World War 2 Anti Semitic Propaganda Essay

The years of World War II, otherwise know as the Holocaust, are arguably the worst years in Jewish history. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party constantly mistreated the Jews on a daily basis. They did everything from using anti-semitic propaganda to opening concentration camps to torture and kill Jews. Hitler was so influential he was able to completely change people’s views on a certain group of people. He even convinced most people that Jews were evil and were the reason Germany was in the bad state it was at the time. They had been used as scapegoats and mistreated before, but nothing compared to this. They were killed, their businesses were boycotted, their books were burned, they were segregated, and so on. That era of anti-semitism started in the year 1933 after Hitler was appointed chancellor, and continued until the war was ended.

Currently America honors those murdered by the Nazis with museums, monuments, and even a remembrance day. However during the Holocaust, under the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, America was reluctant to save the Jews from Europe. Six million Jews were systematically murdered through mass shootings, gas chambers, and in death marches. We might expect that as a model democracy, America would have made a great effort to rescue these Jews but that was sadly not what occurred. Due to America’s tradition of isolationism and a singular focus on achieving military victory, Roosevelt's attention to Jewish refugees in Europe during World War II can most accurately be characterized as a mix of missed opportunities and limited achievements.

There was no one morning where the people of Germany woke up and decided to hate the Jews. Anti-semitism in Europe dates back to centuries ago, to the time period of Jesus Christ. This was the start of a chain reaction that leads to viewing Jews as the “other,” and the pent up intolerance that would eventually fuse over into mass genocide. This resentment boomed in Germany when Hitler accused the Jews of being backstabbers that caused their defeat in WWI. A powerful combination of the incredibly long lasting anti-semitism, scapegoating of the Jews, and the establishment of the Nazi Party alongside Hitler’s rise to power resulted in a rapid transformation from an emerging democracy into a genocidal, fascist dictatorship.

Adolf Hitler’s anti-Semitic views resulted in the genocide of 6 million Jews within Europe during the 20th Century. Blaming Jews for the economic crisis that Germany was suffering, as well as Germany’s humiliating losses during World War 1, Hitler targeted Jews as the countries main enemy by building on and using anti-Semitic ideas that already existed throughout Germany to amplify the German people’s utter hatred for Jews. Nuremburg laws, Liberation of Jews, and the Aftermath of the Holocaust greatly impacted the effect of the Holocaust significantly.

In this slide you can see the list of those that are involved in the warsaw uprising, but first let me tell you how all this started. Before the year 1933 Jewish people had resided in Germany for thousands of years, but in the year 1934 when Hitler

The word anti-Semitism means the prejudice or hatred of the Jews. An example of this would be the Holocaust. Pogroms were the most common example of Anti-Semitism. Pogroms were violent riots launched against Jews and were usually encouraged by the government and were incited by false rumors that Jew used the blood of Christian children to perform their rituals or the blood libel. On the night of November 9 1938, the Nazi destroyed synagogues and shop windows of Jewish owned stores throughout Austria and Germany. This transitions the Nazi to the Era of Destruction and became singularly focused on Nazi Anti-Semitism. Anti- Semitism also told the Germany to look at the Jewish population as a “deformity of the body of public”. After this came the rein of Adolf Hitler which was a crude awakening for the Jewish population. He was not accepted in to the academy of fine art which led him down the road he did then. Adolf Hitler became the Chancellor of Germany in January, 1933. He commanded his troops to invade Rhineland and made allies, which was called the Rome-berlin axis pact with Mussolini’s Italy. The second was the Anti- committer and allied Germany with Japan. Then there were concentration camps. To concentrate and monitor the Jewish population, the Germans and other people constructed Ghettos, Transit camps, and forced labor camps to keep Jew in. Many Jews were sent off to extermination camps by the Nazi authorities to be gassed their by killing them. The biggest and horrifying camp of all was Auschwitz. One of the most important contributors of the concentration camps was Hermann Goering. He was a Nazi Leader, and commander of Luftwaffe. He was designed to be Hitler’s successor and founded the Gestapo. This was the contribution of Anti-Semitism, Hitler, and the concentration camp on the

As can be seen by the extensive collection of newspapers, posters, films, and radio broadcasts, there was a large influence of anti-Semitic propaganda throughout Germany for several years, form the beginning if the late 1920’s to the mid 1940’s. That’s almost twenty years of rising and implementing hatred of the Jewish people. These types of propaganda were created and promoted in the public sphere in an attempt to eradicate the Jewish population, instigated by the Nazi party of Germany. One can see the development and connection of propaganda to this attempt at annihilation of the Jews in the “Ten Stages of Genocide” by Gregory H.

This could pass on the message to the next generation that Jewish children were “fat, cruel and nasty” and would discourage them from thinking that they were friendly or likeable. In 1939, there was a mass arrest of Jews, many were sent to concentration camps. By this action, many of the German Jewish population would be scared to be so open about their faith. In September of the same year, WW2 began and Germany invaded Poland to discover over three million Jews living there. Overall, The treatment of the Jews by the Nazis gradually got worse but as the years went by, the message strengthened and people believed more in the Nazi ideology. With the gradual change in the treatment of the Jews, it meant that people would not challenge the thoughts that they were processing whether they were morally right or

Germany was ready to do everything they could in their power to make the Jewish population hated. They filled televised shows with hateful non-humanlike cartoons, put up disgusting paintings all over, and talked bad about the Jew’s on the radio. They also started teaching young children along with teenagers in Germany that Jewish people were not to be trusted stating that they were disgusting people so that the younger German’s would grow up with hatred for the Jew’s. Germany was willing to do everything they possibly could for all Germans to have hate along with despise for the Jew’s. The propaganda campaign was started and became very successful, it encouraged passivity and hate for the Jewish population.

Schindler’s List offers a mere glimpse into the horrors of the Holocaust, but even these slivers of history convey to us just how evil and terrifying Nazi Germany was during World War II. A scene that immediately stuck in my mind was when the Jews were being relocated to the ghetto, and Nazi soldiers were shooting anyone they pleased. These graphic scenes were shot uncensored, with point blank killings being filmed at point blank range, showing the murders in explicit detail which made it hard to watch. However, it was also necessary to watch, as we need to see what really happened to better understand the unspeakable acts carried out. This allowed us to see the Holocaust as a bystander, unable to do anything to intervene. Another style utilized by Spielberg was fast cuts and shakiness, which gave a sense of chaos and terror from the Jews’ point of view.

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

Genocide is a reality that has ended millions of family trees, changing the course of the future and leaving a massive mark that the human race can never forget. The word genocide was created to describe the mass murdering of the Jewish people along with Slavic, Romanians, Greeks, African-Europeans, homosexuals, and mentally or physically disabled people. This certain genocide was named The Holocaust, or “Sacrifice by Fire” (Holocaust Facts). There are also more recent genocides, like the Rwandan Genocide located in Africa, a land where warlords and murderers control whole countries and kill there people for sport, or their beliefs. But let us focus on the Holocaust, a Genocide where one man and his fellow officers was capable of killing

In Nazi Germany, the effort of consolidating propaganda under official party lines began gradually, following Hitler’s rise to power in 1933. Joseph Goebbels, Hitler’s Minister of Propaganda, created the Filmkreditbank in June 1933 as a means of credit lending to the film industry, which had suffered greatly in the recent depression. The entertainment industry also enjoyed a significant tax cut, from 11 to 8.5 per cent1]. In 1934, the Cinema Laws meant that the film industry could be corralled into a more unified message; the provisions allowed designations to be awarded to films that exemplified National Socialist ideals[2]. Films given these distinctions would enjoy elevated recognition and, consequentially, financial success, and those involved in the film would gain higher prospects in the film industry as a result[3]. Through this method of promotion, Goebbels was able to filter through the films he deemed “vague [and] formless” and promote those which “reflect[ed] national contours”[4].

The Nazis extremely concerned with what they saw as foreign influence and corruption of German citizens, culture, and traditional values. In Mein Kampf Hitler specifically warned against the corruption of German culture by Jews. But, the Nazis were worried about more than just the corrupting influence of Jews, they were worried about the corrupting influences of all foreigners on traditional German culture. Given the Nazis distaste for foreign influence, it is not surprising that Nazi propaganda films choose to touch on the danger foreign influence can have on the state and on the population; in fact all three films discussed so far touch on the issue.

In the film itself, Chaplin shows many events that reflect the reality of late 1930?s Germany including most prominently the treatment of the Jewish people through representations of anti-semitic graffiti and an event reminiscent of Kristallnacht. In the early scenes of the Jewish ghetto, the windows all have painted graffiti reading "Jew" (Sherman, 2002). During the beginning of Jewish persecution in Germany, it was not uncommon for Nazis and Nazi sympathizers to paint anti-semitic texts on to the windows of Jewish-owned shops and homes. Through enormous set pieces, innovative camera work, and great attention to detail, Chaplin was