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CHAPTER 16

Propaganda and the Mobdization of Consent

Wars of persua-sion: the political dimensions

Eveiy combatant nation in the Great War setup agencies to contrgl the flow of infonnation and to monitor and influence public opinion. The first task was hardly original: armies have always drawn aveil oyjęr the de-tails of militaiy deployment, flie timing of operations, and casuąlties incurred in them. The second task did require new initiatives. In earlier con-flicts, writers and artists, piiests and lay notables, had rallied around the flag, but in the Great War, appeals had to reach the nation as a whole. Consent was an essential element of mass warfare; propaganda helped shore itup over the fifty months of the conflict.

The Great War spawned the most spectacular advertising campaign to datę. Its product was justification of war. Its language was morał and replete with the symbolic forms within which notions of justice and injustice were inscribed in popular culture. Because of the excesses and exaggerations of this effort, tbe term ‘propaganda’ has come to mean ‘lies*. During the war, propaganda entailed morę than this. Tbe best way to understand its mixture of morał outrage, selective reporting, and misleading or untrue assertions is to see propaganda as a state-dominated lawyers’ brief, pleading tire cause of the nation before its population and that of die world.

PROPAGANDA AND MOBILIZATION OF CONSENT

State-dominated does not mean state-directed. Yes, there was manipula-tion from above, but tliat is far from the end of the story. One of the key fea-tures of propaganda is its dual character. It mixed political polemic with appeals originating in the private sector. The power of State propaganda was a function of its synergistic relationship with opinion formed from below. When common sense on the popular level diverged from-state propaganda, the official message tumed hollow or simply vanished. But when propaganda coincided with popular feeling, independently generated and independently sustained, tlien it had a real and profound force.

Between 1914 and 1916, both sides emphasized the defensive naturę of the war. Each had been provoked md attaeked; each was simply defending itssoil md its national greatness. In tliis first phase, tlie military played a pre-dominmt role, through. such monitoring bodies as the German Kriegs-presseamt or the Freneh Maison de la Presse. But from 1917, civilim agencies eame to tlie fore. The reason for die change is elear: when the political character ofthe war chmged, so did propagmda. The two Russian revo-lutions of 1917 md the entry of the United States into the war in April 1917 transfomaed die conflict. Now war aims became central to propagmda. What kind of peace, indeed what kind of post-wai* world, were questions at ^ie; heart ofidie -appeal-to public opinion in die last two years of the war.

each.. Europem combatant, the dormant -^T$bda!ist^    establishingits outlook

^i|P ^Q^~ die...f^t^re;.of/Euro.pe. Moderate socialists

óf State control of the ?§£&i iSecmmand dcoho^^it' liacł provided decent wages §i^:7^aiid ehminated uheinplóyfnent. Lenin and the Bol-—sheviks had another set of answers to these ques-tions: the war was an imperialist plot. To prove the point, they pubhshed documents from the tsars Foreign Ministry about the deal madę between Russia, Britain, and France over futurę control of Constantinople. Is tliat why millions had died^ American President Woodrow Wilson had still another point of view: the sacrifiees had to be justi-fied by the creation of a democratic intemational order presided over by a League of Nations.

This turbulent period dearly required a new approach totlie orchestration of die chorus of pub-lic opinion. The European powers were much morę conservative than any of these new voices of 1917. David Lloyd George (British prime minister from December 1916) and Georges Clemenceau (French premier from December 1917) did not want what either Lenin or Wilson was selling. The German high command was even morę resistant to

‘Doyou want four Alsace-Lorraines?' is the rhetorical question on this Austro-Hungarian war poster. To avoidthe dismem-berment ot the empire into smali and unstable ethnic tragments was reason enough to carry on the war.

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