WW1 propaganda posters: who made them and how they worked

Content note. This page discusses First World War atrocity claims, some later confirmed and some not, and shows posters that use the epithets of the period. They are shown as they were issued, as the evidence under study.

Short answer

Every major belligerent used posters in the First World War, mostly for three jobs: recruiting soldiers, selling war bonds, and shaping conduct on the home front. The institutions differed. The United States ran a single federal agency, Britain divided the work between a party-led recruiting committee and a secret bureau aimed abroad, and Germany, Austria-Hungary, France and Russia leaned heavily on war-loan campaigns. The same few techniques appear on every side. Posters were one channel among several, and no source used here measures how many enlistments or subscriptions a particular poster produced. For posters from every period, see propaganda posters.

How each belligerent ran it

United States. Executive Order 2594 created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) on 13 April 1917, a week after the declaration of war. Its chair George Creel wrote that the committee did not call its work propaganda, "for that word, in German hands, had come to be associated with deceit and corruption" [1]. Volunteer artists supplied posters for government departments and patriotic societies, with 1,438 drawings used, and 75,000 Four Minute Men gave 755,190 speeches, by the CPI's own count [1]. The Espionage and Sedition Acts were enforced against dissent in the same period. See The Committee on Public Information: how the U.S. government sold the First World War at home (1917-1919) and Wartime censorship in the First World War: Britain, Germany, France and the United States.

United Kingdom. Recruiting posters came from the Parliamentary Recruiting Committee, whose presidents were the Prime Minister and the Conservative and Labour leaders, Bonar Law and Arthur Henderson [2]. Britain had no peacetime conscription, so it relied on volunteers until the Military Service Act of January 1916. Separately, Charles Masterman's War Propaganda Bureau at Wellington House worked from September 1914, mostly abroad and largely unannounced, placing books and pamphlets with commercial publishers [3]. The first body was open about its sponsor. The second was not. See Wellington House and the Bryce Report: atrocity evidence, confirmed and unconfirmed (1914-1915).

Germany. War-loan campaigns carried most of the poster effort. The Reich issued nine war bonds between 1915 and 1918, raising 98 billion marks, and the sixth loan in spring 1917 was backed by more than 1.4 million posters [4]. Abroad, the Foreign Office answered Allied charges with pamphlets and statements, including the scholars' manifesto of 1914 (Germany answers back: the Manifesto of the 93 and the Lusitania medal (1914-1916)).

Austria-Hungary. War loans were sold in the languages of the monarchy, as with the German and Czech issues of the 1917 seventh loan, while the army's press office managed news and correspondents (Managing the news: France's 'bourrage de crâne' and Austria-Hungary's War Press Office (1914-1918)).

France. The government censored the press and sold the Second National Defence Loan of 1916 on Abel Faivre's "On les aura!" (On les aura! 2e Emprunt de la Défense Nationale. Souscrivez (We'll get them! Second National Defence Loan. Subscribe)). Soldiers named the resulting optimism bourrage de crâne, "skull-stuffing".

Russia. In 1914 Moscow's Segodniashnii Lubok issued satirical prints by Malevich and Lentulov with verses by Mayakovsky (Подошёл колбасник к Лодзи (A Sausage-Maker Came to Łódź)); after the February Revolution of 1917 the Provisional Government sold a "Liberty Loan" (Заём свободы. Война до победы (Liberty Loan. War until Victory)). Norris traces the lubok tradition through Russia's wars [5]. See Russia's war of words: tsarist lubki, the Liberty Loan and the fight over 'German agents' (1914-1918).

Scale and setting differ. The American agency was one federal body created in 1917, when the European powers had been at war for more than two years. Britain's effort was split between a party committee and a bureau, and the German figures above cover only the war-loan campaigns. This page does not rank them.

The recurring techniques

Technique	Typical form on a 1914-1918 poster	Example
Fear appeal	A threat to family, and one remedy	Remember Belgium — Enlist To-Day (UK)
Transfer	A soldier's courage lent to a bond or an enlistment	Helft uns siegen! Zeichnet die Kriegsanleihe (Help Us Win! Subscribe to the War Loan) (Germany)
Name-calling	An epithet in place of an account	Halt the Hun! Buy U.S. Government Bonds, Third Liberty Loan (US)
Card stacking	Benefits shown, costs and terms left out	So hilft dein Geld Dir kämpfen! In U-Boote verwandelt, hält es Dir feindliche Granaten vom Leib! (This Is How Your Money Helps You Fight! Turned into U-boats, It Keeps Enemy Shells off Your Body!) (Germany)
Glittering generalities	"Liberty", "Peace" or "Fatherland" without terms	Заём свободы. Война до победы (Liberty Loan. War until Victory) (Russia)
Scapegoating	Blame placed on an enemy or a group	Das ist der Weg zum Frieden, die Feinde wollen es so! Darum zeichne Kriegsanleihe! (That Is the Way to Peace, the Enemies Want It So! Therefore Subscribe to the War Loan!) (Germany)

In each row an emotion or a symbol is offered where a checkable claim could have been. Lasswell compared four governments' output in 1927 and found the same devices across them [6]. One poster can carry several techniques at once.

Atrocity claims, as issued

The largest recurring subject was enemy atrocity, and it needs the record stated carefully. German troops killed about 6,500 Belgian and French civilians between August and October 1914, in mass shootings and burnings such as Dinant and Leuven, according to Horne and Kramer's study of German, Belgian, French, British and Italian archives; the same study found no documented case for stories such as children's severed hands [7]. The Bryce Report of May 1915 mixed the confirmed with the unconfirmed (Wellington House and the Bryce Report: atrocity evidence, confirmed and unconfirmed (1914-1915)), and the British poster below lists both kinds of item together without distinguishing them. A poster's method is judged separately from the underlying event, as the archive does for every side.

Some claims were false. In April 1917 British newspapers reprinted a report that Germany rendered its dead soldiers for fat; the German government denied it, and in December 1925 the Foreign Secretary told the Commons the government accepted there had been no foundation for it [8]. Neander and Marlin trace how a German word for animal carcasses, Kadaver, was reread as a charge about human bodies [9]. See The German 'corpse factory': a false atrocity story and its long afterlife (1917-1925).

The German side answered too, denying the Belgian charges in 1914 and issuing the statistical chart below in 1916, which replies to accusations by comparing Germany, England and France on categories the chart itself selects. Both exchanges are covered in Germany answers back: the Manifesto of the 93 and the Lusitania medal (1914-1916). Ponsonby collected stories he judged false from several countries in 1928 [10].

Cold-Blooded Murder! Remember Germany's Crowning Infamy: text-only British recruiting poster listing charges that begin "Germans have"

Cold-Blooded Murder! Remember Germany's Crowning Infamy. United Kingdom, 1915, Parliamentary Recruiting Committee poster no. 97.

Sind wir die Barbaren? A statistical chart comparing Germany, England and France, issued to answer Allied atrocity claims

Sind wir die Barbaren? (Are We the Barbarians?). German Empire, 1916, Imperial German government counter-propaganda, artist Louis Oppenheim.

Other sides at a glance

Zaem svobody. Voina do pobedy: a Russian soldier unfurls a red banner reading "War until victory" above the words Liberty Loan

Заём свободы. Война до победы (Liberty Loan. War until Victory). Russia, 1917, Provisional Government Liberty Loan campaign.

I Want You for U.S. Army: Uncle Sam points at the viewer

I Want You for U.S. Army. United States, 1917, U.S. Army recruiting, artist James Montgomery Flagg.

The collection

Every object in the collection with a First World War date appears below, listed by country. The list is generated from the archive's records and grows as objects are added. Only public-domain or openly licensed images are hosted, so the images shown here reflect what can be reproduced, not the full poster output of any country.

From the collection: First World War

201 objects, listed by issuing country: United States 35, German Empire 31, United Kingdom 26, Austria Hungary 16, France 15, Canada 13, Australia 12, Kingdom of Italy 8, Russian Empire 6, Finland 4, Netherlands 3, Russia 3, Belgium 2, British India 2, Czechoslovak National Council 2, Empire of Japan 2, Estonia 2, Portuguese Republic 2, Switzerland 2, Transnational 2, Brazil 1, Bulgaria 1, Emirate of Mecca 1, Kingdom of Greece 1, Kingdom of Romania 1, Kingdom of Serbia 1, Lithuania 1, New Zealand 1, Ottoman Empire 1, Sweden 1, Ukrainian People Republic 1, Ukrainian State 1, Uruguay 1. This list is generated from the collection records, so it changes as objects are added.

WW1 propaganda posters: who made them and how they worked

Short answer

How each belligerent ran it

The recurring techniques

Atrocity claims, as issued

Other sides at a glance

The collection

From the collection: First World War

United States (35)

German Empire (31)

United Kingdom (26)

Austria Hungary (16)

France (15)

Canada (13)

Australia (12)

Kingdom of Italy (8)

Russian Empire (6)

Finland (4)

Netherlands (3)

Russia (3)

Belgium (2)

British India (2)

Czechoslovak National Council (2)

Empire of Japan (2)

Estonia (2)

Portuguese Republic (2)

Switzerland (2)

Transnational (2)

Brazil (1)

Bulgaria (1)

Emirate of Mecca (1)

Kingdom of Greece (1)

Kingdom of Romania (1)

Kingdom of Serbia (1)

Lithuania (1)

New Zealand (1)

Ottoman Empire (1)

Sweden (1)

Ukrainian People Republic (1)

Ukrainian State (1)

Uruguay (1)

How to read a war poster

Sources