Kaiser (to 1917 Recruit). "And don't forget that your Kaiser will find a use for you—alive or dead." Punch, 25 April 1917
The German Corpse Factory or Kadaververwertungsanstalt (literally "Carcass-Utilization Factory"), also sometimes called the "German Corpse-Rendering Works" or "Tallow Factory"[1] was one of the most notorious anti-German atrocity propaganda stories circulated in World War I. In the postwar years, investigations in Britain and France revealed that these stories were false.[2]
According to the story, the Kadaververwertungsanstalt was a special installation supposedly operated by the Germans in which, because fats were so scarce in Germany due to the British naval blockade, German battlefield corpses were rendered down for fat, which was then used to manufacture nitroglycerine, candles, lubricants, and even boot dubbin. It was supposedly operated behind the front lines by the DAVG — Deutsche Abfall-Verwertungs Gesellschaft ("German Waste Utilization Company").
Historian Piers Brendon has called it "the most appalling atrocity story" of World War I,[3] while journalist Phillip Knightley has called it "the most popular atrocity story of the war."[4] After the war John Charteris, the British former Chief of Army Intelligence, allegedly stated in a speech that he had invented the story for propaganda purposes, with the principal aim of getting the Chinese to join the war against Germany.
Recent scholars do not credit the claim that Charteris created the story.[5] Propaganda historian Randal Marlin says "the real source for the story is to be found in the pages of the Northcliffe press", referring to newspapers owned by Lord Northcliffe. Adrian Gregory presumes that the story originated from rumours that had been circulating for years, and that it was not "invented" by any individual: "The corpse-rendering factory was not the invention of a diabolical propagandist; it was a popular folktale, an ‘urban myth’, which had been circulated for months before it received any official notice."[6]
^Fussell, Paul (2000). The Great War and Modern Memory. Oxford University Press US. pp. 116–117. ISBN 0-19-513332-3.
^Nicholas John Cull; David Holbrook Culbert; David Welch (2003). Propaganda and Mass Persuasion: A Historical Encyclopedia, 1500 to the Present. ABC-CLIO. p. 25. ISBN 978-1576078204.
^Brendon, Piers (2000). The Dark Valley: A Panorama of the 1930s. Knopf. pp. 58. ISBN 0-375-40881-9.
^Knightley, Phillip (2000). The First Casualty: The War Correspondent as Hero and Myth-Maker from the Crimea to Kosovo. Prion. p. 114. ISBN 1-85375-376-9.
^Badsey, Stephen (2014). The German Corpse Factory: a study in First World War Propaganda. Solihull: Helion. ISBN 9781909982666.
^Gregory, Adrian, The Last Great War. British Society and the First World War, Cambridge University Press, 2008, p.57
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