First World War propaganda Flashcards
XX century war
The twentieth century saw the arrival of a fundamentally different kind of warfare: ‘Total War’.
The difference between both WWs and other conflicts
the world wars of the twentieth century differed markedly from previous conflicts, not just in their scale but also in the degree to which civilians were affected by, and contributed directly to, events in the front line. War now became a matter for every member of the population, a strug- gle for national survival in which the entire resources of the nation - military, economic, industrial, human, and psychological - had to be mobilized in order to secure victory or avoid defeat.
The main point of new wars and mass media added
The new warfare brought battle closer to the lives of ordinary citizens than ever before.
The twentieth century, however, also saw the arrival of the modern mass media. The year 1896 was a truly momentous one that saw three significant developments. First, Lord Northcliffe founded in Britain the world’s first mass circulation daily newspa- per, The Daily Mail.
1896 also saw the first commercial screening of the cinematograph by the Lumiere brothers in Paris. the cinematograph into the most potent means of mass communication in the first half of the twentieth century. In 1896, a third significant event took place when Guglielmo Marconi demonstrated the practicability of wireless telegraphy on Salisbury Plain.
What gave the rise for propaganda in XX century?
it was the convergence of total war and the mass media that gave modern war propaganda its significance and impact in the twentieth century.
The first signs of major propaganda
Within hours of the expiry of the British ultimatum to Germany, the British cable ship Telconia cut the direct subterranean cables linking Germany with the United States. Thanks to this prompt and premeditated action, the British were able to seize the initiative in what was perhaps the most vital of all the propaganda battles: the struggle for the sympathy of the American people. In 1914, Britain and Germany were each other’s best trading partners. On the outbreak of war it became essential for both to compensate for their mutual loss by increasing their trade with the rapidly expand-ing markets of the United States or, better still, to entice the Americans into joining their cause. Britain, at the head of the Allied Powers, was of course better placed than Germany to direct this campaign against American neutrality by virtue of her common language and heritage.
To wage this highly delicate campaign for securing American sympathies, the British government set up a secret war propaganda bureau at Wellington House.
British propaganda campaign principles
To wage this highly delicate campaign for securing American sympathies, the British government set up a secret war propaganda bureau at Wellington House.
This department was the single most important branch of the British propaganda organization between 1914 and 1917 and its work was so secret that even most Members of Parliament were unaware of it. It was essential to disguise from the American people the fact that the massive bulk of paper material they were receiving from Britain about the war - pamphlets, leaflets, cartoons, and even the news itself - was emanating from Wellington House under Foreign Office guidance.
the British campaign adopted a low-key and highly selective approach based upon persuasion rather than exhortation. It was also decided that the best propa- gandists for the Allied cause were sympathetic Americans, particularly those in influential positions.
Thanks to their control of the direct cable communications between Europe and North America, the British also monopolized the news, and news was to be the basis of the British propaganda campaign - all of it carefully censored and selected, of course. The factual approach had the advantage not only of credibility; it also left American editors with the freedom to present the news in their customary style so that their readers could make up their own minds about the issues reported. But it must always be remembered that the British controlled the source of that news; even the American correspondents working behind the German lines relied on the direct cables - the indirect cables running through neutral Scandinavia and Portugal were slower and more expensive.
The essential element of a British propaganda campaign
Indeed censorship was the source of much friction between Britain and America between 1914 and 1917, but it was an essential element of the successful British propaganda campaign.
German mistakes
The British campaign was greatly aided by several spectacular German mistakes, the best known being the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915 and the Zimmermann Telegram in 1917. These incidents enabled the British to punctuate their softly-softly approach with the occasional rabbit punch.
But the real German mistake came a year later when a bronze medal was struck by the German artist Goetz to commemorate the sinking of the liner. The Foreign Office managed to obtain one of the limited editions, photographed it, and sent it to the United States, where it was published in The blew York Tribune on the anniversary of the sinking. The photographs caused so much excitement that the British decided to exploit further the resulting anti-German feeling by producing virtually an exact replica in a presentation box, together with an ‘explanatory’ leaflet.
British propaganda campaign: neutral states and atrocity stories
Neutral countries were also left in no doubt as to where their sympathies should rest. During the early stage of the war, it was important for the propagandists to cast blame on the enemy for starting the conflict and to prove that he had deliberately let loose the dogs of war upon peace-loving nations. The very fact that Germany admitted violating international law by attacking France and Belgium provided the British with the moral foundation they required to justify intervention to the ordinary men whom they now required to enlist ‘For King and Country’. Atrocity stories, as ever, helped to sustain the moral condemnation of the enemy.
The worst atrocity story of German
Perhaps the most infamous atrocity story of the Great War concerned the alleged German ‘Corpse-Conversion Factory’.
the British press - for which atrocity stories were frequently good copy - accused the German govern- ment of boiling down human corpses to make soap.
‘facts’ were frequently inter- preted more in accordance with the stereotype than in light of the real evidence.
Shortly after the outbreak of war, the British enjoyed three remarkable strokes of luck that gave them all three of the major German naval codes.
USA propaganda
A week after declaring war, the Americans set up their own propa- ganda organization, the Committee on Public Information (CPI). This body was responsible for censorship and propa- ganda, although Creel was more interested in ‘expression rather than suppression’.
The Creel Committee was divided into two sections, the Domestic, which attempted to mobilize America for war, and the Foreign, subdivided into the Foreign Press Bureau, the Wireless and Cables Service, and the Foreign Film Service. The Foreign section supervised offices in more than thirty overseas countries.
this body was staffed with writers and journalists but, unlike the British body, it operated in full view of the public. These men poured out millions of pamphlets, often dealing with issues of personal concern to their liberal, reform-minded intellectual authors who often seemed more determined to reaffirm the ideals of the American republic than to combat Prussian militarism. In other words, many of the CPI’s staff saw their appointment as an ideal opportunity to promote an ideology of American democracy at a time when America itself was undergoing significant social transformations, such as the growth of cities and the closing of the frontier.
Official speeches suggested that America was fighting a war for peace, freedom, and justice for all peoples. (in order for people to go overseas)
USA propaganda: democracy, people and regime
it also served to warn Americans that their enemy was a regime, not a people, an ideology rather than an army, and that if such an autocratic regime triumphed, democracy everywhere would be endangered.
USA propaganda stories about Germans
The CPI had an established source of anti-German propaganda in the atrocity stories already circulating in Allied countries. These were duly drawn upon to demonstrate the nature of the Kaiser’s regime and its incompatibility with democratic ideals. The Kaiser was portrayed as a devil in a spiked helmet, German soldiers as violators of innocent women (nurses and nuns being favourite targets of their lust) and child murderers. Germany’s record in Belgium, Mexico, and in the Atlantic was also exploited as an illus- tration of German kultur. British propagandists were only too happy to help in supplying material
The message of USA propaganda
The CPI attempted to promote an internationalist mentality to justify intervention as an American mission to bring democracy to the Old World. The message was taken into the schools, for instance through the CPI’s publication The National School Service, into the factories, and indeed into all public places including the motion
picture theatres which now became centres for overt jingoism.
With radio still largely at the stage of morse-code transmissions, a network of speakers was formed known as the Four Minute Men who gave a million four-minute speeches to perhaps 400 million people. They were highly successful in stirring up emotions, increasing the level of popular involvement in the war, promoting the sale of war bonds, and aiding recruitment. America was also bombarded with posters, photographs, and exhibitions, while American advertising companies, which had done so much pre-war to pioneer modern sales techniques, were also employed to bring their professional expertise to the campaign. The American motion picture industry was rapidly emerging as the most powerful in the world as a result of the effects of the war on European film produc- tion.
After a slow start, the CPI’s Films Division itself produced over sixty official films, because was not always happy with Hollywood production.
The official films were less overtly propagandistic than the commercial industry’s productions. They were designed to serve military needs (recruitment and morale), to inform and educate, and to serve as historical ‘records’. In other words, they represented part of the CPI’s philosophy that it was its duty to engage in patriotic education for a modern democracy.
The French propaganda
The French did have a substantial propaganda organization, the Maison de la Press, but it was the constant subject of political suspicion and infighting. Its most useful work was done in the German occupied areas of France where it attempted to keep its citizens in touch with Paris’s conduct of the war. But the French modelled their propa- ganda organization on the British and, by 1918, the British organi- zation was at its most complex.
