Evaluating Propaganda in the Great War

Evaluating
PROPAGANDA
in the
GREAT WAR
By Dr. Peter Hammond

“Then Jesus said: … ‘And you shall know the truth
and the truth shall make you free.’” John 8:31-32

The first casualty in war is truth.

As my history teacher in Rhodesia reminded us:
Beware the victor’s version!

Propaganda aims to do other people’s thinking for them.

Propaganda today has moved
into prop-agenda, not only
controlling what we think,
but how we think, and
what we think about.

Propaganda uses
highly selective images,
devious and prejudicial language.

Dubious linkages, confusing
issues and distorting reality
with disinformation,
is a daily reality.

George Orwell wrote:
In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth
becomes a revolutionary act.

Karl Marx declared:
The first
battlefield is
the rewriting of
history.

Vladimir Lenin
– Propaganda
and Agitation
In his book, What is to be
Done, published in 1902,
Vladimir Lenin defined
propaganda as
the use of historical and
scientific arguments
to indoctrinate
the educated and
intelligent
masses.

Agitation was described by
Lenin as the use of slogans,
stories and selective half-
truths to exploit the grievances
of the un-educated and
ignorant masses.

Deceit is Justified
Every unit of the Communist
Party was to have an
Agit-Prop section.
Deceit in
propaganda is
justified
because the end
justifies the
means.

As Vladimir Lenin regularly said: Treaties are like pie crusts,
made to be broken. To tell the truth is a petty bourgeois habit,
but to lie and to lie convincingly is a sign of
superior intelligence.

Mobilise the Masses
The aim of propaganda is to rally people behind a cause. If this requires
exaggerating, misrepresenting, or even lying ,about the issues,
in order to gain that support, the end justifies the means.

Tactics of Propaganda
Common tactics used in propaganda
are:
1. Ignoring the historic context
2. Using selective stories
3. Utilising a narrow source of
experts, those who tow the party line
4. Demonising the enemy and
5. Using a narrow focus (the zoom
lens, rather than the wide angle lens of
context.)

1. Ignoring the historic context

2. Using selective stories, making the
exceptional representative.

3. Utilising a
narrow source
of experts,
those who tow
the party line

4. Demonising
the enemy, often
with ficticious stories.

Bizarre Inventions
One of the most vicious posters of
WWI shows as German nurse
standing beside a wounded British
soldier, lying in his poor makeshift
sick bed pleading for water.

According to the caption:
Wounded and a prisoner,
our soldier cries for water.
A German sister pours it
on the ground before his
eyes. There is no woman
in Britain who would do it.
There is no woman in
Britain
who will forget it!

Malicious
Doubtless there was no
woman in Germany who
would do it either. No such
incident ever occurred.
It was manufactured
in one of the malicious minds
in
Wellington House.

On Christmas Day Football matches were played in no-man's land as
the competing armies mingled and enjoyed fellowship together, even
visiting one another's trenches.

5. Using a
narrow focus
(the zoom lens,
rather than the
wide angle lens
of context.)

Cutting the Cord
On 4th August 1914, as Europe began mobilising for the most disastrous
war in history

Cutting the Cord
Britain’s first act of war was not military,
but aimed at communication.

The steam cable vessel Telconia, was anchored in the North Sea under
cover of darkness to trawl for cables on the seabed.

By dawn her engineers had located and cut all five German cables,
to France, Spain, Tenerife and the two cables to New York.

A War of Words
The severing of these transatlantic links heralded the
beginning of a war of words.

The deep wounds inflicted by the
propaganda war would last far
beyond the ending of
the First World War and
created a climate of mistrust and
suspicion that poisoned
Anglo-German relations for over a
generation.

Cutting the transatlantic cables also signaled the start of
a new kind of war, a war of propaganda.

Separating Family and Friends
It cut the ties that had bound Britain and Germany closer
than any other two nations on earth for over 100 years.

The torrent of lies and deceit
unleashed by clandestine public
relations campaigns continue to
inspire hate and prejudice in
Hollywood films to this day.

Propaganda
War
Under Lloyd George,
a secret British
propaganda agency
was set up
which secretly enlisted
the active support
of virtually
every great British
writer, then alive,
including:
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

A Legacy of Deceit
Pens were dipped in the poison of lies and directed against their recent
close friends in Germany.

British Military Intelligence not only mobilised
the literary big guns for its propaganda campaigns,
but manufactured
the most outrageous atrocity stories
to attribute to their new enemies.

The legacy of bitterness and disillusionment created by this clandestine
propaganda war had far-reaching devastating consequences for world
history throughout the 20th century.

Media Manipulation
David Lloyd
George was the
Chancellor of
the Exchequer at
the beginning of
the war.

He was one of the first politicians to understand how the media game
was played and he shamelessly exploited the press for personal and
professional advantage.

In 1911, Lloyd George had championed the National Insurance Act, an
important foundation stone of the welfare state.

To push this highly controversial act through against strong resistance,
Lloyd George sponsored media manipulation to mobilise public opinion.

It was possibly the first time that a modern, democratically elected
government had spent public money setting up an organisation
specifically to manipulate public opinion.

The National Insurance Commission set up by Lloyd George was the first
government public relations machine producing newspaper articles,
pamphlets and nationwide lectures in favour of legislation.

Lloyd George’s appointed
leader of this commission was
a fellow Liberal Member of
Parliament, and a journalist,
Charles Masterman.

Wellington
House
So it was in 1914,
that
Lloyd George
turned again
to Charles Masterman
to set up the British
War Propaganda Bureau,
based in Wellington
House, London.

On 2 September, Masterman invited Britain’s top literary talent to a
secret meeting at Wellington House.

Promoting War
The authors were requested to produce books,
articles and pamphlets promoting British war aims.

The Bureau would arrange
to have these books
published through normal
commercial publishing
houses:
Oxford University Press,
Thomas Nelson,
Hodder and Stoughton,
McMillan, etc.
and guarantee
their financial success.

Endorsing War
These well-known authors were also requested to sign
full page advertisements to appear in New York Newspapers,
denouncing Germany and appealing for American support.

All these would be secretly financed
by Wellington House.

Top Secret
This clandestine disinformation operation was so effective
that it was only by 1935 that the existence
of the War Propaganda Bureau became known.

Conflict of Interest
John Buchan,
author of
espionage tales
such as
The 39 Steps
and Director of
Thomas Nelson
Publishing House,
ended up as
Director of the
Ministry of
Information.

Managing the Media
On 11 September 1914, Masterman held a meeting with all the editors
of leading newspapers and formed the Neutral Press Committee to
ensure that all British newspapers towed the line, advanced British war
aims and disseminated British propaganda overseas.

Disinformation
In May 1915, the British War Propaganda Bureau produced the
notorious Report on the Alleged German Outrages.

This report was reported to be an independent and objective official
review under the chairmanship of Viscount Bryce, former British
Ambassador to the United States.

It was in fact nothing but a piece
of black propaganda loaded with
fictitious atrocities and
outrageous lies.

Yet many of its claims, such as the
bayonetting of babies, raping of
nuns and chopping off of children’s
hands and feet in Belgium,
ended up in school
history textbooks!

Rewriting
Reality
The British War
Propaganda Bureau
produced
over 1,100 pamphlets
and
a vast number of books
including:

To Arms! by Arthur Conan Doyle,

The Barbarism in Berlin by G.K. Chesterton,

The New Army by Rudyard Kipling,

The Two Maps of Europe by Hillarie Belloc,

Liberty, a Statement of the
British Case and

War Scenes on the Western Front Line by Arnold Bennet.

Is England Apathetic? by Gilbert Parker,.

The Old Front Line
by John Masefield

and Another Sheaf
by John Galsworthy.

H.G. Wells produced The Research
Magnificent and Mr Britling
Sees it Through.

War Mania
Most memorably, H.G. Wells produced
The War that Will End War

John Buchan produced flag waving propaganda such as:
The Battle of the Somme.

John Buchan also produced
The Battle of Jutland.

Buchan’s greatest hit was his
espionage adventure:
The 39 Steps.
This book helped generate spy
mania throughout Britain .

Buchan followed this up
in 1916, with
Greenmantle.

Distortion
An example of the distortions published by Buchan was his Illustrated
History of the War published in 1915, which claimed that the Germans
were on the verge of defeat having lost 1.3 million soldiers,
compared to less than 100,000 British lives lost!

Fiction vs Fiction
Arthur Conan Doyle brought
the world’s most famous
detective out of retirement to
turn Sherlock Holmes
deductive powers to trapping
Von Bork – a fictitious German
spy in England.

Engineering Public Opinion
Because the press was in
on the deception, the
public and most members
of the British government
remained in the dark and
accepted the ever growing
torrent of anti-German
literature as spontaneous
expressions of journalists,
authors and historians.

German Propaganda
In response the German Foreign Office set up and funded the Central
Office for Foreign Services under the direction of Matthias Erzberger,
the leader of the Catholic Centre Party.

The Foreign services office was primarily concerned with collecting and
studying printed works from abroad, and later published German
newspapers and magazines for distribution abroad, including
The Continental Times, Kriegs-Chronik (War Chronicle), and
The Great War in Pictures.

Pictures for Propaganda
Each photograph was captioned in up to six languages, including English.
Also the weekly Illustrated War-Courier.

The German Foreign Services Office
was especially keen on publishing
photographs because visual
propaganda needed no translation
and pictures could
touch the emotions directly and
present evidence of their case.

Later in the war they would also
distribute films.

Building up Morale
In Berlin German writers,
journalists and artists
were encouraged
to extol German courage,
self-sacrifice
and military prowess

and to expose English treachery,

Demoralising the Enemy
The propaganda machines in Britain and Germany aimed to
demoralize the enemy armed forces and civilian populations by
damaging press reports and by dropping leaflets from the air.

Aside from bolstering their own
population with positive propaganda,
the Bureau targeted the enemy
population for negative propaganda.

Anti-German pamphlets,
leaflets and newspapers were
distributed in Germany
and Austria.

Aircraft and balloons dropped propaganda leaflets over enemy areas.
Propaganda was directly posted to selected addresses through enemy
mails. German and Austrian postage stamps were forged.

Moral Blockade
Along with the British Navy’s starvation blockade
of Germany, came a moral Blockade
through propaganda in neutral countries.

German General
Erich Ludendorff wrote in his
post-war memoirs:
We were hypnotised by
the enemy propaganda
as a rabbit is by a snake.
It was exceptionally
clever, and conceived on
a great scale.

It worked by strong mass suggestion, kept in the closest touch with the
military situation, and was unscrupulous as to the means it used…

Encouraging One’s
Own Forces
Secondly they aimed to inspire their
own civilian populations, gaining
moral support for the war, inspiring
young men to enlist and fight,

and encouraging greater industrial
and agricultural production.

Enlisting Sympathy and Support
from Neutrals
The third goal of these propaganda departments was to gain the
support of neutral countries. In this respect, both Britain and Germany
had the same primary propaganda target – The United States.

Breaking the Stalemate
As the militaries were locked in stalemate on the Western front,
the propaganda war became decisive.

No Photographs of Dead Soldiers!
One of the first rules that Masterman enforced on British reporters was
that there were to be absolutely no photographs published of the war,
except those taken by official photographers appointed by the Bureau.
There were to be no pictures of dead soldiers published.

No Cameras Allowed!
Realising that
unrestricted
photography
of the war
could be
very dangerous
to civilian morale,
the prohibition
of cameras
was enforced
very seriously.

No officer or soldier was permitted to
be in possession of a camera.

Technically, owning and using a camera in an operational area
could be punishable by death by firing squad.

However, as anyone who has visited World War I Museums, such as
Hill 60 near Ypres, can see hundreds of contemporary photographs
which British soldiers risked taking that survived the war.

Artists for War Propaganda
In 1916, Masterman recruited a talented artist, Murihead
Bone, to paint more idealised depictions of the war.

These pencil and charcoal
sketches were so successful
that some
90 war artists were
employed,
including William Orphen
and William Rothenstein.

Recruitment
The most memorable
propaganda image from WWI,
that of General Kitchener
announcing:
Your country wants you!
was actually ineffective.

Voluntary recruitment fell so far below the levels needed for 1915, that
the British government was obliged to introduce conscription.

Targeting America
The primary target for British propaganda - the United States, was
successfully recruited to join the allied war effort.

In fact so effective was the British propaganda in the USA, that even
when the US government had declared war on Germany,
the general perception among Americans was that America would
only need to provide food, weapons and ammunition for
the already victorious English, French and Russian armies.

Deception
It came as a shock to the Senate
Majority Democratic leader that
the US would have to send an army
to Europe! Thomas Fleming
observed:

Leading newspapers such as the New York Tribune and the Los Angeles
Times assured their readers that no American army was needed in
Europe…. Everyone thought that the war was as good as won.

All the virtually
victorious English,
French and Russians
needed from the United
States was large
amounts of food,
weapons and
ammunition, paid for by
American loans….

Illusion
Fleming attributed this state of
ignorance on the effectiveness of the
British War Propaganda Bureau.

With the cutting of the German telegraph cables,
and the effective censorship, America newsmen only knew
of the war from the British and French side.

As early as 1916, a US congressman had inserted into the congressional
record, a complaint that the US had been deluged with stories puffing
British and French battlefield superiority. Speakers by the hundreds
toured America telling the same lie.

Smear
Campaigns
British propaganda
sought to seize
the moral high ground
by accusing
their German enemy
of atrocious behaviour.

Although Belgium had military alliances with
France and Britain, the Germans were
accused of violating Belgium neutrality.
Germany pointed out that Belgium chose to
put itself on the side of France…

Belgium was one great
fortified camp against
Germany. In fact the
French and British
military had begun
pouring into Belgium,
30 July, before
Germany responded.

Fabrications
There could have been no one in Britain, and
very few in the United States, who did not hear, or read, of the
British Propaganda Bureau’s fabrications of German soldiers killing
women and children indiscriminately, raping nuns, cutting off the
hands and feet of children and bayonetting babies.

When Myth Becomes History
The fact was that the German army was the most disciplined army
in the world.

Despite many challenges, including
from American Lawyer,
Clarence Darrow, offering US $1,000
to anyone who could substantiate
one of these atrocities,
not one documented case
could ever be shown.

Yet the
Propaganda
Bureau
processed these
urban myths
into permanent
historical fact
by one of
the most
sophisticated
and ruthless
propaganda
machines
ever assembled.

War Hysteria
The notorious report on the
alleged German outrages was
published simultaneously
in 30 languages in May 1915.

Although completely
discredited after the war,
it was widely accepted at
the time in Britain,
America and in many
neutral countries

Margaret Cole wrote of the war hysteria and A barrage of untrue and
idiotic atrocity story about children with their hands cut off by Germans,
priests tied upside down to the clappers of their own bells,
dead bodies boiled down for fat, and the like.

The Absence of Evidence
Irving Cobb, an American reporter for the Hearst press, reported that
while many had stories to tell of German atrocities in Belgium,
he wasn’t able to find a single eye-witness.

It had always happened to someone else,
in another town.

Robert Graves, a young British officer on the Western front wrote

In his memoirs Good Bye to All That: Propaganda reports of atrocities,
it was agreed, were ridiculous. We no longer believed
the highly coloured account of German atrocities in Belgium.

War on Two Fronts
As historian A. J. P. Taylor pointed out, by Germany being forced to fight
a war on two fronts, with Russia in the East and Britain and France in
the West, the German rail network was compelled to mobilise the
millions of soldiers necessary to neutralise these threats on both the
eastern and western fronts according to a very rigid time table.

The German government had requested the Belgian government to
allow passage for the German military
to counter the French mobilisation against it.

As the German chancellor,
Bethmann Hollweg, explained to
the British ambassador, this was
a matter of life and death to
Germany.

A Fight for Survival
The German Army was not an expeditionary force crossing the channel
to some other land mass. They were fighting for their life against the
two greatest armies in the world at that time: France and Russia.

Suspicion
Those who had first hand knowledge rejected the propaganda entirely.
The better educated sections of Britain regarded such accounts
with suspicion.

The uninformed majority of the
public gullibly assumed
that the reports they were being fed
were true and accurate.

As a result of the propaganda war of
words, Germans came to be
perceived by the newspaper reading
public in France, Britain and the USA
as militaristic, brutal, bestial
barbarians.

Fabricated Atrocities
In 1917, Masterman published A Corpse Conversion Factory which
claimed that the Germans were loading the bodies of dead soldiers
onto railway carriages to be transported to a factory
where they were to be melted down for soap!

Historians were later able to trace the story back to its source, which
was that the bodies of dead horses were being processed. The Times of
London then twisted the story to involve human corpses.

Falsehood in
War Time
In 1928, British
Member of Parliament,
Arthur Ponsonby, published
Falsehood
in War Time.

In 200 pages, he
detailed examples of
the blatant lies and
black propaganda
published by British
government
departments and
newspapers between
1914 and 1918.

One of the memorable
examples exposed by
Ponsonby by tracking down
the sources of these atrocity
stories included the fate of
the priests in Antwerp.

The Priests
in Antwerp
In November 1914, the
Cologne Daily News reported:
When the fall of Antwerp became
known, the church bells
were rung.
This referred to the celebrating of
the German victory.

This item was the picked up by the
French Le Matin with a deliberate
distortion, claiming that according to
the Cologne Daily News:
The Clergy at Antwerp were compelled
to ring the church bells
when the fortress was taken.

The Times of London then picked
up this story and embellished it
further: According to what Le
Matin has heard from Cologne by
Paris, the unfortunate Belgium
priest who refused to ring the
church bells when Antwerp was
taken, have been driven away
from their places.

The Italian Corriere Della Sera then quoted the Times as reporting that:
The unfortunate Belgium priests who refused to ring the church bells
when Antwerp was taken have been sentenced to hard labour.!

Le Matin in France then reported
that according to this Italian
newspaper: It is confirmed that the
barbaric conquerors of Antwerp
punished the unfortunate Belgium
priests for their heroic refusal
to ring the church bells by hanging
them upside down
as live clappers to the bells with
their heads down!!!

This farcical games of Chinese
whispers as newspaper editors in
France, Italy and England all sought
to outdo one another
with more bizarre, one upmanship.

As MP Arthur Ponsonby declared: If lies were only used to deceive the
enemy in the game of war, it would not be worth troubling about.

But, as the purpose of
most of them is to fan
indignation and induce
the flower of the
countries youth to be
ready to make the
supreme sacrifice, it
becomes a serious
matter.

Propaganda Kills
As Ponsonby’s documentation in Falsehood in War Time so eloquently
demonstrated: Lies in propaganda kill innocent people.

Reported atrocities of the enemy inspire counter atrocities
by one’s own forces.

Atrocious behaviour is justified by lies about atrocious behaviour
allegedly done by one’s opponents.

Destructive Lies
Some historians have noted that the harm caused by the propaganda
war proved to be even more damaging than the personal agony and
destruction caused by trench fighting, unrestricted submarine warfare
and aerial bombing of civilian targets.

These created lasting physical and emotional trauma for individuals
and lasting enmity between the nations.

Germany’s goal was to persuade
the US to remain neutral
and Britain’s goal was to
persuade the USA to
military involvement
on the allied side.

Truth Surrounded by Lies
Sir Winston Churchill, the British prime minister during World War II declared:
In war time, truth is so precious that she should always be attended
by a bodyguard of lies.

Hidden Manipulators
German philosopher George Hegel, in his 1821 book: The Philosophy of Right,
explained how in democracies the public is manipulated and persuaded by
hidden persuaders and hidden manipulators. French author Anatole France,
wrote: Democracy is run by an unseen engineer.

Propaganda in America
Mark Twain, in 1916, described the rise of
propaganda in America:
Next the statesmen
will invent cheap lies,
putting the blame
upon the nation that is attacked,
and every man will be glad of those
conscience-soothing falsities,
and will diligently study them,
and refuse to examine
any refutations of them;

and thus he will by and by convince himself that the war is just, and will thank
God for the better sleep he enjoys after this process
of grotesque self-deception.

President
Woodrow Wilson of
the United States,
by executive order,
created the
Committee on
Public
Information
in association with
the Military
Intelligence
Bureau.

The CPI was America’s
propaganda office.
The CPI defined propaganda as:
The systematic, widespread
dissemination,
or promotion, of particular
ideas, doctrines, or practices,
meant to further a particular
cause or agenda and weaken
that of another.
It is a systematic effort
to manipulate attitudes,
beliefs and actions
by the use of symbols.

The Committee on Public Information
Edward L. Bernays (1891-1995) was a nephew of Sigmund Freud.
Bernays was a theatrical publicist who was employed by George Creel
as a propagandist for the Committee on Public Information (CPI).

Psychology and Social
Science
Bernays based his methodology
on the social science researches
of French psychologist
Gustav Le Bon
in his 1895 book:
The Psychology of the Crowd;

and on Sigmund Freud’s 1922 book:
Group Psychology and
The Analysis of the Ego .

as well as the research of Russian experimental psychologist Ivan Pavlov,
as published in his 1926 book: Conditioned Reflexes.

Controlling Public Opinion
Bernays based much of his methodology upon the works of Walter Lippmann,
who wrote about controlling and managing public opinion. His ideas were later
published in Public Opinion (1922) and The Phantom Public (1925).

Enlightening Elites
Walter Lippmann was a member of
US Army Military Intelligence
during World War I. Lippmann
believed that most people are
irrational and act chaotically.
Because people are unable to
independently make
rational choices,
they need to be guided by
a specialised class of
enlightened elites.

Lippmann described people as:
Simple minded and sheep-like,
incapable of formulating or
organising their desires, interests
and wishes.
Therefore, enlightened elites
can lead and
educate the masses.
As Lippmann put it:
Making of one general will out of a
multitude of general wishes.
Bernays stated:
The public must be regimented.

Mobilising Hate
and War
In 1927, Harold D. Lasswell,
a professor in Political
Science at the University
of Chicago, analysed the
propaganda techniques
employed
by the Allies
in WWI:

A new and subtler
instrument must
weld thousands and
even millions of
human beings into
one amalgamated
mass of hate and war
and hope…
Propaganda

is the new dynamic of society… the fact remains that propaganda is one of
the most powerful instrumentalities in the modern world. Propaganda is a
reflex to the immensity, the irrationality & the woefulness of the modern world.

Lasswell explained that to: Mobilise the
hatred of the people against their enemy,
represent the opposing nation as a
menacing, murderous aggressor…
represent the opposing nation as satanic;
it violates all the moral standards…

Objectives of Propaganda
Lasswell identified four major
objectives of Propaganda:
1. To mobilise hatred against the
enemy who must be de-
humanised, portrayed as
barbaric, brutal, cruel and
uncivilised.
2. To preserve the friendship of
Allies.
3. To preserve the friendship,
and if possible, to procure the
cooperation, of neutrals; and
4. To demoralise the enemy.

1. To mobilise hatred
against the enemy
who must be
de-humanised,
portrayed as
barbaric,
brutal,
cruel
and uncivilised.

2. To preserve the friendship of Allies.
.

3. To preserve the friendship, and if possible, to
procure the cooperation of neutrals; and

Warning Against War
Before being elected as a candidate for peace in the Presidential Elections of
1916, Woodrow Wilson warned: Lead this people into war, and they’ll forget there
was ever such a thing as tolerance.

To fight, you must be brutal
and ruthless, and the spirit
of ruthless brutality will
enter into the very fibre of
national life, infecting the
congress, the courts, the
policeman on the beat, the
man in the street.
In January of 1916, Wilson stated:
This is a government of the people
and this people is not
going to choose war.

Reversal of Policy
After being elected, under the slogan of he has kept us out of the war, Woodrow
Wilson established the Committee on Public Information which forged the nation
(which was overwhelmingly opposed to intervention) into a situation where,
if anyone believed that America’s entry into Europe’s war was a mistake,
then they were branded a traitor!

Changing
Perspectives
More than 8 million German-
Americans lived in the USA and
many were sympathetic to the
cause of their homeland.
One third of Americans were
immigrants.
Most Americans were not
connected to the European
conflict by blood, or capital
and were not interested in
waging war overseas.

The Committee on Public Information
(CPI) developed into the most
formidable propaganda apparatus
in history.
A muck-raking journalist, George
Creel, was appointed to lead the CPI.

With a phenomenal budget, the CPI recruited from the best of business, media,
academia and the art world. The CPI blended advertising techniques with a
sophisticated understanding of human psychology.

Democratic Propaganda
It was the first time that a modern
government disseminated
propaganda on such a large scale.
Although propaganda came to be
linked with totalitarian regimes such
as the Soviet Union and Red China,
it is a fact of history that
it first emerged in a
democratic state.

Although, as a journalist,
George Creel had been
an outspoken critic of
censorship, the CPI
immediately took steps
to limit conflicting
information.

With the Espionage Act and
Sedition Act Voluntary
Guidelines were enforced on
the news media and ensured
that the mass media in the
United States was flooded
with pro-war material and
perspectives.
On any given week more than
20,000 newspaper columns
were filled with material
gleaned from CPI press
releases.

Mobilising the Masses
The CPI created a Division of
Syndicated Features and recruited
the help of leading novelists, short
story writers and essayists to
present the pro-war position in
popular digestible format, reaching
12 million readers a month.

The Division of Pictorial Publicity had
at its disposal the most talented
advertising illustrators and
cartoonists of the time.

Powerful posters painted in
patriotic colours presented
compelling images
throughout the country.
The poster propaganda
motivated millions to enlist in the
army and navy.

The Division of Films ensured that the war was promoted in the cinema. The
Hollywood film industry wholeheartedly supported the war effort with movie
titles like: The Kaiser – The Beast of Berlin, Wolves of Kultur,
To Hell with the Kaiser and Perishing’s Crusaders!

The cause of the Allies was creatively
publicised in every available
communication channel, including
pulpits. Lasswell pointed out that
propaganda wins wars, with
words, pictures, songs,
parades and many similar
devices… by the
manipulation of collective
attitudes.
Propaganda Changes
Attitudes

Emotional Appeal
CPI propaganda showed the way for future propaganda agencies by appealing
to the heart, not the mind. Emotional agitation and skilful manipulation made
use of manufactured atrocity stories and simplistic slogans such as:
Make the world safe for Democracy!

Will Irwin, a member of the CPI, wrote after the war: We never told the whole
truth – not by any manner of means. G. S. Viereck quoted a Military Intelligence
officer who declared: You can’t tell them the truth. Victories were routinely
manufactured by American military authorities while defeats were suppressed.
Dishonesty was encouraged.

Sentimentality
The analysts attributed the failure of
German propaganda in America to the
fact that:
It emphasised logic over passion.
As Count Von Bernstorff observed:
The outstanding
characteristic of the
average American is rather
a great, though superficial,
sentimentality.

The factual German Press releases
failed to grasp this.

Altering Perceptions
As Lasswell observed: So great are the
psychological resistances to war in
modern nations that every war must
appear to be a war of defence
against a menacing, murderous
aggressor.
There must be no ambiguity about
who the public is to hate.

Made Up Atrocity Stories
Bernays openly admitted that he and his colleagues used made-up stories to
provoke the hate and fear necessary to raise war-bonds and recruits for the
war. Some of their stories, such as a bathtub full of eyeballs and children being
killed by the enemy were actually recycled from previous conflicts.

Propaganda Kills
So effective was the anti-German
propaganda of the CPI in the USA that
Dachshunds had to be renamed,
14 states banned the teaching, or
speaking, of German in their public
schools, Mobs assaulted American
immigrants from Germany.
At least one man, Robert Prager, a
German coal miner, was lynched by an
angry mob in Illinois.

Appealing to Idealists
The CPI recognised that while
emotional appeals and simplistic
stereotypes of the enemy could
influence many, the intellectuals and
pacifists needed
different motivation.
To them American military intervention
in Europe was described as:
a campaign
to end warfare forever
and establish
a league of nations.

To industrialists the war was modified as a conflict to destroy
the competition of German industry.

The propagandist does
not need to ask if it is
true,
but merely,
does it work?

The Value of Propaganda
in Peacetime
In the final months of 1918, a war-
weary American public ousted the
Democrats who had led them into WWI.
The Republican majority in Congress
brought the CPI under increasing
scrutiny.

The director of CPI’s foreign division
later reported:
The history of propaganda in the
war would scarcely be worthy of
consideration here, but for one fact
– it did not stop with the
Armistice.
No indeed!
The methods invented and tried out
in war were too valuable for the
uses of governments, factions
and special interests.

Subverting Society
Subverting
Society
Most Americans came to
realise that they had been
lied to and manipulated
by deceit disguised
as news.
Many sought to pin
complete responsibility for
America’s involvement in
the ruinous World War on
the hate mongering
propagandists in the CPI.

However, as one noted:
Ultimately their guilt is less important than
the questions their activities raised
about the role of propaganda
in a democratic society.
The whole theory of democratic
society was rooted in the belief
that free citizens could form
their own opinions about the
issues of the day to decide
their collective destiny.

Freedom of speech,
freedom of opinion,
freedom of
association,
freedom of thought,
and freedom of
religion are
fundamental
necessities for any
democratic process.

Is Propaganda Compatible
with Freedom?
However, during the First World War,
America’s political leaders decided
that their citizens were
not making the correct
decisions,
quickly enough.

So they flooded the channels of
communication with dishonest
messages that were designed to stir up
emotions and provoke hatred of their
long time trading partner, Germany.
The war came to an end.
But the propaganda did not.

Today many who espouse the ideals
of democracy behave like dictators
and propagandists.
The question is whether
propaganda is compatible
with freedom.
Propaganda clearly undermines
a population’s ability to think
clearly
and critically
about world events.
Simplistic, emotional appeals
undermine logic and reason.

Discerning Between Information
and Disinformation
Students of propaganda soon noted that while the CPI was the largest
propaganda operation to that date,
it was not actually the first such deception operation.

Shortly after the end of the American
Civil War (or War Between the
States) journalist Colburn Adams
wrote: The future historian of the late
war will have a very difficult task to
perform…
sifting the truth
from falsehood
as it appears in
official records.

The Father of Spin
After WWI, Edward Bernays pioneered
Public Relations (PR)
and became known as
The Father of Spin.

As the PR consulter for the
American Tobacco Company, he
campaigned to convince American
women that they should smoke
Lucky Strike cigarettes
(the torches of freedom) to
emancipate themselves!

Public
Relations
Today American businesses
spend trillions of dollars
on marketing.
PR firms employ over
150,000 workers.

The fact is that propaganda changes perceptions
and people.

THE TRUTH SETS FREE.
That is why it is absolutely essential
that we know the truth of history
to recognize the lies of propaganda..

We need to study the truth in the Bible

so that we can
be freed from the
deceptions
of the world.

“You shall
know the
truth and
the truth
shall make
you free.”
John 8:32

REFORMATION
SOCIETY
PO Box 74
Newlands, 7725
Cape Town
South Africa
E-mail:
info@ReformationSA.org
Web:
www.ReformationSA.org

This astonishing statistic is
the result of decades of
research, by political
science Professor R.J.
Rummel of the University of
Hawaii. Prof. Rummel’s
shocking research is
presented in the 500 page
book: Death By
Government (2006,
Transaction Publishers,
New Branswick, NJ).

Yet, very few books have
dealt with the overall
human cost of “death by
government” (The Black
Book of Communism
being one exception).

Evaluating Propaganda in the Great War

Evaluating Propaganda in the Great War

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Evaluating Propaganda in the Great War