During World War I, the U.S. government employed extensive psychological operations (PSYOP) to shape public opinion and garner support for the war effort. The primary vehicle for these efforts was the Committee on Public Information (CPI), established in 1917 under the leadership of George Creel. The CPI’s mission was to disseminate information that would bolster the American war effort, but it quickly expanded into a comprehensive propaganda apparatus targeting both domestic and international audiences.
Key Strategies and Activities of the CPI:
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Media Utilization:
- The CPI produced a vast array of content, including pamphlets, posters, news articles, and films, to promote pro-war sentiments. One of its most infamous films was The Kaiser: The Beast of Berlin, which depicted German leaders as barbaric aggressors (Titus, 1984, p. 52).
- “In speech and in print, in posters and in music, in dramatizations and even films, its basic themes were three: that the war constituted a struggle between democracy and autocracy; that loyalty to America must be unalloyed; and that ‘Huns’ were bestial sub-humans” (Titus, 1984, p. 52).
(Committee on Public Information, America’s WWI Propaganda Agency, n.d.)
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Four-Minute Men:
- The committee organized a network of approximately 75,000 volunteers, known as “Four-Minute Men,” who delivered brief, persuasive speeches in public venues to encourage support for the draft and other war-related initiatives.
- “Some 75,000 ‘Four-Minute Men’ as a kind of human broadcasting network, primarily to urge cooperation with the draft. It flooded the news services with press releases, and sponsored travelling war expositions attended by an estimated 10 million people” (Titus, 1984, p. 53).
(Committee on Public Information, America’s WWI Propaganda Agency, n.d.)
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Press Releases and Censorship:
- The CPI issued numerous press releases to shape news coverage and worked closely with the Post Office to censor materials deemed seditious or anti-American (Propaganda in World War I, 2024).
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Public Events:
- The committee sponsored traveling war expositions, which were attended by millions and served to rally public support and disseminate propaganda materials (Committee on Public Information, America’s WWI Propaganda Agency, n.d.).
Impact and Consequences:
“The principal agency for propagandizing the American public, of course, was George Creel’s Committee on Public Information. Though officially dedicated only to providing factual information about the war, the CPI rapidly evolved into a remarkably effective instrument for playing upon a wide range of public emotions” (Titus, 1984, p. 52).
The CPI’s propaganda efforts were instrumental in mobilizing public opinion in favor of the war. Its techniques of persuasion were replicated in other wartime agencies, such as the Food Administration and the Treasury Department’s bond-selling campaigns. “But the CPI was the pure, undiluted article, and may be taken as the summary example of the style that characterized American mobilization: the appeal not to the majesty of the laws nor even to the concrete discipline of felt necessity, but to high abstractions like ‘democracy’ and ‘loyalty’ and to the base emotions of hatred and fear” (Titus, 1984, p. 53).
The CPI’s work contributed to a climate of intolerance and suspicion, leading to anti-German sentiment and suppression of dissenting views. This climate fostered anti-radical hysteria, vigilantism, and violence that stained the history of World War I America. The techniques developed by the CPI during this period laid the groundwork for modern public relations and government propaganda strategies (Magazine, n.d.).
References:
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Committee on public information, America’s WWI propaganda agency. (n.d.). ThoughtCo. Retrieved November 27, 2024, from https://www.thoughtco.com/committee-on-public-information-4691743
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Magazine, S. (n.d.). How Woodrow Wilson’s propaganda machine changed American journalism. Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved November 27, 2024, from https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/how-woodrow-wilsons-propaganda-machine-changed-american-journalism-180963082/
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Propaganda in World War I. (2024). In Wikipedia. Retrieved November 27, 2024, from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Propaganda_in_World_War_I&oldid=1258624630
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Titus, James. (1984). The Home Front and War in the Twentieth Century: The American Experience in Comparative Perspective: Proceedings of the Tenth Military History Symposium, 20-22 October 1982. Eds. United States Air Force Academy and United States Air Force Academy. [Colorado Springs, Colo.] : Washington, D.C: United States Air Force Academy and Office of Air Force History, Headquarters USAF; For sale by Supt. of Docs., U.S. G.P.O.