444 The Undermining of Austria-Hungary
In this process, front propaganda had only a small role to play. Yet because it
was often impossible to verify rumours, the stories about Russia's collapse,
about Lord Northcliffe's appointment or the Czechoslovak Legion, combined
to give `enemy propaganda' a mythical quality even before the war had ended.
Any reality about the phenomenon was thus quickly engulfed in a myth, a
propaganda of its own. This could then be nurtured after the war, used by
Czech nationalists or Hitler for example, to support different interpretations
of the wartime experience. It ensured that front propaganda, as a tried and
tested weapon, would be resurrected and wielded in all successive conflicts of
the twentieth century.
Notes
1. Antoni Szuber, Walka o PrzewageÎ DuchowaÎ . Kampanja Propagandowa Koalicji 1914±
1918 (Warsaw, 1933) p. ix.
2. See Steed,
Through Thirty Years, II, p. 208.
3. For example
, KA, FAst 1918, Fasz.5994, Res.89, minutes of AOK meeting to discuss
front propaganda, 26 April 1918.
4. Ludwig Windis
chgra
È
tz, Helden und Halunken. Selbsterlebte Weltgeschichte (Vienna,
Munich and Zurich, 1965) pp. 134±5.
5. Finzi, `I.T.O.',
p. 140.
6. Ibid., p.
119.
7. Cf. Aviel
Roshwald and Richard Stites (eds), European Culture in the Great War: The
Arts, Entertainment and Propaganda, 1914±1918 (Cambridge, 1999) p. 350.
8. Cf. Istva
Â
n
Dea
Â
k, Beyond Nationalism: A Social and Political History of the Habsburg
Officer Corps, 1848±1918 (Oxford and New York, 1992) p. 200.
9. See Andrej
Mitrovic
Â
, Jugoslavija na Konferenciji Mira 1919±1920 (Belgrade, 1969);
Rene
Â
Albrecht-Carrie, Italy at the Paris Peace Conference (New York, 1966 reprint).
10. Szuber, Walka
o PrzewagaÎ DuchoweÎ, p. 104.
11. BL, Northcliff
e MSS, vol.X, Add.Mss 62162, Minutes of 14th EPD Committee meet-
ing, 29
October 1918. To be precise, Steed made this claim on behalf of `Crewe
House', not `Allied propaganda'.