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Mass media: Political propaganda and persuasion
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Mass media: Political propaganda and persuasion
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Recall the US Institute for Propaganda Analysis's seven propaganda devices:
We have already seen plenty of examples of the first two in Nazi propaganda. The third, transference, is an attempt by the propagandist to transfer from something we respect or revere the aura, the authority it has to whatever cause the propagandist is advocating. Thus, the politician who appeals to 'Christian values' or who, more commonly in the States than in the UK, ends an address with a public prayer, is attempting to transfer some of the mystery and sanctity of religion to her own cause. Not only religion, of course - there are other ideologies which more or less automatically claim our respect, such as science, and the Nazis were keen to show that their race theory was 'scientific'.
In many ways the NSDAP's programme was ill thought out and often self-contradictory. You might think that any political party trying to appeal to rational voters would find such muddle-headedness a disadvantage, but you only have to consider your recent experience of politics to see that that's not necessarily the case. It can even be a positive advantage in that it allows you to promise something for everyone. So the NSDAP managed to claim at one and the same time that it was anti-capitalist and anti-proletarian, conservative and revolutionary, promising a new, if vague, synthesis which promised salvation through unquestioning obedience to the leader.
According to Lasswell (see the section on the Lasswell Formula), "propaganda relies on symbols to attain its end: the manipulation of collective attitudes" - what more powerful symbols than religious ones? Hitler was the incarnation of the 'national community'; he was invariably right. Thus, he was not bound by any rule of law, he was the chosen one to lead the people back to their true greatness. On December 18 1926 Hitler spoke on the occasion of the NSDAP's Christmas celebrations. The report of his address reads as follows:
The birth of the man which we celebrate at Christmas is of the greatest importance for National Socialists. Christ was the greatest of previous fighters in the struggle against the world-wide Jewish enemy. He was the greatest fighting temperament there has ever been on earth. Christ was not the apostle of peace, as certain circles maintain. Struggle against the power of capital was his purpose in life and his message, for which he was crucified by his enemies the Jews. For future millennia the teachings of Christ provided the basis of the battle against the enemies of humanity, the Jews. For centuries early Christianity was engaged in the most demanding struggle against its enemies and won despite all the persecution. In the same way National Socialism will triumph despite persecutions and difficulties from the authorities and will become that powerful group which allows the ideals of Christ to be realized. The work which Christ had started, but could not finish, will be completed by him - Hitler
This focus on the leader as the bringer of salvation was continued throughout the Nazi Party's evolution. Hitler almost invariably arrived late for his speeches to mass audiences. Just at the point when the expectant tension of the assembled masses had reached fever-pitch, Hitler himself arrived, normally marching through the audience to the podium. The tension was built up by martial songs and music, mass demonstrations and flags and radical slogans, a tension which finally broke with the late arrival of the 'leader' (a technique very widely adopted in today's political campaigns).
After Hitler had come to power, Goebbels commentated on one such mass meeting:
... Hitler, he is the chance Germany still has. Hitler, he is the hope of millions. Hitler, he has become the symbol of the German future. The atmosphere is suddenly tense in the gigantic hall. Shouts of joy. Shouts of 'Heil!'. The SS men who are standing down below step to one side. Hitler has arrived!
It is impossible to convey the tone of Goebbels' voice here, almost evangelical. This sort of constant veneration of Hitler is typical of Goebbels' approach and of the Party as a whole, the leader's public address having been the focus of mass meetings ever since its foundation.
The focus on the leader as a sort of secular Messiah was by no means the only quasi-religious factor in the NSDAP's appeal. Aflfred Rosenberg, the Party's chief ideologue, commented after the 1920 conference on the Nazi flag:
With a flag one leads millions into battle, but a flag only has real value if it a symbol of an effervescent feeling for life which derives from the deepest sources within mankind [That may sound odd, but this kind of twaddle is not easy to translate - my apologies.] That is the black swastika, the Germanic sign of the race and the sign of the battle for the values of our people.The colours black-white-red were the holy banner beneath which the Second Reich was founded and beneath which two million heroes lost their lives. Now we are in chaos. Out of this chaos, against this chaos the idea and form of the Third Recih are struggling to the fore for anyone with eyes to see: the eternal race-sign and the heroic old colours of honour in a new and ages-old form. Race and honour, honour and race, that was what was preached by each one of those flags, each one of the many, which stood close by one another on the morning of July 4 and which in the evening, five hundred in all, followed by column upon column, were paraded before Adolf Hitler. The sea of flags gathered in the market place then expressed once more, wordlessly, but more effectively than any word, the new creed.
The swastika was afforded at least the same significance as the Christian cross and ceremonies were deliberately designed to parallel Christian ceremonies. In Triumph of the Will, for example, Hitler is shown 'blessing' the flags of his regiments.
Like any other religion, the movement had its saints and martyrs. The Feldherrnhalle in Munich where a number had been killed in the abortive 1923 putsch was turned into a shrine by the Nazis. It became one of the major centres of Nazi 'worship'. After the Nazis assumed power, Mein Kampf became the equivalent of the Bible. My copy is bound in black with a gold-tooled spine. The first page reads:
To the newly wedded couple
[space for their names]
with best wishes for a happy and blessed marriage, presnted by the registry office in [space for name]
on [space for date]
signed the Mayor [space for signature]
There follows a black and white head and shoulder shot of Hitler looking resolute and determined, decidedly disinclined to take part in anything as frivolous as a wedding celebration. After the contents page, there is a page edged in black like a funeral announcement. It reads:
On November 9 1923 at 12.30 in the afternoon, in front of the Feldherrnhalle as well as in the courtyard of the former war ministry in Munich, the following men gave their lives for their loyal belief in the resurrection of their nation
There follows a list of their names, their professions and their dates of birth, after which Hitler states that he dedicates this book to their memory.
Foremost among the NSDAP's martyrs was Horst Wessel, who had written a marching song for the movement and who died at the age of only 23. A radio commentary on a ceremony in his honour, a procession to the house where he died, runs:
The man died for the nation; his song was composed for the German people; his suffering, his death was a sacrifice entirely for the future of sixty-six million people ... Horst Wessel's flag is borne in front, all stand up, through the twilight hundreds of torches are visible ....
The commentator then goes on to describe in hushed, awed tones how the procession halts before the house and the lone Gauleiter (Goebbels) steps inside to stand reverentially beside Wessel's deathbed.
Those are just a few examples of the deliberate parallels drawn between organized religion and Nazism. One could easily find many others. For example, in Nürnberg it was the custom at Christmas time to decorate the mediæval Schöner Brunnen (beautiful fountain) with a cross. During the Nazi period it was surmounted by an illuminated swastika. Other manifestations seem plain silly - an example is the cross-shaped base used to support Christmas trees brought into the house. What other shape could it reasonably be? Swastika-shaped, of course.
This phenomenon of transference ("the attempt by the propagandist to transfer from something we respect or revere the aura, the authority it has to whatever cause the propagandist is advocating") is not confined to Nazi propaganda, though in Britain it is that propaganda we see most often on our TV screens. In Britain, the Royal Family has played a roughly similar rôle, presented to us British as the symbol of our national qualities, our proud traditions and our international power. At the same time as the Nazis were holding their mass party rallies, in a seriously divided Britain which had only recently been riven by the National Strike, the Silver Jubilee of George V in 1935 was a hugely expensive display of pomp which was intended to translate reverence for a dynasty into allegiance to the state. The king, wearing a plumed hat and dressed in the scarlet uniform of a field marshall, was accompanied by the queen, wearing the sash of the Order of the Garter, in an open carriage to St Paul's cathedral, where they were blessed by the Archbishop of Canterbury. From all corners of the empire those who dominated their peoples on our behalf came to pay homage. Piers Brendon (2000 : 356) cites the following story as evidence of the effectiveness of this propaganda:
When the Mayor of Bermondsey refused to meet the King, on the grounds that the cost of the ceremony would deprive 30 poor crippled children of a week's holiday by the seaside, an angry crowd burned him in effigy outside his own town hall, to the strains of the National Anthem.
Compared with this, the adulation heaped upon Hitler, who was at least widely credited with having ended unemployment, seems rather more rational.
A year later George V died, apparently hastened on his way by his doctor so as to allow his death to be reported by The Times, rather than by the less fitting evening newspapers. (Brendon (2000 : 365)) This of course was the trigger for another massive exercise in propaganda, more than a million people queuing over four days to pay their respects to the king's embalmed body.
All of this was followed in 1937 by the splendour of the coronation of George VI, for whom popular adoration had been rapidly built up after the unexpected abdication of his feckless brother the year before. At Westminster Abbey the Anglican bishops knelt before the new king who was annointed with holy oil - a conspicuous exercise in 'transference' indeed. We may be horrified when we see the jubilation of the German crowds mesmerized by Hitler and his stormtroopers parading into Nuremberg, but it sometimes feels easier to understand their worship of the leader of the 'national revolution', whose victory had resulted from years of 'struggle' (Kampf), and who promised them a glorious future, than the loyalty which the poverty-stricken dwellers of filthy British slums showed to the distant representative of a class which promised them nothing, who held his power thanks to a mere accident of birth. The British establishment has been remarkably successful in maintaining, if not reverence for a remarkably dysfunctional family worthy of the tackiest of soap operas, then at least deference right into the twenty-first century, deference which occasionally still turns into something more akin to mass hysteria, as in the case of Princess Diana's death, and which, in the case of the Queen Mother, does indeed still seem to continue to be something akin to reverence, in this case for an elderly lady, who seems to have done little to earn respect other than drink gin and play the horses, occasionally waving decorously at public gatherings.
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