--- title: Managing the news:France's 'bourrage de crâne' and Austria-Hungary's War Press Office (1914-1918) url: https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/ description: France, a republic, and Austria-Hungary, a multinational monarchy, both ran the war's news through military censors and official channels, and both sold… section: Case studies --- ![Illustration: a First World War field-intelligence collage of trench maps, wireless transmission logs and aerial reconnaissance photographs.](https://propagandaarchive.org/static/generated/detail/hero-wwi.jpg) [Case studies](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/) # Managing the news:France's 'bourrage de crâne' and Austria-Hungary's War Press Office (1914-1918) At a glance France, a republic, and Austria-Hungary, a multinational monarchy, both ran the war's news through military censors and official channels, and both sold war loans with confident posters… - **When:** 1914–1918 - **Actor:** French government… - **Target:** Home-front readers, soldiers and war-loan subscribers in France and across Austria-Hungary's many… - **Source:** Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are - **Confidence:** **documented** Primary documents, court records, official disclosures - **Techniques:** [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/) [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/) [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/) Full details - **Actor:** French government (the War Ministry's press bureau and censorship, the Maison de la Presse) and the Austro-Hungarian army's War Press Office (k.u.k. Kriegspressequartier) - **Target:** Home-front readers, soldiers and war-loan subscribers in France and across Austria-Hungary's many language communities On this page - [What happened](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#what-happened) - [How it works](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#how-it-works) - [Then and now](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#then-and-now) - [Positions on the record](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#positions-on-the-record) - [Same-method test](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#same-method-test) - [How to spot it](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#how-to-spot-it) - [Images](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#images) - [Sources](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918/#sources) On this page **In one line:** France, a republic, and Austria-Hungary, a multinational monarchy, both ran the war's news through military censors and official channels, and both sold war loans with confident posters; French soldiers gave the upbeat result a name, *bourrage de crâne* ("skull-stuffing"), and satirists in both countries made a living out of mocking it. ![Diagram: military censors cut dispatches; official communiqués and approved correspondents supply the rest; loan posters sell confidence; soldiers and satirists answer with 'bourrage de crâne', Le Canard enchaîné and Karl Kraus](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/images/bourrage-de-crane-1914-1918-diagram.svg) ## What happened **France** - **5 August 1914.** A law against press "indiscretions" in wartime bans publication of military information not released by the government. A press bureau attached to the War Ministry reads newspapers before publication. Cut passages leave blank spaces in the printed columns, and the censor is nicknamed "Anastasie", a nineteenth-century caricature of censorship with her scissors. - **1914-1918.** Official communiqués and approved correspondents supply most war news. Soldiers at the front, and later critics, call the resulting optimism *bourrage de crâne*. Soldiers also write and print their own trench newspapers, several hundred of them, which Audoin-Rouzeau (1992) studied as a record of front-line opinion. - **10 September 1915 and 5 July 1916.** *Le Canard enchaîné*, a satirical weekly founded by Maurice and Jeanne Maréchal, publishes its first issue, and then relaunches for good in July 1916. It mocks official optimism and the censors themselves. The French censorship system, with the first issue's front page, is covered alongside the British, German and U.S. systems in [Wartime censorship in the First World War: Britain, Germany, France and the United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/). - **1916.** The government sets up the Maison de la Presse to coordinate information and propaganda, much of it aimed abroad. - **Autumn 1916.** Abel Faivre's poster for the Second National Defence Loan shows a soldier shouting "On les aura!" ("We'll get them!"), a line from General Pétain's order of the day at Verdun in April 1916. - **May-June 1917.** After the failed Nivelle offensive, mutinies break out in many French army divisions. Censorship keeps them out of the press, and the full picture becomes public only after the war (Pedroncini, 1967). **Austria-Hungary** - **28 July 1914.** The army sets up the k.u.k. Kriegspressequartier (KPQ), the War Press Office. It accredits and escorts correspondents, censors their dispatches, and runs an art group of war painters and photographers whose work is exhibited and sold during the war. - **1914-1918.** Writers are drawn into official war work. Stefan Zweig and Rainer Maria Rilke serve in the literary group of the War Archive in Vienna. Robert Musil edits an army newspaper, the *Tiroler Soldaten-Zeitung*, in 1916-1917. - **1914-1918.** War loans are sold through banks and savings banks across the monarchy, in the languages of its peoples. The seventh loan of 1917 appears in German and in Czech, among others. - **1915-1922.** The Viennese satirist Karl Kraus writes *Die letzten Tage der Menschheit* (*The Last Days of Mankind*), which quotes and parodies wartime newspaper language and portrays the KPQ correspondent Alice Schalek, the first woman accredited to it. ![On les aura! (1916)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/on-les-aura-1916.jpg) *[On les aura! 2e Emprunt de la Défense Nationale. Souscrivez (We'll get them! Second National Defence Loan. Subscribe)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/on-les-aura-1916/), Second National Defence Loan, France, 1916. Abel Faivre. Public domain.* ## How it works - [Card stacking](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/card-stacking/): military censorship removed casualty figures, defeats and, in 1917, the mutinies, while official communiqués stayed in print. What remained on the page could be read only one way. This is the mechanism soldiers named *bourrage de crâne*: the problem they described was less a single false statement than a record with the bad news cut out. The blank columns showed readers that something had been removed, though not what. - [Transfer](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/transfer/): the loan posters borrow the soldier's courage for the act of buying a bond. Faivre's infantryman shouts Pétain's Verdun line above "Souscrivez" ("Subscribe"). The Czech-language Austrian poster puts a grey-bearded civilian holding a loan certificate beside a decorated infantryman under "You too, citizens, on to the fight!", so subscribing is drawn as fighting. - [Glittering generalities](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/glittering-generalities/): an Austrian insurer's eighth-loan poster offers "Fatherland, Family, Future" in place of the loan's terms. Swap the three words for an interest rate and the poster has nothing left to say. ## Then and now ![I vy občané, vzhůru do boje! (1917)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/i-vy-obcane-1917.jpg) *[I vy občané, vzhůru do boje! Upisujte 7. válečnou půjčku! (You too, citizens, on to the fight! Subscribe to the 7th War Loan!)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/i-vy-obcane-1917/), Czech-language poster for Austria-Hungary's Seventh War Loan, Prague, 1917. Antonín Erhardt. Public domain.* The German loan poster [Helft uns siegen! Zeichnet die Kriegsanleihe (Help Us Win! Subscribe to the War Loan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/helft-uns-siegen-1917/) uses the same soldier-as-appeal device as Faivre's, from the other side of the line. Across the two alliances, the posters used the same method. In 2026, after the Gyirong flood, police in Tibet announced ten punishments for "rumours" of a higher death toll, and platforms deleted such posts, while the official figure stayed in circulation ([The Gyirong flood and the official death toll](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/gyirong-flood-death-toll/)). The shared mechanism is card-stacking by removal: the official account stays and unapproved accounts are cut. The differences are large. France and Austria-Hungary censored openly under wartime laws, in a war of mass casualties, and printed blanks where cuts were made. The 2026 case is a peacetime disaster, and the deletions left no visible mark on the page. This page does not rank the two. ## Positions on the record - **The governments:** in both countries, censorship was presented as a military necessity: to deny the enemy information and to keep up morale in a war of national survival. - **Soldiers and satirists:** the trench press, *Le Canard enchaîné* and Karl Kraus answered that the home-front press was feeding civilians a war that did not match the one at the front. - **Historians:** broadly agree that censorship kept military information out of print and shaped civilian understanding. They differ on how far readers believed the official line. Audoin-Rouzeau and others argue that the trench press shows soldiers holding national sentiment and scepticism of official optimism at once. - **Not shown:** that any poster on this page changed subscription totals. Loan totals rose and fell with the war and with the terms offered. ## Same-method test A democracy and a monarchy are scored the same way here. Any government that cuts bad military news from its press while leaving its own communiqués in place, and sells war bonds with a soldier's shout rather than their terms, would get the same tags, whatever its constitution or cause. ## How to spot it - Look for what a report leaves out: casualty numbers, dates of setbacks, events known later. In 1914-1918 the blank column was the visible sign of a cut. - Ask who supplied the story. An accredited correspondent under military escort, writing under censorship, is reporting from inside the official channel. - For any appeal to buy, subscribe or donate, find the terms. When the poster offers a virtue or a soldier instead, the terms are what it isn't showing. ## Images | Image | Source | Licence | | --- | --- | --- | | Mechanism diagram (above) | Drawn for FRAME from this page's sourced facts (`make_diagrams.py`) | CC BY 4.0, FRAME | | *On les aura!* (1916) | FRAME gallery, from the Library of Congress | Public domain in the U.S. (published before 1931) | | *I vy občané, vzhůru do boje!* (1917) | FRAME gallery, from Wikimedia Commons (Sammlung Eybl) | Public domain | | *Vaterland, Familie, Zukunft* (1918) | FRAME gallery, from the Library of Congress | Public domain in the U.S. (published before 1931) | ![Vaterland, Familie, Zukunft (1918)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/vaterland-familie-zukunft-1918.jpg) *[Vaterland, Familie, Zukunft: 8. Kriegsanleihe (Fatherland, Family, Future: 8th War Loan)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/vaterland-familie-zukunft-1918/), Austrian Eighth War Loan, 1918. Public domain.* ### Image gaps - **A French newspaper page with censored blank columns.** Published before 1931, so public domain in the U.S., but Gallica (the Bibliothèque nationale de France's library) could not be reached from the build environment, and no copy was confirmed on Commons. **Fillable.** - **An early *Le Canard enchaîné* front page (1915-1916).** The first issue's front page (10 September 1915) is hosted, as public domain, on [Wartime censorship in the First World War: Britain, Germany, France and the United States](https://propagandaarchive.org/case-studies/wwi-wartime-censorship/) and could be shown here too. **Fillable.** - **KPQ war-art exhibition posters and photographs.** Some are on Commons; none was checked for this page. **Fillable.** - **A French trench newspaper.** None found in an openly licensed scan. **May be fillable.** ## Sources - Law of 5 August 1914 on press indiscretions in wartime (France). - Olivier Forcade, *La censure en France pendant la Grande Guerre* (Paris: Fayard, 2016). - Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau, *Men at War 1914-1918: National Sentiment and Trench Journalism in France during the First World War* (Oxford: Berg, 1992). - Guy Pedroncini, *Les mutineries de 1917* (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1967). - John Horne (ed.), *State, Society and Mobilization in Europe during the First World War* (Cambridge University Press, 1997). - Mark Cornwall, *The Undermining of Austria-Hungary: The Battle for Hearts and Minds* (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 2000). - Karl Kraus, *Die letzten Tage der Menschheit* (Vienna: Verlag Die Fackel, 1918-1919; book edition 1922). - Library of Congress and Wikimedia Commons records for the gallery posters (linked from each gallery entry).