Contemporaries who examined “public opinion” in 1914 agreed that its most striking characteristic was the degree to which the war had captured the public's interest. Johannes Müller, a professor of theology, wrote that “all life in the fighting nations is now war. War has become the total meaning and the only purpose.” This had not been the case in the last war, in 1870. Newspapers filled their pages with stories about the war to the exclusion of almost everything else. Illustrated magazines carried photographs of soldiers, military equipment, or battlefields instead of photographs of sports and movie stars. Literary magazines published articles on the philosophy of war, on war and culture, on the aesthetics of war. Theaters, after closing briefly at the beginning of August 1914, reopened either with productions of classical treatments of martial themes, or, more often, with productions of quickly written pieces which recreated the “August experiences.”

Publishers chose manuscripts which treated war themes. Ministers, priests, and rabbis discussed the war in their sermons, some even replacing the afternoon church service with a patriotic lecture. Those who preferred their religious patriotism outside church attended one of the “patriotic evenings” staged in many of Germany's larger cities, whose program resembled the Lutheran liturgy. Established lecture organizations such as the Red Cross and the Goethe-Bund increased the size of their operations; alongside them new lecture associations sprang up.