The corpse factory and the birth of fake news

[gandalfssocks]

The usual dislclaimer at the end.

Historians Joachim Neander and Randal Marlin remind us how these false stories "encouraged later disbelief when early reports circulated about the Holocaust under Hitler".

hink fake news is a new phenomenon? Think again. Dr David Clarke from Sheffield Hallam University looks at a 100-year-old story that fooled the world.

In February a story appeared in the English-language North China Daily News that claimed the Kaiser's forces were "extracting glycerine out of dead soldiers".

Rumours about processing dead bodies had been in circulation since 1915 but had not been presented as facts by any official source.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-38995205

[Mortimer]

Here is another example of fake atrocity propaganda. This has been covered in the Holocaust Debate forum but I present it again here in case new readers are not familiar with it. During the first world war the Allies claimed the Germans, Austrians and Bulgarians were gassings Serbs which was reported on with newspaper coverage. As the following article conveys this was just a dress rehearsal for the claim that the Germans were gassing Jews in the second world war -
http://codoh.com/library/document/2332/

[slob]

If all the atrocity stories from WWI were proven false, who is to say stories were not made up in WWII, their imaginations just got away with them this time??

https://imgur.com/a/rnzIF


Two interesting quotes from Ponsonby 1928 Falsehood in wartime book.
http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/archiv ... sonby.html

[Hektor]

If all the atrocity stories from WWI were proven false, who is to say stories were not made up in WWII, their imaginations just got away with them this time??

https://imgur.com/a/rnzIF

Two interesting quotes from Ponsonby 1928 Falsehood in wartime book.
http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/archiv ... sonby.html

There was a lot of anti-German hate literature being spread in higher circles before and during world war two as well:
https://archive.org/details/BlackRecord ... Vansittart

This was of course muddying the waters of many officials even more. In such a case atrocity stories of course become more believable and they'll repeat them with some authority and hence more credibility to others. That would explain why a lot of people believed stories that were simply NOT true and why they're often repeated even today.

[Hektor]

....
This was of course muddying the waters of many officials even more. In such a case atrocity stories of course become more believable and they'll repeat them with some authority and hence more credibility to others. That would explain why a lot of people believed stories that were simply NOT true and why they're often repeated even today.

Another thing to make an atrocity story more believable is to mix it with some facts (especially a lot of detail will make it sound convincing) and dose the "outrage content" with the right measures. One would have to steadily increase the outrage over time. Immediate inflated claims will be dismissed as false.

Of course it helps to monitor the targeted group for their reactions to atrocity propaganda:

"Early in the re-education of the German people the military government attempted to develop a sense of collective responsibility for results of National Socialism, especially for atrocities in concentration camps. Detailed interviews indicate that, before the Allied occupation, Germans were aware of the existence and function of concentration camps, although they did not know the details or extent. .... During the first months of the occupation, the Psychological Warfare Branch of the United States Army, being charged with the control of public information in Germany, undertook a campaign through Radio Luxembourg, the controlled Germanlanguage press, and special posters and pamphlets to acquaint the German people with the extent and nature of concentration camp atrocities. The development of a sense of collective responsibility was considered a prerequisite to any long-term education of the German people..."
https://archive.org/details/MorrisJanow ... Atrocities

[slob]

If all the atrocity stories from WWI were proven false, who is to say stories were not made up in WWII, their imaginations just got away with them this time??

https://imgur.com/a/rnzIF

Two interesting quotes from Ponsonby 1928 Falsehood in wartime book.
http://www.vlib.us/wwi/resources/archiv ... sonby.html

There was a lot of anti-German hate literature being spread in higher circles before and during world war two as well:
https://archive.org/details/BlackRecord ... Vansittart

This was of course muddying the waters of many officials even more. In such a case atrocity stories of course become more believable and they'll repeat them with some authority and hence more credibility to others. That would explain why a lot of people believed stories that were simply NOT true and why they're often repeated even today.

Thank you for sharing the link.

[starviego]

Here is another variation to this story:

George Coppard, With A Machine Gun to Cambrai (1969)
I feel I must mention a piece of psychological propaganda put about by some War Office person, which brought poor comfort to Tommies. The story swept the world and, being gullible, we in the trenches were taken in by it for a while. With slight variations it indicated that the German war industry was in a bad way, and was short of fats for making glycerine. To overcome the shortage a vast secret factory had been erected in the Black Forest, to which the bodies of dead British soldiers were despatched. The bodies, wired together in bundles, were pitchforked on to conveyor belts and moved into the factory for conversion into fats. War artists got busy, and dreadful scenes were depicted and published in Britain. The effect on me at first was despondency. Death was not enough apparently. The idea of finishing up in a stew pot was bloody awful, but as I had so many immediate problems the story soon lost its evil potency for me.

[Mortimer]

In his book The Case For Auschwitz - Evidence From The Irving Trial anti revisionist Robert Jan van Pelt admits that the corpse factory stories are false. "It was a lie but it was plausible and it was not possible to completely refute it during the First World War". A review of his book by Paul Grubach here.
https://codoh.com/library/document/363/

[Mortimer]

One of the other fake atrocity stories from the first world war was about German troops cutting off the hands of children. Further proof of the way the Allies went overboard with these tall tales is this comment from Francesco Nitti who was Prime Minister of Italy from 1919-20. Quote -
"We had to win, to win at all costs....In order to win, it is necessary before all else to hate, and to hate we must impute to the enemy all that is hateful ....At that time one portrayed the Germans as cultural barbarians, as the root of all that is evil in mankind. There was no cruelty which one did not attribute to them and if they shot no defenceless women to death they did chop off children's hands....Above all the legend of the chopped off hands of children was exploited during the war as irrefutable proof of the Germans Hun like nature....It's not as if serious people believed in all these legends, but it was nevertheless useful to spread them....Immediately after the war I wanted to assure myself of the truth of all these accusations and assigned several of my friends to make the necessary enquiries about times, places and names. Lloyd George had the same thoughts and on his trip to Belgium interrogated all possible witnesses about the terrible amputations. But neither he nor I have succeeded in establishing even a single case as factual."
Taken from 1939 The War That Had Many Fathers by Gerd Schultze-Rhonhof. Pages 79-80 2011 English language edition.
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