---
title: Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927)
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/
description: Lasswell (1902 to 1978) wrote the book less than a decade after the Armistice, when the belief that wartime propaganda had misled the public was…
section: About and doctrine
---

![Illustration: a redacted Cold War intelligence-dossier collage centred on a world map of influence operations, with the U.S. Capitol among the evidence.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/hero-home.jpg)

[About](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/)

# Harold D. Lasswell, Propaganda Technique in the World War (1927)

In brief

A University of Chicago political scientist's comparative study of how Britain, France, Germany and the United States ran propaganda in the First World War, which set out the first systematic academic account of what wartime propaganda is for and how it is organised.

On this page

- [The source](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#the-source)
- [Context](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#context)
- [What it says](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#what-it-says)
- [How it worked in practice](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#how-it-worked-in-practice)
- [Techniques in this archive's taxonomy](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#techniques-in-this-archive-s-taxonomy)
- [Reception and criticism](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#reception-and-criticism)
- [Same-standard note](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#same-standard-note)
- [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/lasswell-propaganda-technique/#sources)

On this page

**In one line:** a University of Chicago political scientist's comparative study of how Britain, France, Germany and the United States ran propaganda in the First World War, which set out the first systematic academic account of what wartime propaganda is for and how it is organised.

## The source

- **Work:** Harold D. Lasswell, *Propaganda Technique in the World War* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf; London: Kegan Paul, 1927). It grew out of his University of Chicago doctoral dissertation.
- **Companion article:** Harold D. Lasswell, "The Theory of Political Propaganda", *American Political Science Review* 21, no. 3 (1927).
- **Language:** English.
- **Rights on this archive:** both were published in the United States in 1927 and are in the US public domain. They are quoted here directly.

## Context

Lasswell (1902 to 1978) wrote the book less than a decade after the Armistice, when the belief that wartime propaganda had misled the public was widespread in Britain and the United States (see [Arthur Ponsonby, Falsehood in War-Time (1928)](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/ponsonby-falsehood-in-war-time/) for a British example of that argument from the following year). He compared the propaganda offices and output of the four main belligerents, drawing on their published material and on memoirs and official accounts that had appeared since 1918.

His approach was comparative from the start: the book treats Allied and Central Powers propaganda under the same headings rather than one side's as propaganda and the other's as information. Its chapter headings are: The Matter in Hand; Propaganda Organization; War Guilt and War Aims; Satanism; The Illusion of Victory; Preserving Friendship; Demoralizing the Enemy; followed by chapters on method and results.

![Portrait of George Creel, chairman of the US Committee on Public Information, in a dark suit](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/cpi-creel-committee-creel-1917.jpg)

*George Creel, chairman of the US Committee on Public Information, 1917-1919, the central American propaganda office of the period Lasswell studied. Harris & Ewing, Library of Congress. No known restrictions on publication (public domain).*

## What it says

- **A working definition.** In the companion article Lasswell defines propaganda as "the management of collective attitudes by the manipulation of significant symbols." The definition covers any sponsor and any cause, and it names symbols rather than lies as the raw material.
- **Four objectives.** Lasswell sorts wartime propaganda by what it is meant to achieve: to mobilise hatred against the enemy; to preserve the friendship of allies; to preserve the friendship and, if possible, procure the cooperation of neutrals; and to demoralise the enemy. Each objective gets its own chapter, with examples from both sides.
- **The defensive frame.** He argues that popular resistance to war in modern nations is so strong that "every war must appear to be a war of defense against a menacing, murderous aggressor", and that the public must be left in no doubt about whom it is to hate. War guilt (who started it) and war aims (what the war is for) are therefore the first things each government argues.
- **"Satanism" of the enemy.** The chapter of that name catalogues how each side portrayed the other as the source of all harm, including atrocity stories. Lasswell treats the atrocity story as a standard genre of every belligerent's output, not as a feature of one side.
- **The illusion of victory.** Home audiences are kept committed by a steady expectation that victory is coming. News of setbacks is managed so that it does not break that expectation.
- **Organisation matters as much as content.** Lasswell describes central propaganda offices, their links to the press, to allied governments and to sympathetic groups in neutral countries, and argues that coordinated effort across all of these counted for more than any single poster or story.
- **Propaganda as a tool.** In his later entry on propaganda in the *Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences* he wrote that propaganda "as a mere tool is no more moral or immoral than a pump handle", which sets out the value-neutral stance that much later scholarship, including this archive's [Doctrine (working definition)](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/working-definition/), adopts: score the method, not the cause.

**Content note:** Dehumanizing caricature of Germans as an ape, implied sexual violence and partial nudity. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was) ![Recruiting poster showing a gorilla in a spiked helmet marked Militarism, holding a club marked Kultur and carrying a woman onto a shore](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/destroy-this-mad-brute-1917.jpg)

*"Destroy This Mad Brute. Enlist", US Army recruiting poster, 1917, by Harry R. Hopps. Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.*

## How it worked in practice

The book is a description of practice rather than a manual, but Lasswell's framework was later put to work by governments and courts.

- **The Lasswell formula.** His 1948 essay "The Structure and Function of Communication in Society" (in Lyman Bryson, ed., *The Communication of Ideas*, Harper & Brothers) reduces any act of communication to five questions: who says what, in which channel, to whom, with what effect. The formula became a standard frame for content, audience and effects research, including this archive's own briefs, which record actor, message, vector, target and assessed effect.
- **Wartime content analysis.** During the Second World War Lasswell directed the Experimental Division for the Study of War-Time Communications at the Library of Congress, which applied quantitative content analysis to press and radio output, including Axis broadcasts.
- **Evidence in a US sedition trial.** In *United States v. Pelley* (7th Cir. 1942) Lasswell testified for the prosecution that, of 1,240 statements in 157 articles of William Dudley Pelley's magazine *The Galilean*, 1,195 were consistent with fourteen major themes of German propaganda. The appeals court upheld the conviction. Contemporary legal commentary described this as a new evidentiary use of content analysis.

![British recruiting poster showing a soldier standing before a woman and child fleeing a burning village](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/remember-belgium-1915.jpg)

*"Remember Belgium. Enlist To-Day", Parliamentary Recruiting Committee (United Kingdom), 1915. Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.*

## Techniques in this archive's taxonomy

- [Scapegoating](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/scapegoating/): the "Satanism" chapter describes each belligerent placing the whole blame for the war and its suffering on the enemy nation and its leaders.
- [Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/): the defensive frame (the enemy as a "menacing, murderous aggressor") is presented as the precondition for public support of any war.
- [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/): Lasswell documents the labels each side attached to the other, which were meant to settle judgment in advance.
- [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): the "illusion of victory" rests on selecting and ordering battlefield news so that setbacks do not reach the home audience in a form that breaks confidence.
- [Bandwagon](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/bandwagon/): the chapter on neutrals describes propaganda that presented one coalition's victory, and the approval of respected opinion, as already settled, to win over undecided countries.

![German war-loan poster showing a helmeted infantryman staring forward above the words Helft uns siegen](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/helft-uns-siegen-1917.jpg)

*"Helft uns siegen! Zeichnet die Kriegsanleihe" ("Help us win! Subscribe to the war loan"), Imperial German war-bond poster, 1917, by Fritz Erler. Library of Congress via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.*

## Reception and criticism

- **Scope.** The book classifies the materials each government used and the results each aimed at, and proposes a general theory of how those materials were deployed. It is a study of four governments' practice, and it treats all four under the same headings.
- **The "magic bullet" question.** Later textbooks often credited Lasswell and his contemporaries with a "hypodermic needle" or "magic bullet" theory, in which propaganda is injected into a passive audience. J. Michael Sproule ("Progressive Propaganda Critics and the Magic Bullet Myth", *Critical Studies in Mass Communication* 6, no. 3, 1989) argues that this label was applied after 1940 and misdescribes interwar propaganda critics, who assumed an essentially competent public.
- **The neutrality stance.** The "pump handle" view that propaganda is a morally neutral tool is widely accepted in the field. Critics such as Jacques Ellul (see [Jacques Ellul, Propaganda: The Formation of Men's Attitudes (1962)](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/ellul-propaganda/)) argue that propaganda is less a tool that a government picks up than a condition of modern mass society.
- **Use in court.** The *Pelley* testimony has been cited both as a pioneering use of social science as evidence and, by civil-liberties writers, as an example of prosecuting publication on the basis of thematic similarity to an enemy's messages.

## Same-standard note

Lasswell's own method is the standard this archive uses: the same headings (war guilt, satanism, illusion of victory, neutrals, demoralisation) applied to British, French, German and American output alike. His framework also fits later wars on every side, including the Second World War posters in this archive's gallery from Britain, Germany and the United States. It fits less closely where a government does not face the popular resistance to war that his defensive-frame argument assumes, and it says little about peacetime commercial persuasion, which [Edward Bernays, Propaganda (1928)](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/bernays-propaganda/) covers.

## Sources

1. Harold D. Lasswell, *Propaganda Technique in the World War* (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927).
2. Harold D. Lasswell, "The Theory of Political Propaganda", *American Political Science Review* 21, no. 3 (1927).
3. Harold D. Lasswell, "Propaganda", *Encyclopaedia of the Social Sciences* (New York: Macmillan, 1930s).
4. Harold D. Lasswell, "The Structure and Function of Communication in Society", in Lyman Bryson, ed., *The Communication of Ideas* (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948).
5. *United States v. Pelley*, 132 F.2d 170 (7th Cir. 1942).
6. "Content Analysis: A New Evidentiary Technique", *University of Chicago Law Review* (note, 1940s).
7. J. Michael Sproule, "Progressive Propaganda Critics and the Magic Bullet Myth", *Critical Studies in Mass Communication* 6, no. 3 (1989): 225 to 246.