During the First World War, the newspapers of the Entente and Central powers were flooded with reports of enemy atrocities, ranging from the crucifixion of soldiers and children to the mutilation of wounded soldiers. The Welsh press was no exception. Throughout 1914 and 1915 Welsh newspapers published at least 644 articles reporting on German atrocities. These articles were profoundly impactful on the people of Wales, encouraging enlistment and increasing support for the War in Wales. They were also integral in intensifying anti-German sentiment in Wales, which would culminate in May 1915 after the sinking of the RMS Lusitania.
Academically, this topic had not been explored, and my research was the first to discuss the link between atrocity reports and Welsh support during the war. My main aims were to assess how impactful the atrocity reports were on garnering enlistment and support in Wales, and to determine the relationship between atrocity reporting and anti-German sentiment, especially concerning the Lusitania riots in Wales.
To accomplish these objectives, I first had to research the veracity of the reports and to identify the intention of the reports; whether they were genuine or were written with the sole purpose of manipulating the reader. This led me to reading Alan Horne and John Kramer’s book, German Atrocities 1914: A History of Denial (2001). This book completely reworked the historiography around the reality of German atrocities in Belgium, as it was previously believed that they were fabricated for the sake of propaganda. Yet Horne and Kramer found that atrocities did occur and, though the Allied reporting of these atrocities was written with passion and partisanship, it did depict real events and was, in a way, a form of reacting to ‘German methods of warfare’. Additionally, Horne and Kramer argue that atrocity reporting was one of the most defining issues of the war because of its power in mobilising national opinion. I hoped to find out what effect reports of German atrocities had on mobilising Welsh support and how Wales reported on the atrocities.
In the immediate onset of the Great War, 1914, the reports of German atrocities had a profound impact on the people of Wales that would continue to linger in the public mind throughout the war. The reports that arrived from Belgium and Northern France horrified and shocked the population of Wales. The cartoons of Joseph Morewood Staniforth were especially influential. A great example of one of these cartoons is Staniforth’s ‘War, As Practised by Germany’ (figure 1), which is an extremely brutal depiction of the pillaging and burning of the Belgian village of Linsmeau by the German army. While of course clearly exaggerated, Linsmeau was destroyed by the German army and some of its inhabitants were executed. This cartoon specifically emphasises the value of Staniforth’s cartoons as they depict real events, yet appeal to civilian imagination and give a visual representation of what people would have read about in newspapers at the onset of the war. Staniforth’s cartoons offer a unique Welsh outlook on German atrocities, and they also appealed to Welsh people as a distinct part of British society, making them extraordinarily valuable to my dissertation.
Figure 1: Joseph Morewood Staniforth, ‘War, As Practised by Germany’, Western Mail, 21 August 1914, https://www.cartoonww1.org/image.htm?id=2647
The press used these atrocities to reinforce the idea that Wales was fighting in a ‘just war’ for the good of all. They were fighting an evil foe who massacred and killed the innocents of Belgium. The atrocity reports in 1914 gave Wales, and Britain more broadly, moral superiority, which is especially emphasised by another one of Staniforth’s cartoons; ‘The Two Mothers’ (Figure 2). In this cartoon, we can see a great example of how people viewed Germany. It is portrayed as a war-mongering nation fed on gunpowder and ‘murder treacle’ whose only goal is to fight and kill. In contrast, the Welsh are raised on ‘religious nationalism’, the ‘Eisteddfod’, and ‘right living’. Simply, the Welsh are morally superior to the Germans.
Figure 2: Joseph Morewood Staniforth, ‘The Two Mothers’, Western Mail, 2 October 1914, https://www.cartoonww1.org/image.htm?id=55
Of course, many of the reports of German atrocities in Belgium and Northern France were exaggerated. This is especially emphasised by the South Wales Weekly Post, article ‘Child Crucified’, published 31 October 1914. Which describes how a French Chaplain found an 8-year-old girl ‘nailed by the hands and the feet to the door of a house’. Whilst there is no evidence of this occurring, this article’s extreme depiction exemplifies what people thought Germans were morally capable of. In summary, atrocity reporting in 1914 increased war support throughout Wales and provided a justification for British intervention in the war, but it also raised anti-German sentiment.
After identifying that German atrocity reports in the Welsh press, I wanted to examine their effects. I discovered that not only did they increase support for the war, especially when discussing enlistment, but they also began to solidify support. This is especially emphasised by Staniforth’s ‘An Unexpected Effect’ cartoon (Figure 3).
Figure 3: Joseph Morewood Staniforth, ‘An Unexpected Effect’, Western Mail, 16 August 1915, https://www.cartoonww1.org/image.htm?id=324
The ‘just indignation’ towards the Zeppelin raids was exemplified in Wales by the 1916 Penrhiwceiber riot, where a patriotic and violent crowd destroyed a German jeweller’s shop and threatened the resident German in reaction to a recent Zeppelin raid in England. Not only does it convey a unity across Britain, but it also conveys the blurring of lines between German civilians and soldiers. Penrhiwceiber demonstrated that the reports of atrocities, specifically the Zeppelin raids, raised anti-German sentiment. I also discovered that the opposition to the reporting on German atrocities in Wales, mainly coming from the Merthyr Pioneer, had very little impact on Welsh public opinion. This is seen by the 1915 election of the pro-war candidate Charles Stanton in Merthyr Tydfil, defeating the other Labour and more anti-war candidate James Winstone. The impact of opposition to atrocity reporting was relatively contained between Christian pacifists and socialists and did not even deeply influence the historically left-leaning Merthyr Tydfil.
I also examined the sinking of the Lusitania and the anti-German riots and demonstrations in reaction to the tragedy. The RMS Lusitania was a British ocean liner that was sunk off the coast of Southern Ireland in May 1915 by a German U-boat, killing 1,197 civilians. This tragedy had an intense impact on Wales, with the Cambria Daily Leader naming the atrocity the ‘horror of the age’. The tragedy did an incredible amount to boost and completely solidify Welsh support for the war.
In what I argued to be an ‘excess of war support’, many people in Wales took to the streets to riot and demonstrate against Germans living in their communities. Riots occurred in Rhyl and Neath, whereas what the press called ‘demonstrations’ – protests that did not escalate into widespread violence – occurred in Aberavon, Baglan, Briton Ferry, Cardiff, Carmarthen, Llangollen, Milford Haven, Skewen, and Swansea. Most of these riots and demonstrations were exhibitions of people’s support for the war against Germany. In Llangollen, for example, the Llangollen Advertiser noted that the anti-German demonstration was performed to conjure something in the nature of a ‘waistcoat pocket edition’ of what had happened in larger towns across the country, such as the anti-German riots in Liverpool and London.
The sinking of the Lusitania was the ‘seminal catastrophe’ that led to the complete and utter demonisation of the enemy in Wales. Leading the nation to completely view not just the German soldier as the enemy, but all of the German people. This even included German immigrants who, pre-1914, were very well liked in their communities. This is apparent in Swansea by Mr Paul Schenker, a German immigrant and hairdresser who had been living in Swansea since at least 1899. Schenker pre-1914 was widely respected in Swansea, as evidenced by many complimentary articles about him. Yet as the war began, people immediately started to question Schenker’s loyalty. Schenker, responding to the rumours, defended himself in a published letter to the Cambrian Daily Leader, 18 September 1914. In which he asserted his loyalty and ‘Britishness’, imploring people to recognise that he was loyal. Yet after the Lusitania tragedy, he wrote in to the newspaper again in a very different tone. In an article published on 15 May 1915, he declared that:
‘I disowned Germany twenty years ago, and I am now confessing my humility and shame of having the blood of a people who have outraged humanity’.
This demonstrates the impact of the war on Germans living in Wales. Schenker felt the need not only to apologise for Germany’s atrocities but to apologise for even being born a German. A few days after Schenker’s article, his place of business was smashed in by a crowd during the 21 May 1915 demonstration.
The Lusitania riots and demonstrations in Wales have not received much attention academically, which is a shame due to their rich value to any historian interested in Welsh or British history during the Great War. Reports of German atrocities were influential in stimulating pro-war sentiment in Wales and in mobilising and sustaining support for the war from the period 1914-1916. Furthermore, the atrocity reports fed anti-German sentiment, which was in itself an expression of war support. I hope my research will spark interest in this important episode in Welsh history, for there is still far more to research on the topic, especially post-1916.
