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Tone-Deaf Propaganda: American Perceptions and Misperceptions of Italy during the Great War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 March 2023

Dario Fazzi Open the ORCID record for Dario Fazzi [Opens in a new window]
Dario Fazzi*
Affiliation:
Roosevelt Institute for American Studies, 4331CK Middelburg, The Netherlands
*
d.fazzi@roosevelt.nl
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Abstract

One of the ways in which Wilsonianism permeated Europe during the Great War was through the activities of the Committee on Public Information (CPI). Historians are still discussing the effectiveness of the CPI's propaganda abroad. This article contributes to this debate by focusing on and problematising the case of Italy. The Italian scenario confronted the CPI with a series of challenges that exposed the limits of America's germinal public diplomacy. The author's argument is that, in spite of its numerous attempts, the CPI's activities in Italy resulted in a substantial failure, which was mostly due to an inter-institutional conflict of interests and competences between the CPI and the US embassy in Rome. Such a short-circuit prevented US propagandists from developing a genuine understanding of the Italian public's preferences and resulted in what people in the Peninsula perceived as a general lack of empathy.

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Article
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Contemporary European History , First View , pp. 1 - 12
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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19 David Kennedy, Over Here: The First World War and American Society (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2004); Alan Axelrod, Selling the Great War: The Making of American Propaganda (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2009).

20 David Mould, ‘Washington's War on Film: Government Film Production and Distribution 1917–1918’, Journal of the University Film Association, 32, 3 (1980), 17–29.

21 Clayton Funk, ‘Popular Culture, Art Education, and the Committee on Public Information during World War I, 1915–1919’, Visual Arts Research, 37, 1 (2011), 67–78.

22 Clayton Funk, ‘The Committee on Public Information and the Mobilization of Public Opinion in the United States during World War I: The Effects on Education and Artists’, Journal of Social Theory and Art Education, 14 (1994), 120–47. Stephen Ponder, Managing the Press: Origins of the Media Presidency, 1897–1933 (New York, NY: Palgrave, 1998), especially 91–107.

23 See Nick Fischer, ‘The Committee on Public Information and the Birth of US State Propaganda’.

24 Report on the Committee of Public Information by M.I. 4–8, The Military Intelligence Branch, Executive Division, General Staff, May 1918, 22–3.

25 Nick Fischer's and John Maxwell Hamilton's quoted works are, in this regard, breaking new grounds in the analysis of the CPI as the first example of state-coordinated propaganda. See also Gregg Wolper, ‘Wilsonian Public Diplomacy: The Committee on Public Information in Spain’, Diplomatic History, 17, 1 (1993), 17–34, and Caitlin E. Schindler, The Origins of Public Diplomacy in US Statecraft: Uncovering a Forgotten Tradition (New York, NY: Palgrave, 2018).

26 Report on the Committee of Public Information by M.I. 4–8, The Military Intelligence Branch, Executive Division, General Staff, May 1918, 35.

27 Burton St. John, III, ‘An Enduring Legacy of World War I: Propaganda, Journalism, and the Domestic Struggle over the Commodification of Truth’, in Paul M. Haridakis, Barbara S. Hugenberg and Stanley T. Wearde, eds., War and the Media: Essays on News Reporting, Propaganda and Popular Culture (Jefferson, GA: McFarland, 2009).

28 Letter from Will Irwin to George Creel, 15 Feb. 1918, Record Group 63: Committee on Public Information, NC-7, Entry 1: General Correspondence of George Creel, Chairman, July 1917–Mar. 1919, Irwin, Will, Folder 334, NARA, 1.

29 John Gooch, The Italian Army and the First World War (New York, NY: Cambridge University Press, 2014).

30 Paul du Quenoy, ‘With Allies Like These, Who Needs Enemies? Russia and the Problem of Italian Entry into World War I’, Canadian Slavonic Papers/Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, 45, 3/4 (2003), 409–40.

31 Daniela Rossini, Woodrow Wilson and the American Myth in Italy.

32 Richard Bellamy, Croce, Gramsci, Bobbio and the Italian Political Tradition (Colchester: ECPR Press, 2014).

33 ‘President Wilson's Note to the Belligerent Nations’, The New York Times, 21 Dec. 1916, 1.

34 The Ambassador in Italy (Page) to the Secretary of State, 27 Dec. 1916, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, 1916, Supplement, The World War (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1929), 121.

35 ‘Suggestions Concerning the War Made by President Wilson 18 Dec. 1916, and Replies of Belligerents and Neutrals’, American Journal of International Law, 11, 4 (1917), 288–317. See also Stefano Marcuzzi, ‘A Machiavellian Ally? Italy in the Entente (1914–1918)’, in Vanda Wilcox, ed., Italy in the Era of the Great War (Leiden: Brill, 2018).

36 The Ambassador in Italy (Page) to the Secretary of State, 7 Jan. 1917, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, vol. I (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939), 745.

37 Ibid.

38 Ibid., 750.

39 Daniela Rossini, ‘“Profeta per un Anno”: Woodrow Wilson e l'Italia nella Grande Guerra’, in Daniele Fiorentino and Matteo Sanfilippo, eds., Stati Uniti e Italia nel nuovo scenario internazionale 1898–1918 (Rome: Gangemi, 2010), 157–68.

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44 Ibid.

45 Liliana Saiu, Stati Uniti e Italia nella Grande Guerra, 1914–1918 (Florence: Olschki, 2003).

46 Letter from George Creel to Frank Marion, 26 Oct. 1917, Record Group 63: Committee on Public Information, NC-7, Entry 1: General Correspondence of George Creel, Chairman, July 1917–Mar. 1919, Frank J. Marion, Folder 8, NARA, 1.

47 George Creel, How We Advertised America (New York, NY: Harp & Brothers, 1920).

48 Letter from Frank J. Marion to George Creel, 15 Jan. 1918, Record Group 63: Committee on Public Information, NC-7, Entry 1: General Correspondence of George Creel, Chairman, July 1917–Mar. 1919, Frank J. Marion, folder 8, 3.

49 Memorandum from George Creel to Will Irwin, 9 May 1918, in ibid., Will Irwin, Folder 334, NARA, 3.

50 Daniela Rossini, Woodrow Wilson and the American Myth in Italy, 121.

51 In Apr. 1918 Creel wrote to Frank I. Cobb saying he agreed on the necessity for further work in Italy, as the US had been sending there only ‘picked men’, letter from George Creel to Frank I. Cobb, 16 Apr. 1918, Record Group 63: Committee on Public Information, NC-7, Entry 1: General Correspondence of George Creel, Chairman, July 1917–Mar. 1919, Frank I. Cobb, Folder 124, NARA 1.

52 Letter from George Creel to Will Irwin, 1 Aug. 1918, in ibid., S.A. Cotillo, Folder 144, NARA, 1.

53 Letter from Salvatore Cotillo to George Creel, 22 Oct. 1918, in ibid. See also Salvatore Cotillo, Report of Work Performed in Italy for the Committee on Public Information, 22 Oct. 1918, in ibid., S.A. Cotillo, Folder 145, NARA, 3.

54 On 1 Aug. 1918, Creel decided to call Cotillo back to the United States, in ibid., Miscellaneous, Folder 328, NARA, 1. Letter from George Creel to Vincent H. Auleta, 1 Aug. 1918, in ibid., Miscellaneous, Folder 6, NARA, 1.

55 Writing to Frank Cobb, Creel acknowledged that the committee had only sent ‘picked men’ to Italy ‘for some time’ and that this had hampered the CPI's efforts in that country, see Letter from George Creel to Frank I. Cobb, in ibid., Frank I. Cobb, Folder 124, NARA 1.

56 Letter from Frederick C. Howe to George Creel, 27 May 1918, in ibid., Frederick C. Howe, Folder 315, NARA, 1.

57 Letter from John Hearley to George Creel, 25 Oct. 1918, in ibid., Charles Merriam, Folder 17, NARA, 1.

58 Memorandum from George Creel to Will Irwin, 4 May 1918, in ibid., Will Irwin, Folder 334, NARA, 1.

59 Another critical point came in Jan. 1918, after Wilson's statement on Austria–Hungary. US Secretary of State Robert Lansing wrote to Wilson on 25 Jan. 1918, saying that Italian people were dissatisfied with the president's words. The Italians believed that if their frontiers had to be regulated only on the basis of nationality, they would have remained vulnerable to attacks and the Adriatic Question would have remained unsettled. Lansing stressed that it was crucial to give Italians some sort of reassurance: ‘if Italy gains the impression that she is not to strengthen her position in the Adriatic, the Italian people will become discouraged and feel that the war has no actual interest for them’, Lansing wrote. See the Ambassador in Italy (Page) to the Secretary of State, 7 Jan. 1917, in Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States, The Lansing Papers, 1914–1920, vol. II (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1939), 89.

60 The Ambassador in Italy (Page) to the Secretary of State, 26 Mar. 1918, in ibid., 117.

61 Costigliola, Frank C., Awkward Dominion: American Political, Economic, and Cultural Relations with Europe, 1919–1933 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988), 94CrossRefGoogle Scholar.