2.3 Useful resources for studying British propaganda in the First World War

Students might benefit from reading the following articles on the 1914–1918 Online encyclopaedia [Tip: hold Ctrl and click a link to open it in a new tab. (Hide tip)] :

• Propaganda: Media in War Politicsprovides an overview of the various national propaganda organisations, including those in Britain.
• War Propaganda Bureau explores the centre for British propaganda abroad.
• Propaganda at Home explores domestic propaganda in Great Britain and Ireland.
• Othering/ Atrocity Propaganda overviews atrocity propaganda more generally.
• Atrocity propaganda is also discussed on the British Library’s website.

If you have access to free articles on JSTOR , you may find it useful to consult this journal article, in which historians John Horne and Alan Kramer provide evidence from soldiers’ diaries to demonstrate that atrocities were committed by the German army against Belgian civilians:

• John Horne and Alan Kramer (1994) ‘German “Atrocities” and Franco-German Opinion, 1914: The Evidence of Soldiers’ Diaries’, The Journal of Modern History, 66(1), pp. 1–33.

Horne and Kramer’s 2002 book is freely available online.

Students can also find reviews freely online, including Rachamimov on Horne and Kramer, ‘German Atrocities, 1914: A History of Denial’ (more information on accessing reviews can be found in Session 5).

The next section discusses German wartime propaganda.