Propaganda
The newspaper publisher and later Imperial Postmaster Johann Wetzel estimated that during the Thirty Years’ War, a major newspaper had a fighting power of 20,000 men.1 That was an equation repeated often after the media revolution of the 17th century. Indeed, Erich Ludendorff – from 1916 on the real leader of the entire German war effort – agreed with one of the leading British propagandists when he referred to the propaganda battles of the First World War: “Lord Northcliffe was not wrong when he stated that t…