Download When war erupted in 1914, the United States

When war erupted in 1914, the United States attempted to remain neutral and was a
proponent for the rights of neutral states. Isolationist foreign policy was encouraged by
Congress's apprehensions about giving other countries a political door into US policies
and the cultural melting pot of the United States' population. In spite of these factors, the
United States did enter World War I, as a result of several events.
In an attempt by both the allied and the central powers to involve the Americans, the US
was heavily saturated with propaganda. Much of the material had a Pro-British slant
which was aided by the connection to Britain as a "cultural brother" and the United
States' concern with affairs in Western Europe. While propaganda sympathetic to
Germany did also exist, it did not carry much weight with the American public. Germany
was seen by most Americans as a dangerous monarchy with autocratic militarist thinking,
including a hidden agenda to undermine democracy and US power. There were
allegations of industrial sabotage, poisoning water supplies, kidnapping individuals, and
engaging in espionage within American labor unions by Germans to keep the United
States busy on the home front. These rumors, along with extensive submarine warfare,
added to the distrust of the Germans.
Prior to 1915, German subs had a policy of warning and allowing time to evacuate ships
carrying passengers before they sank them. However, in 1915 the Lusitania was sunk
without a warning, killing over 120 Americans. One year later, the Sussex was sunk by
German U-boats and American citizens were outraged at these direct violations of their
neutral rights at sea. At this point, a small percentage of Americans, including
presidential hopeful Teddy Roosevelt, demanded "immediate warfare." In 1916 President
Wilson took a stronger stance toward foreign affairs by increasing the size of the military
and issuing a warning to the Germans:
Unless the Imperial Government should now immediately declare and effect an
abandonment of its present methods of submarine warfare against passenger and
freight-carrying vessels, the Government of the United States can have no choice
but to sever diplomatic relations with the German Empire altogether (1).
The Germans responded by temporally ceasing submarine warfare until 1917 when
German Ambassador Berstorff announced the continuation of submarine warfare and
ended diplomatic relations with the United States. However, military strategists predicted
certain defeat for the Germans if America entered the war at this point. In an attempt to
eliminate the threat of American involvement in Europe, Foreign Minister Alfred
Zimmerman attempted to provoke Mexico and Japan into attacking the United States
with the promise of German assistance after the European front was conquered. A
message containing Zimmerman's intent was decoded by the British and sent to the US,
further swaying Americans to action. Due primarily to submarine warfare and the
Zimmerman note, President Wilson asked Congress for permission to go to war, and on
April 6, 1917, congress officially declared it. President Wilson, along with many
Americans, justified their involvement as "an act of high principle and
idealism...[and]...as a crusade to make the world safe for democracy." (2)
While these are some of the main events, there are many other theories regarding why the
US entered into World War I. Some propose that the US was never actually neutral, but
had been supporting the British; this thinking gives a different light on the events of
submarine warfare with the Germans. The high infiltration of Pro-British propaganda as
well as the considerable profits to the hurting economy lead some to believe that it would
have been impossible for the US to remain neutral and not engage in the war. Others
propose that as German forces crept into the Atlantic and threatened to conquer Britain,
the US felt that its defenses and the country's security were threatened, again justifying
involvement in the war. In all practicality, it is impossible to pinpoint the entry of the
United States to a number of certain events and it was most definitely a combination of
many factors. The most important of these events are discussed above, explaining why
the United States entered World War I.
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The Drift Towards War
"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."
It is one of history's great ironies that Woodrow Wilson, who was re- elected as a
peace candidate in 1916, led America into the First World War. With the help of a
propaganda apparatus that was unparalleled in world history, Wilson forged a nation
of immigrants into a fighting whole. An examination of public opinion before the
war, propaganda efforts during the war, and the endurance of propaganda in
peacetime raises significant questions about the viability of democracy as a
governing principle.
Like an undertow, America's drift toward war was subtle and forceful. According to
the outspoken pacifist Randolph Bourne, war sentiment spread gradually among
various intellectual groups. "With the aid of Roosevelt," wrote Bourne, "the murmurs
became a monotonous chant, and finally a chorus so mighty that to be out of it was
at first to be disreputable, and finally almost obscene." Once the war was underway,
dissent was practically impossible. "[I]f you believed our going into this war was a
mistake," wrote The Nation in a post-war editorial, "if you held, as President Wilson
did early in 1917, that the ideal outcome would be 'peace without victory,' you were
a traitor." Forced to stand quietly on the sidelines while their neighbors stampeded
towards war, many pacifists would have agreed with Bertrand Russell that "the
greatest difficulty was the purely psychological one of resisting mass suggestion, of
which the force becomes terrific when the whole nation is in a state of violent
collective excitement."
This frenzied support for the war was particularly remarkable in light of the fact that
Wilson's re-election had been widely interpreted as a vote for peace. After all, in
January of 1916, Wilson stated that "so far as I can remember, this is a government
of the people, and this people is not going to choose war." In retrospect, it is
apparent that the vote for Wilson cloaked profound cleavages in public opinion. At
the time of his inauguration, immigrants constituted one third of the population.
Allied and German propaganda revived old-world loyalties among "hyphenated"
European- Americans, and opinions about US intervention were sharply polarized.
More than 8 million German-Americans lived in this country, and many were
sympathetic to the cause of their homeland. Meanwhile, anti-German feeling was
strong among the upper classes on the Atlantic coast, and was particularly intense
among those with social and business connections to Britain or France. Most
Americans, however, were not connected to the European conflict by blood or
capital, and were not interested in waging war overseas.
The Committee on Public Information
The absence of public unity was a primary concern when America entered the war on
April 6, 1917. In Washington, unwavering public support was considered to be
crucial to the entire wartime effort. On April 13, 1917, Wilson created the
Committee on Public Information (CPI) to promote the war domestically while
publicizing American war aims abroad. Under the leadership of a muckraking
journalist named George Creel, the CPI recruited heavily from business, media,
academia, and the art world. The CPI blended advertising techniques with a
sophisticated understanding of human psychology, and its efforts represent the first
time that a modern government disseminated propaganda on such a large scale. It
is fascinating that this phenomenon, often linked with totalitarian regimes, emerged
in a democratic state.
Although George Creel was an outspoken critic of censorship at the hands of public
servants, the CPI took immediate steps to limit damaging information. Invoking the
threat of German propaganda, the CPI implemented "voluntary guidelines" for the
news media and helped to pass the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of
1918. The CPI did not have explicit enforcement power, but it nevertheless "enjoyed
censorship power which was tantamount to direct legal force." Like modern reporters
who participate in Pentagon press pools, journalists grudgingly complied with the
official guidelines in order to stay connected to the information loop. Radical
newspapers, such as the socialist Appeal to Reason, were almost completely
extinguished by wartime limitations on dissent. The CPI was not a censor in the
strictest sense, but "it came as close to performing that function as any government
agency in the US has ever done."
Censorship was only one element of the CPI's efforts. With all the sophistication of a
modern advertising agency, the CPI examined the different ways that information
flowed to the population and flooded these channels with pro-war material. The
CPI's domestic division was composed of 19 sub-divisions, and each focused on a
particular type of propaganda. A comprehensive survey is beyond the scope of this
paper, but the use of newspapers, academics, artists, and filmmakers will be
discussed.
One of the most important elements of the CPI was the Division of News, which
distributed more than 6,000 press releases and acted as the primary conduit for warrelated information. According to Creel, on any given week, more than 20,000
newspaper columns were filled with material gleaned from CPI handouts. Realizing
that many Americans glided right past the front page and headed straight for the
features section, the CPI also created the Division of Syndicated Features and
recruited the help of leading novelists, short story writers, and essayists. These
popular American writers presented the official line in an easily digestible form, and
their work was said to have reached twelve million people every month.
The Division of Civic and Educational Cooperation relied heavily on scholars who
churned out pamphlets with titles such as The German Whisper, German War
Practices, and Conquest and Kultur. The academic rigour of many of these pieces
was questionable, but more respectable thinkers, such as John Dewey and Walter
Lippmann, also voiced their support for the war. Even in the face of this trend,
however, a few scholars refused to fall in line. Randolph Bourne had been one John
Dewey's star students, and he felt betrayed by his mentor's collaboration with the
war effort. In one of several eloquent wartime essays, Bourne savagely attacked his
colleagues for self-consciously guiding the country into the conflict. "[T]he German
intellectuals went to war to save their culture from barbarization," wrote Bourne.
"And the French went to war to save their beautiful France!... Are not our
intellectuals equally fatuous when they tell us that our war of all wars is stainless and
thrillingly achieving for good?"
The CPI did not limit its promotional efforts to the written word. The Division of
Pictorial Publicity "had at its disposal many of the most talented advertising
illustrators and cartoonists of the time," and these artists worked closely with
publicity experts in the Advertising Division. Newspapers and magazines eagerly
donated advertising space, and it was almost impossible to pick up a periodical
without encountering CPI material. Powerful posters, painted in patriotic colours,
were plastered on billboards across the country. Even from the cynical vantage point
of the mid 1990s, there is something compelling about these images that leaps
across the decades and stirs a deep yearning to buy liberty bonds or enlist in the
navy.
Moving images were even more popular than still ones, and the Division of Films
ensured that the war was promoted in the cinema. The film industry suffered from a
sleazy reputation, and producers sought respectability by lending wholehearted
support to the war effort. Hollywood's mood was summed up in a 1917 editorial in
The Motion Picture News which proclaimed that "every individual at work in this
industry wants to do his share" and promised that "through slides, film leaders and
trailers, posters, and newspaper publicity they will spread that propaganda so
necessary to the immediate mobilization of the country's great resources." Movies
with titles like The Kaiser: The Beast of Berlin, Wolves of Kultur, and Pershing's
Crusaders flooded American theatres. One picture, To Hell With The Kaiser, was so
popular that Massachusetts riot police were summoned to deal with an angry mob
that had been denied admission.
The preceding discussion merely hints at the breadth of CPI domestic propaganda
activities. From lecture hall podiums and movie screens to the pages of popular
fiction and the inside of payroll envelopes, the cause of the Allies was creatively
publicized in almost every available communication channel. But this is only part of
the story. The propaganda techniques employed by the CPI are also fascinating,
and, from the standpoint of democratic government, much more significant.
Demons, Atrocities, and Lies
Defining Propaganda
The word "propaganda" has already been used several times, and the reader may
wonder how this term is being used. The definition of propaganda has been widely
debated, but there is little agreement about what it means. Some argue that all
persuasive communication is propagandistic, while others suggest that only
dishonest messages can be considered propaganda. Political activists of all stripes
claim that they speak the truth while their opponents preach propaganda. In order
to accommodate the breadth of the CPI's activities, this discussion relies on Harold
Lasswell's broad interpretation of the term. "Not bombs nor bread," wrote Lasswell,
"but words, pictures, songs, parades, and many similar devices are the typical
means of making propaganda." According to Lasswell, "propaganda relies on symbols
to attain its end: the manipulation of collective attitudes."
Propagandists usually attempt to influence individuals while leading each one to
behave "as though his response were his own decision." Mass communication tools
extend the propagandist's reach and make it possible to shape the attitudes of many
individuals simultaneously. Because propagandists attempt to "do the other fellow's
thinking for him," they prefer indirect messages to overt, logical arguments. During
the war, the CPI accomplished this by making calculated emotional appeals, by
demonizing Germany, by linking the war to the goals of various social groups, and,
when necessary, by lying outright.
Emotional Appeals
CPI propaganda typically appealed to the heart, not to the mind. Emotional agitation
is a favourite technique of the propagandist, because "any emotion may be 'drained
off' into any activity by skilful manipulation." An article which appeared in Scientific
Monthly shortly after the war argued that "the detailed suffering of a little girl and
her kitten can motivate our hatred against the Germans, arouse our sympathy for
Armenians, make us enthusiastic for the Red Cross, or lead us to give money for a
home for cats." Wartime slogans such as "Bleeding Belgium," "The Criminal Kaiser,"
and "Make the World Safe For Democracy," suggest that the CPI was no stranger to
this idea. Evidence of this technique can be seen in a typical propaganda poster that
portrayed an aggressive, bayonet-wielding German soldier above the caption "Beat
Back The Hun With Liberty Bonds." In this example, the emotions of hate and fear
were redirected toward giving money to the war effort. It is an interesting side-note
that many analysts attribute the failure of German propaganda in America to the fact
that it emphasized logic over passion. According to Count von Bernstorff, a German
diplomat, "the outstanding characteristic of the average American is rather a great,
though superficial, sentimentality," and German press telegrams completely failed to
grasp this fact.
Demonization
A second propaganda technique used by the CPI was demonization of the enemy.
"So great are the psychological resistances to war in modern nations," wrote
Lasswell "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."
American propaganda was not the only source of anti-German feeling, but most
historians agree that the CPI pamphlets went too far in portraying Germans as
depraved, brutal aggressors. For example, in one CPI publication, Professor Vernon
Kellogg asked "will it be any wonder if, after the war, the people of the world, when
they recognize any human being as a German, will shrink aside so that they may not
touch him as he passes, or stoop for stones to drive him from their path?"
A particularly effective strategy for demonizing Germans was the use of atrocity
stories. "A handy rule for arousing hate," said Lasswell "is, if at first they do not
enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every
conflict known to man." Unlike the pacifist, who argues that all wars are brutal, the
atrocity story implies that war is only brutal when practiced by the enemy. Certain
members of the CPI were relatively cautious about repeating unsubstantiated
allegations, but the committee's publications often relied on dubious material. After
the war, Edward Bernays, who directed CPI propaganda efforts in Latin America,
openly admitted that his colleagues used alleged atrocities to provoke a public outcry
against Germany. Some of the atrocity stories which were circulated during the war,
such as the one about a tub full of eyeballs or the story of the seven-year old boy
who confronted German soldiers with a wooden gun, were actually recycled from
previous conflicts. In his seminal work on wartime propaganda, Lasswell speculated
that atrocity stories will always be popular because the audience is able to feel selfrighteous indignation toward the enemy, and, at some level, identify with the
perpetrators of the crimes. "A young woman, ravished by the enemy," he wrote
"yields secret satisfaction to a host of vicarious ravishers on the other side of the
border."
Anti-German propaganda fuelled support for the war, but it also contributed to
intolerance on the home front. Dachshunds were renamed liberty dogs, German
measles were renamed liberty measles, and the City University of New York reduced
by one credit every course in German. Fourteen states banned the speaking of
German in public schools. The military adversary was thousands of miles away, but
German-Americans provided convenient local scapegoats. In Van Houten, New
Mexico, an angry mob accused an immigrant miner of supporting Germany and
forced him to kneel before them, kiss the flag, and shout "To hell with the Kaiser." In
Illinois, a group of zealous patriots accused Robert Prager, a German coal miner, of
hoarding explosives. Though Prager asserted his loyalty to the very end, he was
lynched by the angry mob. Explosives were never found.
The War to End All Wars
Emotional appeals and simplistic caricatures of the enemy influenced many
Americans, but the CPI recognized that certain social groups had more complex
propaganda needs. In order to reach intellectuals and pacifists, the CPI claimed that
military intervention would bring about a democratic League of Nations and end
warfare forever. With other social groups, the CPI modified its arguments, and
interpreted the war as "a conflict to destroy the threat of German industrial
competition (business group), to protect the American standard of living (labour), to
remove certain baneful German influences in our education (teachers), to destroy
German music - itself a subtle propaganda (musicians), to preserve civilization, 'we'
and `civilization' being synonymous (nationalists), to make the world safe for
democracy, crush militarism, [and] establish the rights of small nations et al.
(religious and idealistic groups)." It is impossible to make rigorous statements about
which one of these appeals was most effective, but this is the advantage that the
propagandist has over the communications scholar. The propagandist is primarily
concerned with effectiveness and can afford to ignore the methodological demands of
social science.
Dishonesty
Finally, like most propagandists, the CPI was frequently dishonest. Despite George
Creel's claim that the CPI strived for unflinching accuracy, many of his employees
later admitted that they were quite willing to lie. Will Irwin, an ex-CPI member who
published several confessional pieces after the war, felt that the CPI was more
honest than other propaganda ministries, but made it clear that "we never told the
whole truth - not by any manner of means." Citing an intelligence officer who bluntly
said "you can't tell them the truth," G.S Viereck argued that, as on all fronts,
victories were routinely manufactured by American military authorities. The
professional propagandist realizes that, when a single lie is exposed, the entire
campaign is jeopardized. Dishonesty is discouraged, but on strategic, not moral,
grounds.
Post-War Propaganda
In the final months of 1918, as the war drew to a close, the CPI fell under increasing
scrutiny from a war-weary American public and from the Republican majority that
had gained control of Congress. On November 12, 1918, George Creel halted the
domestic activities of the CPI. The activities of the foreign division were ended,
amidst great controversy, a few months later. One might assume that the wartime
propagandists then put down their pens and paintbrushes and returned to ordinary
life. This was not the case.
According to Lasswell, many former agents of the CPI stayed in Washington and New
York and took advantage of their skill and contacts. Two years later, the Director of
the CPI's Foreign Division argued that "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 the war were too
valuable for the uses of governments, factions, and special interests." Sigmund
Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, took the techniques he learned in the CPI directly
to Madison Avenue and became an outspoken proponent of propaganda as a tool for
democratic government. "It was, of course, the astounding success of propaganda
during the war that opened the eyes of the intelligent few in all departments of life to
the possibilities of regimenting the public mind," wrote Bernays in his 1928
bombshell Propaganda. "It was only natural, after the war ended, that intelligent
persons should ask themselves whether it was not possible to apply a similar
technique to the problems of peace."
This peacetime application of what was, after all, a tool of war, began to trouble
Americans who suspected that they had been misled. In The New Republic, John
Dewey questioned the paternalistic assumptions of those who disguised propaganda
as news. "There is uneasiness and solicitude about what men hear and learn," wrote
Dewey, and the "paternalistic care for the source of men's beliefs, once generated by
war, carries over to the troubles of peace." Dewey argued that the manipulation of
information was particularly evident in coverage of post-Revolutionary Russia. The
Nation agreed in 1919, arguing that "what has happened in regard to Russia is the
most striking case in point as showing what may be accomplished by Government
propaganda... Bartholomew nights that never take place, together with the wildest
rumours of communism in women, and of murder and bloodshed, taken from
obscure Scandinavian newspapers, are hastily relayed to the US, while everything
favourable to the Soviets, every bit of constructive accomplishment, is suppressed."
When one considers the horrible legacy of the war, it is tempting to pin complete
responsibility for American involvement on hate-mongering militarists in the CPI.
Such retroactive condemnation is no more complex than a wartime slogan.
Ultimately, their guilt is less important than the questions their activities raised about
the role of propaganda in a democratic society.
Democratic theory, as interpreted by Jefferson and Paine, was rooted in the
Enlightenment belief that free citizens could form respectable opinions about issues
of the day and use these opinions to guide their own destiny. Communication
between citizens was assumed to be a necessary element of the democratic process.
During the first world war, America's leaders felt that 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 Germany. The war came to an end, but propaganda did not. For the past seven
decades, those who lead our nation, along with those who seek to overthrow it, have
mouthed the ideals of Jefferson while behaving like Bernays.
Is propaganda compatible with democracy, or does it undermine the population's
ability to think critically about world events? What happens when simplistic,
emotional appeals are endlessly repeated? During the war, Bourne complained that
"simple syllogisms are substituted for analysis, things are known by their labels,
[and] our heart's desire dictates what we shall see." Could this description apply
equally to a political climate in which slogans like "Three Strikes, You're Out," "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell," and "Just Say No" are treated as if they were actual policies for
dealing with social needs?
What of the propagandist's argument that the complexity of the modern world makes
obsolete the Enlightenment faith in popular wisdom? It is impossible for one person
to simultaneously be an expert in foreign policy, labour disputes, the environment,
the educational system, health care, constitutional law, and scientific regulation.
Even the President is forced to rely on the advice of key advisors. Should America
follow Bernays' prescription and accept the wisdom of "a leadership democracy
administered by the intelligent minority who know how to regiment and guide the
masses?" Or is "leadership democracy" simply one stage of our democratic
development? Could it someday be replaced by something more far reaching?
What contribution will emerging communication technologies make to the
dissemination of propaganda? Does the myth of "interactivity" legitimize an
unbalanced social relationship, or does it make it possible for the audience to
challenge the propagandist? The hosts of radio talk shows claim that theirs is a
democratic medium, but callers are screened in advance and filtered through a
three-second time delay. Are truly interactive tools on the horizon?
The important difference between our "leadership democracy" and a totalitarian state
is that we are allowed to raise questions such as these. However, history shows
that, in times of political crisis and social dislocation, this freedom is one of the first
to disappear. As we approach the end of the twentieth century, finding answers to
these questions is more important than ever.
Article contributed by Aaron Delwiche (Doctoral candidate in the School of
Communications at the University of Washington).