Historian Piers Brendon has called it "the most appalling atrocity story" of World War I, while journalist Phillip Knightley has called it "the most popular atrocity story of the war." 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. This was widely believed in the 1930s, and was used by the Nazis as part of their own anti-British propaganda.