1. Nazi Propaganda
One people, one government, one leader!"

2. What’s your reaction to the following quote:
“[Propagandists must have] a fine and sure instinct for the often changeable feelings of the people. They must be able to reach into the world of the broad masses and draw out their wishes and hopes… Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie. It is a mistake to believe that people cannot take the truth. They can. It is only a matter of presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand.”
-Joseph Goebbels

3. How do writers present the truth in a persuasive manner?
They play on the “changeable feelings of the people”
Emotional language
Choosing words to create an emotional response (fear, anger, joy, nationalism)
Scapegoating
Blaming Jews/Blaming other countries (plays on the people’s fears)
Connotation
A words implicit meaning
“cheap” versus “inexpensive”
Through precise word choice, writers are able to “draw out [the audiences] wishes and hopes”

4. Persuasive Techinques
“Good propaganda does not need to lie, indeed it may not lie”
Lying decreases the speakers credibility
However, “…presenting the truth to people in a way that they will be able to understand” is a useful tool for persuasive writers
Semantic slanting
Deliberately choosing words/ideas/facts to create a specific response
75% fat free versus 25% fat

5. So why did the Nazis use propaganda?

6. Two Purposes To create a positive image of Hitler and the Nazi Party
To create a negative view of those considered to be enemies, particularly Jews

7. Hitler’s Propaganda Methods
Present simple themes in a repetitive manner
Appeal to emotion rather than intellect
Have broad appeal to the masses
Focus mainly on one enemy - Claim that this enemy is at the root of all problems

8. Propaganda: Pervasive in Nazi Germany
Images – Posters, Book and Newspaper Illustrations
Spoken Word – Nazi Speeches and Radio broadcasts; Songs and slogans
Printed Word – “Der Sturmer” ; Academic publications; School curricula
Dramatic - cinema (i.e. Triumph of the Will; The Eternal Jew; Jud Suss); Party Rallies

9. Goals of Pro-Nazi Propaganda
To portray Hitler and The Nazi Party as the saviors of Germany
To connect the Nazis to a positive, idealistic vision of Germany’s future
To portray the Nazis as confident, decisive, and overwhelmingly powerful
As we go through the slides….try to connect to what we learned yesterday.

10. Hitler as the Heroic Leader

11. Hitler Brings Unity

12. “The Reich will never be destroyed if you are united and loyal.”

13. Appeals to Traditional Values
Motherhood
“German Women Think of Your Children
Vote Hitler”

14. Youthful Idealism

15. Hitler words about the young: "A violently active, dominating, intrepid, brutal youth -- that is what I am after. Youth must be all those things. It must be indifferent to pain. There must be no weakness or tenderness in it. I want to see once more in its eyes the gleam of pride and independence of the beast of prey... I intend to have an athletic youth--that is the first and the chief thing... I will have no intellectual training. Knowledge is ruin to my young men." 

16. “Youth serves the Fuhrer” By 1939, about 90% of the "Aryan" children in Germany belonged to Nazi youth groups. A massive propaganda campaign was aimed at Germany's youth. The Nazis indoctrinated boys and girls in their duties to the state from a young age. They saw education as critical to the new Germany.

17. “Workers of the mind and hand – Vote for the front soldier Hitler!”

18. Power and Pageantry

21. Racist Ideas
The Nazi racist ideas were clear as early as 1925 when Hitler recorded his ravings in Mein Kampf
(My Struggle).

22. Jews Inferior to Christians
He said that German Jews were different from and inferior to German Christians and referred to physical differences between the blond haired, blue-eyed "Aryans" and the dark-haired, swarthy Jews.   

23. Der Sturmer
The most notorious of the Nazi anti-Semitic newspapers was Der Sturmer (The Attacker). It began in 1923 as a political paper, but as the Nazis gained in influence, the paper became more and more anti-Semitic. By the time Hitler took power in 1933, the paper was strongly anti-Semitic and was a very popular Nazi publication.
Der Sturmer Ritual Murder Issue, May 1, 1934

24. Goals of Anti-Jewish Propaganda
To connect Jews to every problem facing Germany and every other group seen as opponents
To reinforce traditional negative stereotypes about Jews
To create a climate of contempt toward Jews
To dehumanize the image of Jews (to facilitate discrimination, segregation, exile, and murder)

25. Jews as Aliens
“Only a racial comrade can be a citizen. Only a person of German blood, irrespective of religious denomination, can be a racial comrade. No Jew, therefore, can be a racial comrade.”
Point 4 - Nazi Party Program, 1920

26. The Jew as Eugenic Threat
“With satanic joy in his face, the black-haired Jewish youth lurks in wait for the unsuspecting girl whom he defiles with his blood, thus stealing her from her people. With every means he tries to destroy the racial foundations of the people he has set out to subjugate.”
Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf

27. The bottom slogan reads: “Women and girls, the Jews are your undoing!”

28. The Jew as Communist From the cover of the book The Eternal Jew

29. The Jew as Capitalist Exploiter
“The God of the Jews is Money.  And to gain money, he will commit the greatest crimes. He will not rest until he can sit on the largest sack of money, until he becomes the King of Money.”

30. The Jew as Warmonger
“If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe!”
Adolf Hitler - January 30, 1939

31. Nazi propaganda poster blaming Jews for the war

32. All Enemies are Jews!
Note the similarity between the portrayal of Churchill (who was not Jewish) and the antisemitic stereotype.

34. Jews depicted as controlling the Allies

35. Jews plotting to rule the world
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion
(Front cover of a French edition)

36. The “Blood Libel”

37. From an advertising poster for a movie
The Jew as demonic
From an advertising poster for a movie

39. The Poison Mushroom A Children‘s Book Also …From a 1942 biology textbook the Nazis wrote for 5th grade girls:  "Each life form strives to ensure the survival of its species. . . The species goes before the individual.  History provides us with enough examples to prove that mankind too is under this law. In the midst of their prosperity, the Romans lost the desire to have children….Their state was undermined and overcome by foreign peoples in a short time….Our nation too once hung in the balance.  National Socialism restored to the German people the will to have children, and preserved our people from certain decline.”

40. “Jews Get Out!”: A Children’s Game

41. Dehumanizing Words
“We had the moral right, and the duty toward our nation to kill this people who wished to kill us. … We do not, because we were exterminating a bacillus, wish to be infected by that bacillus in the end and die.”
Heinrich Himmler - October 4, 1943

42. Dehumanizing Words
“Was there any form of filth or profligacy, particularly in cultural life, without at least one Jew in it? If you cut even cautiously into such an abscess, you found, like a maggot in a rotting body, often dazzled by the sudden light - a little Jew”
Adolf Hitler - Mein Kampf

43. Jews portrayed as vermin
Dehumanizing Images:
Jews portrayed as vermin

44. Overrun by Inferior Peoples
Other groups such as the "Gypsies" and Africans were also inferior according to Hitler.  He played on fears that Germans would one day be outnumbered by the "inferior peoples."

45. Results of Propaganda
“True Believers” are empowered by propaganda to engage in behavior that would otherwise be forbidden.
Propaganda shifts the “frame of reference” regarding the subject. Formerly extreme ideas enter legitimate discussion.
The “piling on” effect mutes opposition.

46. Lessons for Today
Learn to recognize and interpret propaganda and to distinguish it from legitimate attempts to inform.
Recognize distortions embedded in public communication (i.e. - stereotypes, misuse of statistics, over-generalization, guilt by association, etc..)
Recognize that images and words are important because they create the social climate – which will tend either toward respect or contempt.

47. And since other countries were doing the same thing, Germany warned its own citizens how to deal with enemy propaganda: "Warning! Enemy Propaganda!  In modern warfare, weapons, the economy, physical resources and organization play a role. So too do spirit and soul. A new and sinister weapon is used against a nation's spiritual strength: Propaganda!“ Listening to enemy broadcasts was strictly forbidden.