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 JewAnti-Semitic book

8. Radio - Controlling mass mediaThe 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