One of the most powerful propaganda stereotypes related to war in the last century was the image of the German as the Hun, a bloodthirsty and unethical combatant who would stop at nothing to achieve victory. Ironically, this potent ideological weapon originated with the leader of pre–World War I Germany, Kaiser Wilhelm II. In the racialized heat of the colonial competition marking the build-up to World War I, Wilhelm II uttered the words that would subsequently be used in textual and visual propaganda to identify the Germans as the worst kind of uncivilized, monstrous people.

_{Edmond Guilliaume. Wilhelm I, King of Prussia from The Geniuses of Death (Les Génies de la Mort), 1870. Robert Chase Endowment.}