Transcript German Propaganda

10 Most Evil Propaganda Techniques
used by the Nazis
Background: Many of the branches of the Nazi
Party had their own propaganda offices. This
includes nine weekly quotation posters issued
by the Propaganda Office of the Hitler Youth
headquarters in Berlin. According to the catalog
of the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, about 32 of
these were issued in 1940, after which
publication was suspended.
#10 Posters
Hitler and his leaders understood the power of
propaganda in conveying the party line, and poster art
was often at the heart of the publicity machine. Both at
home and in occupied territory, posters were a powerful
means to simply communicate the main Nazi policies,
through simplified and metaphorical imagery. At home,
posters often focused on boosting the morale of
production workers, telling them ‘You are the Front!’
Abroad, the posters offered a romanticized ideal of the
Nazi Party as a force for good, often employing religious
imagery which represented Hitler as a liberating hero.
Long Live Germany
9. Anti-Semitism - Scapegoating of
minorities
Following the devastating outcome of WWI and the Wall
Street of Crash of 1929, Germany was in a precarious
economic position, with hundreds of thousands out of work.
To explain this, the Nazis blamed the Jews. The Nazi Party
accused them of being a parasitic race that attached itself to
capitalist nations to destabilize the economy and culture of
their ‘host’ nation. Hitler’s own fanatical anti-semitism
became even more pronounced in party policy after the Nazi's
rise to power in 1933. By blaming a minority racial group for
all of the country's ills, the Nazis created a set of scapegoats
who could be blamed at every opportunity for almost
anything. In posters, art, cartoons and film, the Jews were
equated with rats and caricatured as hook nosed misers,
stealing money from the honest ‘Aryan’ German workers.
The Eternal Jew
Anti-Semitic book
8. Radio - Controlling mass media
The radio broadcast was recognized by the Nazis as one of the
most important propaganda tools in their arsenal. In 1933,
their Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, called radio
the ‘eighth great power’ and predicted that it “will be for the
20th century what the press was to the nineteenth.” He
initiated a scheme whereby the German government
subsidized the production and sale of cheap radio sets – the
Volksempfanger, or ‘people’s receiver' – limited in range to
local German and Austrian stations. This placed the party's
voice in every home in the country. By the start of the war,
nearly the entire nation had fallen under the radio’s spell and
was bombarded with speeches and ‘news’ designed to
brainwash the population.
All of Germany can hear the furhrer
with the radio
7. Film and Cinema - Controlling the
social sphere
While the party entered German homes, it also entered
the social sphere, controlling what people would pay to
go and see. A Department of Film was set up in 1933 with
the expressed aim of “spreading the National Socialist
world view to the entire German people.” Primarily it did
this by holding film shows, a frequent and popular
occurrence in German cities and towns. Hitler and
Goebbels were both fascinated by the medium and
regularly showed films in their own homes. Two of the
most famous examples of Nazi cinema are Leni
Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will, which documents the
Nuremburg rally of 1934, and 1940’s The Wandering Jew,
a documentary style attack on the Jewish people.
Triumph of the Will
6. Newspapers - Controlling the press
• Newspapers have always been a powerful means of
influencing thought and opinion. The most notorious of
the Nazi newspapers was Der Sturmer (‘The Attacker’).
Although separate from the official party regime and
Goering’s own departments (he actually forbade it
from his offices), it was a major part of the propaganda
war. Published by Julius Streicher, its tabloid style, rabid
anti-semitism and obscene content won it favor with
other party officials. Hitler himself praised its
effectiveness in speaking to the ‘man on the street’
and was said to ‘read it with pleasure, from first page
to last.
Censorship
5. Mein Kampf - Mythologizing the
party
Adolf Hitler began work on his sprawling semi auto-biography
Mein Kampf (‘My Struggle’) while imprisoned after the failed
Munich Putsch. Combining elements of his own life with
political ideology and violent racial arguments, the book was
unsurprisingly (and still is) a controversial work. Playing on the
death of 16 party members in the failed coup, the Nazis
invented a myth around the event which they would continue
to play on throughout their time in power. From the
publication of Mein Kampf in 1925 and especially during
Hitler's time in power, the book was incredibly successful, and
10 million copies had been produced by the end of the war.
However, not everyone was enthused. One of Hitler’s closest
foreign political allies, Benito Mussolini, described it as ‘a
boring tome that I have never been able to read.’
My Struggle
4. Anti-Communist Propaganda Demonizing political opposition
The Communist Party and international Marxism
were seen as dangerous opponents to Nazi
Germany, both at home and abroad. Once again
propaganda was an effective means of attacking
communist ideology and the Soviet state. Films
often portrayed communists as vulnerable and
brainwashed, while posters declared the supremacy
of the German people over their Soviet
counterparts. Early on in his career Hitler equated
Jews with Communists and loathed them with
almost equal fervor
Death to lies!
3. Mythology, Folktales and Religion Focus on a national myth
Mythology and folktales were extremely important to the
Nazi’s idea of ‘volk’ and tradition. The party’s views on religion
were complex, and in Hitler’s case, fairly confused, but they
recognized the power of religious imagery and occultist
symbology. Christian imagery was often evoked in the artwork
of propaganda, as were Teutonic gods and goddesses. These
efforts were intended to reinforce the idea of an ancient
German national culture, bolstering the Nazis' extreme
nationalism. More peculiarly, eastern spirituality also
interested senior officials, and in 1938 the Nazis made an
official visit to Tibet. This may have been prompted by the
Nazi's belief in Thule – a sort of Nazi Atlantis, which was
purported to be the starting point for the ‘Aryan’ peoples.
2. Music and Opera - Absorbing high
culture
According to Hitler, the three ‘good’ composers that
represented everything admirable about German music were
Ludvig van Beethoven, Anton Bruckner and Richard Wagner.
Of these, Wagner’s is the music most inextricably linked with
Nazi Germany. While Wagner clearly held some contentious
views, in particular towards Jews (he published an essay in
1850 entitled ‘Judaism in Music’, accusing Jews of ‘poisoning’
popular culture), the Nazis took the parts of his work that they
liked and suppressed the rest. In particular, they appropriated
the romanticism and stirring essence for an idealized German
past in Parsifal, and Der Ring das Nibelungen figured strongly
in the Nazis' propaganda plans, reinforcing the national myth
they had manufactured, and opening a whole new
propaganda front
1. The Fuhrer
Of all the propaganda weapons that the Nazi held at their
disposal, perhaps the most effective and enduring was
the cult of the Fuhrer – Adolf Hitler himself. Praised by
contemporaries, allies and foes alike as a charismatic and
powerful speaker, Hitler had an ability to break down
arguments to their most simple terms and could move
crowds on a level of emotion rather than intellect. He
also cultivated his public image to an obsessive degree,
ensuring that it lay at the heart of all things in the Nazi
state. It is difficult, almost impossible, to imagine the Nazi
tragedy without Adolf Hitler at its core.
Adolph Hitler
“German currency is today no longer
the object of speculation by the Jews
and financiers, but rather the reward
of labor.
What our fathers achieved must also
be valuable to us, to be treated with
care and economy.
Every unnecessary purchase is a
luxury.
All must save for the Führer’s work!”
#4/1940: 24 March - 1 April
“Whether in school or the
work place, or serving in
the HJ or BDM, whether at
home with your mothers:
everywhere you have
tasks that you must fulfill
if you want to say that you
are Adolf Hitler’s proper
German boys and girls.”
#18/1940: 1- 6 July
“In every healthy boy and every
healthy girl, alongside the desire for
adventure is respect for great
achievements, for the heroic deed.
The harder it is for you not to be at
the front of the great battle, the
easier it must be for you to do
everything you can today wherever
you are, to do your duty!
Rudolf Heß”
#20/1940: 15 - 21 July
“The dead of the great war of 1914-1918 have
been avenged.
The burden that our fathers had to bear after
giving up a war they had not lost has been taken
from them.
The whole world looks at us with great respect!
We are armed for the final battle against England.
German youth, remain loyal, ready to sacrifice,
obedient and alert!
Captain Ziersch/ Bearer of the Knight’s Cross”
#24/1940: 19-25 August
“However the enemy may
threaten or attack us, it is no
worse than it once was. Our
ancestors often had to
endure the same. We must
recall the statement of a
great German: ‘Were the
world full of devils, we must
still succeed!’”
#27/1940: 9-15 September
“The current generation bears
Germany’s fate — Germany’s
future or Germany’s decline.
Today our opponents scream:
Germany shall decline! —
We have but one answer:
Germany will live, and therefore
Germany will be victorious!
Adolf Hitler”
#28/1940: 16-22 September
“If you boys and girls who are
aware that you are German
want to do something now and
after the war to contribute to
the future of our people, I can
think of no better task that
this: to become pioneers in
building the German East!
Gauleiter Greiser”
#30/1940: 30 September - 6
October
“To firmly establish us in the
German East is the life work of
the present generation,
together with you, my boys
and girls, you who must take
from us the sharp sword of the
best German soldiers and the
plow of the best German
farmers.
Gauleiter Greiser”
#31/1940: 7 - 13 October
“The essence of leadership is not
in command, but in service.
The statement of a great German
[Hitler] that ‘I am the first servant
of my state’ is also a fundamental
principle of National Socialism.
Baldur von Schirach”
#34/1940: 28 October - 3
November