World War 1 Propaganda Essay

Propaganda has been used since the beginning of human society. When most people think about propaganda, they think of the bad, manipulative kind used in the world wars. Not all propaganda is bad. Some propaganda is good and informative, such as the Uncle Sam posters. Some uses scare tactics, especially smoking ads that try (and succeed) to scare people away from smoking. The most popular times that propaganda was used was during World War I and World War II. Propaganda in World War I was widely used across the United States, Britain, and Germany. It was the first war where propaganda was used significantly to inform people at home what was going on overseas. It was also the first war where the government attempted to alter the public’s opinion …show more content…
It was mainly used to support the war and a victory for the Allies. It was also used to promote victory gardens and the purchase of war bonds and persuaded people to save material that could be used for the war effort like metals and rubber. Another reason that the United States used propaganda was to maintain the morale of the people, unlike the German propaganda. The United States produced more propaganda posters than any other country in the war with more than 200,000 different designs produced. Unlike the German propaganda, the propaganda used in the United States was more informative and persuasive. The German propaganda was manipulative and deceitful, but they did do it very well. Some studies have shown that the effectiveness of propaganda on people is unclear but some researchers have some sort of idea of how it works psychologically. In Richard Nelson’s “A Chronology and Glossary of Propaganda in the United States”, he defines propaganda as “a systematic form of purposeful persuasion that attempts to influence the emotions, attitudes, opinions, and actions of specified target audiences for ideological, political, or commercial