Making an enemy: the ten principles of wartime propaganda

Series: How minds are moved · Foundations: how persuasion works · 6 of 7

On 17 April 1917 The Times of London told its readers that the Germans were boiling down the bodies of their own dead soldiers for fat in a “corpse factory”. It was not true, and in 1925 the British Foreign Secretary told Parliament so. In August 1943, when reports of gas chambers reached London, the chairman of Britain’s Joint Intelligence Committee, Victor Cavendish-Bentinck, wrote that they reminded him of the corpse-factory story, “a grotesque lie”. This time the killing was real. A war lie told in 1917 helped make the truth harder to believe in 1943. That is why it is worth learning how wartime propaganda is built, on every side.

Contents · 9 sections

TL;DR #

• In 1928 the British politician Arthur Ponsonby catalogued the false stories of the First World War in Falsehood in War-Time.
• In 2001 the Belgian historian Anne Morelli condensed his work into ten principles that every side keeps using in every war.
• The record shows the same principles used by Britain, Germany, the United States, Kuwait’s PR firm, Russia, Ukraine, and parties in the Middle East.
• Knowing the pattern is not the same as knowing which side is right. Real atrocities happen too, and disbelieving everything is its own trap.
• The test is evidence: who verified this, and how?

Ponsonby’s catalogue #

Arthur Ponsonby was a former diplomat who opposed Britain’s entry into the First World War. In 1928, ten years after it ended, he published Falsehood in War-Time, a plain list of more than twenty stories the Allied public had been told and that had turned out false or unproven: the Belgian baby with its hands cut off, the crucified Canadian soldier, the corpse factory. His introduction explains why every government does this:

“A Government which has decided on embarking on the hazardous and terrible enterprise of war must at the outset present a one-sided case in justification of its action, and cannot afford to admit in any particular whatever the smallest degree of right or reason on the part of the people it has made up its mind to fight.”

The book was popular in Britain and America. The British historian Adrian Gregory later criticised Ponsonby for believing every German source and doubting every British one, and argued that many of the false stories did not come down from government at all. They came up from frightened soldiers and civilians, and newspapers printed them. Propaganda is not always a central plan; sometimes it is a whole society wanting to believe.

Morelli’s ten principles #

Anne Morelli, a historian at the Free University of Brussels, published Principes élémentaires de propagande de guerre in 2001. She showed that the same ten claims appear in war after war:

1. We do not want war.
2. The other side alone is responsible for it.
3. The enemy’s leader is evil, a monster.
4. We are defending a noble cause, not our own interests.
5. The enemy commits atrocities on purpose; our mistakes are accidents.
6. The enemy uses forbidden weapons.
7. Our losses are small; the enemy’s are enormous.
8. Artists and intellectuals support our cause.
9. Our cause is sacred.
10. Anyone who doubts our story is a traitor.

Each of them can be true in a particular war. The point is that they are said in every war, whether they are true or not, and so hearing them proves nothing.

The principles in the record #

“They started it”: Gleiwitz, 1939 #

On the evening of 31 August 1939, SS men dressed as Polish insurgents seized a German radio station at Gleiwitz, on the Polish border, and broadcast a short message in Polish. A prisoner was killed and left as “evidence”. The next day Hitler told the Reichstag that Germany had been attacked and was now “returning fire”. The staged incident was established at the Nuremberg trials from the testimony of the SS officer who led it. Principles 1 and 2 in their purest form.

“They attacked us”: Tonkin Gulf, 1964 #

On 4 August 1964 the US government reported a second North Vietnamese attack on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, and within days Congress passed the resolution that opened the way to full war in Vietnam. A study by the National Security Agency’s own historian, Robert Hanyok, released in 2005, concluded that the second attack did not happen and that NSA reporting had been skewed to support the claim that it did, though he found no evidence that the President or his senior officials knew. Principle 2.

“They kill babies”: Kuwait, 1990 #

In October 1990 a fifteen-year-old girl, introduced only as Nayirah, told members of the US Congress, in tears, that she had seen Iraqi soldiers take premature babies from hospital incubators in Kuwait and leave them to die. President George H. W. Bush repeated the story several times, and senators cited it in the debate that authorised war. She was the daughter of Kuwait’s ambassador in Washington, and her appearance was prepared by the public relations firm Hill & Knowlton, paid by a Kuwaiti-government-funded group. The firm said it never knowingly deceived anyone. Later investigations by journalists and human-rights groups found no support for the story; a report commissioned by Kuwait said she had briefly visited the hospital. Iraq’s occupation of Kuwait was brutal and real; the most famous atrocity in it was not. Principle 5.

“They have forbidden weapons”: Iraq, 2003 #

The case for the 2003 invasion of Iraq rested on weapons of mass destruction, including the British claim that some could be ready within 45 minutes. None were found. The UK’s official inquiry concluded in 2016 that the judgments “were presented with a certainty that was not justified”. Principle 6.

“A special operation against Nazis”: Russia, 2022 #

When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, its government called it a “special military operation” for the “demilitarisation and denazification” of Ukraine, a country with a Jewish president elected with 73% of the vote. That covers principles 3, 4 and 9. In March 2022 Russia told the UN Security Council that the United States ran biological weapons laboratories in Ukraine; the UN’s disarmament chief said the UN was not aware of any such programme (principle 6). The same month a new law made spreading “fakes” about the army punishable by up to 15 years in prison, and calling the war a war became a risk (principle 10).

“Our heroes”: Ukraine, 2022 #

In the first days of the same war, Ukrainian officials and social media spread the story of the “Ghost of Kyiv”, a pilot said to have shot down many Russian jets. On 30 April 2022 Ukraine’s own air force called it a “superhero legend” created by Ukrainians. On 25 February President Zelensky announced that all 13 border guards on Snake Island had been killed defending it; days later the Ukrainian navy said they were alive and had been captured. A country fighting for survival used morale stories that were not true. Principles 7 and 9.

“Look what they did”: Gaza and Israel, 2023 #

On 17 October 2023 an explosion hit the car park of al-Ahli hospital in Gaza. Within hours the Hamas-run health ministry said an Israeli strike had killed about 500 people, and many international outlets put that in their headlines. Israel blamed a misfired rocket from Palestinian Islamic Jihad. American, British and French intelligence assessments later pointed to a misfired rocket, with US intelligence estimating a lower death toll, and Human Rights Watch found in November 2023 that the evidence pointed to a rocket while calling for further investigation. The New York Times published an editors’ note saying it had relied too heavily on claims by Hamas. The responsibility is still disputed by some, but the speed is the lesson: principle 5 travelled around the world before anyone had checked it.

The same week showed the same principle from the other side. On 10 October 2023 the Israeli channel i24 reported soldiers saying that militants had beheaded babies at Kfar Aza, and “40 beheaded babies” spread worldwide within hours. The Israeli government then said it could not confirm the claim, and on 11 October the White House walked back President Biden’s remark that he had seen photographs of beheaded children, saying he had relied on media and Israeli officials’ accounts. The massacre at Kfar Aza was real; the most-shared detail was not confirmed. Two claims, two sides, one pattern.

What it feels like from the inside #

War propaganda feels like loyalty. Doubting it feels like betraying the people who are dying. It also feels like moral clarity: our side is good, theirs is evil, and the evidence always seems to agree. That is principle 10 doing its work from inside your own head.

What it can and cannot do #

• It works best in the first days of a war, when facts are scarce, fear is high and people want to rally.
• It wears off. Soldiers come home, documents come out, inquiries report. Ponsonby’s book appeared ten years after his war.
• It leaves a debt. Each exposed lie makes the next true report harder to believe, as the corpse factory did in 1943.
• And it is not proof of innocence on the other side. A real atrocity can be reported with propaganda techniques and still be real. Recognising the pattern is the start of checking, not the end.

How to notice it #

1. Which of Morelli’s ten principles am I hearing right now? Usually more than one.
2. Who verified this claim, independently, and when?
3. Has the same kind of claim been made by the other side about us?
4. Is the number of dead or the weapon named from a party to the war, or from someone outside it?
5. Am I being told that questions are disloyal?
6. Wait. In war, the first version of a story is the least reliable one.

Frequently asked questions #

What are Morelli’s ten principles of war propaganda? #

They are ten claims that the Belgian historian Anne Morelli found in the propaganda of every side in modern wars, from “we do not want war” to “anyone who doubts our story is a traitor”. She built them on Arthur Ponsonby’s 1928 book.

Was Falsehood in War-Time itself biased? #

Historians such as Adrian Gregory have argued that Ponsonby was too ready to believe German sources and too quick to dismiss British ones, and that many false stories came from rumour rather than official design.

Does recognising war propaganda mean the atrocities are fake? #

No. Real atrocities happen in every war. The corpse-factory story made officials doubt reports of the Holocaust in 1943. The aim is to check evidence, not to disbelieve everything.

Which side uses war propaganda? #

Every side. The cases above include Britain, Germany, the United States, Kuwait, Russia, Ukraine, Hamas and Israel, and the pattern is the same in each.

The lesson #

Every war needs an enemy, and every enemy is built from the same ten sentences. Learn them, and you will hear them from your own side as clearly as from the other. Then do the harder part: wait, ask who verified it, and keep room for the possibility that the terrible thing is true. Next and last in this family: the words themselves, and how euphemism does the work of persuasion quietly.