American+Propaganda+in+the+Great+War+(WW1)+-4th+5th+Hrs.

= ﻿Stamp out the Kaiser: American World War I Propaganda =

Propaganda in World War One was used to influence public opinion in favor of the war effort. The US government's tool of misinformation was the CPI (Committee on Public Information). This organization was formed on April 13, 1793, per executive order 2594, by Woordrow Wilson. Between its signing and slightly after the end of the Great War in 1919, The CPI Used multiple mediums to bend public opinion in favor of the war effort, along with encouraging it to conserve, enlist, and save your quarters to buy some United States War Bonds Today!

Means
No brainwashing of a country could begin without means of doing so. the Government used a variety of tactics including: The primary means of getting the word out to people was through posters. They depicted the glory of enlisting, or if you weren't capable, bent you to come off like an unpatriotic jerk if you didn't buy United States War bonds.v
 * Posters
 * Newspapers
 * Radio ads, and
 * Bands of traveling pitchmen

Newspapers and Pamphlets
During the time period of World War 1, newspapers were the primary source of information for the citizens of this fine nation. Consequently, they received a lot of attention from the CPI. Military victories were often exaggerated and in some cases downright fabricated; all in the name of boosting the patriotism and morale of US citizens. Semi-Censorship The CPI didn’t Censor the media, per se, but used more of a strong-arm approach. They overshadowed all other media sources that weren’t pro-war to a point that ostracized them. they insinuated that peace activists were evil and should be crushed. It was a parallel to today’s prisons, where the most horrific, evil criminals are placed normally with other prisoners, dealing a punishment that most would like to sentence those kinds of people to, but the government is not allowed to. the CPI, in a sense, “looked the other way” when peace newspaper editors and personnel were brutally discriminated against.

Resistance to War
Still, some people were not convinced to support the war effort, Wilson's election was supposed to be one of peace (needs more information). Also at that current time, there were about 8 million German Americans and one third of the US population was immigrants. These people could be and often were sympathetic to the causes of the enemy, or just plain weren't interested in waging a war. Another significant faction of the public that the CPI had to account for were those who were not so easily swayed by emotional appeals alone (pacifists, intellectuals, and, wealthy businessmen for example).

The War to End All Wars
To convince those more resistant to war and manipulation, the CPI had to perpetuate the idea that our involvement in the war would bring the end of all war. This idea needed to be treated as an absolute truth. There also needed many intellectual reasons why. Throughout the war, the CPI argued that our intervention would bring about the league of nations and end all war, would halt German industrial competition, preserve democracy, and give rights to small nations. These were just a few of the specifically calculated and targeted intellectual appeals to war made by the CPI.

Demonizing the Enemy (and the consequences that followed)
The newspapers were where most of the atrocity stories were printed. "A handy rule for arousing hate,is, if at first they do not enrage, use an atrocity. It has been employed with unvarying success in every conflict known to man." Harold Lasswell. By using often fabricated atrocity stories and distributing them to newspapers, the CPI could easily manipulate public opinion in favor of the war. Atrocity stories (such as the story of Germans keeping a bathtub full of eyeballs) have the effect of creating a strong feeling of self righteous fury in the hearts of the readers. Atrocity stories helped further the ideal that war is only brutal when practiced by the enemy; therefore dehumanizing the said enemy.

The rather large efforts to turn the public against the Germans also had the unfortunate side-effect of creating a national sentiment of anti-German racism. Hamburgers and sauerkraut were renamed "Liberty Sausage" and "Liberty Cabbage" respectively. But alas, these were some of the more comical displays of intolerance: Beatings, verbal abuse, humiliation, and even lynchings were committed against innocent German Americans. "Many fevent“patriots” had no compunction about harassing, intimidating, or physically assaulting German Americans, since local and state officials rarely interceded to protect the rights of German Americans against these unjustified attacks"

**Emotional Appeal**

American propaganda often appealed emotionally. Many posters and slogans implied that small children and kittens would be homeless and/or die if you didn’t enlist in the army. The CPI used emotion often because you could use a guilt trip to bend almost anyone into the government’s interests.

Post-war legacy and demise
towards the end of WWI in 1918, the American public was starting to get tired of seeing propaganda everywhere they went. as a result, the CPI ceased to publish anything in the US, and later in foreign countries. However, many Propagandists returned to work publishing peacetime propaganda relating to domestic interests in various countries. Influence decreased gradually through the late 1910’s due to a complete abandon of fact checking, often slapping headlines from obscure Scandinavian “newspapers” about the perils of communism.

On a different note, american WWI involvement wasn’t really the CPI’s fault. The government didn’t feel that people were aware of the issues at hand, thus, they couldn’t form the opinions necessary to back an unprecedented war effort. Albeit, the CPI took the wrong approach-spamming all forms of communication with guilt trips and atrocities- but without a somewhat informed American public, a war effort would not be possible.