Committee on Public Information
President Woodrow Wilson created the Committee on Public Information (CPI) by executive order on April 14, 1917, nine days after Congress declared war on Germany. The primary purpose of the CPI was to unify public opinion in favor of the war effort, explain the justification for U.S.
entry into the military conflict, and to spread the message of the United States’ selfless war aims across the North American continent, as well as Europe. Under the leadership of George Creel, a progressive and reform-minded newspaperman from Missouri, the CPI became a public relations agency that used every form of communication to bring the government’s message to the people.The CPI enlisted thousands of volunteers who educated Americans about the facts of the war and German militarism. Famous writers and leading historians prepared circulars and leaflets and supplied the nation’s press with feature articles defining American ideals, purposes, and war aims. The Speaking Division sent famous speakers, including U.S. veterans, several Belgians, and the Blue Devils from coast to coast, describing life on the front and German atrocities. The Four-Minute Men, a group of 75,000 volunteer speakers, addressed audiences with brief four- minute speeches during reel changes in movie theaters and explained why the United States entered the war. Speeches, motion pictures, billboards, pamphlets, and cartoons presented the enemy, Germany, as a murderous aggressor and as an obstacle to the civilized world and justified U.S. entry into this global conflict as good fighting evil. This emotionally charged promotion of American values and negative portrayal of Germany not only created a willingness to sacrifice life and money for the war effort but also resulted in hatred and intolerance to everything German and un-American.
The CPI also established a Division of Work with the Foreign-Born to shape and unite the attitudes of the foreign-born.
The CPI targeted immigrants from fourteen European countries, but German immigrants and their descendants received particular attention through the German Bureau. Creel enlisted famous immigrants as writers and speakers to combat ignorance about the United States and bring the truth about the war and American ideals to the foreign-born. These writers supplied the foreign-language press with articles about education, industry, religion, agriculture, and institutions to project a true picture of American democracy and its devotion to peace and unselfish aims in the war. Speakers and writers emphasized that the war was a fight with Wilhelm II and his government, not with the German people.In October 1917 the CPI also established the Friends of German Democracy in the German Bureau for the purpose of keeping the German-born loyal to the United States. It appointed Franz Sigel, the son of the Civil War hero Franz Sigel, as its president to recognize the loyalty German Americans had demonstrated in the past. Prominent, loyal German American authors wrote pamphlets and articles, such as “Democracy, the Heritage of All,” “German Militarism and Its German Accusers,” “Lieber und Schurz: Two Loyal Americans of German Birth,” “On Loyalty, Liberty, and Democracy,” and “American War Aims and Peace Program,” which reached an estimated 2 million German readers. The Friends of German Democracy also sent letters and appeals to groups in Switzerland, who were able to smuggle many of them into Germany. These articles aimed to incite opposition to the war and urged the people of Germany and Austria to overthrow their old rulers and to establish pro-democracy governments. At the same time, the German Bureau also collected valuable information on various German organizations and the German-language press in the United States to learn how German propaganda had been able to make headway and how the U.S. government might be able to stop it.
The CPI not only fought to unite American public opinion against Germany and for the war effort but also aimed to persuade world opinion in favor of the Allies.
Creel and government officials believed that for years preceding the war, Germany had been secretly building a publicity machine, in the United States and elsewhere, designed to spread pictures of Germany’s vast industrial, commercial, and military power and to spread lies about the United States. To counter this impact and to provide European countries with information explaining American ideals and war aims, the CPI opened offices and established wireless service throughout the world, including Mexico City, Paris, Bern, Rome, Madrid, Lisbon, Tokyo, and Beijing. President Wilson’s speeches and CPI pamphlets, posters, and movies received worldwide circulation. Well-known authors such as Ida Tarbell and William Shepherd wrote short articles describing the nation’s history and its social and industrial progress and emphasizing U.S. patriotism, self-sacrifice, and goodwill toward allied nations. Several articles also exposed German methods of propaganda. The Foreign Press Bureau translated and mailed them to the foreign press. The office in Bern, Switzerland, was one of the busiest. Getting news into the Swiss press appeared to be one of the best ways to get news into Germany because Germans read Swiss papers, German papers quoted from Swiss papers, and rumors circulated freely between Switzerland and Germany.The CPI also had full control over the foreign distribution of American movies. By requiring foreign movie houses to purchase entertainment films with war pictures, the CPI was able to distribute the committee’s own movies and became convinced that it ran the German propaganda film industry out of business. George Creel believed that the CPI succeeded in destroying the German misinterpretation of the United States as a materialist country and turned the most misunderstood nation in the world, the United States, into the most popular.
Petra Dewitt
See also Lieber, Francis; Schurz, Carl; Sigel, Franz; World War I; World War I and German Americans
References and Further Reading
Blakey, George T. Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1970.
Cornebise, Alfred E. War as Advertised: The Four-Minute Men and Americas Crusade, 1917—1918. Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1984.
Mock, James R. Words That Won the War: The Story of the Committee on Public Information, 1917—1918. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1939.
Ross, Stewart Halsey. Propaganda for War: How the United States Was Conditioned to Fight the Great War of 1914—1918. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1996.
Vaughn, Stephen. Holding Fast the Inner Lines: Democracy, Nationalism, and the Committee on Public Information. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980.