Atrocity propaganda focused on the most violent acts committed by the
German and Austro-Hungarian armies, emphasising their barbarity and
providing justification for the conflict.
Victims shot, bayoneted to death, killed with knives, arms lopped off,
torn off, or broken, legs broken, nose cut off, ears cut off, eyes put
out, genital organs cut off, victims stoned, women violated and killed,
breasts cut off, persons hanged, victims burnt alive, one child thrown
to the pigs, victims clubbed to death with butt ends of rifles or
sticks, victims impaled, victims whose skin was cut into strips.
Professor R.A. Reiss, a prominent forensic scientist commissioned by the
Serbian prime minister to conduct an enquiry into war crimes, thus
categorised the numerous violent acts against civilians perpetrated by
the occupying Austro-Hungarian forces in Serbia in 1914. His account
bore striking similarities to French and British publications of the
same period, notably Le livre rouge des atrocités allemandes and the Bryce Report.
In painstaking detail, such reports recorded the crimes of 1914,
individual acts of violence against civilians, troops and prisoners of
war; looting and pillage; the use of weapons "forbidden by the rules and
conventions of war"; the destruction of ancient libraries and
cathedrals, and of homes and villages; rape, mutilation, and torture.
Vivid illustrations and first-hand testimonies accompanied each
description of the "crimes without name", while Liège, Louvain, Dinant,
Antwerp, Reims, Arras, and Senlis were transformed into "martyred
towns", ravaged by an uncompromising, inhuman enemy whose victims ranged
from children to the elderly, from men of God to the injured and
helpless. Such images dominated the early propaganda of the Great War,
serving as a potent reminder of the justification for war and a
vindication of the sacrifice it demanded.
 |
The German Changes Clothes But Always Remains
a German, Remember! Italian Poster |
Atrocity propaganda varied, appearing in books, newspapers, pamphlets,
sketches, posters, films, lantern slides, and cartoons, and on
postcards, plates, cups, and medals. It operated on many levels.
Official government reports presented "evidence" that German troops had
contravened the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. Eyewitness accounts
from victims and perpetrators made for compelling and convincing
reading, and, although methods of investigation often fell short of
legal standards, the reports appeared to be based on irrefutable facts.
That respected experts led these enquiries (Bryce, for example, having
served as a British ambassador to the United States, member of the House
of Lords, and jurist) further legitimised the allegations.
 |
Postwar Stamps from a French Organization
Dedicated to Remembering German Crimes |
While the reports tended to adopt an objective tone, salacious stories
were extracted from testimonies to form the basis of sensational
newspaper articles, exhibitions (such as that by Louis Raemaekers in
London in 1915), or popular books. This created a dynamic,
transformative and self-reinforcing propaganda environment. William Le
Queux detailed the suffering of the ‘honest, pious inhabitants’ of
Belgium, at the mercy of ‘one vast gang of Jack-the-Rippers… frothing
with military Nietzschism’ and excited by ‘a primitive barbarism’.
Although initially a response to the invasion of Belgium in 1914,
atrocity stories drew - as Le Queux’s account suggests - on pre-existing
anti-German sentiments. These sentiments were strengthened by wider
official and unofficial publicity campaigns that pitted German Kultur
against Christian civilization and morality, and created an
interpretative framework for subsequent events. The ‘assassination’ of
Edith Cavell, the sinking of the Lusitania, the declaration of
unrestricted U-Boat warfare, Zeppelin raids, and the use of gas in the
trenches all seemed to confirm the fundamental depravity of the German
character and bolstered the hierarchy of enemies. Thus German atrocities
were afforded a particular prominence, whereas the Turkish slaughter of
Armenians passed almost unnoticed. The power of atrocity stories
derived in part from their ability to stand either alone, as singular
acts of barbarism and moral depravity, or as a series of pre-meditated
collective behaviours that condemned a nation. These shocking stories
allowed propagandists to justify the war, encourage men to enlist, raise
funds for war loans schemes, and shake the United States from its
neutrality. The impact of such propaganda was enduring, lasting well
into 1918 and beyond.
 |
| Depiction of German War Aims, British 1918 |
The German response
Allegations of atrocities proved difficult to refute. Any attempt to do
so attracted further publicity, and explanations offered by the German
and Austro-Hungarian authorities seemed only to confirm their guilt. The
‘Manifesto of the 93’, signed by leading German scientists, scholars
and artists, including fourteen Nobel Prize winners, refuted charges of
war guilt and legitimised the retaliation of German soldiers against
illegal franc-tireurs (irregular forces, ‘free-shooters’), asserting
that German troops had acted within international law. German propaganda
pointed to the hypocrisy of ‘perfidious Albion’ (Great Britain), whose
brutal Empire had perpetrated countless atrocities against the
suppressed peoples of Ireland, India, Egypt, and Africa, and pointed to
Germany’s own record of scholarly endeavour and social welfare.
The German Foreign Ministry’s ‘White Book’ sought to exonerate German
troops as the victims of an illegal and unrelenting ‘people’s war’
conducted by Belgian civilians. This strategy proved unsuccessful. The
Académie française condemned the Manifesto, while the ‘White Book’,
highly selective and deploying unconvincing evidence, seemed to confirm
German crimes and was demolished by the Belgian Livre Gris (1916).
Attempts by the Austro-Hungarian Government to justify its troops’
actions met with similar criticism: Reiss condemned the ‘tardy excuses
of the Austrian officials [which] fall to the ground’. By simply
responding to Allied accusations, German and Austro-Hungarian propaganda
was purely reactive: it failed to exploit the Allies’ own
contraventions of international law, handing to them the moral high
ground and ultimately the more convincing explanation for the outbreak
of war.
Legacy
In the inter-war period, investigations into the nature of war
propaganda suggested that atrocity stories had been fabricated by the
Allies in order to justify the war and to encourage enlistment. Although
more recently historians such as John Horne and Alan Kramer have
illustrated the importance of the franc-tireur myth to the German
military mind-set and highlighted the contravention of international law
entailed in the murder of c.6000 Belgian citizens in 1914, for many
years doubts about the veracity of Allied claims and the memory of the
franc-tireurs remained.
 |
A True Report of Atrocity from World War II, That Overlooked or
Discounted Because of the Experience in the Earlier War |
When German forces once again occupied Belgium in 1940, monuments to
civilian resistance in 1914 were destroyed, while researchers sought
evidence of the existence of a citizen army in the Belgian and French
archives. Liberal democratic propagandists of the Second World War were
divided over the memory of the Great War: some invoked the experience of
1914 to demonstrate Germany’s continual threat to a peaceful Europe
(Lord Vansittart’s Black Record, 1941, for example), while others
pointed to the uniqueness of Nazism. While seeking ‘another Edith
Cavell’ for their campaigns, they were limited by the popular memory of
‘false’ 1914 atrocity stories. As a result, they feared exposing
themselves to charges of exaggerating Nazi atrocities in Europe from
1941, with the consequence that the plight of the Jews and others was
largely ignored and public attention directed elsewhere.
