http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Af44Slin7lg

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

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

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

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 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v= xGSnVAjqQFw

Hitler as the Heroic Leader

Hitler Brings Unity

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

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

Youthful Idealism

“Youth serves the
Fuhrer”

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

Power and Pageantry

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) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
NGNyc_LlJhs

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

The Jew as Eugenic Threat
“With satanic joy in his face, the blackhaired 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

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

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

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.”

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

Nazi propaganda poster blaming
Jews for the war

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

Jews depicted as controlling the Allies

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

The “Blood Libel”

The Jew as demonic
From an advertising poster for a movie

A
Children's
Book

“Jews Get Out!”: A Children’s Game

“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

“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

Dehumanizing
Images:
Jews portrayed as vermin http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=
U2Iazwru7yE

• “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.

Propaganda questions
1. What statement is this photo making?
2. How is the example exploiting the already existing attitudes in Germany?
3. Which of the propaganda methods apply to this photo?
4. How do you think Nazi propaganda created an atmosphere of terror for all
Germans?