Forensic Research Archive of Manipulation and Exploitation
Illustration: an interwar radio-and-newsreel intelligence collage with a 1930s map of Europe and propaganda poster proofs.

Library · Book

Propaganda Technique in the World War

Illustration, not an archive object

Content note: Quotes First World War atrocity stories and abusive wartime language about the enemy, including "Hun", and period terms for racial groups, as examples of propaganda. This object is shown as it was published. Why

A 1927 book by Harold D. Lasswell, then an assistant professor of political science at the University of Chicago, on how the governments of the First World War organised and used propaganda: how the offices were run, how war guilt and war aims were presented, how the enemy was portrayed, how friendship with allies and neutrals was kept, and how enemy morale was attacked. It draws on published accounts from several belligerents, chiefly Britain, France, Germany and the United States, and is a scholar's analysis of all sides rather than an account of one side's own work. The archive hosts it because its doctrine page on Lasswell and several case studies cite it as an early systematic study of wartime propaganda; the doctrine page gives the background. The text is machine-read from a scan and has not been proofread, and its footnotes appear as quoted blocks after the paragraph they belonged to.

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Download as plain text 63,993 words, with the provenance header above the text

Provenance and rights

Edition
Propaganda Technique in the World War. London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner and Co.; New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1927; Delhi University Library scan of the London printing (Internet Archive item dli.ernet.233727)
Text source
Internet Archive, item dli.ernet.233727 (Digital Library of India, Delhi University Library)
Text basis
Machine-read (OCR) text of a library scan, not proofread.
Rights
Published in London and New York in 1927, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States (works published in 1930 or earlier). Lasswell died in 1978, so the text may still be protected in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years; readers outside the United States should check their own law. Checked September 29, 2026.
Changes made
Machine-read (OCR) text of a library scan, not proofread: recognition errors (for example stray marks such as "^" and misread letters) are the scan's, not edits. Page numbers, running heads, printer's signature letters, stray marks standing alone on a line and library stamps removed, line-end hyphens resolved against the same book and line wraps rejoined, paragraphs that run across a page break rejoined, chapter titles set in title case; nothing else changed. The book's footnotes, printed at the foot of each page, are moved to just after the last paragraph on that page (or the paragraph that continues across the page break) and set as quotations; the scan reads the footnote figures as marks such as ^ or *, and a few footnotes that the scan runs into the next page's text stay where the scan puts them. The note on bibliography is included. The title page, dedication, acknowledgement note, contents list and index are not.
Source file checksum
8293e8e6d83831c4… (SHA-256 of the download this text was made from)

Where it appears in the archive