To nations which had been fed stories of the Germany Army's atrocities in the Great War - real and invented - of Belgian towns burned, poison gas and flamethrowers used, civilians mutilated and tortured - the stories of what was done to German soldiers' corpses (and possibly those of their enemies) were shocking but credible. The story of the "corpse factory" would have repercussions beyond the end of the war.
GERMAN DEAD
DETAILS WHICH COULD BE SPARED.
LONDON, 17th April. The newspaper Independence Belge, states that a German offal recovery company with a dividend earning capital of a quarter of a million sterling, has been established at St. Vith, near the Belgian frontier, in a thick forest. Train loads of naked corpses from the West front arrive daily at the factory. The hands, wearing oilskins and masks, and armed with long, hooked poles, push the corpses on to an endless chain, which picks them up with big hooks. The chain carries the bodies to a compartment where they are disinfected, steamed, and dried.
Finally they are automatically detached from the chain and dropped into a great cauldron of steam, being treated, while being slowly stirred by machinery, for eight hours under a process. The results include stearine, tallow, and oil, the latter being redistilled at a separate oil refinery. The refined oil is yellowish-brown in colour, and packed in small cakes like petroleum. A portion of the by-products are sent to the soap-makers. The corpse factory is thoroughly scientific, fitted with the latest appliances and electric machinery, and employs two chemists and eighty men, who are closely guarded, and not allowed to leave the works. -Evening Post, 18/4/1917.
THE CADAVER QUIBBLE.
CORPSE FACTORY HORRORS.
GERMAN CANNIBALISM.
LONDON, April 23. Newspapers agree that the belated official repudiation of the corpse factories is not acceptable. The London "Times" characterises the German quibble regarding the word "cadaver" as definitely and deliberately untrue. It repeats its charge that the Germans are using soldiers' corpses, stating that the Government lists fixing the prices of fodder differentiates between Tierkorpermehl, or meal made from animal carcases, and Kadavermehl, or meal made from corpses.
Speaking at Manchester, Mr. W. F. Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand, said German madness had culminated in boiling slain soldiers for commercial requirements. He expressed horror, and said he trusted the evil power of Germany would be broken for generations.
Speaking at Derby, Earl Curzon, Lord President of the Council, confirmed the facts regarding the German corpse factories. He added "No horror is repulsive to Germans."
The Bishop of Carlisle described the operations as cannibalism, recalling the Prussians' cannibalism during the Thirty Years War. — (A. and N.Z. Cable.) -Auckland Star, 24/4/1917.
“NOT ACCEPTABLE”
DENIAL OF CORPSE FACTORY CONFIRMATION IRREFUTABLE.
By Telegraph — Press Association — Copyright Australian and N.Z. Cable Association LONDON. April 22.
The newspapers agree that the belated official repudiation of the corpse factories is not acceptable. It is noteworthy that Berlin deliberated for five days before it challenged “The Times" translation of the “Lokal Anzeiger’s” admission.
The “Evening News” points out that the American Consul-General confirms the story that the Chinese Government was largely influenced in breaking off relations by the authenticated facts regarding the establishments for the conversion of corpses.
The “Daily Mail” says the Germans eat horses and tan the hides, but never boil them down. The “Lancet” says the facts are undeniable and are confirmed from many sources. A thousand bodies yield two tons of fat or four hundredweight of glycerine.
CORPSE FACTORIES.
WIDESPREAD LOATHING
FEARS FOR ALLIED DEAD.
LONDON, April 26. The wave of intense disgust and loathing is widespread over the revelations of the German horrors — utilising the bodies of soldiers for conversion into fat, oils, and pigs' food. The horrible news has stunned the British and French people, and has produced a greater moral effect than all the previous German brutalities and crimes. It is feared here that the Germans are probably using the Allied dead for the same abominable purpose. It is suggested that aeroplanes should distribute the news in Turkey and the East, with the object of effectively disillusioning Mahometans. It is stated that there is a regular service of corpse trains from the front to the interior of Germany. They run only at dead of night, and the utmost secrecy is observed.
Commenting on the German corpse factory the Maharajah of Bikanir states: — "We may be certain that the German authorities are not more considerate to the remains of fallen foes than to their own fighters. Therefore it is practically certain that the bodies of British and French soldiers have been removed from the field of battle by the Germans and undergone like indignities, also that Indian warriors have been used in the same loathsome way. Nothing could exceed the of horror and detestation with which this latest crime of Germany against mankind is regarded in every part of India."
As Australians only on one occasion yielded ground, it is unlikely that many, if any, met this fate.
L'Homme Enchaine says that the existence of the German corpse factory is confirmed by the evidence, of the American Consul.
A wounded Kent sergeant, says that when at the front German prisoners jestingly referred to the corpse factories. One said. "Even when we are dead our work is not done. We are wired together in batches, and boiled down in factories, making fat for munitions, feeding pigs and poultry." Prisoners called their margerine "corpse fat," suspecting its origin. -Nelson Evening Mail, 7/5/1917.
GERMAN CORPSE FACTORY
A CAPTURED ARMY ORDER.
(Australian and N.Z. Cable Association.) (Rec. May 17, 12.20 p.m.) j
LONDON, May 16. A Western front German army order was picked up dated December, 1916, requesting details as to unit, date, and death or illness, in connection with corpses sent to the corpse utilisation establishments. -Nelson Evening Mail, 17/5/1917.
HUNS AND THEIB DEAD
GREAT CORPSE FACTORY.
"We pass through, Everingcourt. There is a dull smell in the air, as if lime were being burnt. We are passing the great corpse exploitation establishment (Kadaververwertungsanstalt) of this army group. The fat that is won here is turned into lubricating oils, and everything else is ground down in the bones mill into a powder, which is used for mixing with pigs' food and as manure."
This description of the German Corpse Exploitation Establishment behind their lines north of Rheims is furnished by Herr Karl Rosner, special correspondent of the Berlin "Lokalanzeiger" on the Western front. The statement corroborates an account of this new and horrible German industry which appeared in the "Independance Belge" for April 10, taken from "La Belgique," of Leyden, in Holland. Moreover, it will be recalled that one of the American Consuls, on leaving Germany in February, stated in Switzerland that the Germans were distilling glycerine for nitro-glycerine from the bodies of their dead, and thus were obtaining some, of their explosives.
The Belgian account referred to (omitting the most repulsive details) states: "We have known for long that the Germans stripped their dead behind the firing-line, fastened them into bundles of three or four bodies with iron wire, and then despatched these grisly bundles to the rear. Until recently the trains laden with the dead were sent to Leraing, near Liege, and a point north of Brussels, where there were refuse consumers. Much surprise was caused by the fact that of late this traffic has proceeded in the direction of Gerolstein, and it was noted that on each wagon was written 'D.A.V.G.'
"German science is responsible for the ghoulish idea of the formation of the German Offal Utilisation Company (Ltd.) ('D..A.V.G.' or 'Deutsche Abfall-Verwertungs Gesellschaft'), a dividend-earning company with a capital of £250,000, the chief factory of which has been constructed 1000 yards from the railway connecting St. Vith, near the Belgian frontier, with Gerolstein, in the lonely, little-frequented Eifel district, south-west of Coblentz. This factory deals specially with the dead from the West front. If the results are as good as the company hopes, another will be established to deal with corpses on ,the East front.
"The factory is invisible from the railway. It is placed deep in forest country, with a specially thick growth of trees about it. Live wires surround it. The works are about 700 ft. long and 110 ft. broad, and the railway runs completely round them. In the north-west corner of the works the discharge of the trains takes place. The trains arrive full of bare bodies, which are unloaded by the workers who live at the works. The men wear oilskin over-alls and masks with mica eyepieces. They are equipped with long, hooked poles, and push the bundles of bodies to an endless chain, which picks them with big hooks, attached at intervals of 2ft. The bodies are transported on this endless chain into a long, narrow compartment, where they pass through a bath which disinfects them. They then go through a drying chamber, and finally are automatically carried into a digester or great cauldron, in which they are dropped by an apparatus which detaches them from the chain. In the digester they remain from six to eight hours, and are treated by steam, which breaks them up while they are slowly stirred by machinery.
"From this treatment result several products. The fats are broken up into stearine, a form of tallow, and oils, which require to be redistilled before they can be used. The process of distillation is carried out by boiling the oil with carbonate of soda, and some part of the by-products resulting from this is used by German soapmakers. The oil distillery and refinery lie in the .south-eastern corner of the works. The refined oil is sent out in fine casks, like those used for petroleum, and is of a yellowish-brown colour. The fumes are exhausted from the buildings by electric fans, and are sucked through a great pipe to the northeastern corner, where they are condensed, and the refuse insulting is discharged into a sewer. There is no high chimney, as the boiler furnaces are supplied with air by electric fans.
"There is a laboratory, and in charge of the works is a chief chemist, two assistants and 75 men. All the employees are soldiers, and are attached to the 8th Army Corps. There is a sanatorium by the works, and under no pretext is any man permitted to leave them. They are guarded as prisoners at their appalling work." -Ashburton Guardian, 1/6/1917.
THE WESTERN THEATRE.
A GRUESOME FIND.
BUNDLES OF CORPSES FOR THE "FACTORY."
(Received June 23, 8.45 a.m.) LONDON, June 22
Pirrie Robinson, the "Times" correspondent, states that after clearing a wood on the Messines front, Welsh troops discovered a lot of German corpses ready packed in bundles, doubtless for transmission to the corpse factory. The bundles were carefully made-up, and loose arms and legs were stuffed in to make good weight. -Ashburton Guardian, 23/6/1917.
Those doubting Thomases who discredit reports about the German Corpse Factory are asked to ponder the subjoined grim story contained in a recent letter from neutral Holland: — A German railway waggon got across the frontier by an error, and as there was no mark on it to identify it it was sidetracked at a Dutch station. There it remained for some days until a horrible stench began to come from it. It was then opened by the Dutch officials, who found it packed with dead soldiers, standing upright, and bound together in bundles of four. It had been on the way to Liege, where, or in the neighborhood of which, a corpse factory has been established. -Evening Star, 2/7/1917.
"CORPSE FACTORIES" EXPLAINED.
THE GERMAN WORSHIP OF THE WOLF.
(London "Daily Mail.")
Hardened though they are to shock upon shock of Hun barbarity, many people scarcely credited — until proof came from a German newspaper — the terrible German "corpse factory."
"The Germans," they reflected, "are a European race. They belong to our common Aryan stock. They are decadent, brutalised; they have committed atrocities that have only been previously perpetrated by savage races in the dark age of world-history. But here is horror that savages have never done, horror wreaked not upon the Huns' enemies, but upon their own people; horror that surpasses cannibalism in its revolting details; horror that has sickened the souls of all humanity." The "corpse factory," they thought, must surely be some super-nightmare of war's crop of rumours. It was impossible.
And so it would be impossible were the Germans a European people or, indeed, a people of any of the ancient civilised races of the world. But they are none of these. They are not European, not Aryan. They are a race alone and apart; interlopers and squatters in Europe. They are the "Wolf Tribe."
L. A. Waddell, C.B., traveller, explorer, archaeologist, ethnologist, philologist, and author of many learned books, has devoted a large part of his busy lifetime - and his entire time during the last ten years - to a research into the origin of our Aryan ancestors and their civilisation. He has made discoveries which revolutionise the established views held by historians and anthropologists, (views, be it remarked, mainly self-interestedly foisted upon us by German professors) and is shortly publishing those discoveries in an important volume.
Only his book can set forth the full argument of Colonel Waddell's laborious researches, but, in the meantime, he has given.to Daily Mail interviewer these interesting proofs of the non-European, non-Aryan ancestry of the German "Wolf Tribe," explanations of the existence of a wild beast race in Europe that can conduct "corpse factories."
Colonel Waddell's facts will be refreshing; to British people who have always resented the insolent, nauseous claim of the most uncouth people m Europe to "cousinship" with us.
The Teutons, says Colonel Waddell, are not racially Ayrans at all. Huxley wrote: "The characteristic modes of speech termed 'Aryan' were developed among the blond long-heads alone." This definition totally excludes the Germans and Prussians, who are all roundheads or short-heads.
Germans Allied to the Turks. Their head formation inexorably affiliates the Germans to the "Alpine Race," which is essentially Turanian, from Central Asia, and of the same stock as the Huns and Turks. The Germans are relatively late-comers to Europe, who have adopted the Aryan language from their civilised Aryan neighbours, and together with it a veneer of their civilisation. Their uncouth form of spelling and their long, agglutinating compound words suggest that alien origin.
The "Wolf Tribe." — Colonel Waddell has found new and positive evidence connecting these Teutonic Turanians with the prehistoric "Wolf Tribe." Vestiges of early worship of the wolf are widely found in the earliest historic and prehistoric remains and customs in Ancient Egypt, Asia and Europe. The only modern nation which has clung .to the primitive tribal badges of the cult of this ravenous beast are the Germans. Colonel Waddell has now discovered that the name "Ger-man," or "Alle-man," means "Wolf-man." "Ger," "Geri," or "Garm," was the chief wolf which attended upon Wodan, or Odin, the "All-Father" of the Germans, and it associates the Germans with the Turanian Sarmatians, who disposed of their dead by throwing the corpses to dogs.
Attila the Hun was of the "Wolf Tribe.'' Tacitus said that the name "Ger-man" was invented by the Germans "to inspire terror" ("frightfulness"). The Hymn of Hate has an old foundation, for even the very name of Wodan is derived from a word meaning "hate." "Hun," again, is derived from Hunda ("hound"), the modern name for a wolf in Indo-Persia.
"Fritz" means "of the Wolf Tribe." — "Fritz," that popular Hun name, has, says Colonel Waddell, an almost uncanny appropriateness. It also means "wolf," and, indeed, the word "frightfulness" comes from the same root. "Wolf," pure and simple, is, moreover, one of the commonest German surnames.
It is impossible within a newspaper column to enter upon Colonel Waddell's cogent derivations of these damning stigmata upon Hun heredity. He proves that oven "Valhalla," the Heaven of the Teutons, was only a "Wolf's Heaven," exclusively reserved for those who died shedding blood and sword in hand. All peaceful, and therefore evil, Germans went to eternal torture in "The Abode of Anguish" in the realm of the she-wolf Hela (Hell). The famous banquet of German heroes in Valhalla was evidently human corpses, pointing to cannibalism of the heroes while on earth. A dying mediaeval Teutonic King thus sings of the feast:
We are cut to pieces with swords, but this fills me with joy
When I think of the feast that is preparing for me in Odin's palace.
Quickly seated there, we shall drink out of the skulls of our enemies.
The food of this "Heaven" is suggestively provided by the two foraging carrion wolves of Odin:
Geri and Freki feedeth the war-faring
Famed Father of Hosts.
And even the "All Father" himself, who has lived by the sword, is eventually fated to perish by the fangs of the all-devouring wolf. A grim mythology for ordinary races, but, like the "Gott" of the German of to-day, it was made for the cruel German "spirituality."
German Eagle a Carrion Raven. — And, finally, even the German eagle is not an eagle. He is a carrion, corpse-feeding raven or vulture. The "Lord God Wodan" was accompanied by two ravens, which, together with his two wolves, "follow the fight and pounce upon the fallen." There is no mention whatever of eagles. They are an invention of modern German arrogance. The double-headed "German Eagle" is merely the conjoined pair of corpse-feeding ravens of Odin, and an examination of this hideous bird, as pictured by the Germans themselves, shows that it is not a falcon or eagle, but a bedraggled pair of foul carrion ravens.
It is significant, says Colonel Waddell, that such a wide array of wolfish titles and badges should have been so zealously treasured by the Germans through the ages for their tribes and ethics. -Lytteltom Times, 14/7/1917.
A GRUESOME DISCOVERY.
LONDON, October 6
Mr Percival Phillips writes: The gruesome discovery of portions of a human body in a cauldron in an underground cookhouse at St. Quentin led to reports that a corpse factory had been found in full operation, but there seems no doubt that the bodies strewn about were broken by an explosion. At the same time, there is no explanation forthcoming of the presence elsewhere in the same tunnel of human remains carved up with the skill of a butcher. Surgeons and doctors state that they had been dissected for days, possibly weeks. The tunnel labyrinth is the most wonderful German shelter on the west front. The original subterranean galleries were begun in 1789, and were continued from time to time. -Ashburton Guardian, 8/10/1918.
MEN WHO TOOK SCHELDT CANAL ARE UNBEATABLE.
NO ENEMY LINES WHICH OUR MEN CANNOT BREAK.
THE BOCHE IN DESPERATE STRAITS (excerpt)
(By Philip Gibbs.)
With the British Armies, Oct. 4.
"EXPLORING A BIT." - "Well, boys," they said, "don't be scared. We are only exploring a bit on our own."
They had got into the tunnel higher up and were on the prowl for Germans or souvenirs.
There are only dead Germans in the runnel now and dead in such a way that the sight of them revived that gruesome story of the German kadaver anstalt, or corpse factory, which some time ago deceived the credulous.
A wild rumor was spread among the English and Australian troops that here they had discovered the ghoulish work of boiling German bodies for their grease and because it is likely to spread to tradition I must tell the truth of it.
In a cavern of the main canal were two boilers, and round about on Thursday I saw the bodies of German soldiers and inside the boilers were mounds of bodies. What more was wanted as evidence of this foul practice?
To men of easy belief in the worst horrors of humanity such evidence would be good enough — but I prefer the mentality of an Australian boy whose face I could not see but who as he stumbled along by my side, said:
"I want to get at the truth of this tale, because I do not think any men in the world would be vile enough to do such things."
And the truth is that, by some explosion, from within or without, these German cooks and soldiers had been killed and blown to bits as they stood round their stew pans, and parts of their bodies had fallen into the boiling grease.
I saw a gun carriage in the tunnel close to this cook house, suggesting that there had been a premature burst of a shell inside of the tunnel, and in the roof of the cook house itself was a small hole through which a fragment of shell had come, but whatever happened to kill the men, it is obvious that they all met sudden death. -Poverty Bay Herald, 9/11/1918.
I have read some of the works of Phillip Gibb, especially his first-hand accounts of the British experience of the First World War. I give him a lot of credence.
GERMAN CORPSE FACTORY.
UNDERGROUND CANAL USED.
AN AUSTRALIAN SOLDIER’S DISCOVERY.
Despite official German denials, Private Peter Vai Kerr, 67th Battalion (Victoria), found evidence of the existence of a factory for boiling down the bodies of dead German soldiers to obtain fat from which to extract glycerine for use in the manufacture of munitions (says the Melbourne “Herald ”).
Private Kerr, who is a son of Mr H. J. Kerr, senior architect of the State Public Works Department, and grandson of Mr Peter Kerr, architect of Federal Parliament House, Spring Street, describes what he saw in a letter to his father from France, dated October 3. After stating that he had regarded the stories of the “frightful practice” with incredulity till he visited the German “corpse factory,” Private Kerr continued: —
“We came here a day or two ago, and it was rumoured that such a concern (boiling down establishment) was in our vicinity. . . . I then decided that I should take the first opportunity of going there, and this morning (October 3) a party of us set out.
"First, we entered a passage underground, quite similar to the entrance to a deep dugout. This passage led to an underground canal. We travelled about 1500 yds along the canal, and finally entered a small door in the wall of the canal. Two flights of stairs brought us to a room approximately 40ft long by 15ft wide. The stencil was awful, and some of our fellows put on their gas respirators. There was no natural light in the room, but we had candles.
“In the centre of the room were two rows of stretchers raised 3ft 6in from the floor. There were no bodies on these stretchers, but there was evidence that they had recently contained human remains. This was indicated by patches of clotted blood, which, was also noticeable all over the floor.
“In one corner of the room there were ten or twelve dead Huns, some of whom had only lost their lives apparently three or four days, but others had been there much longer. The head had been removed from one body, and the arms were missing from another. In the opposite corner two coppers had been placed side by side. That on the right contained the body of a German. The work of rendering the remains was stopped by our (Australian) advance. The other copper was full of brownish fluid, which I consider was blood. On the floor were portion of a human leg and other small parts of bodies.
“I understand that in another room there was a chopper for dissecting the bodies and a net arrangement to strain away the bones, etc., but I did not see these, as to reach the second room necessitated walking over the bodies of the dead, which did not quite appeal to me. However, I had seen enough to convince me that the enemy actually carried out this terrible practice.
“Prisoners captured by us were shown the factory, and expressed, great surprise. They said that they were entirely ignorant that such places existed. This can be understood, as the bodies could be loaded in barges, drawn into the underground canal, and treated there in secrecy by special men who would be under the strictest orders to hold their tongues.
“This discovery of ours accounts for a rather peculiar fact. I have seen many German military cemeteries, most of which have been ploughed up by shell fire, but I have never seen any human remains. The contents of this letter may be ghastly, but I think it is only right that you should know the true state of affairs.”
Private Val Kerr was an apple orchardist at Tyabb when he enlisted. Prior to that he was an officer of the horticultural branch of the Agricultural Department at Burnley Gardens. He is a fellow of the Royal Horticultural Society, and before becoming a soldier lectured and read essays on horticulture in public. As the armistice was not signed till nearly six weeks after Private Kerr’s discovery, he was unable, owing to the censorship regulations regarding location of troops, to indicate the place in Franco to which he referred. -Star, 2/1/1919.
I will play the contrarian here. Can all that Private Kerr saw - discounting what he was told about and did not see - be explained as a protected forward aid station - evacuated without clean up, after action which would have produced many wounded needing amputation?
Shortly after the end of the war, doubts were aired as to the truth of the story.
THE SUPERNATURAL IN WARTIME (excerpts)
(By 'A.E.C.,' in the "Manchester Guardian") Every war has its crop of supernatural "happenings," superstitious beliefs and habits, as well as political, military, and social ideals, or idols, which the folklorist and sociologist may garner at its close. The former are always survivals or recrudescences; there is nothing in modern superstition which is not to be found in the "lower culture," among the so-called "savage" or "primitive" peoples of the world.
The sociological pessimist may select his own pigeon-holes for such idols as Militarism, German invincibility (since Julius Caesar's time), or the Declaration of London. Each has failed its worshippers. Even Bolshevism has not satisfied the Bolshevist; the activity of a Raoul Rigault is apt to pall even on himself. Among the social idols of the war one may count the War Babies and the enormities of the now Scarlet Woman, the Flapper. Among horror curiosities is the story of the German "Corpse Factory." Among curiosities also the story told me of how the Germans were able to continue the war by salvage of the ships they had "submarined." There was a big undersea carrier system, with many huge depots. -Dominion, 10/6/1919.
Miss Cecilia John, writing in the "Woman Voter," says that whilst travelling abroad an Allied army colonel told her that most of the war atrocity stories were manufactured in the offices of the newspapers printing them. He stated that the story of the "corpse factory" in Germany was so manufactured, and sent to the trenches for the benefit of the soldiers, "who simply yelled with laughter at the stupidity of the new lie." Now that the war is over, and it doesn't matter, our army officers are doubtless permitted to tell us how the people were fooled. -Maoriland Worker, 17/12/1919.
A Socialist Survey Of The World of Men and Things (excerpt)
The English have evidently deteriorated from those of Pepys' time, when they severely punished people for lying about the enemy's "atrocities." Had it not been so, nearly every editor, parson and politician would have lost his "eares" and had his nose slit and been whipt round the Stock Exchange for telling the corpse factory lie, the cutting-off-the-nurses'-breasts lie, and the cutting-off-the-Belgian-children's-hands lie (to mention only a few) which they religiously told about the Germans. -Maoriland Worker, 4/5/1921.
THE CORPSE FACTORY AGAIN.
Comparatively few people at the time were able to believe the story that Germany was boiling down the bodies of her dead soldiers, to utilise the fats for fertiliser purposes, though the "Times" credited it and "Punch" used it for a cartoon. It was about the most difficult of all such stories to swallow. To-day General Charteris, who was at the time Chief of the British Intelligence Department, says that the tale was circulated as a piece of British propaganda in China. He says that in order to counteract the seeming pro-German proclivities of the Chinese he conceived the idea of changing the titles of two pictures which had been taken from dead German soldiers. One was a picture of a train full of dead horses being taken to fertiliser factories, and the other showed a train taking dead German soldiers to the rear for burial. With the change of title it was made to appear that the dead soldiers were being used for the factories. If the General's claim that he was the origin of this story is to be taken seriously, it only shows the length to which propagandists are prepared to go. The Greek historian of the Peloponnesian war dwells on the decay of truth both during and immediately after that great conflict. But in the Great War of our time propaganda reached its zenith, or its depths, and the very word is now distrusted by the great mass of people. It smells tainted. In fact the word "propaganda" has assumed a meaning almost synonymous with the word "lie." Some of the concoctions circulated during the war had a definite tactical value, such as the story of the Russians journeying through England to Antwerp. This caused a body of Germans to be immobilised in case of a coastal attack, when their services were urgently required on the right wing of their army. These deceptions, however, stand in an entirely different category from stories invented purely with the object of exciting feelings of hatred against the foe. Propaganda that deals in exaggeration, or wilful untruth, defeats its own ends. In time people realise that they have been misled, and they refuse to believe even what is true. This holds good of all such propaganda, whether political, religious, or military, and it accounts for the defeat of some causes which had merit in themselves, but were badly served by some of their too ardent supporters. It would be interesting to know what the British Government thinks of General Charteris' ingenious invention, to call it by its mildest name. -Auckland Star, 21/10/1925.
The corpse factory story of the war is now explained as having been a deliberate canard dispatched to China when that country appeared to be too well disposed towards the Germans. The story was given great prominence in the London “Daily Mail, but the London “Times,” so far as the writer recollects, ignored it altogether. Afterwards, when it appeared that there was no such thing as a German corpse factory for frugally boiling down the remains of dead soldiers, an explanation was made that a hurried translator had overlooked the fact that "cadaver” in German means the corpse of a horse and not a human corpse, and thus on reading in a German newspaper of a factory for boiling down dead horses had inadvertently, but in entire good faith, turned the horses into humans, All may be fair in love or war, but dead horses can very well be allowed to remain dead horses — even when it is necessary to tickle the ears of China’s millions. -Dominion, 22/10/1925.
WAR OFFICE SILENT
GERMAN CORPSE FACTORY STORY
(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION — COPYRIGHT.)
(AUSTRALIAN-NEW ZEALAND CABLE ASSOCIATION.) LONDON, 23rd October.
A controversy has arisen concerning the reported speech in New York, in which Brigadier-General C'harteris is alleged to have declared that the wartime story of the German corpse factory, in which bodies were boiled down for munitions and fats, was an invention for propaganda purposes. A War Office official declined to comment, saying: "General Charteris may have been wrongly reported, or speaking facetiously."
An official of the Intelligence Department during the war said he had seen the diary of a German soldier in which there was an allusion to the subject. "It will be remembered," he said, "that doubt arose whether the German word for corpse referred to human beings as well as animals." -Evening Post, 24/10/1925.
CABLE MISCELLANY
The "Daily Express” states that it is understood that Brigadier-General Charteris’s statement in New York about the German “corpse factory” will he the subject of an inquiry when he returns. -NZ Times, 26/10/1925.
“SHAMEFUL LIE” RESENTED BY THE GERMAN PEOPLE.
CORPSE FACTORY STORY OFFICIALLY REPUDIATED.
By Telegraph. — Press Assn. — Copyright, Sydney "Sun" Cable. (Received November 2. 11 a.m.) LONDON. November 1.
Herr Stresemann, in a letter to the newspaper "Weekly Despatch," says that Germany created wartime establishments to utilise the carcasses of animals for industrial purposes. The allegations that the establishments were intended for the utilisation of soldiers’ corpses were officially repudiated as a shameful lie, which Germans, mourning the loss of many sons on the battlefield, regarded as one of the most cruel and poisonous forgeries of the war ever penned. -Star, 2/11/1925.
CORPSE FACTORIES
STORY IS "AS YOU WERE"
CHARTERIS DENIES INVENTION
ALLEGATIONS DESCRIBED AS ABSURD.
(UNITED PRESS ASSOCIATION — COPYRIGHT.)
(REUTERS TELEGRAM.)
(Received 4th November, 11 a.m.) LONDON, 3rd November
Brigadier-General Charteris emphatically denies the statements attributed to him in regard to the German corpse factory during his recent visit to America. He said the allegations that he invented the "Kadaver story," altered the captions of a photograph, or used "faked" material for propaganda purposes were absurd. He says he explained the whole circumstances to the Secretary of State, who was perfectly satisfied. -Evening Post, 4/11/1925.
FALSE WAR STORY.
ALLEGED CORPSE FACTORY.
DEFINITE GERMAN DENIAL.
A. and N.Z. LONDON. Dec, 2. The Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Austen Chamberlain, in reply to a question in the House of Commons, said Dr. Luther, German Chancellor, had authorised him to say there never was any foundation for the war-time story of a German corpse factory. Sir Austen said he accepted the denial and he trusted the false report would never be revived. Dr. Luther and the German Foreign Minister, Herr Stresemann, who were in the distinguished strangers' gallery, left the House when the question was asked. -NZ Herald, 4/12/1925.
The "corpse factory" lie cast a dark shadow over Europe, a shadow which could be drawn over Allied claims of what was occurring in wartime Germany after 1939. The inhumanity of the fictional "corpse factory" was eclipsed by that of the nazi concentration camp system, but reports coming from those nations under occupation could be discounted as propaganda by those who recalled General Charteris' effort in the previous war. Only when Allied armies entered Germany was the shocking truth revealed.
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