Photo: Unknown / Wikipedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain

A propaganda stamp issued shortly after Cavell's death

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In the months and years following Cavell's death, countless newspaper articles, pamphlets, images, and books publicised her story. She became an iconic propaganda figure for military recruitment in Britain, and to help increase favourable sentiment towards the Allies in the United States. She was a popular icon because of her sex, her nursing profession, and her apparently heroic approach to death. Her execution was represented as an act of German barbarism and moral depravity.

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Because of the British government's decision to publicise Cavell's story as part of its propaganda effort, she became the most prominent British female casualty of the First World War. The combination of heroic appeal and a resonant atrocity-story narrative made Cavell's case one of the most effective in British propaganda of the First World War.

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Source: Wikipedia

Photo: Unknown / Wikipedia • Believed to be in the Public Domain

An advertisement for The Woman the Germans Shot

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