Holocaust Essay

Propaganda is the use of mass media like television, radio, magazines and other mediums to make a large number of people believe a specific point of view. Propaganda controlled Germans and allowed them to adapt to the idea of murdering the Jews. Nazi party created such effective propaganda that immediately people only saw or heard their opinions and they had the urge to comply with them. They portrayed their anti-semitism and the murderous concept of killing Jews in a way that made it indirect yet straightforward and clear. This propaganda allowed almost the entire population to develop a strong hatred for the Jews. Hitler forced all media sources in Germany to send out antisemitic messages to citizens. Anything that opposed him in media was censored or removed. Posters and advertisements were used to falsify the German citizens into supporting violence leading up to the Holocaust. It was especially powerful in enabling the genocide to move from ideology to action. These visual deliberately misled people to believe the ideology was right because of the constant repetition of the same message. Propaganda softened people’s resistance to Nazi aggression. Nazi propaganda encouraged those carrying out the holocaust to think their actions were acceptable. The holocaust was not only caused by

First of all, propaganda initiated brainwashing, indoctrination, and distortion in the people, causing them to allow the genocides to occur. One example is shown in the Holocaust. The Holocaust was a mass extermination of the Jews and others, led by Hitler and the Nazis from 1933 to 1945. Before the Holocaust occurred, propaganda was the main cause that influenced many Germans to agree with getting rid of the Jews. They were brainwashed into thinking that Jews were evil and should be erased from their country. In Night, a documentary by Elie Wiesel, Wiesel states, “The gypsy looked him up and down slowly, from head to front. As if he wanted to convince himself that this man addressing him was

The Nazi's did use propaganda in this negative sense but in an underhanded and subversive way. They backed up all their false reports with "scientific studies" and claims of a better human race.

Hitler and the Nazis used propaganda to suppress the Jews’ freedoms and human rights. Films portrayed Germans as powerful and mighty while showing the Jews to be “subhuman creatures” (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 1). German newspapers portrayed Jews in their cartoons as anti semitic caricatures while radios played Hitler’s manipulative speeches all over Germany. By dehumanizing Jewish people through propaganda, Hitler was able to encourage Germans to support the Nazis and look down on the Jews. Without propaganda, less people would have been motivated to support Hitler.

The Nazis were terrified of the Jews, as they had been conditioned to do so. By publicly identifying the Jews as the enemy, they managed to exploit the Germans’ distress and incited their rage towards the Jews. Propaganda such as Der Ewige Jude, or posters stating “behind enemy powers: the Jews” aimed to slowly condition fear and indifference into the Germans. These tactics model the ones used in operant conditioning. Furthermore, the Nazis were also fearful of what would happen if they attempted to defy mob mentality. People feel the urge to conform with a group and its views, and this is a fundamental part of human nature. However, when one’s thinking conflicts with the group, there is a notable change in one’s brain.

The Holocaust is widely considered to be one of the darkest times in history- an abominable genocide with casualties measured in millions. With infamy comes inquiry, leading many to question and examine the exact motives behind the Nazi regime that killed masses. There are various factors to be considered when pinpointing the root causes of the Holocaust, among these being the historical and cultural hatred of Jews, the growing German unrest following WWI, and the Nazi Party’s ability to effectively utilize propaganda as to spread their doctrine. Despite this, anti-semitic ideas and propaganda spread before and during WWII were decidedly some of the most influential causes of the Holocaust.

One of the main characteristics of the revolutionary or fanatic groups of the XX and XXI century is their ability to recruit and increase in numbers. This characteristic, that from time to time has not been studied, is due to the propaganda and publicity that they deliver. Some examples of this catching propaganda are Joseph Goebbels with the Nazis, ISIS as a publicity machine, and the classroom experiment of The Wave. To analyze Nazis’ case the book Night and the 19 principles of propaganda are going to be used. However, it is going to be presented just from the perspective of Jews and its basis.

First of all, the Nazis used false information about Jewish people and utilized negative Jewish stereotypes to legitimize the horrific acts of violence during the Final Solution. The Nazis were evil towards the Jews. Movies, newspapers, and posters were only some of the ways anti-semitic messages were thrown out into the public. A newspaper called Der Sturmer pumped out stories devoted to showing Germans how dirty Jews were (Marcovitz 15). Things like “Jews are immoral, indecent, dishonest, ugly, fat, not human, cannibalistic”, and “Jews eat their children and drink their blood”, were common headlines (Marcovitz 15). Jews were not humans. They were on the same level as bugs and needed to be exterminated from Germany and all of Eastern Europe. Also, stereotypes from 100’s of years ago were still alive and well. Jews were tax collectors a long time ago, and some people still hated them for it. Some people could not let go of old derogatory lies and the Nazis loved this. Hate towards the Jews was stronger than kindness and the Nazis fed off of this. If people saw the propaganda and the heard old stereotypes, then maybe they would hop on board with the Nazis.

The primary source “German Economic Goals and the Jewish question (August 1936)” by Adolf Hitler describes antisemitism was central to Hitler’s political vision and strategy. The Reichstag passed laws such as making the Jewish people liable for all damage inflicted by individual specimens of this community of criminals upon the German economy, and thus upon the German people. Hitler figured if he destroyed the Jewish people that the world he envisioned would be born. Therefore, he staged the holocaust to eliminate the Jews from German culture. The factors that contributed towards the Nazi hatred of the Jews includes the ideas of ‘Positive Christianity’ supported by Nazi Movement. Additionally, racial and political factors were significant in their relations to anti-Semitism during World War I, which singled out the Jews as a threat to the established order of society in German. These factors made the Jews a target for persecution and ultimate destruction by the Nazis.

In Germany, like most countries of Europe, the Anti-Semitism acquired more followers during the late 1880’s the first anti-Semite was elected for the parliament. The 1890’s was a time of social and economic problems in Germany; the most affected was the lower middle class. Many people used the nationalism and anti-Semitism as the answer to most of the problems in Germany.

During the first part of Hitler’s Regime, the government established concentration camps to confine and detain anyone the Nazi’s though as political, cultural and ideological opponents. The first Concentration camp was built in January, 1933, right after Hitler came into power. Hitler gained further support for his ideas by propaganda, which filled the media of Germany with pro-nazi material. All forms of communication; newspapers, radio, books, TV, art, music and movies were controlled by the Nazis. This way, nonother than what the Nazi’s wanted published could only be distributed to its society, and preventing news about the Holocaust from getting anywhere outside of Germany. This propaganda identified the Jews as an inferior ‘race’, and the source of Germany’s defeat and economic depression in world war one on them.

    Even at the local level jews were greatly targeted by the propaganda put up by the nazis. The nazis ordered “all villages in the district to build large anti-jewish signs.”(Hill, 98) Even some Jewish children couldn’t go to school because they weren’t welcome there. The nazis had a specific way they wanted hate spread out on paper. Posters had to be “30ft by 5ft. The word Jew shall be underlined in red and must be conspicuous. When possible the poster is to be framed with a black margin.”(Hill, 98, 99) “These Jewish poles lost everything: jobs, schools, property, land, and money.”(Haugen, 17)

In order for Adolf Hitler to become successful, he knew that he had to spread Nazism to the far corners of the world. He accomplished this to some extent by using propaganda. “Following the Nazi seizure of power in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by Joseph Goebbels” (“Nazi Propaganda”). Goebbels was the master propagandist and orator to whom Hitler gave the responsibility of spreading the favorable image of the Nazi regime. The Nazis took control of all means of entertainment in order to spread their beliefs. “The ministry’s aim was to ensure that the Nazi message was successfully communicated through art, music, theater, films, books, radio, educational materials, and the press” (“Nazi Propaganda). The main target of the propaganda was the Jewish race. Goebbels’ “propaganda campaigns created

The Nazis and Hitler used extreme propaganda in attempt for people to accept their actions. Hitler made the Jews out to be a problem and a threat to the purity and perfection of German society (Holocaust Encyclopdia: Nazi Propaganda ). In Hitler’s speech to the Reichstag in September, 1942, he states,

Propaganda is a tool for manipulating and changing the opinions people. The bases of propaganda have come forth form the modes of persuasion, Ethos, Pathos and Logos.