Propaganda during World War 1 and World War 2 - Research Paper Example

Propaganda during World War 1 and World War 2 The World War I has become a turning point in the development of the theory and practice of propaganda. At the beginning of the war the governments of the conflicting states except Germany and Russia came to the conclusion that it was necessary to create special bodies to have an informational and psychological influence on the military forces and the population of the opponent. It was also considered necessary to influence the public opinion in neutral countries. Every day of the war took away the lives of the people. By the end of 1916 the losses of the both parties were great. Patriotic moods were coming to the end and antiwar movement was developing. Soldiers did not follow the orders more and more often. All the countries, which participated in war, faced such problems. The citizens claimed the immediate end of the war and peace establishment. Gradually, due to the governments’ refusal to meet the requirements antiwar actions turned into the revolution movements. However, the governments of imperialistic countries had to take into account the mood of the masses. Thus, propaganda was the only way to change the situation (Messinger, 1992:6). In 1914 the War Propaganda Bureau were created in Great Britain. Bureau implemented propaganda among the soldiers and the population of the foreign countries. In August 1915 the propaganda service was created in France. The activity was held by means of leaflets spreading. In 1917 the United States Committee on Public Information ruled by George Creel was created. The main task of the committee was to mobilize the public opinion inside of the country to support both the participation of America in War and the peacemaking efforts of Wilson due to the public opinion split straight after the war was declared. Creel’s committee started working not having any tested tools of mass media. Thus, it was necessary to improvise. As that time there was no developed radio and television for the fast spreading of information, the committee formed the mobile groups of volunteers. The main goal of such organizations was to make people think that the opponents wanted to destroy the country and they were not going to stop (Lasswell, 1972:40). The activity of the created organizations, which dealt with propaganda were successful and brought good results. For example, more people started entering such organizations as Red Cross. Less people tended to join those who propagated the end of the war and peace establishment (McQuail, 1969:5). Germany became the victim of the informational and psychological operations of the opponents. Under the informational pressure the revolution started in Germany and led to its failure in the World War I (Knightley, 2002: 4). The World War II represented a check of violability of the theoretical statements about the effectiveness of skillfully organized informational and psychological effect imposed on the military forces and population of the opponent. During the World War II there were much more opportunities to make successful propaganda due to the development of radio and TV. Radio and press were the main tools of propaganda during the World War II (Rhodes, 1996 :3). Germany failed to make good propaganda during World War I that was the reason of its failure. Having made the corresponding conclusions, the heads of the fascist Germany started paying more attention to the issues connected with war propaganda. Hitler stated: “Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...)” (Hitler, 1939: 5) . Hitler’s government formed the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. (Chakhotin, 1940: 8) The Ministry united the existing propaganda organizations and became the monopolist in the sphere of propaganda. The influence of such propaganda was very strong. Moreover, Nazi widely applied such method as “black propaganda”. They provided the citizens of other states-participants with false facts on behalf of their government. This brought a lot of disorders to British and French societies. Actually, Great Britain was a country the propaganda of which was closely connected with film-making, many films was created during World War II: The Day Will Dawn (1942:2), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) are among them. Books, radio, leaflets and posters were also widely used (De Fleur, 1966: 24). The propaganda held by Hitler was great and influential, but it did not allow him to win the war as the propaganda held by Joseph Stalin was also strong. The main thing that helped him was so-called “soviet spirit”. “We must make the young into a generation of Communists. Children, like soft wax, are very malleable and they should be moulded into good Communists... We must rescue children from the harmful influence of the family... We must nationalize them. From the earliest days of their little lives, they must find themselves under the beneficent influence of Communist schools... To oblige the mother to give her child to the Soviet state – that is our task" (Figes, 2007:20). While the antiwar propaganda held in Germany was not successful as people were under the influence of fascist ideology, the propaganda directed on making people struggle for their state in the Soviet Union had a great success. It may be one of the reasons, which led Soviet Union to victory. References Chakhotin, S 1940, The Rape of the Masses: The Psychology of Totalitarian Political Propaganda, New York De Fleur, M 1966, Theories of Mass Commiunication, New York Figes, O 2007, The Whisperers: Private Life in Stalin's Russia, Picador Hitler, A 1939, Mein Kampf. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Knightley, P 2002, The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo, Johns Hopkins University Press Lasswell, H D 1972, Propaganda Teclhnique in the W'orld War (New York 1972), 48-50. . McQuail, D 1969, Towards a Sociology of' Mass Communtications, London Messinger, Gary S 1992, British Propaganda and the State in the First World War, New York Rhodes, A 1996, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, Chelsea House Publishers, New York Read More