Magicseeker
Dr. Margaret Anne Smith
English 3508
4th December 2018
Generals Die in Bed: Propaganda Versus the Realities of War
An analysis of propaganda and its effects are fundamental in understanding the perception of war in the public sphere. War propaganda was designed to influence the opinions of the public, enforce nationalistic ideals, and encourage men to enlist. To achieve the desired results, propaganda promoted an unrealistic version of war. In his novel Generals Die in Bed, Charles Yale Harrison systematically contradicts and invalidates the false pretences of bravery and glory which war propaganda fed to the public. Harrison reveals a more realistic depiction of war, of its effects, and of soldiers. The core concepts of war propaganda: bravery, the heroic soldier, the concept of the enemy, and glory are all addressed in the novel and contrasted against the realities.
Propaganda often portrayed soldiers as gallant heroes, strong warriors, and protectors; this appealed to people's desire to be a better version of themselves. In World War 1 and Propaganda, Troy Paddock writes that "Effective propaganda needs to meet its target audience halfway if it wants to be effective. Appealing to the emotions of the intended audience is certainly one approach." (Paddock, 14). War propaganda promised young soldiers a dream of glory, heroism, admiration from others, and even attraction from women. Soldiers were held up to an unrealistic ideal, but Harrison represents them more accurately as ordinary people who were placed under the constant threat of death. Throughout the novel, Harrison avoids describing the soldiers' actions with unrealistic and unattainable bravery; instead, he makes certain to insert the fear and confusion involved: "We are in the line – suddenly the enemy artillery begins to bombard vs. We cower behind the sandbags, trembling, white-faced, tight-lipped. Our own guns reply" (Harrison, 18). The diction used does not reflect the romanticized notions of heroism that newspapers of the time typically reported.
In the introduction, it is written: "If a screaming, one-ton shell launched from six miles away had your name, rank, and serial number on it, it mattered not one damn how brave you were" (Harrison, i). From the very beginning, the novel addresses a difference between the propaganda and the reality of war. The quote demonstrates the sentiments surrounding the concept of 'bravery'; the public had an image in their mind, developed by promotional posters and newspaper articles, of the 'brave soldier'. It was an idea which asserted that wars were won through bravery, and claimed that Canadian and American soldiers were braver than others. Harrison revokes that concept by addressing one of the many realities of war: a soldier's death typically depended on the location that he was standing when an attack hit, making them victims of circumstance. Despite the portrayals in the media, personality and other characteristics were irrelevant when under attack.
Despite the celebratory atmosphere when the community sends off new recruits, the novel identifies an underlying fear which indicates that the public appearance is not the complete situation. The narrator literally clings to a woman, symbolically clinging to the last traces of his home: "She is the last link between what I am leaving and the war. In a few minutes she will be gone. I am afraid now. I forget all my fine heroic phrases" (Harrison, 5). This demonstrates how the phrases and falsehoods enforced by propaganda fade when faced with the reality of the situation. The first chapters implement the idea of appearance versus the reality of war because it contrasts civilian life against the horrific chapters that follow.
One of the most interesting aspects of this novel is the concept of the 'enemy'. The narrator speaks on behalf of the troops as a whole when he mentions the sentiments about the German soldiers. There are one or two officers who make negative comments, or a few new recruits that excitedly talk about killing the enemy and participate in petty name-calling, but the narrator expresses that it is not the case for most people. In the trenches, the soldiers are usually depicted remaining neutral about the soldiers of the opposition. When they receive newspapers with Anti-Germanic material and atrocity stories, they are not subject to believe it: "Strangely, we never refer to the Germans as our enemy. In the week-old newspaper which comes up from the base we read of the enemy and the Hun, but this is newspaper talk and we place no stock in it. Instead we call him Heinie and Fritz. The nearest we get to unfriendliness is when we call him 'square-head'" (Harrison, 23). The other soldiers are not viewed as 'the enemy', other aspects of everyday life fill that role: "We have learned who our enemies are – the lice, some of our officers, and death" (Harrison23). The novel makes certain to demonstrate that there is no 'good side' and 'bad side'; whereas propaganda often dehumanizes and villainizes these other soldiers, Harrison humanizes them. "The most famous propaganda technique employed in the First World War, which all governments and most journalists used, was that of the atrocity story" (Cawood, 23). An atrocity story was often a fictitious or exaggeration of a horrendous act committed against our
soldiers and civilians. Such stories were designed to spur hatred for opposing soldiers and contrast them against the 'golden' image which propaganda had presented for American soldiers. Harrison reverses the concept of the atrocity stories by telling graphic details inflicted by our soldiers: "He will hold his trembling hands on high and stammer the international word for compassion and mercy. He will say that beautiful word comrade, a word born in suffering and sorrow, but we will stab him down shouting to one another" (Harrison, 29). In sharing these instances of violence, the perception of the two sides are rendered more equal. There are several more scenes of soldiers begging for mercy, but being met with death at the hands of our soldiers. It shows that there was considered to be no room for mercy in war, and contrasts the images displayed in propaganda.
New recruits nearing the end of the war were more likely to have the us-versus-them mentality and express more distain for the soldiers they fought. They would have spent a longer time being exposed to the anti-Germanic propaganda and atrocity stories because they spent the end of their childhood into their young adulthood in civilian life: "children were expected to go along with the group and play war games in which hating the enemy became great fun. Posters, picture books, and pamphlets made war part of childhood experience, using details sometimes linked to fairy tales that would have been familiar to most children" (Kingsbury, 169). The 'hatred of the enemy' in World War 1 was mild in comparison to the degree it reached in the second world war, when propaganda had more time to foster the resentment, negativity, and hatred; however, propaganda during the first world war also distorted the image of opposing soldiers. As Josef Seethaler writes in Selling War: The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the 'War on Terror' : "The great War was no longer a 'gentlemen's disagreement'. On the contrary, the respective public opinions viewed the enemy as the incarnation of evil, which precluded compromise and only considered unconditional surrender as a satisfactory outcome" (Seethaler, xi). Despite this being the general opinion in civilian life, it was not necessarily an accepted outlook to the soldiers who understood the falsities of propaganda, which is why it is important to note how Harrison approaches the idea of 'the enemy' in his novel. The interactions his characters have with German soldiers do not represent loathing; most interactions come with a degree of respect and mutual understanding for the situation that they are both in.
The novel also humanizes these other soldiers through the interactions the narrator has with them. In one scene, after capturing two German soldiers, he shares his cigarettes with them and, despite not speaking their language, attempts to have a conversation: "I want to tell these boys what I think, but the gulf of language separates us... The wounded one's cigarette goes out. I move the candle towards his mouth. He puts his thin hand on mine to steady it. The cigarette is lit. He looks into my eyes with that same doggish look and pats my hand in gratitude" (Harrison, 67). This scene humanizes the German soldiers by aligning them with the characters of Brownie, Broadbent, or fry, the narrator's fellow soldiers, as similar scenes have taken place earlier in the novel designed to convey moments of bonding.
One of the strongest examples of 'humanizing the enemy' is through the scene that names a fallen soldier that the narrator has killed. The narration makes readers consider the life of the German soldier prior to the war: "And Karl...? Maybe he was a farmer or a mechanic. Who knows? He could have died in a hundred way in civilian life" (Harrison, 74). The emotional and ungraceful bayonet scene where the narrator impales another soldier is not swift, but drawn out. It makes it difficult for the reader to dismiss the death and move on to the next scene. Once the soldier dies, and the scene appears to be over, Harrison further humanizes the fallen German soldier by providing the character with a brother distraught with grief, showing that the other side is not some nameless force. The narrator even imagines a letter from their mother: "I imagined that I see the happy face of the mother when she heard that her two boys were to be together. She must have written to the older one, the one that died at the end of my bayonet, to look after his younger brother. Take care of each other and comfort one another, she wrote, I am sure. (Harrison, 67). The image that he conjures in his mind of a concerned mother, would be one that many Canadian soldiers were familiar with as well.
The novel appears to revoke all the core framework of the war propaganda, denying any truth in these idealizations. In For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front, Celia Malone Kingsbury argues that the public opinion was not simply passive to the influence and manipulation of the representations in media or state propaganda; instead, Kingsbury declares that the public response to the war, including the rallying around the troops, was to a large extent a spontaneous movement of public opinion. The media had a role in producing it, of course, but they did not create it out of nothing. Media coverage has to be understood as to some extent a product of media response to public sentiments. Our interviews with journalists made it very clear that public opinion was a concern for them, and its influence was felt both positively and negatively. (Kingsbury, 99)
Propaganda developed out of the desires of the public. To please and satisfy the readership, media produced news that catered to the fantasy that the public desperately wanted to be true. Their part in developing war propaganda explains one of the reasons why the public had such a negative reaction to Generals Die in Bed. Harrison's novel threatened to shatter the false reality they helped build for themselves. Troy R. E. Paddock explains that censorship during the war may have limited how much newspapers could challenge government authority; however, "support for the war, in the form of propaganda, took an appearance that bore a closer resemblance to negotiation rather than manipulation. Whether it was the values that the nation was fighting to defend or the war aims that it hoped to achieve, newspaper attempts to mobilize citizens through propaganda navigated domestic differences among competing groups" (Paddock, 9-10). Because propaganda was a 'negotiation', where the public participated in the construction of these false images, it makes sense that they would be protective of the idealization they created.
The reader is presented with an example of the public's response to behaviour that does not coincide with their interpretation of war: "A jolly-faced routines civilian in evening dress sitting near me says: 'I say, he's funny, isn't he?' I stare at him. He turns to his female companion. I hear him whisper: 'Shell-shocked'" (Harrison, 90). The scene that takes place at the theatre demonstrates how the narrator's stoic response to the comedian is dismissed as 'shell shock' because it is an easy way to explain away the reaction and try to make it fit into their version of events; however, the general public would have a harder time trying to revoke everything addressed them in the novel.
One of the main false images fed to the public through propaganda that Harrison aims to discredit is the concept of achieving glory through war. Instead of the swift, distanced, and desensitized killing that would likely be imagined of war, a drawn out, unceremonious death is presented to the readers. "I want to strike again and again. But I cannot. My bayonet does not come clear. I pull, tug, jerk. It does not come out. I have caught him between his ribs. The bones grip my bade. I cannot withdraw" (Harrison, 61). After the brutal killing scene, the narrator is praised and told that he will likely receive a military medal for his actions, a fact that sickens him. The medal does not seem to represent his bravery, as it is supposed to; rather, he feels that he is being commended for murder. Additionally, the concept of the 'glory of war' promoted through propaganda, is falsified in the novel by the reality of the soldiers' living conditions. The soldiers live like rats, with lice, filth, sores, rotting feet, and sleep deprivation. They are not achieving 'glory' through war, they are merely trying to survive. Their struggles are not to attack the enemy, it is to fight and survive their own environment.
Unlike in propaganda, Generals Die in Bed does not describe war as action-packed and glorious. The majority of scenes depict the soldiers sitting in the muddy trenches, being attacked by rats and fighting boredom; however, all this 'down time' is not just filled with a sense of dull boredom because the soldiers are in constant fear of an attack at any moment. The destruction of the evacuated town in 'Arras' further destroys the image of the idealized soldier; they partake in mindless vandalism, breaking and entering, theft, drinking, and destruction. Similar to how the novel humanizes the enemy, the novel also humanizes the Canadian soldiers whose propaganda had previously transformed them into greater beings.
One instance in the novel perfectly sums up the soldiers' sentiments on the uselessness of the concept of 'glory': "...lookit all the glory yuh get. Canadians saved the day' 'It's beer we want. To Hell with the glory'" (Harrison, 56). Despite propaganda advertising this 'glory' as some prize to be attained, achievable through serving their country, it has no actual value in war. Similarly to how it is revealed that 'bravery does not win wars' and cannot prevent bombs and gunfire from killing, 'glory' is also a meaningless concept in battle. When the narrator and his fellow soldiers are discussing what they desire most in the world, none of them wish for glory. They do not wish for the deaths of their 'enemies', they are mostly thinking of things to help their physical circumstances, such as food, sex, and bedding. "His wish is that the war would end, but this is against the rules of the game. the wish must be specific...if I ever get out of this, I'll never refuse a thing my mother sets before me" (Harrison, 22).
Propaganda during the first World War did not spur as severe hatred for opposing soldiers and military as the wars that followed; however, it did mark a significant shift in public opinion. World War 1 was when this 'hatred for the enemy' behaviour, produced by propaganda of the time, began to emerge to such degree. Propaganda praised its own soldiers and villanized others. Harrison uses his novel to demonstrate the realities of war; he contradicts the idealized notions of glory attained through war, reveals the harsh mental and physical conditions that soldiers experienced, and provided an alternative to the us-versus-them mentality. Generals Dies in Bed had a negative reception from the public because in revealing the lies and hypocrisies of war that propaganda perpetuated, the novel threatened to break the romanticized image the public had carefully built for themselves.
Works Cited
Cawood, Ian, and David McKinnon-Bell. The First World War. Routledge, 2001.
Kingsbury, Celia Malone. For Home and Country: World War I Propaganda on the Home Front. University of Nebraska Press, 2010.
Seethaler, Josef. Selling War : The Role of the Mass Media in Hostile Conflicts from World War I to the ""War on Terror"". Intellect, 2013.
Paddock, Troy R. E, editor. World War I and Propaganda. Brill, 2014.