Nazi Propaganda And The Holocaust

"Propaganda attempts to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea." These words of Adolf Hitler are taken from his book Mien Kampf (My Struggle) published in 1926. Propaganda was an elaborate and essential tool used extensively by Hitler and the Nazi's during their terrorizing reign of Germany and throughout Europe. Not only was it used to promote and endorse the party and its leader's extreme anti-Semitic values, but also to mask the horrifying truths of what was to become known as the Holocaust.

Hitler had shown unwillingness to tolerate the Jews and once he was appointed Chancellor, he started to take elimination measures like deportation, forced emigration, and isolation to enforce his belief. He took advantage of Germany’s weakness in World War One, then used it as an opportunity to blame the Jews for Germany’s defeat. Hitler’s political party was the largest political party in Germany thus allowing them to draw very large crowds to gatherings. He had very good oratory speeches with hand gestures that easily manipulated people to adhere to his views. Hitler constantly targeted the Jews because he knew people believed in these speeches. People in Germany were already anti-semitic but Hitler made it worse by constantly consuming them in his speeches. From the way he spoke about the Jews, we could clearly see the possibility of genocide. Hitler wanted Germany to be free of any humans that anyone other than his ideal master race so he personally selected bodyguards to be part of a group called the SS. Hitler was responsible for ordering the SS to carry out the extermination of anyone who did not fit this ideal. The SS handled oppositions using force and as a result of which people were forced to give into the idea of violence. Sometimes people purposely went along with this Holocaust ideal due to the fear of getting killed. These terrors allowed the holocaust occur

From 1941 to 1945, Jews were systematically murdered in one of the deadliest genocides in history, which was part of a broader aggregate of acts of oppression and killings of various ethnic and political groups in Europe by the Nazi regime. Every arm of Germany 's bureaucracy was involved in the logistics and the carrying out of the genocide. Other victims of Nazi crimes included Romanians, Ethnic Poles and other Slavs, Soviet POWs, communists, homosexuals, Jehovah 's Witnesses and the mentally and physically disabled. A network of about 42,500 facilities in Germany and German-occupied territories were used to concentrate victims for slave labor, mass murder, and other human rights abuses. Over 200,000 people are estimated to have been Holocaust perpetrators. Beginning in 1941, Jews from all over the continent, as well as hundreds of thousands of European Gypsies, were transported to the Polish ghettoes. Every person designated as a Jew in German territory was marked with a yellow star making them open targets. Thousands were soon being deported to the Polish ghettoes and German-occupied cities in the USSR. Since June 1941, experiments with mass killing methods had been ongoing at the concentration camp of Auschwitz and many more. That August, 500 officials gassed 500 Soviet POWs to death with the pesticide Zyklon-B. The SS soon placed a huge order for the gas with a German pest-control firm, an ominous indicator of the coming Holocaust. Beginning in late 1941, the Germans

Hitler believed that propaganda from the allies was the main reason that the Germans lost during World War I and felt that this form of warfare needed to be a primary tool in modern warfare. He spoke of this belief in his book Mein Kampf well before the start of the second World War. Hitler felt that the public needed to be inundated with the ideology of the state at all times and through all mediums (Jowett and O'Donnell 2). "To do this," he said "everything from child's story-book to the last newspaper, every theater, every cinema and every advertisement must be brought into the service of this single mission" (qt. in Qualter ix). This onslaught of propaganda led to the Holocaust by leaving no other option open to the German people

Propaganda was a major factor into dehumanizing the Jews. What is propaganda one may ask, propaganda is when the government gives false information to mislead someone into believing something they want them to believe. The Nazi government used propaganda to mislead their followers or the general group to support them. They would make posters and exaggerate their

The Holocaust was the Nazi attempt to wipe out the Jewish race (Rossel 12). The Holocaust took place from 1933 to 1945 (Rossel 12). The Holocaust took place in Europe, mainly Germany (“Introduction” par 3). Mainly Jewish and Nazi people were involved in the Holocaust, as well as some Gypsies (“Introduction” par 2, 3). The Holocaust was the persecution of 6 million Jews and millions of others forced to live in ghettos, deported to camps, and systematically annihilated until the Allied forces liberated the remaining survivors.

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.

One central focus of Nazi propaganda was anti-Semitism. Germans were fed stories of Jewish greed and assistance to foreign enemies (Welch). During periods preceding legislation or executive measures against Jews, propaganda campaigns created an atmosphere tolerant of violence against Jews, particularly in 1935, prior to Nuremberg Race Laws of September and in 1938, before anti-Semitic economic legislation following Kristallnacht (Welch). Propaganda also encouraged acceptance of anti-Semitic legislation, as these appeared to depict the Nazi government as stepping in and “restoring order” (Welch). Newspapers in Germany, such as The Attacker, printed cartoons depicting Jews with stereotypical features and personalities. After the Germans began World War II with the invasion of Poland in September

What would make a group of people ignore their country’s own genocide? In Nazi Germany, the answer was propaganda. From the end of World War I, the German leaders knew how important propaganda was. By the time Hitler had complete control of the military, the powerful propaganda film Triumph de Willens was already being produced . By the time the second offensive started, they had already launched an international propaganda magazine called Signal. Both of these are prime examples of the purpose of German propaganda. Like earlier British propaganda, it had two primary roles. First, the control of the people. Gobbels’ propaganda about “national enemies” made it seem as if the Nazis were the only alternative to a loss in national security. The second goal was scaring foreign powers. Through international magazines and radio broadcasts such as Signal, German power and victories were highlighted and shown to the world. The three key issues are the attacks on Jews and Communists, the origins of these methods, and the uses of these methods to create a powerful Nazi government. Through slandering and suppression of the opposition of the Nazis, Hitler’s media soon became the voice of the country. The Nazi Party used propaganda to gain power out of fear for national security.

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.

“All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach,” Adolf Hitler (The National World War Museum). The German Nazi dictator utilized his power over the people using propaganda, eventually creating a sense of hatred towards Jews. After World War 1, the punishments of the League of Nations caused Germany to suffer. The Nazi party came to blame the Jews in order to have a nation-wide “scapegoat”. This hatred and prejudice towards Jews is known as anti-semitism. According to the Breman Museum, “the Nazi Party was one of the first political movements to take full advantage of mass communications technologies: radio, recorded sound, film, and the printed

It began with a simple boycott of Jewish shops and ended in the gas chambers at Auschwitz as Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers attempted to exterminate the entire Jewish population of Europe.

Propaganda is a way of trying to “force a doctrine on the whole people” (Nazi Propaganda). That quote is written in the first piece of Hitler’s Nazi propaganda - his book Mein Kampf. As soon as he got out of jail, he helped the Nazis take power of Germany. Once they did, he created a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. The goal of this organization was to spread the Nazi ideals through press, films, radio, music, books, theater and other arts, and school education. The propaganda that was being spread had many goals - those goals included promoting Hitler and the Nazi party, encouraging anti-Semitism, and eventually, encouraging support for World War II. Some examples of anti-Semitism include framing the Jews for communism in Russia, portraying Jews as a threat to Germany, and simply making Jews look bad. Many political cartoons and movies were

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,

The central theme to this essay will be to answer the question “Discuss the roll that graphic design played in political/social change in a specific period”. This essay will look into what Hitler’s propaganda meant for the Nazis and the population of Germany. Propaganda is the dissemination of information to influence or control large groups of people. In totalitarian regimes like Nazi Germany, propaganda plays a significant role in consolidating power in the hands of the controlling party. (ushmm, 2015) This essay in conjunction will look into what Hitler’s propaganda meant, what methods conducted by Adolf Hitler and the Propaganda Ministry, directed by Dr. Joseph Goebbels use to infiltrate their enemies and commit mass genocide of the