selling america during world war i wisconsin workshop, wed. 8:00-9:30 emily rosenberg, u california,...

Selling America During World War I

Wisconsin Workshop, Wed. 8:00-9:30

Emily Rosenberg, U California, Irvine

We Will Discuss

• 1. World War I, Wilsonianism, and Americanism

• 2. Techniques of Political Persuasion (The Committee on Public Information)

• 3. Censorship and Surveillance

• 4. Controversies over Selling: Democracy, Nationalism and “The Mass”

Wilson and World War I

• President Wilson was a deeply religious man, a “Progressive,” and nearly a pacifist. Why did he take the country into World War I, joining England and France against Germany?

– Many explanations are advanced by historians, but I will stress Wilson’s desire to be the principal peacemaker and thereby to transform the world along American lines.

– “war to end all wars” – war to “save the world for democracy”– The faith that the fires of war would spread “Americanization” at home

and abroad

• Many “progressives” rallied around these war aims and came to believe that the war would transform the world.

We Will Discuss #2

• 1. World War I, Wilsonianism, and Americanism

• 2. Techniques of Political Persuasion (The Committee on Public Information)

• 3. Censorship and Surveillance

• 4. Controversies over Selling: Democracy, Nationalism and “The Mass”

GEORGE CREEL led this transformative effort as head of the Committee on Public Information (CPI)

WILSON AND CREEL

How the CPI pioneered new advertising techniques and worked to “sell” Americanism and the war:

SPEAKERS:

“Four-Minute Men” from Nebraska

Such speakers gave 7 million speeches to 314 million people

ADS:

“German AgentsAre Everywhere. . .”

Use of Historians

• Many historians hired to write pro-war histories

• In early 1918 Edgar Sisson, a Creel Committee representative in Russia, obtained documents purporting to prove that Trotsky, Lenin, and the other Bolshevik revolutionaries were agents of the German government.

• In the U.S. two prominent historians, J. Franklin Jameson and Samuel N. Harper, reported

– “We have subjected them with great care to all the applicable tests to which historical students are accustomed and . . . upon the basis of these investigations, we have no hesitation in declaring that we see no reason to doubt the genuineness or authenticity of these fifty-three documents”

• Some people challenged them at the time; after the war they were shown to be very sloppy forgeries.

• During the war, the forged “Sisson Papers” were widely used to stir pro-war sentiment.

POSTERS

FILMS

A Revolution in Selling America: New Techniques of Political Persuasion

• “How We Advertised America”: The wartime state embraces the new profession of advertising

• Control the message; use new media

• Appeal to emotions: good and evil; saving women and homes

• Employ persuasion techniques at home and abroad

We Will Discuss #3

• 1. World War I, Wilsonianism, and Americanism

• 2. Techniques of Political Persuasion (The Committee on Public Information)

• 3. Censorship and Surveillance

– Why was there such concern over espionage?– How did selling the war accelerate “Americanization”?

• 4. Controversies over Selling: Democracy, Nationalism and “The Mass”

CENSORSHIP AND SURVEILLANCE

• Why the extreme concern over antiwar activity?

– Immigrants– Antiwar socialists and anarchists [next slides]

• Measures taken to add coercion to CPI’s persuasion

– Censorship of mail

– Selective Service Act [Draft], 1917, made anti-conscription speeches illegal

– Government seizure of all wireless (radio) stations

– Espionage Act; Sedition Act (2000 people prosecuted)

– New surveillance institutions: FBI and Military Intelligence

– Encouragement of American Protective League (APL)

Debs for president in 1904 or 1908

Debs for president in 1920--still jailed under the EspionageAct

Deportation photo of Emma Goldman, 1919. Goldman, a rebel who embraced anarchism, free love, birth control, atheism, and anti-militarism, had immigrated fromRussia to the US in the 1880s.

Goldman was arrested for speechesagainst war and against conscription into the military.

During the war many antiwar “radicals” and immigrants were targeted as potentially disloyal.

After the war, some were deported.

The “Red Scare” pervaded life in 1919-20.

Goldman’s magazine

FBI Memo on Emma Goldman

Goldman became well-known tolater generations of rebels throughher saying: “If I can’t dance, I don’t want to be in your revolution.”

POSTWAR DEPORTATION

Deportation of “Reds”ordered by US government in 1919

How did the combinationof advertising’s persuasivetechniques combinewith measures of coercion to push for“Americanization”?

We Will Discuss #4

• World War I, Wilsonianism, and Americanism

• Techniques of Political Persuasion (The Committee on Public Information)

• Censorship and Surveillance

• Controversies over Selling: Democracy, Nationalism and “The Mass”

Controversies over Selling America

• World War I represents the first all-out effort by the national government to use wartime emergency to roll-out an extensive program of propaganda and coercion – both designed to “sell” Americanization at home and American models abroad.

• Let’s meet some critics and commentators, who reflect a wide range of reactions to govn’t use of such methods: a wide-ranging discussion of “propaganda” emerges during and after the war.

RandolphBourne

Dissent against war’s conformity and coercion

“War is the health of the State. It automatically sets in motion throughout society those irresistible forces for uniformity, for passionate cooperation with the Government in coercing into obedience the minority groups and individuals which lack the larger herd sense. The machinery of government sets and enforces the drastic penalties; the minorities are either intimidated into silence, or brought slowly around by a subtle process of persuasion. . . .

–Randolph Bourne

WalterLippmann Public Opinion

Enlightened experts shouldbe in control; fear that suchtechniques would mobilizethe ignorant “mass.”

Harold Lasswell, Propaganda (1927)

Experts could use political persuasion to mobilize “masses” to good causes

John Dewey

Education should strive tofoster a competent “publicopinion” that is worthy of democratic citizenship andnot dupped by propaganda

Edward Bernays, the “father” of American adverstising

Advertising techniques will allow leaders to steer democracies toward desirable ends

Bruce Barton,who producedpro-war ad copy During WWI

Most prominent advertising manof interwar era alsohad great faith inthe power ofadvertising for good.

1933

Could advertising sell peace and internationalism?

Barton sponsoredthese antiwar ads:

With outbreak of WWII,Barton went back to workfor the government--Office of War Information

Selling America During World War I

• World War I formed the structures of a new public-relations state (using advertising techniques of persuasion, censorship, surveillance)

• World War I also prompted a broad debate over the above in which people both defended and critiqued this new type of state power.

• When should the state employ its huge power to “sell America”? In wars? In peace?

• What is the role of “selling” (propaganda) in a democracy?