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Index
Index............................................................................................................................................ 1
Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 2
National Socialist regime ..................................................................................................... 3
Adolf Hitler´s Mein Kampf .................................................................................................. 6
Volume I – Chapter VI excerpts ...................................................................................... 7
Volume II – Chapter XI excerpts ..................................................................................... 8
Joseph Paul Goebbels (1897 – 1945) ................................................................................. 9
11 principles of propaganda ........................................................................................... 10
Conclusions ............................................................................................................................ 11
1
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
Introduction
The idea of the following work, together with its respective presentation made
in class, is to present in a more concrete way the sociopolitical regime of Germany
during the Third Reich, analyze the rise to power of the National Socialist party and
try to understand the causes and consequences of its stay in power from 1933 to 1945.
The work revolves around the best-known literary work of the National
Socialist leader, Adolf Hitler. The book I analyze is Mein Kampf, and will specifically
deal with the subject of war propaganda, collected in two chapters in the first and
second volumes of the book.
I will finish the essay giving some brief conclusions about Nazi propaganda,
its way of being and the effect it had and why it had such effect in the German society
of that time. I will now give a few brief touches on propaganda, on persuasion and on
the emotional charge and how it exerts its effects on the emotions of the German
citizens of that time. Thus, I will give way to the chapters of Mein Kampf that deal
with the subject more broadly.
1
PIZARROSO QUINTERO, Alejandro: Historia de la propaganda. Eudema, Madrid, 1993.
2
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
basis" (Brown, 1991: 24).2 The propagandist rarely argues, he limits himself to
making affirmations in favor of his thesis, appealing, for that, to the emotions.
He only had to convince them that the war had not been lost because of their
poor performance but because of "the back-stabbing of Jews and communists." With
this, he returned to the German people the confidence and security they had lost. The
use of the theme of the war was from the beginning essential for Hitler.
2
BROWN, J.A.C.: Técnicas de persuasión. Alianza Editorial, Madrid, 1991.
3
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
Thus, the first stage will be the advance of the Nazi party, from 1919 to 1929
and as it made its way through a weakened and unstable Weimar Republic. The second
stage is the dissolution of the Weimar Republic itself and the role that National
Socialism played in it. After the collapse of the Weimar Republic there is the
consolidation of Nazi power between 1933 and 1934, which would be the third stage.
And the fourth and final stage: the stay of Hitler and his party in power from 1934 to
1945.
First stage: Both Hitler and the Nazi Party, founded in 1919, were, in a real
sense, product of the German defeat in the First War World. It was that defeat, of
which he had news in the field hospital where he was being treated for gas poisoning,
which prompted Hitler to devote himself primarily to politics. Since then, he devoted
his life to preparing Germany for another war European that would repair that
unearned defeat.
On July 29, 1921, he won his first decisive success, when an extraordinary
meeting of party members, renamed the National Socialist Workers Party in February
1920, appointed Hitler the party's first president with dictatorial powers. In the spring
of 1920 SAs were established, a shock force that gave the party a qualitative advantage
over other similar parties, which multiplied before the mostly unstable political
climate in the first years of the postwar. The Nazi party surpassed all the other parties
in the use of avant-garde propaganda techniques, making massive demonstrations in
which columns of men marched in unison making the salute (heil), to the sound of
martial music and with flags deployed. The choice of visual symbolism was also
significant: signs and emblems of the Indo-Germanic mythical past were deliberately
manipulated for a new political use.
4
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
In the Reichstag elections in May 1928, the Nazi Party received 2.6% of the
votes, mainly un rural areas. The carefully organized 1929 Nuremberg meeting
marked the recovery of the Nazi Party from the setback in the electoral defeat of 1928,
and its successful adaptation to the era of mass organization and mass demonstrations,
where Hitler received support from wealthy people and German universities.
Second stage: The Nazi Party took advantage of the growing disenchantment
of the German masses in the face of democracy. The attraction of the Nazis quickly
adapted to different situations and promised everything to everyone. Between 1930
and 1933 there were three German chancellors: Brüning, von Papen and von
Schleicher, followed by Adolf Hitler. The head of state from 1925 until the arrival of
Hitler was Paul von Hindenburg.
Two things stand out in this period. First, the access of Hitler to power was not
the result of a violent takeover of the government or a free democratic election. At the
time of its designation, the Nazi Party was the largest party, with 33.1% of the vote,
but still far from being a majority. Second, the Nazi arrival to power would not have
been possible without the dissolution of the Weimar Republic and the failure of its
parliamentary democratic system.
Third stage: The day Hitler was appointed prime minister by Hindenburg
came to be known in the Nazi tradition as "the seizure of power”. January 30 was not
the end point of the transfer of power, but its beginning. It took the Nazis not one day
but 18 months, from January 30, 1933 to August 3, 1934, to consolidate their control
of the state and of society.
The last logical step to consolidate power after winning support and depriving
other parties and politicians of rights was to eliminate from the ranks of the Nazi
movement all the elements that defied Hitler's authority. The commanders of the SA
were executed between June 30 and July 2, 1934, and the place of the SA was
occupied by the SS, the executive body par excellence of the Nazi ideology and its
symbolic incarnation and commanded by Heinrich Himmler.
5
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
Under the command of Himmler, the SS grew from a few hundred to around
52,000 members by the end of 1932, and 209,000 by the end of 1933. Devoted to the
völkisch ideology of blood, race and land, Himmler set out to transform the body of
guard in an elite.
Fourth stage: After Nazi rise to power, comes what we already know as one
of the most turbulent periods in the history of Germany. A fierce war in Europe and
the Pacific. Alliances of fascist and dictatorial powers against countries that defended
democracy, and deaths numbered by millions.
Horrors like the massacres of the Holocaust and a battle to death, in which the
German population was reduced to crumbs and their economy shattered. I want to
emphasize that throughout the process of the Nazi Party promotion to power,
propaganda played a fundamental role in aligning the population.
In fact, in the case of the Nazi regime, talking about propaganda is talking
about the policy on which a whole system was based during its existence. Propaganda
was not only a massive use, a systematic action of methods and techniques, but a
whole political strategy on which the entire regime was based on. This conception
could have been the result of Hitler's activity as head of party propaganda, at which
time he became aware of the persuasive and mobilizing power of an adequate
propaganda apparatus, as we will see know in some excerpts of Mein Kampf.
The knowledge that Hitler had of the propaganda was not intuitive, as some
author defends. Some passages of the Mein Kampf show that he had studied the Allied
and German propaganda strategies during the First World War. From that moment,
Hitler becomes fully aware of the importance of oratory, of the force of the word, of
what, in the end, well-planned propaganda is capable of achieving. Any propagandist
could even be guided only by his work, since the main secrets of propaganda are
contained in it.
6
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
Starting from this prior knowledge, the merit of Hitler consisted in its
masterful application, in having plunged the German population into an almost
imaginary world in which nothing escaped the control of the Fuhrer.
Hitler understood from the beginning the need to know and master the art of
propaganda, not only as a method of mass control, but as mentioned in this chapter,
as an impulse to win a war.
3
Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945. (1999). Mein Kampf, Chapter VI, Volume I. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
7
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
You can see in this extract how the population was seen at that time. A mass
of people to manipulate, to make them believe something. As Goebbels would later
say in one of its principles, propaganda should be focused on the masses, on the lowest
part of the social strata, in a simple and easy language, without technicalities.
Hitler analyzes in the sixth chapter the propaganda of his enemies in the First
World War. And yes, Adolf Hitler fought in the trenches and tried the war firsthand.
In this chapter he praises the ability of the Allies to prepare their soldiers for the worst,
through propaganda and to inculcate hatred towards their enemies, denigrating them
in any way. It is seen how even the Allies carry out the propaganda principles that
Goebbels would later collect. Deny the enemy, referring to German soldiers as
barbarians
4
Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945. (1999). Mein Kampf, Chapter XI, Volume II. Boston: Houghton Mifflin
8
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
them for the time when this doctrine will triumph, through the body of combatant
members which he has formed from those followers who have given proof of the
necessary ability and willpower to carry the struggle to victory.
The final triumph of a doctrine will be made all the easier if the propagandist has
effectively converted large bodies of men to the
belief in that doctrine and if the organization
that actively conducts the fight be exclusive, vigorous and solid.”
This extract is nothing more than an ode to the final objectives of the
propaganda. What it should be and what it should have been for the Germany that
Hitler envisioned. This extract also lets you read between the lines the function of
Goebbels propaganda principles as the one of unanimity.
Finally, Adolf Hitler hints at the ultimate function of propaganda. Bring the
German people down the same road, “en masse”, towards the same goal and under
the command of a single supreme leader, giving the people the image of unity and
strength they had lost after the First World War.
Joseph Goebbels is essential to understand all the propaganda that took place
in the Third Reich. With extreme fanaticism, he took care to take Hitler to Olympus,
a god to worship where Goebbels was his prophet5
The career of the most important ideologist of the Third Reich took off after
the victory of the Nazi party. That is when Hitler began to notice him. He was
appointed to the German Nationalist Workers Party (NSDAP), Gauleiter (zone chief)
in Berlin in 1926. His speaking skills were exceptional, so 4 years later, in 1930, he
was appointed leader of the Propaganda Division. He was in charge of taking their
5
Martín, J. (16 de julio del 2015) Joseph Goebbels, el profeta de Hitler. [Entrada de blog]
Recuperado de:
http://www.elmundo.es/la-aventura-de-lahistoria/2015/07/16/55352d91268e3e3c798b4577.html
9
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
strategy not only to their local area of Berlin, but to the entire nation. Here Goebbels
had already become a promoter of Hitler and the party.
For the next section we must mention Leonard Doob, who dedicated his life
to study all of Goebbels journals and made a synthesis of them. I will mention below
the principles of propaganda summarized by Leonard W. Doob (1948) with a brief
explanation of each:
11 principles of propaganda
10
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
From here also comes the famous phrase: “If a lie is repeated enough, it ends up
becoming true.”
Principle of silencing. Silence the issues on which there are no arguments and
disguise the news that favors the adversary, also counterprogramming with the help
of related media.
As we can see, all these principles apply to nowadays propaganda, and are
used broadly by propaganda masters all over the world with political ends. Goebbels
was such a master in propaganda that he might be one of the few Nazi party leaders
who is actually remembered because of something really extraordinary. Taking
propaganda to the next level.
Conclusions
If the masterful application of Nazi propaganda was part of the success of the
regime, the other key aspect were the peculiarities of the German population: not only
its personality, its character of submission to authority, certain anti-Semitism, but also
currents of German thoughts - which stressed the need for war and the spirit of
struggle of the people or hatred of the Jews -, the political circumstances - a weak
11
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS
Pelayo Bolívar Rodríguez
Profesor: Anna Piazza
Weimar Republic, a democracy that failed to solve the main problems of society -, the
Treaty of Versailles and the feeling of guilt after the war, the socio-economic
circumstances, the reparations of the war or the crisis of 1929. Without this
accumulation of aspects, the Nazi propaganda is likely that it would not have been as
useful and effective as it was. But who knows.
12
Hª DE LAS TEORÍAS POLÍTICAS CONTEMPORÁNEAS