Content note: Repeats First World War atrocity stories, including invented ones, and their wording. This object is shown as it was published. Why
To the uninitiated there is something substantially reliable in a picture obviously taken from a photograph. Nothing would seem to be more authentic than a snapshot. It does not occur to anyone to question a photograph, and faked pictures therefore have special value, as they get a much better start than any mere statement, which may be criticized or denied. Only a long time after, if ever, can their falsity be detected. The faking of photographs must have amounted almost to an industry during the war. All countries were concerned, but the French were the most expert. Some of the originals have been collected and reproduced.* Descriptions of a few of them may be given here :
In Das Echo, October 29, 1914, there was a photograph of the German troops marching along a country road in Belgium.
This was reproduced by Le Journal on November 26, 1914, under the title :
Les Allemands en Retraite.
Cette photographic fournit une vision saississante de ce que fut la retraite de Tarmee du general von Hindenburg apres la bataille de la Vistule.
A photograph taken by Karl Delius, of Berlin, showed the delivery of mail-bags in front of the Field Post Office in Kavevara.
' How the World Madness was Engineered, by Ferdinand Avenarius, This was reproduced in the DatJj Mirror of December 3, 1915, with the title :
Made to Wash the Huns’ Dirty Linen.
The blond beasts are sweating the Serbians, who are made to do the washing for the invaders. Like most customers who do not settle their bills, they are full of grumbles and complaints. Here a pile has just arrived from the wash.
Several photographs were taken during the pogrom in Russia in 1905; some of these were circulated by Jews in America. One of these photographs represented a row of corpses with a crowd round them, and was reproduced in Le Miroir, November 14, 1915, with the title :
Les Crimes des Hordes Allemandes en Pologne.
Several others of these were similarly reproduced in newspapers. The Critica, a newspaper in the Argentine, exposed German atrocities by this means.
A photograph was taken in Berlin of a crowd before the royal palace on July 13, 1914 (before the outbreak of war). This was reproduced in Le Monde lllustrS, August 21, 1915, with the heading :
Enthousiasme et Joie de Barbares, with an explanation that it was a demonstration to celebrate the sinking of the Lusitania.
A photograph which appeared in the Berlin Tag, on August 13, 1914, represented a long queue of men with basins. Under it was written :
How we treat interned Russian and French ; lining up the interned before the distribution of food.
This was reproduced in the Daily News on April 2, 1915, with the title :
German Workers Feel the Pinch.
The above crowd lining up for rations is a familiar sight in Germany. It reveals one aspect of our naval power.
A photograph of German officers inspecting munition cases was reproduced by U^ar Illustrated, Jununy 30,1915, as “ German officers pillaging chests in a French chateau.”
A photograph of a German soldier bending over a fallen German comrade was reproduced in ]l^ar Illustrated, April 17, 1915, with the title :
Deiinite proof of the Hun’s abuse of the rules of war. German ghoul actually caught in the act of robbing a Russian.
In the Berlin Dokalatr^eiger of June 9, 1914, a photograph was published of three cavalry officers who had won cups and other trophies, which they are holding, at the Army steeplechase in the Grunewald.
This was first reproduced in Wes Mir, a Russian newspaper, with the title “ The German Looters in Warsaw,” and also, on August 8, 1915, by the Daily Mirror with the title :
Three German Cavalrymen Loaded with Gold and Silver Loot.
Faked photographs were, of course, sent in great numbers to neutral countries.
A German photograph of the town of Schwirwindt, after the Russian occupation, was reproduced in Illustreret Familieblad (Denmark) as, “ A French City after a German Bombardment.”
A photograph from Das Leben in Bild, in 1917, of three young German soldiers laughing, was entitled :
Home again. Three sturdy young Germans who succeeded in escaping from French imprisonment.
This came out in a Danish family paper on May 2, 1917, as :
Escaped from drumfire hell. Three German soldiers apparently very happy to have become French prisoners of war.
The citadel at Brest-Litovsk was fired by the retreating Russians, and a photograph appeared in Zeitbilder, September 3, 1915, showing Germans carrying out the corn in sacks.
This was reproduced in the Graphic, September 18, 1915, as, “ German soldiers plundering a factory at Brest- Litovsk, which was fired by the retreating Russians.”
Illustrated War News, December 29, 1915, gave a photograph of war trophies. A sergeant is holding up a sort of cat-o’-nine-tails whip.
What was it used for ? A German Whip among a Collection of War Trophies.
These war trophies captured from the Germans in Flanders have been presented to the Irish Rifles by a sergeant. The presence of the whip is of curious significance.
The “ whip,” as a matter of fact, was an ordinary German carpet-beater.
A Russian film represented German nurses in the garb of religious sisters stabbing the wounded on the battlefield.
A picture, not a photograph, which had a great circulation, was called Chemin de la gloire (the Road of Glory) in the Chases Vues (Things Seen) series.
In the background is a cathedral in flames, a long road is strewn with bottles, and in the foreground is the body of a little boy impaled to the ground by a bayonet.
But if pictures and caricatures were to be described, there would be no end of it. Undoubtedly the cartoonist had a great influence in all countries, especially Raemakers and Punch. The unfortunate neutral countries were bombarded with them from both sides.
A remarkable series of photographs was taken by a Mr. F. J. Mortimer, Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society, and published in 1912. They were widely reproduced in illustrated periodicals. Among them was a photograph of the Arden Craig sinking off the Scilly Isles in January 1911. On March 31, 1917, a popular illustrated weekly devoted a page to “ Gimera Records of Prussian Piracy,” and this particular photograph was reproduced in a succession of pictures to illustrate “ a windjammer torpedoed off the English coast by the criminally indiscriminate U-boat pirates.”
Mr. Mortimer’s photographs of British ships were also reproduced in Germany under the heading of “ Scenes from the German Navy.”
On September 28, 1916, the Daily Sketch gave a photograph of a crowd of German prisoners under the heading “ Still They Come I ” “ Between 3,000 and 4,000 prisoners have been taken in the past forty-eight hours.” (Official.)
On October 10, 1918, the Daily Mirror reproduced precisely the same photograph, under which was printed : “ Just a very small portion of the Allies’unique collection of Hun war prisoners of the 1918 season.”
Falsehood in War-Time, Arthur Ponsonby. Published in the United Kingdom in 1928, more than 95 years ago, so in the public domain in the United States. Ponsonby died in 1946, so the text is also in the public domain in countries that count the author's life plus 70 years. Provenance and rights.