It’s now a cliché of World War One history that the war was pointless and fought only for the vanity of an elite minority. Yet at the time both sides conducted propaganda campaigns to keep public support behind the war. This included praising their own supposedly noble goals, but also slandering the opposition.
Now 100 years old, Save the Children was initially founded in response to the plight of German and Austrian children during the blockade of Germany in the aftermath of World War One. Listen Now
In the propaganda of Britain, France and the USA, Germans were presented, often literally, as monsters, while atrocities both real and imagined were liberally exploited.
In the post-war years anti-German sentiment remained a powerful tool for political groups like the nationalist British Empire Union.
German atrocities in Belgium played into the hands of Allied propaganda artists.
The cartoon shows a German-American expressing public support for the USA while privately toasting the Kaiser, showing that anti-German prejudice was not only directed against enemy combatants.
The British often invoked the German attack on the town of Scarborough to incite anti-German feeling.
References to nurses had particularly high propaganda value after the shocking execution of British nurse Edith Cavell.
Dan Snow introduces four projects funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council over the last four years, highlighing underexplored aspects of First World War history, from German wartime photography to miltary training in Northern Ireland.Watch Now
