propaganda: III Reich 6

Mass media: Political propaganda and persuasion

The Propaganda of the Third Reich

Lies

Exclusivity

The hypodermic needle model is generally considered to be overly simplistic. However, in those cases where all competing messages are rigorously excluded, it may be a more accurate model of media effects. Certainly, as always, there are factors which will influence your assessment of what you hear - do you trust the source of the message? does the message chime with the norms of your group? etc. - but in essence the more effectively the propagandist closes off the competition, the more successful s/he is likely to be. So all totalitarian societies have taken total control of the media. Stalin's Russia rewrote the school history books, re-edited old newspapers, air-brushed Stalin's enemies out of old photos; in Pol Pot's Kamputschea owning a radio was a capital offence; in the former East European bloc Western radio output was jammed and so on. And even in democratic countries, there will normally be some kind of provision for increased, even total, censorship of the news media in times of war or, possibly, other crises.

The Nazis were no exception. Goebbels proclaimed at the 1934 Party Congress his contempt of 'total propaganda'. He moved swiftly to take control of broadcasting. Control of newspapers was, however, more subtle. He hoped to benefit from the prestige and credibility of the great German dailies. Although their style continued to differ from Nazi Party organs, they actually contained no additional information. If you can imagine yourself in the position of a skeptical German at that time, you can perhaps see how that could have been quite effective - you use those traditional dailies to check the veracity of what you're hearing on the radio or reading in the Nazi papers; you find that the style is reassuringly different, similar to what it always was, there is no obvious Nazi propaganda, but you don't find any of the news in the other media contradicted, so ....

Goebbels was a skilled enough propagandist to realize that a total lack of variation would soon lead to boredom. As he put it, 'We don't want everyone to blow the same horn at all, but only want them to blow according to one plan ... not everyone has the right to blow what he pleases.'; 'We would not presume to tell a conductor how to conduct; but what is played, that is our sovereign right to decide.' So he rapidly set about ensuring that there were plenty of different instruments available - radio, film , galleries etc. - but all playing his tunes.

The Reich Culture Chamber, under Goebbels' directorship, was founded in 1933. All 'intellectual workers' had to belong to it, giving Goebbels total control of all aspects of cultural life. The Culture Chamber embraced the Chambers for Literature, Press, Broadcasting, Theatre, Music and Fine Arts, as well as the Film Chamber which had been set up earlier. Anyone who did not join did not work, or might even end up in a concentration camp. As Goebbels pointed out, censorship was virtually unnecessary as a result, all intellectual workers 'voluntarily' toeing the party line if they wished to continue to earn a living.

The NSDAP did not simply dominate the news media, but the whole of cultural life in the Reich in order to ensure the eradication of all unGerman thought. Intellectuals who opposed Hitler were ousted from the academies and universities and on May 10 1993 their books were publicly burnt in the public squares of cities and university towns, not only the works of living writers, but as far back as the nineteenth century.

In music the works of Jewish composers such as Mendelssohn and Mahler were condemned and the performance of 'degenerate' modern works was banned. In actual fact, though, the régime had little success with music, perhaps in part due to the efforts of the internationally renowned conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler, who remained in Germany during the Nazi period and continued to perform publicly.

In art, 'entartete Kunst' (decadent art) was reviled, barred and destroyed. 'Decadent' art was anything that was produced by a Jew, as well as just about anything that was not straightforwardly pictorial. The works of the Bauhaus movement were condemned as 'architectural Bolshevism' and a new architectural style in a pompous neo-classical style was encouraged. In the Haus der Kunst (House of Art) in Munich the preferred works of Nazi art were put on display - pseudo-mediaeval portraits of the Führer in armour and on horseback surrounded by swastika penants, huge sculptures of muscular, firm-jawed Aryans etc. - not so different from Stalinist socialist realism in fact. The destruction of 'decadent' art and its replacement by the new kitsch met with considerable popular acclaim.

Once the entire cultural output of Germany had been brought under the régime's control, there was in effect little to stop the leadership producing whatever lies they wanted. As long as these did not contradict people's direct experience, what hope would they have of questioning them?

The Reichstag Fire

After the elections Hitler had achieved the Chancellorship in 1932, but had not achieved an overall majority for his Party. He obtained the cabinet's agreement to hold new elections in March 1933. In the meantime Goebbels is said to have arranged for the Reichstag (the German parliament building) to be burnt down by ten of his agents. Following that, there was to be an official investigation which would make the Communists responsible for the arson. The day after the fire, the 'Reichstag decree' dispensed with all constitutional protection of political, personal and property rights, effectively paving the way for the establishment of a totalitarian state.

The return of the Saar Region

Until January 1935 the Saar region was under the rule of a Commission of the League of Nations. The population there were due then to vote on whether it should become part of France, part of Germany or remain under the League. It was to be expected that most would vote for a return to Germany, but since Hitler had taken power in 1933, an increasing number of Socialists and Catholics were prepared to vote to remain under the League.

Goebbels prepared for the plebiscite with a massive propaganda campaign, flooding the region with cheap radio sets, safe in the knowledge that, since the vast majority were German speakers, it was his broadcasts they would be listening to. Part of the campaign was the (quite untrue) threat that, even though the League of Nations had promised a secret ballot, the Nazis would find out which way people had voted. The major propaganda coup was the claim that Max Braun, the Socialist leader in Saarbrücken, had fled to France. Braun drove through the streets in an open car to prove that he was still there - to no avail: people said he must be an impostor.

The invasion of Poland

Although it is still unclear whether the Reichstag fire was started by Goebbels' agents, there is no doubt that a similar use of agents provocateurs took place in 1939 to legitimate the invasion of Poland. In this case the German army and the radio station at Gleiwitz came under attack from 'Poles' who were not Poles at all. The attack was organized by Germans themselves to provide a legitimate excuse for invading Poland.

The use of agents provocateurs in such a manner is of course not limited to Nazi Germany. In the early 1980s in France there were mass marches in Paris after President Mitterrand closed the steel mills in Lorraine. The protestors began throwing missiles at the riot police which led to a devastating police baton charge. It was subsequently discovered that at least some of the 'protestors' who threw missiles were in fact undercover policemen. In today's Algeria, it would appear that the Algerian government is in fact using its own agents to massacre Algerian people and blaming the Islamist fundamentalists for it.

memetics
consistency theory
social influence
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