British, french and german newspapers influenced soldier morale during world war i. He also delves into the shortcomings of using soldiers letters home as an historical source. This is about an hour. Lora it is my pleasure this morning that we begin with dr. Robert nelson, who is the Department Head and associate professor in history at the university of windsor, where he specializes in modern european cultural history and world war i. While a recent visiting all fulbright scholar at the City University of new york, he investigated the development of a german colonial gaze on Eastern Europe that he argued was radicalized during world war i. I also note that he has a cool art program about some of this. Nelsons innovative thinking helped him informed his 2011 book german newspapers of the first world war, from which his presentation today derives. Nelson will explore the role of british, french, and german newspapers and examine their effects on soldier morale. Please welcome to the stage dr. Robert nelson. [applause] dr. Nelson no pressure. [laughter] dr. Nelson first of all, i very much want to thank the world war i museum and memorial. This is the third time i have been to kansas city in two years, which is fabulous to know that world war i historians get to come to kansas city and not go to d. C. All the time. I am really happy this is in kansas city and not d. C. But it is nevertheless very strange for me that this place is in kansas city and not the district of columbia. When the president of this Museum Opened his mouth yesterday, you knew immediately that he was not from kansas city. But when i open my mouth, you cant tell directly that i am a foreigner, but i am a foreigner, because foreigners can sound like americans. But for mr. Naylor and myself, an australian and a canadian, to see there is a National World war i museum and memorial in kansas city and not in the heart of the mall in washington, d. C. In a 200 Story Building looming over and telling everyone this is the most important event in the history of mankind, it is very strange. And i am always interested in the place of world war i in National History, because you learn a lot about the National History of the country and where world war i is in that history. If you are from canada or australia or britain or france, world war i is a hell of a lot more important than world war ii. If you are from the u. S. , russia, or germany, world war ii tends to be a hell of a lot more important than world war i. There is an easy answer to that, dead people, casualties, no comparison. A lot more people died in those countries canada, britain, france in world war i than world war ii. The opposite is true for those other countries, when it comes to world war ii canadians die a lot more in world war i because we are there in the trenches the whole time. Canada tends to get in world wars immediately. We dont wait two or three years for our neighbors to show up and help us out. We tend to take a few more casualties for a while. We are always happy when the big brother shows up with his big guns and money and material. So there is also centrality in National Stories for these events, so canada and australia see world war i as this huge comingofage moving away from the polyesters directing us in the british empire, and we become these new young nations. It is always interesting to make these comparisons, and what is interesting about this conference so far is how comparative the conference is. Those papers yesterday constantly comparative, not just Strict National histories. Foreigners like myself have a big fear that next years symposium will be america, america, finally we get to talk about america in world war i, so forget all this other stuff. Lots of other stuff happens in 1917 than the entrance of america. I will put up my plea to please keep it at that nice level of comparative work. All right, let us get to what i am going to talk about today. We heard yesterday about you are teased by certain sources that tell us more about soldiers thoughts or peoples thoughts. We have the diary from lithuania. We got to see inside the mind of a woman from lithuania. We had the letters from some french soldiers and how they talk about being morose and fighting not for honor, not for fatherland, not for duty, because we have to. Thats what we heard in those french letters yesterday. We will delve more deeply into those kinds of sources today, through soldier newspapers. First of all, what we call social history. What is life like on the bottom of the totem pole . What are people thinking down there . Social history of world war i really gets under way in the 1970s and into the 1980s, with the first major source. Diaries have been read since the 1920s, but diaries are very elite sources. You want to get social history, but when you are reading diaries, you are reading the thoughts of usually welleducated, Upper Echelon people. The move by the 1970s and 1980s is to read soldier letters. Letter writing was a massive phenomenon in world war i. You had soldiers writing several letters a day every day. There are millions of letters for the first world war. You had literate armies, except for russia. Russia is going to be out of my example when it comes to newspapers, because they are illiterate for the most part. But britain, france, germany, highly literate population. They are writing letters. This was the first move in the 1970s in the real social history of world war i. But there are problems with these sources. First of all, there are millions of these letters, so you have a sample problem immediately whenever a historian wants to write a history of world war i based on social letters. How many of you are going to read . 500, 1000 . How many. 00 of the letters are you going to read . And there is the further bias, historians, we like to think we are belligerent, but we are also pretty lazy and normal human beings, and if there are four different sets of letters in an archive, believe me, the one that is the most nicely handwritten with the most elegant sentences is going to be the source that we choose to read, meaning the ox ridge boy is who we are going to read, not a boy from liverpool who works in a factory. You want to get the point of view, but that is what we are going to do because it is a hell , of a lot easier than reading the scrawl from a dude in a factory in liverpool. There is that bias with social letters. You have a smaller sample, you are going to have to make choices, representation is difficult. Further, even though all different classes wrote these letters, there is a misrepresentation in that you still have to be motivated to write. There is a level of education that will come into those sources. A lot of men did not write letters, especially from lower classes. So, how much are their voices represented in letters . Finally, there are some very important silences in soldier letters. Who is the audience for a soldier letter . Sometimes, a pal on the homefront two is somehow not in the war. Sometimes a dad or a brother. But by far and away, the audience for soldier letters is mother, wife, or girlfriend. That is the audience of a soldier letter. So how does that affect how a soldier writes about daily life and his thoughts at or near the front in france . Well, when historians only focused on soldier letters to describe life in france for all these three different armies, they came up with a believe that in france, from 1914 to 1918, there were no women. [laughter] dr. Nelson empty. Very strange. We have the evidence. The evidence is in the soldier letters. The soldiers never saw any women in france. Never talked about any women. I will admit, once in a while, there is a mention, and it goes like this darling, you should have seen the two ugly flags i saw yesterday down by the wells in this belgian town. That is about the only mention of women. So, a fundamental and huge element of soldier life does not exist in the major source of social history for soldiers in world war i. So, where did we find those women, and where do we find how soldiers spoke to each other . We will find a source where the audience is soldiers, not the home front. Soldier newspapers printed by and for soldiers at or near the front. First of all, this was my phd project, and unlike those millions of letters, this was a very nicely defined source space. I was able to read every french soldier newspaper, every british soldier newspaper, every australian, crucially every canadian. [laughter] dr. Nelson and all 12,000 german soldier newspapers. There are italian soldier newspapers, could not read those. They were done in the 1970s, not in terrible depth. That is a phd waiting to be done. And there are no russian soldier newspapers, just ones read by the elite officers, but beyond that nothing. There are several languages of hofsburg newspapers. That is a project for a multilingual historian to really dig deep into. But i did not read those. And world war i was the golden age of soldier newspapers. You had a literate audience, and crucially you did not have mobility. World war ii is not a good war for soldier newspapers. Too much movement, western front especially, but also the Eastern Front. But the western front, especially static. Four years of setting in behind the lines, finding printing presses, finding rooms for editors, and sitting down and making newspapers. It was fantasyland for soldier newspapers, and we will probably never see anything like that again. So what are these newspapers . First of all, the authors. You get to choose from a massive army to pick your editors. You pick people with the right background, for the most part. Of course, educated, often journalistic or editorial backgrounds, often in the publishing business, but also lots of lawyers, teachers, etc. People who make sense to be chosen for this position. Half to 2 3, of all three armies, half to 2 3 are officers, 1 3 are lower ranks. These are older men. Something has happened by the activity 1915. The newspapers are up and running by 1915. By then, we have had a demographic shift of all three armies. These armies in 1914 were mainly in their 20s, professional standing armies before. All those are gone by early 1915. Those men are dead, and we have what are essentially replacement armies. They have called up very young 30plusyearold reservists, old people, over 30, ancient people according to my kids. So you have an army of very young people and very old people, according to 15yearolds. Ok . Youve got a demographic split, and then you have those young people at the front, the faster people, the people who do not have children or are married. They are the front. And to be more idealistic, hotheaded, nothing to lose. They are 19, they are invincible. They are the front, and the 30 plusyearolds are behind the lines, doing supply, etc. They are older, they tend to be more conservative, they have a family, they have a lot to lose. They do not want to take chances, so they are working behind the lines, doing all that business including editing and writing newspapers for the troops. And these newspapers are at all levels, from big army level newspapers all the way down to Company Level newspapers. Every unit level in these armies is represented by a newspaper. Not unit has their own newspaper, but these are the different levels, from much fancier looking army level ones, to handwritten Company Level stuff at the bottom level. Production, in late 1914 the first ones appear, and those are handwritten, nailed to trees, to be read by passing soldiers. In 1915, you have mimeographs. Getting a few hundred copies. By mid1915, for the most part, these newspapers have printing presses. Somewhere down the line, they found printing presses, or they write and create the newspapers at the front and then they send them to paris somewhere further behind the line to get them printed and sent back. Distribution mainly through railway stations, canteens, and mail subscriptions. The soldiers are paying for and sending in subscriptions to have this stuff mailed to them, or handed out in the larger units, mailed within those units. How many . The british and dominion armies had 107 distinct newspapers, and the biggest of those newspapers had runs of up to about 5000 per month. Most newspapers are monthly. Some of the higherlevel ones come out more often, but most of these are monthly. Up to 5000 per month were some of the biggest british newspapers. The french had around 200 distinct titles, and collectively in 1916, about 100,000 french soldier newspapers were being produced each month and distributed. Now those numbers, the biggest british distributor was 5000, but altogether, more towards 35,000 to 50,000 per month, 100,000 in total for the french per month. That means on the face of it, a minority of allied troops saw one of these soldier newspapers, on the face of it. But there are elements of newspaper reading in the early 19th century that we have to keep in mind. First of all, reading aloud in a cafe in 1910 with several people was very normal behavior in european cities before world war i. Yes, 100,000 newspapers distributed among the french, but how many of these were read aloud to other troops in the dugout . Further, how many people read each issue . These would be passed around and read until they met their obvious, inevitable fate, toilet paper. Some were saved for me to read 100 years later. [laughter] dr. Nelson so, it is difficult to tell the level to which french and british saw , somewhere around 50 , but it is hard to tell how much these get passed around. The germans, on the other hand, we know everybody read social soldier newspapers in the german army. While only 115 distinct titles, so less than the french army, way more were produced in the german army. On the western front in 1916, a million soldier newspapers appeared each month for an army of 3 million soldiers. On the Eastern Front, one million to 1. 5 sorry, 2 million newspapers were produced each month for an army of one million to 1. 5 million, if that seems strange. So, way more saturation on this front. So why is that the case . I know we will talk more about the Eastern Front today, already introduced yesterday. On the western front, at those canteens that were not far from germany, there were german homefront newspapers available to read. You could get reasonably recent german homefront newspapers. In other words, german soldier newspapers on the western front had some competition. Also, german officers could read french newspapers. On the Eastern Front, way out in the east, it took two weeks for a german homefront newspaper to show up, and you were in a total foreign landscape. You are not reading any local material. Much less competition for those newspapers and a deep desire for those newspapers. The germans felt isolated. They were in a very alien landscape compared to the germans on the western front surrounded by civilization and people. They had been studying since they were fighters old. Five years old. France was not some foreign, alien landscape to german soldiers. Germans wanted to have their newspapers about the east while they were in the east. Censorship, there is very little material on british censorship. Nothing to be found in archives that i have found. Could only go off what was in the newspapers themselves. The editor of a magazine wrote, we are not allowed to insert the names of the various places we go to, neither are we allowed to discuss too minutely the ends and outs about our misunderstanding and unpleasantness with the germans. Neither are we permitted to criticize too freely our political enemies and friends. Thats about all we learned about censorship, and it is in the mode of all communication and description of the british newspapers, humor. Always, everything. We will get back to that. Thats about all we know. Officers likely looked over the unit newspaper, and then it went out. The french, in 1916 there was informal censorship. Officers told to make sure that morale would not be lowered by soldiers reading these newspapers. After the 1917 mutinies in the french army it becomes more formal. Every copy has to be sent to headquarters before it can be sent to the troops. In germany, there was more formal censorship. In 1916, you had to send a copy of every issue to the War Press Office before you can send it out. Very interestingly, in 1916, that same War Press Office attempts to have propaganda articles inserted into these newspapers. They write what they called for correspondence, correspondent articles framed very hamfisted way to appear as if they are not propaganda. A story about franz and hans sitting around a fire, saying, you know, franz, we really should buy some more bonds. [applause] dr. Nelson really hamfisted stuff like this sent out to the editors of the newspapers, not ordered, would you please consider placing these articles in your soldier newspapers . And we get the letters back from the officers to the war press saying, not a chance. This appears in our newspaper, i lose all my subscriptions overnight. Right there in the letters, i will lose all my paying subscribers overnight if this garbage appears. In other words this is really strong evidence that these newspapers are not propaganda german army. E these are from the soldiers, for the soldiers. And what someone like me has to do, especially in a phd defense, is argue why on earth are we to believe that what we find in the soldier newspapers in any way represents the voices of the soldiers . How do we know these are not the nazi equivalent of free pamphlets handed out to soldiers . That is hard to make a case, what appeared on a nazi pamphlet reflected soldier beliefs, if it was mass printed and handed out to soldiers. That is a hard case to make. For world war i, how do i make the connection to say, this is not just propaganda in here . First of all, they paid for these. Soldiers paid money for these newspapers. Any specialist of newspapers will tell you that is on enormously important factor. People do not pay for propaganda pieces. They paid for them. And second, especially in the larger newspapers, they are full of advertising. Capitalism tells us that companies only paid for ads in newspapers that the readership recognizes and buys and wants to read. You dont pay for ads in a propaganda organ that has no connection with your audience. Ok, and also there is selfcensorship going on all the time. It is impossible to really get to, but these editors, there was a selfcensorship that happened immediately with those propaganda pieces. Editors censored those pieces out of the newspapers because they knew their audience would not accept it. And one of the most surprising