Propaganda
He has also been associated with some notable allied propaganda and disinformation successes such as "the master hoax" of World War I, the story of the German corpse factory Kadaververwertungsanstalt. Charteris deliberately switched captions on two German war pictures: one image showed soldiers killed in battle being taken away for burial, while the other showed horse carcasses being delivered to a processing factory behind German lines. After the war Charteris claimed the deception, causing a media outcry.
A letter from Charteris, dated 5 September 1914, noted "the story of the Angels of Mons going strong through the 2nd Corps". This may be the earliest account of the rumour. If authentic, this reference would pre-date Arthur Machen's The Bowmen—widely held to be the source of the Angels of Mons legend. However, this letter was published in 1931 in compilation book At G.H.Q., and its authenticity is questionable. Examination of Charteris' original letters gives evidence that these entries and/or dates were falsified, leading David Clarke, among others, to suggest that Charteris was using the Angels rumour for propaganda purposes. Charteris had not kept a diary at the time so At G.H.Q. consisted of papers, notes and letters from the time rewritten into diary form. He confessed to sometimes amplifying from memory but by and large the reconstructed “diary” is consistent with records which he kept at the time, e.g his entry for the First Day of the Somme which he states was “not an attempt to win the war at a blow” and “weeks of hard fighting” lay ahead.
After the war he was the Conservative MP for Dumfriesshire. He wrote two books on Haig: “Field Marshal Earl Haig” (1929) and "Haig" (1933).
Read more about this topic: John Charteris
Famous quotes containing the word propaganda:
“The best propaganda omits rather than invents.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move is instantly deconstructive. For if the complex can be put into the simple, then it cannot be as complex as it seemed in the first place; and if the simple can be an adequate medium of such complexity, then it cannot after all be as simple as all that.”
—Terry Eagleton (b. 1943)
“Do not forget birthdays. This is in no way a propaganda for a larger population.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)