The British Propaganda Campaign in World War I

The British set up a unique system for propaganda, involving GB, the USA and all the colonies. Most different agencies and civilians worked together, the civilians not always knowing about the machinery behind.
During the first years of the war the main goal was to achieve a U.S.-entry to the war on Britain's side of the battle. All propaganda was working on this, which meant to destroy Germany's reputation and create dark stereotypes about them, which was an easy task as the Germans were not only fatally unlucky but also very weak in propaganda. At the same time the U.S.-citizens' opinion about the war had to be influenced. The most promising way to do so was by starting with the men in power.

One of the most beloved tools at that time was the use of atrocity stories; and most popular among the masses were cartoons, furthermore posters, an element perfectioned by the USSR in World War I and II, and movies.

The particular thing was that British propaganda finally had an effect on the German population. Soldiers at the front and people at home received the disinformation messages, mostly pamphlets that had been dropped by aeroplanes or balloons.
Together with the development of the fightings turning against the Germans this kind of propaganda was able to discourage the people and make the German government lose its power of propaganda.
"Allied propaganda had caused a collapse of morale at home." (Taylor, Munitions of the Mind, p. 188)

After all this success it is hardly understandable that the British committed a huge error right after the war, an error that had bad consequences for the next war: being regarded as a tool of war and therefore regarded as inappropriate for times of peace, the propaganda institutions were closed. At about the same time similar ones were built up in Germany - first of all on paper, in Hitler's book Mein Kampf, whose author was an admirer of the British propaganda machine in World War I and decided to perfect it in his own country.

TEXTBLOCK 1/1 // URL: http://world-information.org/wio/infostructure/100437611661/100438658408
 
INTELSAT

INTELSAT is in business since 1964 and owns and operates a global communications satellite system of 17 geostationary satellites providing capacity for voice, video, corporate/private networks and Internet in more than 200 countries and territories.



http://www.intelsat.int/index.htm

INDEXCARD, 1/2
 
Themistocles

Themistocles, a Greek politician and general, conquered the Persians in the battle of Salamis, in 480 BC. The Persians, under their King Xerxes, who were on the edge of winning the battle, got defeated by a propaganda campaign that Themistocles launched, telling the Persians that he was on their side and willing to let them win the battle; his argument was that the Greek were so busy with their quarrels that they were not prepared to fight an aggressive battle and a lot of them would change sides if the power of the Persians was shown in a short and cruel fight. In the end Xerxes got the message that parts of the Greek army were fleeing the battlefield. This disinformation lead to a wrong assessment of Xerxes, which made it easy for the Greek to win the war.

For further details see:
http://www.optonline.com/comptons/ceo/31900_Q.html

http://ds.dial.pipex.com/kitson/ESSAYS/Them.htm

http://www.eptonline.com/comptons/ceo/31900_Q...
http://ds.dial.pipex.com/kitson/ESSAYS/Them.h...
INDEXCARD, 2/2