The Germans were leafletted with Safe Conduct Passes at the end of WWII. This had been done in the Pacific theater also, and later in Vietnam, but seemed to be much more successful against the Germans. This was believed to be due to the Germans cultural respect for authority and formal processes.
Interestingly, there was a lot of pornographic propaganda used too. This article goes into detail about it, I find it fascinating because it doesn’t usually get mentioned in propaganda discussions.
Has nude pics from actual leaflets so NSFW
Well if you are going to say atrocities don’t count against countries that carried out atrocities in their colonies you just ruled out a good chunk of the atrocities committed in WW1 and WW2.
That’s not true at all, there was a premeditated campaign of atrocities, that killed thousands of civilians. Not just an overreaction to actual guerilla acts. The fear of “francs-tireurs” (which had been a major issue in the war of 1870) was deliberately encouraged by the military authorities amongst troops, and so in most cases there were no guerilla acts, just atrocities.
There was definitely a premeditated campaign of mass-murder of civilians by German troops, that was not just overreaction to guerilla attacks (albeit the scale of atrocities pales compared to WW2 or what happened on some of the other fronts in WW1, e.g. the Balkans or Turkey). The hope was that by doing so the civilian population would be cowed and the “francs-tireurs” of 1870 wouldn’t be repeated e.g.:
the city of Dinant, where, on 23 August, the worst massacre of the invasion left 674 people, one out of every 10 inhabitants, dead; and the university town of Louvain (Leuven), where the treasured university library was burned and 248 civilians killed.
Yes, the British government wasn’t always scrupulous about which eye witnesses to these atrocities they believed. But ultimately their propaganda was based on actual atrocities, with first-hand accounts, not just made up. There were reports in the media that were either made up or based on unsubstantiated rumors, made by private tabloids, not British government propaganda.
A premeditated campaign of mass-murder of civilians being 3000 Belgians?
As opposed to say 10 Million Russians and Slavs?
A premeditated campaign of mass-murder of civilians being 3000 Belgians?
As opposed to say 10 Million Russians and Slavs?
Well if you include (as that 10M number certainly does, and even then seem far too high to me) all the civilians that died of starvation etc during the expulsions and work camps the total is around 23,000, but yes.
We are in agreement there was a premeditated campaign of mass-murder by Germany that killed thousands of civilians. That wasn’t invented by British propaganda it was an actual event that happened.
That there were other far more heinous atrocities committed in WW1 (Armenian Genocide, occupation of Serbia by Austro-hungary, East African campaign, etc.) is a complete non-sequitur. No one is claiming what happened to Belgium is comparable to those.