Anticipating the Blitz Spirit in First World War Propaganda Film: Evidence in the Imperial War Museum Archive

2011 ◽  
pp. 160-169
Author(s):  
Roger Smither
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
First World

“The Methods of Barbarism” and the “Rights of Small Nations”: War Propaganda and British Pluralism

1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-75 ◽  
Author(s):  
John S. Ellis
Keyword(s):  
Use Of Force ◽  
First World War ◽  
Anglo Saxon ◽  
World War ◽  
Boer War ◽  
Historical Progress ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Liberal Vision ◽  
First World

The “methods of barbarism” and the “rights of small nations” are perhaps the most recognizable of British slogans arising out of the wars of the early twentieth century. They are instantly associated with the Boer War and the First World War respectively, but seldom are they associated with each other. However, the Pro-Boer rhetoric of “the methods of barbarism” and the First World War propaganda of “the rights of small nations” are intimately linked through their roots in the pluralist Liberal vision of Britishness.These slogans and the propaganda campaigns that they epitomized must be understood within the context of a multicultural Britain and opposing notions of British national identity. Defining “barbarism” as the oppression of small nations through the brutal use of force, the Pro-Boers associated the term with the Anglocentric vision of the British nation reflected in the “New Imperialism” of the Conservatives. Through their belief in Anglo-Saxon racial superiority, the Conservative imperialists maintained that small nations like those of the Irish, the Welsh, and the Boers would either be assimilated or swept aside by the historical progress of an expanding Anglo-Saxon nation state. In contrast to this notion of Conservative “barbarism,” the Pro-Boer Liberals drew on the Gladstonian heritage of their party in defining the United Kingdom as a multinational state at the center of a multinational empire. They eschewed the use of force in the maintenance of empire and argued that the bonds of imperialism must be based upon mutual goodwill, voluntarism, and the recognition of the principle of nationality.When the First World War broke out in 1914, propagandists drew upon these contrasting constructions of Liberal cultural pluralism and Conservative cultural uniformity. In terms similar to those employed by the Pro-Boers, British propagandists depicted the First World War as a struggle against German “barbarism” and as a fight to vindicate the “rights of small nations.” Solidly based upon the Liberal construction of the multicultural and multinational nature of Britishness, Britain's role as the champion of the principle of nationality was proclaimed with an eye not only to the international context of Europe but to the domestic context of the British state and empire as well.

scholarly journals Scandal in Mesopotamia: Press, empire, and India during the First World War

2019 ◽  
Vol 54 (5) ◽  
pp. 1395-1445
Author(s):  
MANU SEHGAL ◽  
SAMIKSHA SEHRAWAT
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Colonial India ◽  
The First World War ◽  
War Effort ◽  
British Press ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Post War ◽  
The One ◽  
First World

AbstractBy providing the first comprehensive account of the role of the British and Indian press in war propaganda, this article makes an intervention in the global history of the First World War. The positive propaganda early in the war, intertwined with a rhetoric of loyalism, contrasted with how the conservative British press affixed blame for military defeats in Mesopotamia upon the colonial regime's failure to effectively mobilize India's resources. Using a highly emotive and enduring trope of the ‘Mesopotamia muddle’, the Northcliffe press was successful in channelling a high degree of public scrutiny onto the campaign. The effectiveness of this criticism ensured that debates about the Mesopotamian debacle became a vehicle for registering criticism of structures of colonial rule and control in India. On the one hand, this critique hastened constitutional reforms and devolution in colonial India and, on the other, it led to demands that the inadequacy of India's contribution to the war be remedied by raising war loans. Both the colonial government and its nationalist critics were briefly and paradoxically united in opposing these demands. The coercive extraction of funds for the imperial war effort as well as the British press's vituperative criticism contributed to a post-war, anti-colonial political upsurge. The procedure of creating a colonial ‘scandal’ out of a military disaster required a specific politics for assessing the regulated flows of information, which proved to be highly effective in shaping both the enquiry that followed and the politics of interwar colonial South Asia.

scholarly journals ‘Milksops’ and ‘Bemedalled Old Men’: War Veterans and the War Youth Generation in the Weimar Republic

Fascism ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 13-41
Author(s):  
Kristian Mennen
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
War Veterans ◽  
Combat Experience ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Collective Imagination ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
Old Men ◽  
First World

This article reconsiders traditional assumptions about the connection between the First World War and the rise of National Socialism in Germany, according to which politically radicalised war veterans joined the Freikorps after the war and formed the backbone of the Nazi membership and electorate. In questioning this view, the article first traces the political paths of actual veterans’ organisations. Whereas the largest veterans’ organisations were not politically active, the most distinctive ones – Reichsbanner and Stahlhelm – were not primarily responsible for a ‘brutalisation’ or radicalisation of Weimar political culture. Their definitions of ‘veteran’ and ‘front experience’ implicitly excluded the so-called ‘war youth generation’ from their narrative. Secondly, it is shown how representatives of this younger generation, lacking actual combat experience but moulded by war propaganda, determined the collective imagination of the First World War. The direct connection between the First World War and National Socialism can therefore primarily be found in the continuity of public and cultural imagination of war and of ‘war veterans’, and much less so in actual membership overlaps between veterans’ and Nazi movements.

A Linguistic Hermeneutic Approach to Paul Rohrbach's Kriegsbotschaften

2009 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-130
Author(s):  
Felicity Rash
Keyword(s):  
National Socialism ◽  
First World War ◽  
Second Empire ◽  
World War ◽  
South West ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Discourse Strategies ◽  
South West Africa ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
First World

This paper applies the methods of linguistic hermeneutics devised by Wengeler (2005) to the pre- and early First World War propaganda essays of Paul Rohrbach. The analysis illustrates the discourse strategies and rhetoric of this staunchly nationalist German writer who was also Settlement Commissioner to German South-West Africa between 1903 and 1906. The texts are good examples of German nationalist propaganda of the Second Empire and were widely read at the time of their publication and afterwards. Their influence is likely to have extended to the period after the First World War, when National Socialism was inchoate.

scholarly journals Letters of Orthodox Priests about the German Occupation of Estonia during the First World War

2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Irina Paert ◽  
James M. White
Keyword(s):  
First World War ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
Main Complaint ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Complex Picture ◽  
War Propaganda ◽  
The One ◽  
The Baltic ◽  
First World

During the invasion of the Baltic provinces between 1915 and 1918, a large swathe of territory and its population fell under German control: this included Orthodox parishes and their priests. The clergy and laity thus had to face many new challenges: the behaviour of occupation forces, material deprivations, and the actions of Lutheran clerical and secular elites in the new context. This article focuses on the response to the advance of the German armies in 1915 and 1916 into the Baltic. On the one hand, the article addresses the preparation and execution of the evacuation of the clergy and the rhetoric that underpinned the process of evacuation. On the other hand, it examines the problem of the church life under occupation. As evident from the sermons and articles published in the ecclesiastical press, the Germans represented a major threat to the Orthodox faith, clergy, and church property. Thus most Orthodox institutions were evacuated from the Baltic in 1915. Finally, the article discusses the position of the Orthodox Church during German occupation of the Estonian islands seized by the imperial German navy on 3 November 1917 from the perspective of parish priests. The article is based on the letters written by priests to the bishop of Riga and provides a complex picture of the German occupation, much of which differs from the representation of Germans in Russian war propaganda. Most priests represented the German forces as being relatively respectful towards churches and the clergy: their main complaint against the soldiers was the seizure of food, horses, and property, with the concomitant disruptions and discomforts this caused. The more serious threat to Orthodoxy, according to this evidence, came not from Germans but from the Lutheran clergy, who allegedly used the opportunity afforded by the invasion to undermine the Orthodox Church’s position. This publication will provide a unique insight into religion under occupation during the First World War, revealing the difficulties of maintaining everyday religious life in a multiconfessional region during and after invasion.

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