why did this lead to often contrasting depictions of women? With the advent of cinema, how was film propaganda utilised and how did the public respond to films like the Battle of the Somme? What techniques were employed by recruitment posters and to what extent were all these propaganda efforts successful?
The First World War was the first war in which the mass media played a significant part in disseminating news from the Fighting Front to the Home Front. It was also the first war to target systematically produced government propaganda at the general public. All the belligerents were therefore compelled to recognise that they had to justify the righteousness of the war and, to this end, themes such as patriotism and nationalism played an important role.
‘Your Country Needs YOU’
The armies of continental Europe were made up of conscripts, who really had little choice about going to war. In 1914 the British Army, by contrast, was made up of professionals and then volunteers. The British placed immense reliance, therefore, on propaganda to justify the war to the people, to help promote recruitment into the armed forces and to convince the population that their sacrifices would be rewarded. One of the most enduring images of the war – much copied and parodied since – remains the distinctive recruitment poster of Lord Kitchener’s heavily mustachioed face and intimidating finger imploring the British population that ‘Your Country Needs YOU’. Stereotypes deeply embedded in national sentiment were invoked to justify Britain’s entry into the war, and British propaganda posters often employed the religious symbolism of St George slaying the (German) dragon. British recruitment posters changed in tone, from appealing to an individual’s honour to ‘mobilisation by shame’. Savile Lumley’s famous poster of 1915 depicted two young children asking their father about his military prowess after the war: ‘Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?’ The emotional blackmail of using children to shame their elders into fighting was, in fact, employed by most of the belligerents. Women were also assigned the responsibility for ordering men into war. Perhaps the most well known in this genre is ‘Women of Britain Say—“GO!”’
Symbols of Nationhood
Once the initial euphoria (‘war fever’) had subsided, it was imperative to remind people, both at home and in the trenches, of what they were fighting for. The major themes included a call to arms and a request for war loans; as well as efforts to encourage industrial activity, to explain national policies, to channel emotions such as courage or hatred, to urge the population to conserve resources, and to inform the public of food and fuel substitutes.
One tactic at a state’s disposal was the use of iconic figures to strengthen a particular point about national identity in order to promote patriotism. These might be real people presented in a mythologised form as national heroes, or they might come from old myths or popular folklore: Britannia, John Bull and the British bulldog; the German eagle; the French cockerel or the national emblem of France, Marianne – an allegorical encapsulation of liberty and reason.
An alternative strategy was the use of material symbols of nationhood. Indeed, a state might have numerous opportunities at its disposal to create narratives and circulate images favourable to its preferred national story – in everyday items such as coins, banknotes and postage stamps, or symbolic structures such as statues, monuments and buildings. Two of the most overt and powerful symbols, which allow citizens to express their affinity with the state, are the nation’s flag and its anthem.
The Money Motif
The need to raise money to pay for the war by means of war bonds (or ‘Liberty Bonds’ as they were known in the United States) provided one of the most important patriotic themes for posters and for the new medium of film. A recurring, related theme was the portrayal of money (coins and banknotes) as an active force in military engagement, for example: ‘Turn Your Silver into Bullets – at the Post Office’. In France, a similar poster, designed by Jules Abel Faivre in 1915, depicted a large gold coin with a Gallic cockerel on it, crushing a German soldier, with the slogan: ‘Deposit Your Gold for France – Gold Fights for Victory’.
All sides, therefore, supplemented their military engagement with propaganda aimed at stimulating national sentiment by means of nationalistic slogans and patriotic calls to arms.
Atrocity Propaganda
By Dr. Jo Fox
Professor of Modern History
Durham University
Overview
Atrocity propaganda focused on the most violent acts committed by the German and Austro-Hungarian armies, emphasising their barbarity and providing justification for the conflict.
World War One atrocity propaganda was a specific propaganda technique that sought to garner support for war and provide a moral explanation for it, by highlighting the crimes and atrocities committed by the of the enemy. Professor Jo Fox discusses a number of atrocities utilised by propagandists, such as the invasion of Belgium in 1914, the execution of Edith Cavell and the sinking of the Lusitania. Using British Library collection items such as the Bryce Report, Professor Fox discusses the techniques used by propagandists, their validity as historical sources and their legacy in the inter-war years and beyond.
Victims shot, bayoneted to death, killed with knives, arms lopped off, torn off, or broken, legs broken, nose cut off, ears cut off, eyes put out, genital organs cut off, victims stoned, women violated and killed, breasts cut off, persons hanged, victims burnt alive, one child thrown to the pigs, victims clubbed to death with butt-ends of rifles or sticks, victims impaled, victims whose skin was cut into strips.
Professor R A Reiss, a prominent forensic scientist commissioned by the Serbian Prime Minister to conduct an enquiry into war crimes, thus categorised the numerous violent acts against civilians perpetrated by the occupying Austro-Hungarian forces in Serbia in 1914. His account bore striking similarities to French and British publications of the same period, notably Le livre rouge des atrocités allemandes and the Bryce Report. In painstaking detail, such reports recorded the crimes of 1914, individual acts of violence against civilians, troops and prisoners of war; looting and pillage; the use of weapons ‘forbidden by the rules and conventions of war’; the destruction of ancient libraries and cathedrals, and of homes and villages; rape, mutilation, and torture. Vivid illustrations and first-hand testimonies accompanied each description of the ‘crimes without name’, while Liège, Louvain, Dinant, Antwerp, Reims, Arras, and Senlis were transformed into ‘martyred towns’, ravaged by an uncompromising, inhuman enemy whose victims ranged from children to the elderly, from men of God to the injured and helpless. Such images dominated the early propaganda of the Great War, serving as a potent reminder of the justification for war and a vindication of the sacrifice it demanded.
The Nature of Atrocity Propaganda
Atrocity propaganda varied, appearing in books, newspapers, pamphlets, sketches, posters, films, lantern slides, and cartoons, and on postcards, plates, cups, and medals. It operated on many levels. Official government reports presented ‘evidence’ that German troops had contravened the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Eyewitness accounts from victims and perpetrators made for compelling and convincing reading, and, although methods of investigation often fell short of legal standards, the reports appeared to be based on irrefutable facts. That respected experts led these enquiries (Bryce, for example, having served as a British Ambassador to the United States, member of the House of Lords, and jurist) further legitimised the allegations.
While the reports tended to adopt an objective tone, salacious stories were extracted from testimonies to form the basis of sensational newspaper articles, exhibitions (such as that by Louis Raemaekers in London in 1915), or popular books. This created a dynamic, transformative and self-reinforcing propaganda environment. William Le Queux detailed the suffering of the ‘honest, pious inhabitants’ of Belgium, at the mercy of ‘one vast gang of Jack-the-Rippers… frothing with military Nietzschism’ and excited by ‘a primitive barbarism’. Although initially a response to the invasion of Belgium in 1914, atrocity stories drew – as Le Queux’s account suggests – on pre-existing anti-German sentiments. These sentiments were strengthened by wider official and unofficial publicity campaigns that pitted German Kultur against Christian civilization and morality, and created an interpretative framework for subsequent events. The ‘assassination’ of Edith Cavell, the sinking of the Lusitania, the declaration of unrestricted U-Boat warfare, Zeppelin raids, and the use of gas in the trenches all seemed to confirm the fundamental depravity of the German character and bolstered the hierarchy of enemies. Thus German atrocities were afforded a particular prominence, whereas the Turkish slaughter of Armenians passed almost unnoticed. The power of atrocity stories derived in part from their ability to stand either alone, as singular acts of barbarism and moral depravity, or as a series of pre-meditated collective behaviours that condemned a nation. These shocking stories allowed propagandists to justify the war, encourage men to enlist, raise funds for war loans schemes, and shake the United States from its neutrality. The impact of such propaganda was enduring, lasting well into 1918 and beyond.
The German Response
Allegations of atrocities proved difficult to refute. Any attempt to do so attracted further publicity, and explanations offered by the German and Austro-Hungarian authorities seemed only to confirm their guilt. The ‘Manifesto of the 93’, signed by leading German scientists, scholars and artists, including fourteen Nobel Prize winners, refuted charges of war guilt and legitimised the retaliation of German soldiers against illegal franc-tireurs (irregular forces, ‘free-shooters’), asserting that German troops had acted within international law. German propaganda pointed to the hypocrisy of ‘perfidious Albion’ (Great Britain), whose brutal Empire had perpetrated countless atrocities against the suppressed peoples of Ireland, India, Egypt, and Africa, and pointed to Germany’s own record of scholarly endeavour and social welfare.
The German Foreign Ministry’s ‘White Book’ sought to exonerate German troops as the victims of an illegal and unrelenting ‘people’s war’ conducted by Belgian civilians. This strategy proved unsuccessful. The Académie française condemned the Manifesto, while the ‘White Book’, highly selective and deploying unconvincing evidence, seemed to confirm German crimes and was demolished by the Belgian Livre Gris (1916). Attempts by the Austro-Hungarian Government to justify its troops’ actions met with similar criticism: Reiss condemned the ‘tardy excuses of the Austrian officials [which] fall to the ground’. By simply responding to Allied accusations, German and Austro-Hungarian propaganda was purely reactive: it failed to exploit the Allies’ own contraventions of international law, handing to them the moral high ground and ultimately the more convincing explanation for the outbreak of war.
Legacy
In the inter-war period, investigations into the nature of war propaganda suggested that atrocity stories had been fabricated by the Allies in order to justify the war and to encourage enlistment. Although more recently historians such as John Horne and Alan Kramer have illustrated the importance of the franc-tireur myth to the German military mind-set and highlighted the contravention of international law entailed in the murder of c.6000 Belgian citizens in 1914, for many years doubts about the veracity of Allied claims and the memory of the franc-tireurs remained.
When German forces once again occupied Belgium in 1940, monuments to civilian resistance in 1914 were destroyed, while researchers sought evidence of the existence of a citizen army in the Belgian and French archives. Liberal democratic propagandists of the Second World War were divided over the memory of the Great War: some invoked the experience of 1914 to demonstrate Germany’s continual threat to a peaceful Europe (Lord Vansittart’s Black Record, 1941, for example), while others pointed to the uniqueness of Nazism. While seeking ‘another Edith Cavell’ for their campaigns, they were limited by the popular memory of ‘false’ 1914 atrocity stories. As a result, they feared exposing themselves to charges of exaggerating Nazi atrocities in Europe from 1941, with the consequence that the plight of the Jews and others was largely ignored and public attention directed elsewhere.
Propaganda as a Weapon? Influencing International Opinion
By Ian Cooke
Lead Curator for International and Political Studies
British Library
Overview
From the beginning of World War One, both sides of the conflict used propaganda to shape international opinion.
Governments during the First World War devoted massive resources and huge amounts of effort to producing material designed to shape opinion and action internationally. The efforts of states to justify their actions, and to build international support, resulted in some of the most powerful propaganda ever produced. They also shaped attitudes towards propaganda itself in the years following the end of the War.
Influencing the News
One of the first actions carried out by Britain at the start of the war was to cut Germany’s under-sea communication cables, ensuring that Britain had a monopoly on the fastest means of transmitting news from Europe to press agencies in the United States of America. Influencing the reporting of the war around the world, with the aim of gaining support and sympathy, was an important objective for all states. In Britain, a secret organisation, Wellington House, was set up in September 1914, and called on journalists and newspaper editors to write and disseminate articles sympathetic to Britain and to counter the statements made by enemies. As well as placing favourable reports in the existing press of neutral countries, Wellington House printed its own newspapers for circulation around the world. Illustrated news, carrying drawings or photographs, was viewed as particularly effective. By December 1916, the War Pictorial was running at a circulation of 500,000 copies per issue, in four editions covering 11 languages. The Chinese-language Cheng Pao had a fortnightly circulation of 250,000 issues, and was described as having ‘such a powerful effect upon the masses that the Chinese government were able to declare war against Germany’.[1]
World War One atrocity propaganda was a specific propaganda technique that sought to garner support for war and provide a moral explanation for it, by highlighting the crimes and atrocities committed by the of the enemy. Professor Jo Fox discusses a number of atrocities utilised by propagandists, such as the invasion of Belgium in 1914, the execution of Edith Cavell and the sinking of the Lusitania. Using British Library collection items such as the Bryce Report, Professor Fox discusses the techniques used by propagandists, their validity as historical sources and their legacy in the inter-war years and beyond.
German and British Covert Propaganda
In addition to press reporting, states attempted to influence opinion using a wide range of pamphlets, cartoons, and longer books. German efforts in the USA centred on the production of vast numbers of publications through existing German cultural institutions. The War Plotters of Wall Street, published in 1915, is an example of this type of propaganda. It tells of a plot by unscrupulous financiers to draw the USA into a war which would be against its own interests and ruinous to its economy. The book warned Americans against financial support for Britain, arguing that loans would never be repaid.
However, German propaganda tended to lack subtlety, and the use of organisations such as The Fatherland Corporation as publishers often gave the game away. British efforts, directed through Wellington House for most of the war, took a different approach. Commercial publishers were used to give the impression that works were produced independently of state direction. Books and pamphlets were published in huge numbers and circulated to lists of people identified as opinion makers sympathetic to Britain. The intention was that popular support for Britain would be built through local advocates rather than appearing to come from Britain directly.
Official Propaganda
In some cases, this covert activity would be supported through more overt official messages, where this might lend further weight. The 1915 British Parliamentary publication, Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages (the ‘Bryce Report’) was an attempt by the government to set out its justification for war, and to give credibility to stories of German atrocities in Belgium and France. The report, widely circulated alongside Wellington House propaganda, was based on testimony from refugees from Belgium and France, and was later criticised for its uncritical treatment of sources.
In some cases, this covert activity would be supported through more overt official messages, where this might lend further weight. The 1915 British Parliamentary publication, Report of the Committee on Alleged German Outrages (the ‘Bryce Report’) was an attempt by the government to set out its justification for war, and to give credibility to stories of German atrocities in Belgium and France. The report, widely circulated alongside Wellington House propaganda, was based on testimony from refugees from Belgium and France, and was later criticised for its uncritical treatment of sources.
Exploiting Mistakes Made by the Enemy
British propaganda aimed at neutral countries also made effective use of Germany’s misfortunes or misjudgements during the war. In 1916, an independent German artist created a small number of medals to commemorate the anniversary of the sinking of the Lusitania. The medals focused on German justifications for the act (which had claimed 1,198 lives), alleging that the passenger liner had been carrying weapons for Allied forces. The medal was found by British agents, and hundreds of thousands of copies were made and circulated to highlight the ‘barbarity’ of the enemy.
Most damaging of all was the ‘Zimmerman telegram’, a German diplomatic communication which was uncovered in 1917 by British intelligence. The telegram contained details of German plans in the event of the USA joining the war on the Allied side. It envisaged an offer to Mexico of territory including the states of Texas and Arizona in return for declaring war on the USA. Although the American President, Woodrow Wilson, had probably already decided to commit to war before the contents of the telegram were known, their subsequent publication ensured public support.
Propaganda against Enemy Armed Forces
Alongside attempts to influence public opinion in neutral countries, propaganda was also used directly against enemies. From the start of the war, aeroplanes and balloons were used by all sides to drop leaflets and posters over fighting forces and civilians.
On the Western Front, the German publication, the Gazette des Ardennes, was intended in part to engender French and Belgian civilian hostility to British forces. It was countered by the British publication Le Courrier de l’Air. As well as publications in French and Flemish, German propaganda included material written in Urdu, aimed at Indian regiments fighting in Europe. These leaflets and posters played on resentments of British rule in India, and attempted to persuade soldiers to stop fighting or join with German troops.[2]
The Impact of International Propaganda
The impact of this propaganda on fighting forces is hard to assess. Leaflets and posters were certainly circulated in vast numbers by all sides, and captured troops were often found to have leaflets in their possession, despite the harsh penalties imposed for doing so. There were also reports of leaflets being exchanged for money.
Certainly, contemporary commentators were impressed, and sometimes horrified, by the effectiveness of propaganda in influencing public opinion. In the years immediately following the war, the exaggerated reports of German and Austrian treatment of civilians were denounced as ‘atrocity propaganda’. In the USA, the opinion that the country had been ‘duped’ into joining the war influenced isolationist policies. Both Lenin and Hitler were convinced of the significance of propaganda in ensuring success. Perhaps the most damaging legacy was the myth that gained currency in Germany that the war had been lost not on the battlefield, but through the influence of foreign propaganda on the German people.
Depicting the Enemy
By Dr. David Welch
Emeritus Professor of Modern History
Honorary Director of the Centre for the Study of War, Propaganda and Society
University of Kent
Overview
What kind of propaganda techniques were utilised during the World War One? Professor Jo Fox provides fascinating insights into this topic, using unique historical sources from the British Library’s collection and other archival footage.
How did both sides go about depicting the enemy and why did propagandists balance terror and humour? How was gender used as a propaganda technique and why did this lead to often contrasting depictions of women? With the advent of cinema, how was film propaganda utilised and how did the public respond to films like the Battle of the Somme? What techniques were employed by recruitment posters and to what extent were all these propaganda efforts successful?
During World War One atrocity propaganda was employed on a global scale. The Great War was the first total war in which whole nations and not just professional armies were locked in mortal combat. This and subsequent modern wars required propaganda to (1) mobilize hatred against the enemy; (2) convince the population of the justness of one’s own cause; (3) enlist the active support and cooperation of neutral countries; and (4) strengthen the support of one’s allies. Having sought to pin war guilt on the enemy, the next step was to make the enemy appear savage, barbaric, and inhumane. All the belligerents in World War One employed atrocity propaganda associated with the enemy and, as a result, stereotypes emerged that had been largely developed in the period leading up to the outbreak of war. The recognition of stereotypes is an important part of understanding the use of anti-symbols and the portrayal of the enemy in propaganda. The enemy is of great importance in propaganda, for not only does it provide a target that can be attacked, but also it offers a scapegoat – the easiest means of diverting public attention from genuine social and political problems at home.
German Depictions
In Germany the war was justified as one of defence, as a result of aggressive encirclement on the part of the country’s enemies (France, Russia and Britain). This proved a fruitful theme in German propaganda. The Germans referred to the British as ’perfidious Albion’ and provided accounts of the Allied use of dum-dum bullets, mutilation, and brutality, as well as the use of ’savages’ from Africa and Asia to fight civilized peoples. The Germans also referred to the British naval blockade as an ’atrocity.’
British, French, and Belgian Depictions
Britain, however, is justifiably regarded as having deployed atrocity propaganda with more intensity and more skill than most. Stories of the dastardly deeds of ‘the enemy’ are a time-honoured technique of propagandists, particularly in war propaganda. The stereotype of the German ‘Hun’ that emerged in British propaganda was used to reinforce British values and to contrast such values favourably against German aggression and barbarism. The French employed similar stereotypes to depict the Germans in disparaging terms such as the Boche. The image of the enemy was a crucial aspect of wartime propaganda and served to justify British war aims, encourage enlistment, help raise war loans, strengthen the fighting spirit of the armed forces and bolster civilian morale.
The German invasion of neutral Belgium was the pretext for an anti-German campaign which rapidly mobilised widespread support amongst all sections of the population. Belgium was depicted as a defenceless child or woman ravaged by a brutal Prussian militarism. Tales of the spike-helmeted German ‘Hun’ cutting off the hands of children, boiling corpses to make soap, crucifying prisoners of war, and using priests as clappers in cathedral bells were widely believed by the British public, particularly after the Bryce Commission (1915), which had been established to look into these claims, concluded that many were true. Vilification of Kaiser Wilhelm II, and his Weltpolitik (often referred to as ‘kaiserism’), as well as accusations of German brutality, were hallmarks of British and French propaganda throughout the First World War. Like the British, the French fashioned the war against Germany into a struggle of civilization against barbarism and referred to the Kaiser as ‘chef des barbares’ (chief of the barbarians).The Germans’ policy of Schrecklichkeit (based on the idea that military ruthlessness shortens war) was in evidence during their advance through Belgium and was widely reported in the British press, which needed no encouragement from the government to publish stories of German atrocities, and as a result public opinion, whipped up by such stories, was prone constantly to hysteria.
Both the British stereotype of the Hun and the French image of the Boche provided a platform for the Allies’ propaganda to launch a moral offensive against a society founded upon militaristic values, thereby bringing home to their own populations the unimaginable consequences of defeat. Hatred of the enemy and atrocity propaganda therefore played a major role in the wave of patriotism that enveloped Europe in the early stages of World War One.
Commercial Advertising as Propaganda in World War One
By Dr. David Clampin
Subject Leader for History and Associated Programmes
Liverpool John Moores University
Overview
Key propaganda messages were incorporated into commercial advertising for the Home Front and the battlefield, transforming consumer’s relationships with everyday goods.
When war came to Europe in 1914, it coincided with a variety of shifts and developments that were moving many western nations towards a state of modernity as we might recognise it today. As one example, the consumption of goods was being promoted less on rational grounds and more according to emotional appeals. These developing patterns of consumption extended into the war. With reference to Britain in particular, it can be seen how autonomous private concerns played a significant role in the propaganda effort and served to characterise the nature of that conflict in the promotion of their goods.
The Nature of Marketing Communications up to 1914
At the turn of the 20th century, the economy was geared towards the mass production of consumer goods at prices within the reach of many. In a market now virtually flooded with goods, finding demand for these helped to give rise to modern marketing and advertising. Part of that process frequently entailed creating a want, if not a need, for goods where none had existed before. Consumers were encouraged to shift from making rational, fact-based decisions towards choices based more on emotional impulses. This sense that you were buying something beyond the physical product and creating an emotional bond with inanimate goods was well developed by the time of the First World War, and was used to good effect. What is more, the British government itself appeared to sanction such an approach.
The Official ‘Endorsement’ of Commercial Advertising
In the face of shortfalls in recruits into the army prior to the outbreak of war, J E B Seeley, the Secretary of State for War, had recruited the services of the publicist Hedley Le Bas of the Caxton Publishing Company. Le Bas’s solution had been to launch an advertising campaign, drawing on emotional appeals, which met with a good deal of success. Subsequently, these services were retained and many in government acknowledged for the first time the contribution that advertising practitioners might make either in an ‘official’ capacity or by their own volition in joining the patriotic crusade as a means of promoting their goods as the nation went to war.
A Time of Opportunity, a Compelling Message
As the war developed, there was a surge in newspaper readership as the public clamoured for news from the front. This increase represented large numbers of potential customers to advertisers, who were keen to place advertising in pursuit of those readers who might be inclined to buy their products. Further, given the sense of unity within the nation, simple sales messages could be devised, which keyed into the popular narrative and reinforced pervasive propaganda messages. Patriotism was a recurring motif in commercial advertising, alongside the denigration of the enemy. In this process, buying the products of the Allied nations was absolutely key and extended to distinguishing the Allies’ approach to war in contrast to that of the enemy, as well as tacitly advocating an emotional connection through the consumption of these goods. This is typified in the Gillette advertisement which celebrates the ‘Clean Fighters’ of the Allied forces ‘fighting for clean ideals’[3].
Private enterprises stood squarely behind the war effort, reinforced prevalent propaganda messages and, at the same time, benefited through the sale of their goods under such a worthy mantle. Along the way they could draw on a sense of romanticism (which they had been using prior to the war to bring their goods to life in a crowded marketplace), recreating the war in a romantic way and reinforcing recruiting propaganda that spoke to the sense of adventure that characterised the conflict. So it was that the Swan Fountpen was not just a writing implement but also a connection to home and a means to ‘bring comfort to you and joy to your mother, wife or sweetheart’. Conversely, the ‘Greys’ cigarettes, ‘SECOND TO NONE’, captured the ‘excitement’ of a ‘Stirrup charge…at St. Quentin 1914’. In combination, an all-pervasive propaganda message could reach out to ordinary people in the home nations and at the same time nurture a healthy profit for the companies concerned.
Women in World War One Propaganda
By Dr. Jo Fox
Professor of Modern History
Durham University
Overview
What kind of propaganda techniques were utilised during the World War One? Professor Jo Fox provides fascinating insights into this topic, using unique historical sources from the British Library’s collection and other archival footage.
How did both sides go about depicting the enemy and why did propagandists balance terror and humour? How was gender used as a propaganda technique and why did this lead to often contrasting depictions of women? With the advent of cinema, how was film propaganda utilised and how did the public respond to films like the Battle of the Somme? What techniques were employed by recruitment posters and to what extent were all these propaganda efforts successful?
Women, awake! ‘Tis yours your men to sway,
Bid them beware the confidence they feel.
Bid them cast sloth and apathy away:
The foe is brave and worthy of our steel.
This appeal to the women of Britain by the Imperial Maritime League is redolent of the famous poster convincing potential recruits to enlist: while their loss is keenly felt, mothers, wives, and daughters sanction the departure of their menfolk to the battlefields of Flanders in order to defend their honour and way of life. Propagandists exerted pressure on prospective volunteers by urging that women and children were under threat and required their protection, as the reports emanating from the occupied territories of rape, torture, and mutilation seemed to confirm. Equally, women themselves were called upon to mobilise, to assist in the care of troops at the Front, to fill roles on the Home Front vacated by the nation’s soldiers, and to work in factories producing munitions for them to fire.
Mobilisation and Duty
Propaganda tended to depict women as guardians of the home, their gentle nature and vulnerability making them both objects of men’s affections and victims of the enemy’s barbarous acts, and yet also as resilient, active participants in the war effort.
Women served as reminders of the necessity of the fight and of the companionship that awaited soldiers upon their return. The idealised family home symbolized stability, safety and peace, the description of life under German occupation only serving to underscore the need to protect it. Those who refused to do so, propagandists argued, would face accusation and recrimination (‘What did YOU do in the Great War, Daddy?’) and would be spurned by sweethearts. Propaganda urging women to ‘wait, weep, and be worthy’ (Braybon, 2003: 98) accompanied direct appeals to mobilise. Campaigns exhorted them to nurse injured servicemen, temporarily take up untraditional occupations, and to manufacture arms for the front. Numerous publications valorised ‘our adaptable women’, now farmers, station-masters, stokers, railway greasers, bricklayers, carpenters, butchers, brewers, and chimney sweeps.
Suffragettes seized upon the mobilisation of women to argue that active female participants in the war effort were more worthy of citizenship than were male pacifists or conscientious objectors. But the image of such women was far from clear-cut. Female nurses, who risked their lives to care for the troops at the front, were still described in gendered terms (as carers, sisters or ‘angels’), while munitions workers were simultaneously depicted as capable of demanding physical labour and as compromising their maternal instincts. How to reconcile the paradox that the same women who made the bullets and shells, responsible for the deaths of so many, would also be the mothers of the next generation?
National Symbols
Women served as the embodiment of the nation: Mère-Patrie, Marianne, ‘the spirit of Australia’, Mother Russia, ‘Liberty’, and Britannia all took the female form, appearing as both demure and combative. Frequently deployed at times of national crisis, these symbols epitomized the nation’s moral rectitude, its virtue and innocence, the justice of its cause, and its determination to overcome the enemy. They evoked the fertility and wealth of the nation’s natural resources and its historic foundations. French propaganda, for example, drew parallels with the principles of the Revolution and with the levée en masse (mass mobilisation during the French Revolutionary Wars), while the Alsatian community recalled the defeat of 1871 when memorialising their dead.
Women also served as allegories for the brutalisation of the nation. The violation of national boundaries and the suffering inflicted upon the occupied was expressed in graphic and gendered terms (for example, the ‘Rape of Belgium’). Such language was particularly expressive when complementing the prevailing narrative of the war: that Prussian militarism, with cold, masculine efficiency, had overcome and subdued the ‘feminised’ nations (the national mythic construction of France and Belgium). This narrative found expression in numerous graphic representations of German soldiers menacing and defiling the feminised national symbols, literally or by allusion, while conversely the invaded nations’ menfolk were emasculated, unable to defend their women while on duty in the trenches.
Victims of Violence
The desecration of the nation by the invader was also evoked through atrocity propaganda that drew attention to individual barbarous acts against women, whether young women (who tended to be the victim of brutal sexual assault or murder – this included children) or old ones (subjected to beatings or psychological torture). This propaganda, no doubt receiving widespread publicity due both to public moral outrage and to the lurid details contained within eyewitness testimonies, was intended to signify the bestiality of the enemy. As such, it obscured the suffering of the victims of assault and minimised the dilemmas they faced. As the historian Ruth Harris has demonstrated, particular attention was given to those women who fell pregnant following an assault: could the ‘child of the barbarian’ ever be raised as a Frenchman, and, if not, would the State and the Church sanction abortion to remove the enemy foetus not only from the violated woman but also from the entire body politic? ‘The enemy is the enemy’, declared Dr. Paul Rabier, ‘and wherever he inserts himself and digs in, we have to dislodge and kill him, that is war’ (Horne and Kramer, 2001: 305).
The ‘New Woman’
Contemporary commentators recognised that the war had complicated traditional conceptions of gender in the public and private spheres. The Editor of Women of the Empire suggested that women’s contribution to the war effort would ‘mean a totally new world when peace once again holds sway the world over. It means an entire regeneration, not only of womanhood, but of manhood also, for you may be quite assured that the new woman will not rest satisfied with the old man.’ Such pronouncements cast the war as a ‘watershed’ moment in the history of women’s liberation. Of course, the reality was different, and new tensions soon emerged.
The extension of the suffrage and the growing voice of women’s rights campaigners underscored a perception that ‘women prosper[ed] as men suffer[ed]’, another example of how war produced gendered dichotomies. As the historian Gail Braybon noted, propaganda tended to reinforce such divisions: ‘[Just] as mobilisation was polarised by gender, the men marching away, the women staying behind, so too victory and defeat. In victory, the men were to march home and the women were to cheer. In defeat, the men were killed and the women were raped’ (Braybon, 2003: 88, 121-2). The reality, as Braybon suggests, was more complex: relatively few women either experienced or embraced the notion of sexual, social and political liberation promised in the interwar years, epitomised by the Weimar Republic’s ‘new woman’, but equally the status of women had fundamentally changed and would undergo further upheavals during the second major conflict of the 20th century.
Children’s Experiences and Propaganda
By Ian Cooke
Lead Curator for International and Political Studies
British Library
Overview
Children were affected by the First World War in ways previously unexperienced. For the first time, war impacted on whole populations, as the requirements of mechanised warfare meant that entire economies had to change to support munitions production as well as feeding and supplying huge armies. Technological innovations brought the threat of bombing from the air to cities far outside the zones of conflict, while naval blockades of shipping meant that millions across Europe experienced starvation and other extreme shortages.
Childhood experience of the war reflected these radical changes. Children were vulnerable to the effects of shortages caused by blockades and the need to redirect resources to the war effort. They experienced the loss of parents and other adults in their families as fathers and uncles joined the armed forces and mothers and aunts started working in factories. At the same time, the experiences of children across Europe generally had been changing rapidly from the mid-19th century, as a result of reforms in education and progress in maternal and infant care. By the early years of the 20th century, more children received some form of school provision up to their early teens than ever before.
Schoolwork Created by Children in Wartime
In the minds of many Europeans of this time, education meant learning correct moral behaviour just as much as learning to read and write. Already before 1914, school had become an important influence on children’s values, sometimes even more so than parents. Across Europe, schools promoted patriotic values. This development became even more marked from the start of the conflict, as schools and teachers came under pressure to devote their entire teaching to support of the war effort.
Typical lessons asked children to write and draw about the war. These two examples were produced by children from a secondary school in Styria, Austria, and reflect the way that children were taught about war.
The previous drawing, by a 13-year-old boy is titled ‘Durch Feindeshand!’ (‘done by the hand of the enemy!’). It reflects fears about the destruction of civilian property and lives, but also clearly attributes responsibility to ‘the enemy’. Much propaganda on all sides of the war focused on the atrocities caused by enemy troops against innocent civilian populations. The peoples of enemy countries were portrayed as barbarians, who caused such outrages because amorality was an inherent part of their national character. This type of propaganda was not just restricted to children, and formed part of the wider environment within which the young lived. In this picture, ‘the enemy’ has become completely dehumanised, replaced by a field gun.
The previous picture, by a student at the same school, accompanies an essay describing a fictional Zeppelin attack on London. Both the essay and the picture show a fascination with the new technology of warfare, which was a popular topic for children. There is little or no concern for the fate of those being bombed, and the essay describes the Zeppelin crew receiving a hero’s welcome on return to their quarters in Antwerp. In contrast to this fictional essay, there are many accounts of real airship raids over London, written by local children. The accounts by the boys of Princeton Street Elementary School, aged between 5 and 14, often show excitement as well as fear at the sight of the Zeppelins.
Children’s Humor and Cruelty in Propaganda
Cruelty towards the enemy was encouraged by propaganda directed at children as well as adults. The use of cruelty in children’s humour was prevalent before the war, for example in the popular book Struwelpeter. This parody of morality tales for children consisted of rhymes and grisly images that told the gruesome fate of children who didn’t behave properly. Originally published in the mid-19th century, it remained popular through Europe, and was adapted for propaganda purposes in both world wars.
In this version of the book, the enemies of Germany are portrayed as the errant children in the verses. The enemies of Germany are responsible for causing the war, requiring ‘Germania’ to intervene to restore order.
The use of cruelty was particularly heightened in commercial publications, such as the German children’s book Hurray! A picture book of war. The book tells the story of two boys, the German ‘Willi’ and Austrian ‘Franzl’, as they learn about the different countries fighting in the war, and take part in attacks on enemies. The countries are divided into ‘good’ or ‘evil’ depending on which side they are on.
Hurra! is also typical for its depiction of children in uniform. The use of uniforms, armed forces’ for boys and nurses’ for girls, contributed to the expectation that children would grow up to defend their country. More immediately, it increased the pressure on children to be patriotic and active supporters of the war.
Propaganda and Children’s Roles
Children were expected to contribute to the war in a number of ways, including growing vegetables in family allotments, and collecting scrap materials for re-use. They helped to make necessary equipment such as sandbags, and girls were encouraged to knit clothes for soldiers. War savings campaigns in particular made an effort to recruit children. They were required to contribute their own money, and to encourage their adult relations to do likewise. Schools helped coordinate fundraising activities such as concerts.
As children grew older, their roles became more militarised. The Scouting movement was a significant factor, emphasising military preparedness and practical support for police and armed forces. Older children carried out jobs such as carrying messages between army barracks or government departments, and worked in soup kitchens for soldiers. The propaganda aimed at earlier years prepared children for more active roles.
Propaganda had one further influence on the activities of children during the First World War – looking out for spies and saboteurs. Children’s stories exaggerated the threat of enemy agents, but also focused on the responsibility to be vigilant against ‘slackers’. Children and adults not demonstrative enough in their patriotism were targets for social pressure and accusations of treachery. The parent unable to answer the question, ‘what did you do during the war?’, risked more than private shame.
The Legacy of World War One Propaganda
By Dr. Jo Fox
Professor of Modern History
Durham University
Overview
By 1918, it had become clear that propaganda was a fact of modern society. For some it represented the solution to the challenges of the twentieth century; for others, its greatest threat. The sheer volume and intensity of the literature on propaganda published in the interwar period, largely in response to its deployment in the First World War, attests both to its contemporary importance and to its contested status. This literature established a series of contemporary assumptions (now largely discredited by scholars) that were difficult to dislodge: propaganda was an unseen, almost mystic, force in society that could manipulate the thoughts and behaviour of the vulnerable masses at will. Its success was undoubted and the repercussions for both liberal democracy and for fledgling European dictatorships considerable.
Victory and Defeat
The closure of Britain’s Ministry of Information in December 1918 and, eight months later, of the United States Committee on Public Information prompted numerous publications by propagandists keen to assert their role in securing victory. Campbell Stuart’s The secrets of Crewe House: the story of a famous campaign and George Creel’s How we advertised America glorified the skill of Allied propagandists, who deployed their ‘specialism’ with devastating efficiency. As evidence of Allied success, Campbell Stuart cited the German General Erich Ludendorff’s ‘pathetic…. apologia’ drawn from his War memories. Ludendorff attributed the collapse of the German army and of civilian morale to ‘mischievous and lying propaganda’, concluding that ‘we were hypnotised… as a rabbit is by a snake’. Allied propaganda had convincingly demonstrated German war guilt, and the nation would now face the consequences. Ludendorff lamented that the Versailles Treaty (1919) ‘sent the German people into bondage, into an absolutely crushing one. All delusions have vanished’, he wrote, ‘We look into nothingness. Something else is needed’.
The Pacifist Turn
As nations began to reflect on the cost of war, commentators raised questions over the nature of Allied propaganda. In 1928, the British pacifist MP Arthur Ponsonby published Falsehood in Wartime. Ponsonby claimed to have exposed the false nature of the atrocity stories that lay at the heart of Allied campaigns. ‘There must have been more deliberate lying in the world from 1914 to 1918 than in any other period of the world’s history’, he asserted, and he went as far as to suggest that not only had propaganda been responsible for convincing unsuspecting British citizens to enlist; it had also drawn the United States into war in 1917 under false pretenses. This charge was to have a profound impact on future British propaganda activities there. For Ponsonby and for many contemporaries, such as Robert Graves (in Goodbye to all that), moral fears and social anxieties about propaganda largely concentrated on its challenge to democracy. Propaganda inevitably involved a degree of censorship and control that sat uneasily alongside perceptions of democratic societies as free and open. An article by Aldous Huxley in Time and Tide in May 1932, the same year that he published Brave New World, reflected fears about a future ‘great Ministry of propaganda’. This was, according to Huxley, a very real, and sinister, threat to democracy: ‘A really efficient propaganda could reduce most human beings to the condition of abject slavery’. The challenge posed by Europe’s dictators, who seemed to deploy propaganda to suppress the will of the people without regret, brought such concerns into sharp relief.
The Modern Political Weapon
Ludendorff’s explanation of German defeat contributed to the development of the Dolchstoβlegende (‘stab in the back myth’), a dominant theme of far-right rhetoric, although it had appeal across the political spectrum. With its origins in the ‘spirit of 1914’, that victory would be achieved through will and nerve, the myth preserved the German army’s honour and excused the miscalculations of military strategists. It had a profound impact on the political thinking of Adolf Hitler, who declared in his first speech as the new chancellor of Germany on 1 February 1933 that ‘Fourteen years have passed since those unfortunate days when the German people, blinded by various internal and external promises, forgot the highest values of our past’. Nazism proposed to restore these values, not least through an active programme of propaganda and ‘popular enlightenment’. Hitler firmly believed that the loss of the war was a result of ineffective and inefficient German propaganda. The experience of 1914-1918, he wrote in Mein Kampf, ‘spurred me to take up the question of propaganda even more deeply than before… What we failed to do, the enemy did with amazing skill and really brilliant calculation. I myself learned enormously from this enemy war propaganda’. Praising the manipulation of atrocity stories, he concluded that Allied propaganda was regarded as ‘a weapon of the first order, while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed politicians and a haven for slackers’. As a result, he determined that Germany would not be in such a position again, and propaganda was to play integral role in acquiring and, after 1933, consolidating power.
Consequences
These debates played a formative role in shaping propaganda campaigns when war came again in 1939. Whereas Britain pursued a more understated approach, National Socialist propaganda sought to activate the population psychologically. Attempting to dispel the ‘myth’ of Allied supremacy, Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, deemed British dominance in propaganda during the First World War an ‘easy victory’. But times had changed: ‘we have become political psychologists’, he wrote in the newspaper Der Angriff in March 1940, ‘whereas Churchill and Chamberlain are still employing methods from 25 years ago and think they are still dealing with the Germans of 1918’. The fear of exposing old wounds was dominant in the minds of British propagandists. Concerned that tales of barbarism would prompt the ‘feeling that it is the old armless-baby-act of the last war being worked all over again’ (John Grierson), they virtually excluded the suffering of Jews and others from their anti-Nazi publicity campaigns. It was only in 1945, with the reports and images that emerged from Europe’s extermination camps, such as those by Richard Dimbleby from Bergen-Belsen, that the full horror of Nazi atrocities was revealed.
Appendix
Endnotes
- The National Archives INF 1/317 Home Publicity during the 1914-1918 War
- Propaganda leaflet dropped on Indian regiments fighting in France. Berlin?, c.1915. The British Library PP Urdu 37
- Added to this, the First World War presented a great opportunity for Gillette and changed men’s shaving habits for ever. Up to this time, shaving had been accomplished via the skilled application of the straight (or ‘cut-throat’) razor. Indeed, so troublesome was this implement to wield effectively that for many men, shaving was an occasional practice placed in the hands of the professional at the barbers shop. Clearly, this practice was not possible in the front line and conditions generally exacerbated the difficulties of using this implement. Further, many of the men filling the American ranks from 1917 were drawn from rural areas where the practice of wearing a full beard was commonplace. This presented two problems: firstly such beards were prone to lice; and secondly they would not accommodate the effective wearing of a gas mask. In consequence, the US Army determined that all its men should be clean shaven, and called on the recently invented safety razor as the solution. King C Gillette had patented the safety razor in 1904 and, seeing a great opportunity to change traditional habits, struck a deal with the US Army which saw every American soldier sent off to Europe with a safety razor in his backpack. The troops of other nations, seeing this new implement in action and experiencing the difficulties associated with cleanliness, were keen to adopt this new practice and so it was that the safety razor came to eclipse the traditional straight razor.
Further Reading
- Gail Braybon, ‘Winners and Losers: Women’s Symbolic Role in the War Story’, in Gail Braybon (ed.), Evidence, history and the Great War: historians and the impact of 1914-18 (Oxford: Berghahn, 2003), 86-112
- John Horne and Alan Kramer, German atrocities, 1914: a history of denial (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)
- Nicoletta Gullace, ‘Allied propaganda and World War I: interwar legacies, media studies, and the politics of war guilt’, History Compass 9 (2011)
- Nicolette Gullace, The blood of our sons: men, women, and the renegotiation of British citizenship during the Great War (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2002)
- Alan Kramer, Dynamic of destruction: culture and mass killing in the First World War (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007)
- David Welch, Germany, propaganda and total war, 1914-1918: the sins of omission (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2000)
- Ruth Harris, ‘The “Child of the Barbarian”: Rape, Race and Nationalism in France in the First World War’, Past & Present 141 (1993), pp. 170-206
- Jeffrey Verhey, The spirit of 1914 : militarism, myth and mobilization in Germany (Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 2000)
Originally published by the British Library, 01.29.2014, under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.