The Content of British Propaganda

Abstract

Images of the bloated ‘Prussian Ogre’ proudly sporting his pickelhauber, the ‘Beastly Hun’ with his sabre-belt barely encompassing his enormous girth, busily crucifying soldiers, violating women, mutilating babies, desecrating and looting churches, are firmly implanted in the consciousness of the twentieth century. Evoked repeatedly by Allied propagandists during the First World War, the British stereotype of the ‘Hun’ or the French stereotype of the ‘Boche’ came to personify a particular perception of the quintessential immorality of ‘Prussian militarism’ for causing the war and for its more inhumane excesses. ‘Prussian militarism’ provided Allied propagandists with the essential focus they required to launch their moral offensive against the enemy at home and abroad, and amongst their own troops. They personified and pictorialised a German society based upon militarist principles in order to bring home the terrifying consequences of defeat and thereby to sustain the will to continue the struggle until victory was secured. Neutral countries would be left in no doubt as to where their sympathies should rest. During the early stage of the war, it was important for British propagandists to apportion blame to the enemy for having caused the conflict and to prove that he had deliberately let loose the dogs of war upon peace-loving nations.