Captured English pilots who had dropped inflammatory leaflets over the Western front since December 1915 were convicted by our military courts, their offense punished as a violation of the laws of war. We forbade our own pilots to drop leaflets on enemy troops. Late in the war, we made a disastrous attempt at the counter-propaganda, using apparently moral unmanned hot air balloons. They kept our propaganda of “extravagance,” as one of us said, far from the enemy. That it also kept us far from success was not noticed. Our internal propaganda could not be “political,” our foreign propaganda could not “irritate England.” From the beginning, our enthusiasm and activism were officially corrupted to devotion, endurance, and passivity. The world and concept of propaganda left a stale aftertaste. They labeled enemy activity as evil and immoral which one was afraid of. One saw the enemy lies but was still taken in by them.

While the army at the front remained strong and in control of its actions, German intellectuals lost control of the masses. Their propaganda stood speechless before the raging flood from without and the bubbling turmoil within. Here their naiveté was exposed, for they believed the German people and the peoples of the world were too “sensible” to believe such “nonsense,” such lies and fabrications.

In his memoirs, published in 1920, Colonel Nicolai, the head of the German intelligence service, recalled with a quiet, rather painful pleasure the approach of the German bureaucracy to enemy propaganda. The Foreign Service office in the Foreign Ministry decided to seek expert advice as to the abnormal mental condition of the enemy, which was proven by his hate-filled propaganda! When German legislators and governmental officials saw examples of enemy propaganda, they suggested to the high command that they doubted the genuineness of the material, instead of opposing it everywhere with vehement action. They depended on so-called human reason, without considering that is it dependent on impressions from the surrounding world. We receive these impressions for the most part today indirectly, through news reports with pictures, sounds, and words. Every man therefore depends on the news, and even with the strongest opposition of the rational facilities one must finally believe what one hears over and over again and nowhere finds refuted with inner conviction and the force of truth.

The slogans about Huns and Boches and the bloody hand print (“The Hun’s market [sic]) which glared from a hundred thousand wall posters in large enemy cities for four years, the horror-provoking Belgian atrocity stories, the filthy lies about the use of corpses to make grease (based on an intentional mistranslation of the wordKadaververwertung [cadaver utilization], and the portrayal of German soldiers as grotesque, arrogant, cowardly drunkards and sauerkraut pigs must certainly have aroused the feelings of the enemy’s masses to an extreme and bitter desire for combat and victory.

H. G. Scheffeur said in regards to the German answer to such hate-propaganda:

Germany lost itself in otherworldliness, in varied and confusing world views; it worshipped the intellect for its own sake. Knowledge was often an end, not a means. It was used to shed light on the world and the universe, but not to master life. An army of worldviews sprang up, but not control over the world. They enriched the intellect, but as Schopenhauer proved, in a way that nourished itself like a vampire on the will and character.

Germany’s enemies deafened the world’s reason, as well as their own civilization, by childishly attempting to brand the greatest modern culture as “barbaric.” They expanded on hate inherited from their ancestors, or made even more revolting inventions, as was revealed in a survey of French scientists which asked “Whether Germans were human…”

The indignation which such claims of barbarism kindled in the breast of the German people proved that they could still see the true worth of the enemy. They expected truthfulness and justice from him. But the indignation was express together with a peculiar and unfortunate defect in human judgment which endangers the broadest and deepest thrusts of the German spirit. Germans tried to show that they were not barbarians through historical and scientific means. It would have been better and easier if they had proven their enemies were barbarians….

Such unified propaganda worked for the most part on the other side, although it was supported by some pitiable paid stooges and insane idealists among the German people. Here, the Germans suddenly became poets and philosophers who had been driven to war not for the defense of food, home, and freedom, but for the conquest of the world under the ruling class. The enemy masses were not insane, raving, chauvinistic, and inflamed Frenchman, Belgians, and Serbs, they were instead, peaceful farmers, workers, and citizens; their leaders were not relentless statesmen intent on victory, coldly calculating for the advantage of their own peoples, but rather humanitarians extending the olive branch, who were fighting only to give German freedom, human dignity, and — the League of Nations. The best of these apostles of happiness who appeared to the German people and its intellectuals was the noble Wilson, whose Fourteen Points were to bring “world peace.” “It was really tough luck for the Germans to believe Wilson,” an American Senator later said.

The English intellectuals worked hard under the leadership of Herbert George Wells, the popular novelist, trade unionist, and socialist, following the firm directives from the Propaganda Ministry headed by Lord Northcliffe. Müller-Freienfels wrote that Wells, in his reminiscences, said: “Those in England had carefully considered how best to reach the German mentality, and had agreed that we had to catch the Germans through their tendency towards speculative ideas; therefore, it was decided that the League of Nations was by far the best way. It was played up like a roman candle.” The enemy press completely cooperated with such propaganda. Significantly, the press chief (Lord Northcliffe) was a member of the Allied government, and conversely, the members of government considered it self-evident that the press should be a participant in decision making and in the center of discussion and debate. The foreign press portrayed us as having started the war, as war criminals, as protracting the war through our desire for world conquest, and as the final losers. This was done to strengthen their own militant posture and their alliance, and to prepare for a devastating peace. They worked towards a systematic weakening of our fighting force, and mobilized enemies of the German state as well as international fanatics in neutral nations and even in Germany itself to assist their cause. They were exceptionally clever in that they directed their propaganda against the Kaiser and General Ludendorff as the organizers of the war, but made little mention in pictures or publication of Field Marshal Hindenburg, who had the highest trust of the people. They hoped not only to gradually drive a wedge between these men but also to convince the masses that their supposed explanations of the depravity of our leaders were serious and accurate.

They acted like Bismarck in 1871. As is well known, he took the greatest care not to do anything that could harm the newly founded republican government as long as he knew it was agreeable to his political goals. He must have thought that, with the republican government in power, he could at least include it as a known factor in his calculations rather than as a chaotic force intent on gaining power by surprising and incalculable means.

While enemy leaders and intellectuals directed their entire wills and thoughts to our destruction, German officials in Berlin offices led the struggle as if they had the most secure positions in the world.

The Society of German Scholars and Artists used its own limited means to clear things up somewhat in 1915. In 1916, it approached the Reich Chancellor in conjunction with the Interior Ministry, the Admiralty, and the General Staff and demanded material and financial support. Reich Chancellor Bettman Hollweg made a few trivial remarks, refusing every expense on the brilliant grounds that current funds “had not been appropriated” for purposes of internal political propaganda.

A weary indolence filled the Berlin offices when important war matters were handled. Enthusiasm was much greater on jurisdictional disputes, and while the army bled to death in an enormous ring, those in Berlin joined with growing enthusiasm in the hunt for soft jobs and war profits.

A few well meaning patriotic societies, a few voices in the wilderness, believed they could restore lost spiritual vitality through thundering speeches or emotional appeals. They spoke and wrote, but knew noting of the hard realities of the front and of common life, with husbandless wives and starving families. They aimed for the mind but achieved the opposite, and gave the enemy free agitation material. The Assistant General Command said in its monthly report that it was to be feared that the public appearance of the “German National Union” on 4 August 1916 served the enemy more than the fatherland.

Wounded volunteers, seriously wounded and disabled workers, farmers, soldiers, and officers of unshakable spirit were not trained and set before the public. One had no confidence in the magnitude of Germany’s sacrifice, and no courage to affirm it.

It was the army General Headquarters under the leadership of Hindenburg and Ludendorff, after a look at the enemy, that finally decided to combat the nation’s lethargic will, not the responsible political leadership. But German specialization and bureaucracy exercised their disastrous force. The General Staff had little direct influence on the machinery and instruments of public opinion. In a resigned Imperial Germany, they apparently could not reach the revolutionary decision to brutally set aside an ossified government that did not willingly use its power.

Colonel Nicolai, the experienced head of Section IIIb of the General Staff, was given control of propaganda.

After October 1915, the War Press Office was independent, operating directly under the General Staff. It consisted of:

a) The Domestic Office for the German Press, under the leadership of Major Deutelmoser;
b) The Censor’s Office, under Major von Oldberg;
c) The Foreign Office for the Foreign Press, under Lieutenant Colonel von Herwarth.

General control was in the hands of Deutelmoser. Thus army officers took over the political leadership of public opinion, a task for which the government was unsuited. Colonel Nicolai himself said that some journalists of suitable ability, had they possessed political character, could not have brought the impartiality that the officers in War Press Office demanded. The tragedy of the Germany army, politics, and propaganda is contained in that sentence.

German public opinion could not be led colorlessly, but rather it required indivisible political will and character. It is indicative of the disintegration of our internal position that a conflict could result about whether the War Press Office was seeking “political influence!” It is really so naive that one must wonder what those engaged in the argument thought of as the tasks of the War Press Office.

In the course of his reflections, Colonel Nicolai himself comes to the conclusion that the solution to the military necessities was inseparable from political deliberations. Politics, military leadership, and public opinion must be unified to secure success. Those who direct a war must at the same time direct politics and public opinion.

At the end of 1915, the War Press Office together with the National Union of the German Press and the Union of German Newspaper Publishers drew up a common set of guidelines, but it refused to give the press a representative in the War Press Office or to permit private organizations to play a part in developing the guidelines. Later, the War Press Office began distributing prepared articles, written for the most part by officers in competition with professional journalists. This must naturally have led to an intensification of existing antagonisms and further crippled work with the press.

The political leadership intentionally ignored the German press, and worked exclusively through the Foreign Ministry.

The Wolff Telegraph Company was the center of its news agency. The Censorship law of 1916 offset its total neglect of the German press by censoring statements of the Reich and other leading officials taken from the foreign press.

The General Staff had to make the rather obvious demand that the political leadership at least inform the German press at the same time as the foreign press. When around 1916 the political leadership finally gave in to pressure from the General Staff and decided to establish an office for press and propaganda, Major Deutelmoser was relieved of his previous duties in the War Press Office and put in charge of the new department.

While the influence of the War Press Office declined (despite the addition of a fourth department which was added under the Hindenburg Plan to strengthen the will to war) nothing new, of equal or superior value developed to take its place. Everything was blocked by bureaucracy. People began to ‘organize’ instead of making propaganda.

While England had three propaganda ministers working along side each other — Lord Northcliffe who led English propaganda with restless energy, Robert Donald who was propaganda minister for neutral nations, and Rudyard Kipling, who handled internal propaganda — foolishness and a general weakness of the will dominated Germany. It lacked the character necessary to handle the strong tensions controlled by the powerful apparatus of economic, military, and political war leadership. It also lacked a circle of men who could work together confidently on specialized tasks and who were together possessed by an unyielding will for victory. Will extended only as far as jurisdiction, and judged itself only that far.

Our first governmental attempt at propaganda had no success within the country, and it damaged and exposed “German propaganda” in the eyes of the entire world. One must finally conclude that the propaganda was faulty in organization, in psychology, and in timing:

In organization, because it did not understand how to mobilize public opinion;

In psychology, because it lacked the unified leadership on which enthusiastic activity and belief depends;

In timing, because propagandists generally did not learn abut an attack until after it had already begun.

Propaganda is not instituted at the height of political or military actions. It is, rather, to be used as an extensive and wide-ranging preparation for them.