Description
During World War I, the Allies, who had a near-monopoly on news agencies worldwide, accused Germany of the worst atrocities. Propaganda about atrocities became, in the hands of intelligent but unscrupulous men, an exact science. Incredible tales of German barbarism in France and Belgium created the myth of the Germans’ exceptional brutality-a myth that continues to influence the minds of many people today. The Uhlans-it was solemnly reported to the whole world-amused themselves by tossing Belgian babies into the air and piercing them with their bayonets as they fell; they also cut off the hands of Red Cross nurses. The Anglo-Saxon press and radio announced the crucifixion of Canadian prisoners.
But perhaps the most repugnant and widely circulated “news” concerned a corpse-processing plant, in which the bodies of soldiers-both German and Allied-killed in action were “melted down” to extract fat and other products useful to the Central Powers’ war effort. The fact that Arthur Ponsonby, a prominent British historian and politician, debunked this myth did not prevent the Soviet prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials from once again accusing Germany of having set up a factory producing soap made from human fat in Danzig in 1942.
