Triumph of the Will and Jud Suess as Nazi Propaganda Essay examples

When the Nazi party completely took over power, they had the vision to restore proper traditional German culture in Germany. This too meant that for instance artist that expressed their emotional feelings /political views through their art, were persecuted if the art that was painted did not align with the Nazi ideology or seemed anti-Nazi. This was a weakness since artist and film makers flourished during the years of the Weimar republic, capturing historic moments and filming them from a primary perspective. However, the Nazis came and basically filtered everything that seemed anti-Nazi or promoted something else than what the Nazis wanted. The Nazis then used cinemas and art for the own propaganda reasons. Only allowing their films which manipulated the German viewers and promoting the German superior race, banning any foreign movies or documentaries which

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

Most of us have heard of the Nazi party’s horrific, genocidal regime on destroying the Jewish race, but what events led up to their dire judgement? In this study I aim to uncover the events, reasons and changes which led to the Holocaust and the further changes in the treatment of the Jewish race by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party.

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

Nazi films portrayed Jews as inferior and subhuman creatures which where invading and making Aryan society decay. For example, The Eternal Jew, which was launched in 1940, directed by Fritz Hippler, pictured Jews as parasites, consumed and blinded by sex and

With all of the false stereotypes being relayed to the people, hate towards the Jews became normal. Kurt Mobius, a German police officer working at a concentration camp in Poland, said, “I believed the propaganda that all Jews were criminal and subhumans” (Marcovitz 18). The constant anti-Semitic distortion made it easy for

With the emergence of World War II and endless propaganda campaigns, Jew Suess was able to successfully distinguish itself as one of the most popular German propaganda films. Premiering at the Venice Film Festival in 1940, the film is considered “one of the most anti-Semitic films of all time” today. It is notorious for embedding countless anti-Semitic themes through the portrayal of the main character, Suess Openheimer, in which he exploits the city of Württemberg. Collectively, the countless anti-Semitic themes built through the character of Suess Openheimer boil down to one central idea: when a society is freed from the presence of Jews it prospers and becomes a place that is just for all; eliminating greed and corruption. Jew Suess also warns society against the dangers of the

"Propaganda tries 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." ( Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, 1926).

Adolf Hitler was one of the 20th century's most powerful dictators. He was responsible for World War II and the death of millions. Hitler saw a nation in despair and used this as an opportunity to gain political power. He saw a nation of unemployed and hungry citizens and promised them economic prosperity in return for absolute power. Someone once said "The Nazis rose to power on the empty stomachs of the German people".

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 fact that wars give rise to intensive propaganda campaigns has made many people suppose that propaganda is something new. The truth is, it is not. The battle with persuasion for power and men’s minds is as old as human history (Casey, 1994d)

Laura Heins focuses on what makes melodramas so popular as forms of entertainment and organizes her chapters thematically explaining the pros and cons of melodramas pertaining to the themes. Heins explains that the German government used melodramas to push their unfavorable view towards the Jews and their favored views of the Aryan way of life. Laura Heins wrote about a film, Jud Süss, “The most notorious example of a Nazi propaganda film, Jud Süss (Jew Süss, 1940), cast a Jewish figure as the aristocratic villain, superimposing virulent racism onto the unresolved complexes of class and gender difference derived from both eighteenth-century bourgeois tragedy and nineteenth-century sensational melodrama.” According to Heins, the film was the most evident statement of propaganda from Germany. In the film the Jewish antagonist is someone who is extremely well off and the protagonist Dorothea, a middle class German girl, is forced into the rich Jewish man’s (Süss) bed. Films like Jud Süss got people extremely upset, this helped feed the negative view that people began to have of Jewish people. More and more they saw them as opportunistic and sexual individuals; they were seen as greedy in every way. In this example, the message that the Nazi government was trying to portray was clear, but the message can be blurred. Melodramas were written with the intent to stand

Quentin Tarantino’s 2009 film Inglourious Bastards entails a Jewish revenge fantasy that is told through a counterfactual history of events in World War II. However, this story follows a completely different plot than what we are currently familiar with. Within these circumstances, audiences now question the very ideas and arguments that are often associated with World War II. We believe that Inglourious Basterds is a Jewish revenge fantasy that forces us to rethink our previous understandings by disrupting the viewers sense of content and nature in the history of World War II. Within this thesis, this paper will cover the Jewish lens vs. American lens, counter-plots with-in the film, ignored social undercurrents, and the idea that nobody

The leaders of the Nazi party made it one of the most infamous groups to lead a nation in history. The horrible things done under their rule and with their stamp of approval has made the term Nazi one of the worst possible. The amazing thing about the Nazi party is that many of the main aspects of their ideology existed in Germany even before they formed or came to power. Some of the major aspects of Nazi ideology such as antisemitism, the desire to expand the German empire, and the belief in the strength of the Aryan race existed in Germany years before Adolf Hitler was a name anyone in Germany would recognize.

There are two types of propaganda: sociological propaganda; the spreading of an ideology through the mass media, and political propaganda; efforts that are sponsored by governments and political groups that alter a persons’ interests. All propaganda has a direction, and the overall quality determines whether it will have a positive or negative effect over the masses. Our entire nation is a vast propaganda operational system that is greatly linked to education, consumerism and politics. A great deal of what makes up propaganda and how it is placed among the masses lies in understanding the overall emotional and physical states of these groups of people and in finding a way to draw a persons’ attention to capture their hearts, breaking down