Propaganda as a weapon during wartime: Words are cheaper than bullets

The methods of modern warfare are limited by a number of international agreements and rules that every civilized state is obliged to adhere to. These rules set limits on the use of certain tactics and weapons. However, until now, not a single provision of international law has dealt with propaganda during the war. Even no conditional restrictions appeared, although the horrific effect of propaganda became known as early as during the war of 1914-1918. Thus, propaganda has now become a means of warfare, the use of which is in no way regulated by the norms of international law. Even the most shameless propaganda is not specified in any paragraph of international conventions.

There were a lot of proposals from representatives of the most diversed people, in which they, proceeding from the considerations that people should communicate not only during a period of peace, but also during a war, demand that propaganda should be completely stopped or limited to certain limits. The first official step in this direction was taken by the Polish government in 1931 and 1932, which sent two memoranda to the League of Nations. According to these memorandums, governments of all countries received the right, through open prohibitions and increased censorship, to prevent various publicistic and propaganda speeches that could spoil relations between peoples. These proposals were rejected as contrary to the principle of free speech.

Propaganda of horrors during war

The history of World War I propaganda is primarily a history of horror propaganda. It was from this time that propaganda became something of a stigma imposed on the enemy; it is gaining a very bad reputation for itself in wide circles, which to some extent explains its successes and failures during the Second World War. The two decades that have passed since the end of the First World War were not enough to forget about the propaganda of horrors and thus free the propaganda of wartime from its main evil - lies. Many opponents of the Minister of Propaganda Goebbels recognized him as a certain propaganda talent, but there is no doubt that with the state of affairs that existed at that time and with a rich propaganda experience gained from the First World War, a much less talented one could have made the German people immune to enemy propaganda man.

One had only to remind the Germans about the danger of horror propaganda, about Lord Northcliffe and his methods. Moreover, from the memory of many Germans who survived the First World War, all these "horrors" are still far from being erased. In Germany, there was not a single course for propagandists and agitators, in which the lies of the enemy's propaganda would not be exposed on the basis of outdated methods of combating the propaganda of horrors. Exposing enemy propaganda became the subject of political studies in schools, and the editorial offices of newspapers and magazines were literally inundated with these materials.

In fact, horror propaganda was no longer real propaganda. In the literature, back in the twenties, the most famous facts of lies were exposed and their roots were revealed. The lie about the severed hands of children in various versions went around the entire world press. Thousands of citizens from all over the world then declared their readiness to adopt mutilated children, and even the Pope himself promised to protest the German government if irrefutable data were presented to him. In his book Diary of the World War, the American Colonel Repington later noted that of all these cases, "none has been proven."

The most disgusting and at the same time the most effective lie was the report that the Germans were processing the corpses of soldiers for feed for pigs. This message caused a storm of indignation around the world and served as a pretext for China's entry into the war on the side of the Entente. On April 30, 1917, the British Prime Minister was asked in the House of Commons whether he intended to take measures to ensure that it became known in Egypt, India and the whole East that the Germans were processing the corpses of their own soldiers and enemy soldiers for pig feed. It was only in 1925 that this lie was finally exposed in an article that appeared in the American newspaper Times Dispatch, which wrote on this matter: “Of all the terrible weapons of modern warfare, propaganda, which is an important component of the military machine of any nation. The famous story of the corpses, which during the war brought the hatred of the peoples towards Germany to the limit, is now declared a lie by the English House of Commons. Several months ago, the world learned that this lie had been fabricated and disseminated by one of the clever British intelligence officers.

Propagandists should always remember that there is a big difference between propaganda, which aims to raise the morale of its own people, and propaganda, which sees its task in weakening the enemy's will to resist.

It goes without saying that a propagandist must know both the way of thinking of his people and how he should address them. In order to get to know a foreign nation, you need a lot of additional knowledge, sufficient experience and a lot of art.

Back in the First World War, General Ludendorff once proposed creating a small group of specialists for this purpose. But at the same time, some rather gross mistakes were made. For example, propaganda against England was carried out most intensively, the Ministry of Propaganda began to publish a series of photographs telling about the life of the English people, which were supposed to stigmatize the deep social contradictions in this country. So next to the photograph of the young princesses riding ponies in Hyde Park was a photograph of street children from London slums, and next to the lords riding out on horseback with a pack of dogs to hunt, were pictures of emaciated workers in Wales. The doubtfulness of the propaganda success of such photo series soon became completely obvious, because the German reader saw in this, first of all, not social inequality, but evidence that in England, despite the war, people continue to live carefree and beautiful. Shortwave radio broadcasts, which, using the same themes of social inequality, were supposed to sow discontent in the enemy's country, did not achieve their goal, because photographs illustrating the life of high society could be seen in the English press itself, from which they actually were taken by the German Ministry of Propaganda. This is due to the fact that the average Englishman did not see any injustice in the life of the upper strata of his people in relation to himself, on the contrary, he saw in it rather the inviolability of the existence of the state and the stability of the political situation, which could not but affect him in the most reassuring way.

Annoyed and surprised by this failure, Goebbels made at one of the press conferences an offer to the German press to describe the private lives of individual prominent figures in Germany, just as the British themselves did. He even agreed to photograph his own daughters riding ponies in Schwanenwerder Park for this purpose. Photographs were taken, but such "propaganda" produced results completely opposite to those that everyone expected, and therefore the practice of photographing "famous" personalities was immediately stopped. This case once again proved that the propaganda used in shit does not give the same result every time and therefore this must be treated very carefully.