World War I Unleashed Total War,

and the

Power of Mass Communication

By MICHAEL ROBBINS

NOV 11, 2018

Nov. 11, now called Veterans Day, was originally Armistice Day, a commemoration of the end of World War I, in 1918, the cessation of 50 months of shooting, shelling and killing that claimed the lives of 9 million combatants. It was the Great War, the war to end all wars, but today, 100 years after the armistice was signed, it may chiefly be remembered as the exact opposite of all that — a prelude to many conflicts still to come.

The causes and the operational and geographic details of this truly catastrophic global war have faded from our national memory; nonetheless, we live in a world still shaped by World War I. Geopolitically, it spelled the end of the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Germany’s colonial empire and Imperial Russia. It terminated European monarchies and literally and disastrously redrew the map of the Middle East. It unleashed modern, industrialized warfare — total war — and it introduced the world to the full extent of the power of modern communications, in the form of the war’s propaganda.

Of course World War I, which began in 1914, was not the first in which participants sought to publicize their aims, the rightness of their cause and the perfidy of their enemies. But it was the first in which mass communication techniques were controlled and deployed by governments for a wide variety of patriotic aims: to demonize their enemies, to attract soldiers, to bolster the morale of their citizens, and to fund the staggering costs of full militarization.

Large-scale public information campaigns were conducted by all the major participant nations and aimed at their own soldiers and civilians, at the enemy forces, and at other nations not yet involved in the war, most notably the United States, which didn’t enter the war until April 1917. Propaganda media included mass-circulation newspapers, advertising, photography, popular cinema, cartoons, songs, magazines and books.

The medium that had lasting impact, and became most emblematic of the war, was vivid propaganda posters. Nearly all war nations produced them, but the most artful and memorable are those of Britain and the United States.

Influence and persuasion were the aims, and governments were not above employing deception, half-truth, distortion and outright falsehood to make their case. Early in the war, the British Parliament published the Bryce Report on “Alleged German Outrages,” full of unsubstantiated accounts of savage German military behavior in Belgium and France. It was soon widely discredited, but not before it was effectively exploited in propaganda distributed in Europe and the United States.

British posters such as “Remember Belgium!” interpreted (or “spun,” we would say now) alleged atrocities including civilian rapes and murders committed by the invading German armies. German soldiers were “Huns,” uncontrolled barbarians whose acts included torching libraries and cathedrals. The German Kaiser became “The Beast of Berlin.” The images were motivational, stoking hunger for justice and revenge and assuring audiences that this war was an existential conflict.Large-scale public information campaigns were conducted by all the major participant nations and aimed at their own soldiers and civilians, at the enemy forces, and at other nations not yet involved in the war, most notably the United States, which didn’t enter the war until April 1917. Propaganda media included mass-circulation newspapers, advertising, photography, popular cinema, cartoons, songs, magazines and books.

The medium that had lasting impact, and became most emblematic of the war, was vivid propaganda posters. Nearly all war nations produced them, but the most artful and memorable are those of Britain and the United States.

Influence and persuasion were the aims, and governments were not above employing deception, half-truth, distortion and outright falsehood to make their case. Early in the war, the British Parliament published the Bryce Report on “Alleged German Outrages,” full of unsubstantiated accounts of savage German military behavior in Belgium and France. It was soon widely discredited, but not before it was effectively exploited in propaganda distributed in Europe and the United States.

British posters such as “Remember Belgium!” interpreted (or “spun,” we would say now) alleged atrocities including civilian rapes and murders committed by the invading German armies. German soldiers were “Huns,” uncontrolled barbarians whose acts included torching libraries and cathedrals. The German Kaiser became “The Beast of Berlin.” The images were motivational, stoking hunger for justice and revenge and assuring audiences that this war was an existential conflict.