Examples Of World War 1 Propaganda

Known as the Great War, World War I was one of the first armed conflicts that shaped global history. For the first time in history, practically every world power was embroiled in war. The Great War brought death and destruction, like no one had ever seen and it startled the citizens of each country drowning in conflict. Patriotic sentiments soared and men lined up for military service. Unfortunately, the pride and nationalism wasn’t of as pure origin as it seemed to the citizens. Propaganda seeped into daily life in all of the countries ranging from Germany to America. Only after the conflict was this atrocity explored by people, specifically by filmmakers.

Possibly the most widely known book-turned film on the topic of World War I propaganda,
All Quiet on the Western Front was made at the turn of the decade, 1930. The film follows a class of German boys, specifically one named Paul Baumer, from the classroom to the battlefield (All Quiet). The boys’ world is quickly turned on their heads when Corporal Himmelstoss tells them “You’re going be soldiers- and that’s all” (All Quiet 00:10:30). The corporal exposes a harsh and nasty truth of any war. In order to become a soldier, one must lose a part of themselves. This was something their professor never told them when he was grinning, giving his pro-war speech. When they were being inspired, they were being inspired by a romanticised version of the war.
They were inspired to be great heros, and some of them fulfilled that goal, but not without paying a price. No one returns from war unharmed, and many don’t return. When the boys are sent out for the field for the first time, they do not encounter a heroic, fair battle, but barbed wire and find themselves holed up in a bunker, under
constant attack from the Allied forces.
While they do succeed in taking a trench belonging to the enemy, they end up having to abandon it (All Quiet). The price they paid for even taking the trench was in lives. There were so many soldiers dead, that the living soldiers were able to double up on their rations. When Paul returns home, he’s met with expectations contrary to what he expected, expectations much more like the one’s he had when he enlisted (All Quiet 01:23:46). His mother believes he’s starving himself when he doesn’t over indulge and she herself says “Paul, you’re a soldier now aren’t you but somehow, I don’t seem to know you” (All Quiet 01:25:47). One of the biggest things that surprises Paul is when he is out with his father and some of his father’s friends and one gentleman remarks “you do at least get decent food out there, naturally it worse here” (All Quiet 01:26:58). This moment really exemplifies to Paul, and the audience the lies that are being spread around Germany. The people back home think that this war is necessary and that the soldiers are being taken care of to a golden standard, yet Paul, and the rest of the soldiers see a grittier side. They see all the death and destruction. They don’t eat well or sleep well, but it doesn’t really
matter; it just matters what the public perceives. Frustrated with the idealized version of war his family and family friends hold, Paul returns to his unit. Not long after Paul returns, he finds a butterfly just out of his trench. Desperate to hold onto something joyful, Paul reaches out to touch the butterfly, just to be killed by an enemy sniper (All Quiet). This exposes a vicious truth about the war to the audience. The moment Paul tried to get back into touch with something good and his soul, he was lost to war. At the end of the day, Paul had been told lies in order to get him to fight; his professor had believed and spread propaganda and it cost Paul his life.

While the traditional soldier was an adrenaline fueled young man, no one was immune to the propaganda and peer pressure of the war. In the 1933 film Ace of Aces, both a young woman named Nancy Adams and her fiance Rex “Rocky” Thorn, a pacifist, end up whirled up in the war. Nancy is taken by the propaganda, and becomes a nurse with the Red Cross. Rocky; however, continues to object the war, until Nancy starts to mock him and rejects him. Insulted by her rejection, Rocky enlists and is hesitant about becoming a fighter pilot. He’s hesitant, that is, until he encounters an enemy