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Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War

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This was required reading for a graduate course in the history of American military affairs. George T. Blakey, whose book Historians on the Homefront: American Propagandists for the Great War critically examined the propaganda activities of the Wilson administration by looking into the activities of The Committee on Public Information (CPI) headed by George Creel. Blakey highlights the irony of the unprecedented measures the Wilson administration took in 1917 to promote America's involvement in the war. "Only months earlier he [Wilson] had won re-election to the presidency as the man who `kept us out of war.'" Creel was a well-known "sensational" journalist with plenty of enemies; however, he proved to posses an unprecedented talent for organizing and running the CPI. The CPI's mission was to win over the "hearts and minds" of Americans by using modern propaganda techniques. As Blakey so astutely observed, "While much of the American war effort still bore the imprint of the nineteenth century, the CPI was a true child of the twentieth, using modern methods of psychology, mass production, and advertising to market its product." The main purpose of Blakey's book was to examine in detail one of the CPI's more unusual, and unfortunate partnerships with academia--the National Board for Historical Service (NBHS). In 1917, almost three dozen of America's most eminent historians created the NBHS; an organization that was unfortunately used to draw false historical analogies in an effort to rally American support for the war. Observing the transformation of European political and social structures that a protracted war would bring, president Woodrow Wilson, who had been a historian most of his professional life, wrote to a friend, "`Every reform we have won,' Wilson had said as early as 1914, `will be lost if we go into this war.'" Blakey concluded that, "Good intentions to the contrary, their propaganda work represented a severe break with scholarly historical standards."

Recommended reading for anyone interested in American history.