British
Propaganda In World War One
In WW1 propaganda was used,
in Britain, to gain support for the allies and to portray the enemy in a bad
light. Propaganda often showed exaggerated or false enemy atrocities. Picture 1
is an example of this.
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(3) Image Source: http://gcaptain.com/wp-
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content/uploads/2012/02/image140.png
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Propaganda was also heavily
used to recruit people into the armed forces. Governments constantly used
propaganda to encourage people to support the war effort. This is shown in
Picture 2 & 3.
Propaganda was used to gain
the support of every-day people in Britain and it encouraged them to support
the war even more.
Propaganda has been used so effectively to lobby support and is as relevant today, with the effective use of social media, as it was in WW1 as shown in your examples above.
ReplyDeleteThis project makes very interesting reading and is well researched.
ReplyDeleteNewspaper cartoons (the "old" media) are still powerful tools to inform, engage and quite often enrage, as with the posters from the World Wars.
ReplyDeleteThank you for supporting the blog!
DeleteInteresting project - well done! Germany, of course, also made heavy use of propaganda. Indeed, every war that is ever fought does so. What to one person is a "terrorist", to another person is a "freedom fighter". Being aware of how words are used by the powerful to manipulate public opinion is a vital life skill - congratulations that you have been able to discern this!
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I'm glad you included propaganda in your overview. It's probably one of the most powerful weapons of war. As you show, the British in WWI painted the Germans as evil killers of mothers and children. That captured the ire of the British public and got them behind the war effort. And, considering the huge numbers of people you showed here who were massacred, with millions more in the war effort, nations required every able-bodied person to pitch in. And, as you show again, propaganda feeds on peoples' natural fears. The men are afraid not to fight because The Hun would otherwise come to their home towns and kill their wives and children. Many women began working in the factories, in what was essentially the first industrialised war, to ensure that the men had the ammunition and supplies they needed to carry on the war. Propaganda, through fear, makes the fight personal for each person. Propaganda also justifies the industrial-scale murder that war amounts to. We generally accept that it is a terrible thing to kill another human being. Yet, in war, we're sent out to do just that, as much as possible. We're told that it's OK now because the people we're killing are bad people and they deserve to die. They have breached the moral code that we're taught people should generally live by and that justifies our actions. Propaganda took a bit of a knock in WWI one Christmas day when soldiers from both sides put their weapons aside and instead of sniping and shelling one another played a game of football. I forget the exact comments but they basically said: "Those guys aren't so different from us. We all just want to get home alive." That's never good for an army designed to fight, kill and destroy the enemy.
ReplyDelete1. This is quite impressive stuff for a man of your age. You'll make a great journalist.
ReplyDelete2. Maybe it's necessary to state when the war took place (between 1914 and 1918), who were the protagonists, and what was the cause (assassination of Archduke Ferdinand)
3. Maybe define what we mean by propaganda, and propaganda does not always have negative connotations. It's only negative when it's waged by the enemy.
4. How difficult it was to wage a propaganda war during those years. There was no twitter, no Facebook, not even the fax machine. So conveying messages or propaganda would take a while which could obviously affect the conduct or outcome of a campaign. Even the war was pretty primitive, which may account for the high number of casualties. No drones or smart bombs or precision bombing.
Thanks
Barney M
Matt, this is really wonderful – impressed to say I once taught you!
ReplyDeletePropaganda is such a strong, persuasive tool. I remember watching Animal Farm with my Grade 4 class just recently and propaganda is used to trick and deceive in this movie. The propaganda extolled, becomes a twisted mass of lies and half-truths intended to hide the reality of the situation from the animals. It is used to confuse and bewilder them. And above all, to stop them thinking for themselves.
One also remembers what Hitler once said: Telling lies is always a major tool of the propagandist. ‘If you tell a BIG LIE often enough and loudly enough people will begin to believe it.’
Your Grade 4 Teach
Mrs Van