Modernity, World Wars and Dictatorships | 111to send in their travelogues as ‘amateur journalists’. Death was completely
blanked out and only revealed indirectly in print media through images of
memorials and destroyed hostile technical equipment, though at least dead
horses were pictured, albeit very seldom (Eisermann 2000: 135–38). The
French media, however, regularly published images of ruins and demolished
churches for the purpose of pillorying the Germans as uncultivated barbarians.
The war also brought about a change in the film market. After the medium
had enjoyed a period of international success, despite French predominance,
films produced in enemy countries were now banned. In Germany this led to
a sudden lack of films, in spite of people’s eagerness for recent images from the
front line. Such speedily produced reality films announced footage of battle
scenes at the outset, but were hardly ever able to fulfil their promise. As far as
re-enactments of war scenes are concerned, which continued to be shown in
cinemas, soldiers were quick to see through them and reacted with laughter.
Starting in 1916, a change regarding the degree of realism depicted in film
finally occurred (international comparison: Oppelt 2002).
Emotionalised feature films were an inherent part of war propaganda.
British, French, Russian and American movies would often represent the
Germans as barbarians guilty of raping women and killing children in Belgium
(Dibbets and Hogenkamp 1995: 40). In England most notably, close coop-
eration between the government and the film industry led to intensive and
successful film-making. Subsequent to their films about the ‘Huns’, the British
also heralded a more realistic approach: The Battle of the Somme from 1916
was a shockingly realistic film which, by arousing empathy, succeeded in com-
mitting almost 20 million viewers to war within six weeks, despite previous
reservations on the part of the government (Reeves 1997: 15). The United
States made war participation palatable using a movie entitled The Battle Cry
of Peace (1915), which featured inebriated attackers wearing Pickelhauben and
fictitious scenarios of New York air bombings. After America’s war entry a
multitude of films followed, drawing particular attention to the threat that
German soldiers posed to women. German films, on the contrary, were less
disparaging of their opponents, but instead embedded the issue of war in love
stories, which served to propagandise a collective that transcended social class
during the war. First and foremost, however, the film industry placed their
trust in diversionary entertainment, as a means of preventing defeatism.
The introduction of censorship regulations was common to all coun-
tries, even though such monitoring proved less rigid in Great Britain than
in Germany and France. None of the warring parties, including liberal
pre-1915 Britain, allowed their journalists to report from the front line. In
Germany, freedom of press was rescinded by an emergency decree as well as
a 26-point plan specifying bans on reporting concerning not only military
matters (such as troop movements), but also information on the economy,