Censorship and Propaganda in World War I

A Comprehensive History

Eberhard Demm

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781350118591
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Propaganda politica

This book demonstrates how people were kept ignorant by censorship and indoctrinated by propaganda. Censorship suppressed all information that criticized the army and government, that might trouble the population or weaken its morale. Propaganda at home emphasized the superiority of the fatherland, explained setbacks by blaming scapegoats, vilified and ridiculed the enemy, warned of the disastrous consequences of defeat and extolled duty and sacrifice. The propaganda message also infiltrated entertainment and the visual arts. Abroad it aimed to demoralize enemy troops and stir up unrest among national minorities and other marginalized groups. The many illustrations and organograms provide a clear visual demonstration of Demm's argument.

Chapter 1

Censorship

If people really knew, the war would be stopped tomorrow. But of course they don’t know and can’t know. The correspondents don’t write and the censorship would not pass the truth. (David Lloyd George)¹

Introduction

Propaganda has a chance only if divergent sources of information can be suppressed as much as possible. Therefore, the indispensable prerequisite of successful propaganda is censorship. Thus, in all warring countries, censorship was established immediately at the outbreak of hostilities.² The primary aim of censorship was to protect military secrets and movements. This could easily be justified, because during the Franco-German War in 1870 military operation tactics of the French imperial army were published in the French and the British press alike to the great profit of the German military command. The same happened in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5 in favour of the Japanese.³ However, now it was rapidly extended to political matters as well. Everything which might criticize the government, distress and trouble the population or weaken its morale was to be withheld or at least toned down and justified.

How was censorship organized?

While on the continent censorship was justified by the proclamation of the state of siege, in Britain and later in Italy and in the United States the parliamentary bodies had to be consulted.⁴ Censorship was thus authorized in Britain by the Defence of the Realm Act (DORA), in Italy by the decree of 23 May 1915, and in the United States by the Espionage and Sedition Acts.⁵ Most urgent was the control of the media, and also, somewhat later, of correspondence. All countries rapidly organized central censorship offices: the Chief Censorship Office (Oberzensurstelle) in October 1914 in Berlin, subordinated to the Intelligence and News Service (III b) of the Supreme High Command (Oberste Heeresleitung, OHL), which did not take up its work until February 1915; the Press Bureau (Bureau de la Presse, BP) in Paris under the direction of the Press Commission of the Ministry of War, which also received guidelines from the General Headquarter of the French Army (Grand Quartier Général, GQG); the American Central Censorship Board, established on 12 October 1917, which consisted of representatives of the Secretaries of War and Navy, the Post Master General, the War Trade Board and George Creel, the chairman of the Committee on Public Information (CPI).⁶ In London the Official Press Bureau (named after its address Wellington House), jokingly called ‘Suppress Bureau’, under the direction of the Foreign Office (FO) censored only the newspapers and their telegraph connections and at the same time issued the official information, while private and commercial telegrams and mail were censored by two separate branches under the control of the War Office.⁷ In Italy, the Press Office (Officio Stampa, OS) was established in May 1915 under the direction of the Minister of the Interior who was also the prime minister at the time.⁸ In Austria-Hungary, censorship was handled in Austria by the War Surveillance Office (Kriegsüberwachungsamt, KÜA) directed by the Austrian War Ministry, and in Hungary it was by the War Surveillance Commission (Kriegsüberwachungskommission) directed by the Hungarian Ministry of Defence. Only the KÜA pre-emptively censored newspaper articles until summer 1917. Dissatisfied with the KÜA, the High Command of Austria-Hungary (Armeeoberkommando, AOK) was from October 1915 authorized to give its officials instructions as well. Furthermore, the War Press Office (Kriegspressequartier, KPQ), under the direction of the AOK, took care of the War Area but also intervened in the censorship of the Viennese newspapers, a fact which led to permanent conflicts with the KÜA. The actual censorship with the exception of the press in the capitals and of doubtful cases was handled by the police, by post offices, the public prosecutor and the County Councils (Bezirkshauptmannschaften). Correspondence with foreign countries was regularly controlled, local letters only selectively; phone communications were tapped, interrupted and the lines could be closed.⁹ In Russia, on 22 July 1914, rather lax civilian censorship regulations were replaced with military censorship under the Temporary Decree on War Censorship and a supplementary list of military secrets. In Turkey, political censorship, already intensified from January 1913, now passed to military censors, but in a country with over 90 per cent illiteracy it was quite rudimentary.¹⁰

The organization of censorship was somewhat modified during the course of the war. In some countries the censorship authorities lost their autonomy at a later date. In Germany, in October 1915, they were united with the offices of propaganda at the War Press Office (Kriegspresseamt, KPA), subordinated to III b. In France, the Press House (Maison de la presse, MdP) was created in February 1916; it was subordinated to the French Foreign Office, reorganized the former propaganda office and was supposed to coordinate it with the censorship office. In February 1918, the Italian OS was subordinated to the Undersecretary of Propaganda Abroad (Sotto Secretario della propaganda all’estero).¹¹ In February 1916, the British War Office expanded a former small office (MO5/MO7) to the huge Directorate of Military Intelligence (MI7) which organized propaganda but also censored military matters. In Germany, the various ‘Ministries’ of the Reich in the rank of Imperial Offices (Reichsämter) and other civilian authorities had their own censorship offices, 22 altogether. Furthermore, the commanders of the POW camps censored prisoners’ correspondence and camp papers and prohibited certain books and newspapers.¹²

The central censors in Prussia, Russia and Austria were mostly career officers, and in Britain, Italy, Bavaria and in the occupied territories, mostly civilians. In France, military and civilian censors worked together, but the military were usually in command and could override the civilians. The authorities in France and Germany even hired professional writers such as Guillaume Apollinaire, Marcel Berger, Arnold Zweig and Walter Bloem.¹³ The censors received their instructions from the service departments of the military authorities and from various ministries, in some cases also from the prime ministers, and passed them to the press, either directly or through regular press conferences which in Germany were also joined by representatives of the Imperial Offices and the Admiralty.¹⁴ However, sometimes heavy conflicts arose about particular questions. For instance, in Germany the Office of Food Supply advocated an open discussion of the supply problems whereas the Foreign Office (Auswärtiges Amt, AA) wanted to suppress this news in order to avoid the impression abroad that the authorities were not able to feed the people properly. Despite heavy opposition by the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg, and the AA, the OHL suppressed the proposal of the Soviet of Petrograd of 23 March 1917 for a peace without annexations and compensations. In France and Britain, there were no conflicts about this question: the authorities suppressed the proposal as well and later also the invitation to the Brest-Litovsk peace conference.¹⁵

In France and Italy, local authorities had an important part to play, and in Germany, they had a decisive influence. In Italy, censorship was done by the local censorship offices under the authority of the prefects, who received their daily instructions from the OS in Rome.¹⁶ In Paris, the BP, successively organized between August 1914 and January 1915 with 400 censors and subordinated to the Ministry of War, coexisted with the censorship office of the military government of the city.¹⁷ Censorship in the provinces was handled by 385 provincial control commissions with 5,000 censors under the joint authority of the prefects of the 55 departments and the commanders of the 21 military regions, but the role of the prefects was reduced in 1915.¹⁸ These local censorship bodies issued their own instructions which did not always harmonize with the central ones. Censorship in the combat zones was handled by special censors: in France from the War Ministry while in Italy from the High Command (Comando Supremo, CS).¹⁹

Germany, with the exception of Bavaria, had been placed under 57 military commanders who, only nominally supervised by the Kaiser, assumed the executive power in their districts and were unconstrained ‘like rulers of independent satrapies’.²⁰ Considering the Instructions for the Press from the KPA in Berlin as mere guidelines, their local censorship offices arbitrarily decided about censorship measures to be carried out either by subordinate commands, by local police or by public servants. Although from spring 1917 the military commanders had to accept consistent principles transmitted by the OHL via the Prussian Ministry of War, the practical application remained far from uniform.²¹ Some military commanders were reputed as being rather tolerant; others were extremely harsh. For instance, the commander in Stettin was completely under the sway of the Pomeranian Junkers and thus in January 1915 suspended the Greifswalder Tageblatt for the rest of the war because of its campaign against their exorbitant bread and potato prices. He was also responsible for a part of the province of Posen, where he placed Polish newspapers under preventive censorship and finally prohibited the newspaper Lech for the rest of the war. His colleague in Posen, responsible for the other part of the province, even lifted preventive censorship for Polish newspa...