How Did Propaganda Influence World War 1

World War 1 was the first war fought on the front lines and through the media. The war was fought in the early 20th century and was the biggest war fought at the time. Since it was a massive war happening around the world one of the best ways to stay tuned into it was through the media. But sometimes the media wasn’t honest and was biased, this is what is called propaganda. Propaganda influenced World War 1 because of the way it portrayed the war, viewed the enemy, and how much was pumped into people’s everyday lives. In World War 1 Propaganda influenced the war by the way it portrayed it. It was portrayed to men as a way to go serve and honor their country. They thought that they would be able to go to war, win, and come back as heroes.

Germany was the most targeted in this type of propaganda because of how big of a role it had in the war. Most of the propaganda that was targeted at Germany was used to produce fear. This fear helped the militaries recruit people because they were stopping “the inhuman acts of the Germans” (Sterling & Demm). These inhuman ideas were “the Germans allegedly used human corpses to make soap.” or “German soldiers were accused of mutilating children and killing babies.” (Sterling & Demm). But not all of the propaganda was just for their own country. America created a rumor in Germany that they had soldiers everywhere and there was no hope for them. “2 million Americans are now in France, more than 10 times that number stand ready in America. Your course is hopeless!” (Sterling & Demm). This helped the Americans seem a lot bigger than they actually were and caused fear throughout the German ranks. Some rumors were true though and impacted more people than fake rumors. For example a British nurse was killed by a German firing squad. When people heard about this they became furious that the Germans killed an innocent nurse and decided that now they needed to enlist and fight the Germans (Hodgson