The Propaganda of War

Individuals tend to seek adventure through war to counter the effects of boredom. The wars of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries have found many men and women who cannot imagine life without combat. They enlist because of the power war brings them and the knowledge that they literally hold life and death in their hand. Governments, too, seek adventure through war. Propaganda is the manipulation of ideas to influence the beliefs of the masses and bring about a specific action. War propaganda has been used widely throughout history and for a broad variety of purposes, often to inspire military enlistment and a hatred of the enemy.

This book examines military enlistment as a result of boredom that comes with everyday existence, or as an element of hopelessness and the desire to escape from intolerable pressures at home; recruitment propaganda and its relation to the promise of adventure, marketable skills, and personal transformation; and the inability to chill and leave military life behind after one’s time in the armed forces has ended. The material in this book is excerpted from For God, Gold, and Glory: A History of Military Service and Man’s Search for Power, Wealth, and Adventure, also by Martina Sprague. The full series comprises the following books:

1. The Forces of War: Patriotism, Tradition, and Revenge

2. The Financial Incentives of War: Poverty Draft, Mercenaries, and Volunteers in Foreign Armies

3. The Propaganda of War: Personal Transformation and the Search for Adventure

4. The Glory of War: The Way to Historical Immortality

5. The Reality of War: Boredom, Disillusion, and Desertion