Propaganda In Nazi Germany Essay Research Paper

Propaganda In Nazi Germany Essay, Research Paper

Propaganda in Nazi GermanyThe rise of fascist Germany has taught society that we must be aware of who controls the media, otherwise we are vulnerable to manipulation by today s propagandists. Propaganda is defined as the dissemination of ideas and information for the purpose of inducing or intensifying specific attitudes and actions. Although propaganda was not new a new phenomena founded in Nazi Germany, never before had it influenced public opinion to the extent that it did. By communicating ideas that played on the public s emotions, the Nazis justified their military aggressions, the arresting of their political rivals and their systematic extermination of six million Jews. The Nazis were able to involve themselves in virtually every aspect of the German people s lives through propaganda. The creation of a new ministry intended to promote public enlightenment demonstrates the importance of propaganda to the success of the German National Socialist Party. At the head of this newly created mini!!stry was Joseph Goebbels. Together, Goebbels and Hitler were tremendously effective in their persuasion of the German people. They mobilized the masses, stimulated the German economy during the Great Depression and harnessed the might of German industry and her people in order to create a formidable war machine that nearly conquered all of Europe. Mein Kampf, considered to be the bible of the Nazi party, outlined the importance Adolf Hitler placed on propaganda. In his book, Hitler explained that German troops were ill-prepared for the enemy during the First World War as he wrote,In Germany the school, the press, and comic magazines cultivateda conception of the Englishman s character, and almost more so of hisempire, which inevitably led to one of the most insidious delusions; forgradually everyone was infected by this nonsense, and the consequencewas an underestimation for which we would have to pay most bitterly.Furthermore, he adds that the German soldiers were misinformed as he wrote,After the very first days of battle the conviction dawned on each andevery one of them that these Scotsmen did not exactly jibe with thepictures they had seen fit to give us in the comic magazines and pressdispatches. It was then that I began my first reflections about theimportance of the form of propaganda.Hitler would apply the lessons he learned from Germany s defeat in the First World War to his wartime propaganda campaign in the Second World War. He used alleged evidence of persecution concerning German minorities in the victim country, believing that the German people needed to be educated about the enemy by drawing on the public s emotions.The key to the rise of the German National Socialist s Party, was controlling the tide of public opinion. When Hitler became Chancellor of the Republic, there were over 4,073 newspapers in Germany. The Nazis ran only a small portion of the very diverse press. At the beginning of 1933 they had 121 dailies and periodicals, most of them with low circulation. By the end of 1934 however, the situation had drastically changed in that they now controlled 430 newspapers directly and indirectly. Hitler preached the importance and effectiveness of slogans, by bombarding the public through as many channels of the media as they could as he wrote,It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientificinstruction, for instance. The receptivity of the great masses isvery limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgettingis enormous. In consequence of the facts, all effective propagandamust be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogansuntil the last member of the public understands what you want him tounderstand by your slogan.Propaganda is essentially the art of manipulating public opinion as Hitler wrote, “The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses.” Joseph Goebbels brilliance accounts for much of Hitler s success. Goebbels, the founder and editor of the official National Socialist periodical Der Angriff (The Attack) became Reichminister for propaganda and national enlightenment in 1933. One historian, George Reuth wrote that,Officially the new ministry was intended to promote enlightenmentand propaganda among the populace as to the policies of the Reichgovernment and the national reconstruction of the German fatherland. The actual purpose was to set in motion a mental mobilization of themasses, to work on them until the people could no longer resist them. The department s assignment, “was to make sure that the press not only informed but also instructed The press had to be a piano, so to speak, in the hands of the government on which the government could play.” This crucial process of bringing the media into line was called Gleichschaltung. An Editor Statute was created that gave newspaper editors responsibilities that had previously rested only with publishers. Now both were subject to direct intervention by the state. The sanctions Goebbels had at his disposal included: removing an editor from the list of those in the profession, issuing a warning, or even sentencing a paper s editor to a concentration camp. In order to communicate to the entire population, Goebbels had the network of stations expanded, ordered Reich loudsp