Download Propaganda and Terror

Propaganda and Terror
The Nazis maintained the basic institutional structure of the Weimar Republic while adding a nazified
layer. This was the case with the policy of indoctrination and propaganda.
PROPAGANDA
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The Ministry of Education was fully centralised. This was part of a campaign to destroy the
autonomy of the Lander in 1933. Schools were to have a common Nazi curriculum. New
subjects were introduced which used reflected Nazi ideology.
The Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda was a new institution established
in March 1933. This was presided over by Goebbels. It controlled all areas of propaganda
through film, radio, and the press and influenced cultural output in the form of literature,
music and the fine arts.
The Law on the Hitler Youth in 1936 confirmed the existence of the group which had been
around since the start of the Third Reich.
TERROR
Coercion or even terror was the other side of the coin. This was the responsibility of the
SS/Gestapo/SD complex. The Schutzstaffeln (Security Squads SS) formed in 1925 merged with the
SD and the Gestapo to assume complete responsibility for security and political policing. They
implemented Hitler’s racial policies and after 1941 became the instrument of genocide. Goebbels
and Himmler took control of this, although their methods differed. Goebbels operated within the
regular institutions of the Nazi sate, while Himmler created a new system.
How effective were Indocrination and Propaganda?
“It is not enough for people to be more or less reconciled to our regime, to be persuaded to adopt a
neutral attitude towards us: rather we want to work on people until they have capitulated to us,
until they grasp ideologically that what is happening in Germany today not only must be accepted
but also can be accepted” (Goebbels at a press conference at opening of Ministry of People’s
Enlightenment and Propaganda March 15 1933)
He also wanted to use the latest technology in order to achieve maximum saturation. This was done
in through two changes:
1. Increase in the power of the existing Ministry of Education. This was fully centralised taking
power from the Lander.
2. Setting up of the Ministry for People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda. It was to be all
embracing with a series of chambers, relating to press, radio, theatre, music, creative arts
and film. In theory it had the power to apply negative censorship in whatever form it saw as
necessary and to shape the development of culture at all levels.
Propaganda: Channels like radio, cinema and press.
Indoctrination: Education and youth movements, the work place and the armed forces.
Youth:
Education:
Indoctrination was at its most effective with the Youth movements.
 Schools had a radicalisation of the curriculum introducing race study, eugenics and health
biology, all as vehicles to impart Nazi ideology. Conventional subjects like History and Maths
were given a twist. 22 of 76 pages of official Maths textbook had ideological references eg.
Calculations of the cost to produce lunatic asylums as opposed to workers’ housing.
 Girls and boys were to be prepared separately for obviously stereotyped roles.
 The teaching profession was carefully organised, the Nazi Teachers’ League (NSLB) made up
97% of the total teaching force by 1937.
Flaws in the process:
There was the overlapping between administrative and party organs. Eg: the Ministry of Education
continued to use the Weimar Republic guidelines as it disagreed with the party about how they
should be changed. The conflict between Ley and Rust and Bormann and Hess delayed the new
regulations for elementary education until 1939. Secondary schools had equally similar problems.
The content of the curriculum was diluted by more traditional influences.
Confusion persisted as to how to deliver the curriculum. Gestapo reports contain numerous
examples of unsatisfactory teachers who were probably just confused.
Indoctrination in education was in theory to be complemented by the mobilisation of the youth
movements.
Youth Movements
Specialised activities (for age and gender) were provided through the German Young People (DJ),
Hitler Youth (HJ), Young Maidens (JM) and League of German Maidens (BDM).
These held widespread appeal for young people as they appeared at first to challenge more
conservative forms of authority and gave youth a sense of collective power.
The Flaws
Again there were disputes. The Ministry of Education and Reich Youth Leadership argued over
underlying objectives and priorities. They often diverged. The youth groups encouraged physical
prowess over intellectual ability.
The Youth movements lost their appeal as they were seen to be simply enforcing the ideas of the
new establishment. The Hitler Youth became simply a nursery for military mobilisation. The best of
the youth leaders moved into the army and the official youth programme became more routine and
less imaginative.
Peukert claims “the ideological content of National Socialism remained too vague to function as a
self-sufficient educational objective. In practice young people selected from competing informationsources and values which were on offer”.
With war, Youth movements lost all their positive aspects but did become more influential. Nazi
Germany created a modern youth culture which was autonomous and sometimes hostile to it.
Propaganda to population
Radios
Nazis gave priority to radio as this increased the personal contact between people and their leader.
By 1939 70 % people owned radios (compared with 25% in 1932). More than anywhere else in the
world. The radio provided the most abiding impression of the fuhrer they were likely to have.
Film
Film was more difficult. It was less successful than radio. Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will was
commissioned by Hitler as a record of the Nuremberg rallies of 1934. It fostered the Fuhrer cult.
However, it was too long for most audiences who disliked the repetition of the same type of scene.
Hitler was less able to produce a film to capture the public’s imagination than Goebbels. The Eternal
Jew commissioned by Hitler and directed by Hippler was so crude that audiences were repelled by
its images. Goebbels was more successful with his anti-semitic film ‘Jew Suss’. He had, by this time
learned how to introduce propaganda as a subliminal message within the context of a story with
which the viewers could identify.
Press
Using the press for propaganda was difficult. It was based on a more traditional technology. It had
had longer than radio to develop under private ownership.
Radio, by contrast could be taken over fairly easily by the state.
Newspapers were produced in huge numbers during the liberal years of the Weimar Republic. By
1933 there were over 4,700 daily newspapers in Germany, representing a wide variety of political
and regional views and loyalties. To an extent, the regime gained effective administrative control.
1933-45 the number of State-owned papers increased from 2.5% to 82% of the total.
The German News Agency (DNB) controlled the means whereby the news was to be presented.
News agencies were amalgamated to ensure a single source of information. Journalists were
responsible to the state not their editors. Goebbels met with the newspaper bosses every day to
discuss their front pages and news stories. The result was a bland form of journalism and writing.
This led to a decline in public interest. The emphasis on censorship was preventative not creative.
Culture
Nazis distrusted the traditional content of culture but never really was able to suggest an alternative.
In Literature, art and music, censorship created a contemporary vacuum which was supposed to be
filled with a Nazi culture. Literature produced a complete void. Music was less affected. Art was the
most filled but with work a distressingly low quality.
In literature there was much censorship. Massive book burning by the SA led to the removal of
2,500 German authors from the approved lists. It was never really going to lead to an alternative
Nazi literature since Nazism itself was anti-intellectual.
Visual arts were used to put across basic blood and soil values. Painters like Kampf and Ziegler were
able to provide pictorial stereotypes eg: women as home makers and men in a military role. This
reinforced the gender roles as introduced by the youth movements such as BDM and JH. The result
was a bland form of art which lacked talent. The vacuum left by censorship was filled with
mediocrity. ‘Nazi’ art tended to copy other forms of art and lacked originality. Eg: Kamp’s study of
Venus and Adonis was a copy of earlier masters like Rubens and David. There was always more
interest in non-Nazi art (which was seen as ‘degenerate’ by the Nazis).
Music
The Nazi regime ended the period of musical expereimentation which had been a major cultural
aspect of the Weimar Republic. The works of Shoenberg and Berg were considered un-German and
those of Mendelssohn were banned as ‘Jewish’. The majority of German or Austrian composers
were unaffected. The Nazis used certain composers to spread Nazi values. Hitler liked Wagner and
saw his ‘Ring Cycle’ as the musical embodiment of volkisch values. Some composers like Richard
Strauss and Carl Orff had an ambivalent attitude to the Nazi regime (neither against or in favour of
it). They managed to exist alongside the regime. Therefore the musical output of the Third Reich
was superior to the art. However, it was not necessary distinctively Nazi.
Nazi culture did not have a lasting impact on culture (unlike Socialist Realism in Russia).
Success of Propaganda
The big test was would people accept the war? Propaganda worked to put across the Nazi ideology.
However, there was a need to be pragmatic, particularly to meet the needs of war.
1933-9 - pragmatism frequently diluted ideology. This meant that Hitler’s ideas were theoretically
very inconsistent. He was presented as a man of peace while emphasising struggle and war-like
values.
1939-43 – Stage One: Getting people used to the idea of war. Emphasis was made on ‘Blitzkrieg’.
This fitted in with the notion of easy conquest achieved by the ‘master race’. This was a
considerable success. Hitler reached the peak of his success in 1940 with the fall of France.
1943-45 – Stage Two: Getting people used to the experience of war. 1943 Goebbels ‘Total War’
speech was a success. Propaganda became less successful. People showed fortitude in the face of
adversity and destruction, not a fanatical desire to achieve a world vision. By this stage Nazi
propaganda had become irrelevant.