Joseph Goebbels

7 Key excerpts on "Joseph Goebbels"

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  eBook - ePub

  The Library of Congress World War II Companion

  • David M. Kennedy, David M. Kennedy(Authors)
  • 2007(Publication Date)
  • Simon & Schuster

    (Publisher)

  Reichsministerium fur Volksaufklarung und Propaganda, or RMVP). Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi’s premier propagandist, directed this ministry. He had served as the Nazi gauleiter (regional political leader) of Berlin since 1926 and was elected to the Reichstag in 1928, under the Weimar Republic. Goebbels worked assiduously against the Weimar government and for Nazi control. He believed that propaganda was the necessary link between the people and the government, and that it guided them toward a complete commitment to the goals of the state.

  Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, speaks during a book burning in Berlin, May 10, 1933. Courtesy of National Archives and Records.

  Goebbels was enormously skilled at manipulating facts and information to fit the Nazi view. “Neither the amount of news communicated matters nor the speed with which this is done,” he said of the newspapers the state controlled. “The only thing which does matter is making German readers absorb a particular viewpoint. No announcement should be published as it stands. Make-up, headline or comment or all three should be designed to arouse in the reader the particular reaction at which, in conformity with government policy, the editor is aiming.” He attributed the Nazis’ success in gaining supporters to the use of “clever psychology and a pronounced ability to sense the thinking processes of the broad masses of the population.”

  Goebbels staffed the RMVP mainly with young, educated, and dedicated Nazis. Its departments included administration, propaganda coordination, radio broadcasting, press, foreign press (not established until 1934), film, theater, and music, fine arts, and folk culture. The RMVP formulated policy in each of these areas. Its role was to centralize control of the media and to provide content reinforcing Nazi precepts. It was funded by the sale of radio licenses, the number of which rose steadily as people bought more and more radios. Regional RMVP offices operated throughout Germany.

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  Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini

  Totalitarianism in the Twentieth Century

  • Bruce F. Pauley(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-Blackwell

    (Publisher)

  Mein Kampf, written at a time when he was not allowed to speak publicly, was his only important publication. His speeches were not without faults. They were too long, repetitious, chaotic, and full of contradictions. But these drawbacks were overshadowed by the emotion and compelling conviction that they aroused. He seemed to know instinctively how to tell every audience exactly what it wanted to hear. In this respect Hitler was without peer. He was phenomenal, especially because Germany was not a country with a great tradition of oratory.

  The task of Nazi propaganda became a good deal easier after the party’s takeover in 1933. Within a few weeks there were no more opposition newspapers or public speakers to challenge and contradict Nazi assertions and allegations. The government-owned and -operated radio station was now a Nazi monopoly and was frequently used by the Führer. But most important, Hitler was now the chancellor and could make policy, not merely talk about it. Like any incumbent politician, his words now had to be taken seriously.

  In March 1933, just six weeks after seizing power, Hitler established the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, headed by Josef Goebbels, who had been in charge of Nazi propaganda during the Kampfzeit. Many commentators have noted that Goebbels was devoid of inner convictions. He simply knew how to display the convictions of others. His cynicism, however, seems to have stopped short of Hitler. Goebbels was one of the few Nazi leaders to commit suicide, along with Hitler, in the final days of the Third Reich.

  Goebbels was actually a more polished speaker than Hitler, and his intellectual skills proved to be his most important asset. Unlike his master, who thought that the importance of propaganda would decline after the seizure of power, Goebbels believed that it would still be necessary to mobilize support and maintain enthusiasm. Probably his most important achievement was the creation of a semireligious myth of an infallible German messiah, which forged an extraordinary bond of loyalty between the masses and their Führer.

  Goebbels controlled the news by holding daily press conferences at the Propaganda Ministry where editors were told what to write, although they were given some leeway in how they wrote, so as to avoid obvious conformity and monotony. Thus, German (and also Italian) newspapers were manipulated, but unlike those of the Soviet Union they were not nationalized. Goebbels’s ministry also demonstrated the close connection between propaganda and culture; after September 1933 it included a Reich Chamber of Culture, which was subdivided into chambers not only for the press, but also for broadcasting, literature, theater, music, film, and the fine arts. In his control of German culture, Goebbels was guided by his personal conviction that propaganda was most effective when insidious, that is, when its message was concealed in popular entertainment. He knew that once propaganda was recognized as such it lost its effectiveness. When he occasionally departed from this ideal and used “hard sell” techniques, the attempt usually failed miserably. The entertainment content of the Nazis’ propaganda after their takeover of power can be seen in elaborate ceremonies honoring Nazi martyrs, marching songs (which replaced hymns), and festivals commemorating great Nazi events (which replaced religious holidays).

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  Nazi Propaganda (RLE Nazi Germany & Holocaust)

  The Power and the Limitations

  • David Welch(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  But his task as a historian is neither to condemn nor to justify: it is merely to explain. Condemnation and justification may be signs of moral strength, even acts of moral bravery, but they are also acts of historical cowardice for they stand in the way of historical explanation. While the literature on Goebbels is rich in examinations of the psychological consequences of his physical disabilities, or in anecdotes about the lengths to which his Ministry went to conceal his limp from the general public (and here Goebbels had something at least in common with the perceived arch-enemy Roosevelt!) it is much thinner indeed on serious scholarly attempts to explain precisely what Goebbels thought he was doing. Even the best works on Nazi propaganda, such as Herzstein’s The War That Hitler Won, 11 or Heiber’s introduction to the two-volume German edition of the speeches, 12 do not, in the final analysis, really confront the fundamental question that a historian must ask about Goebbels and his role in the Third Reich. That question is, quite simply: what, as Reich Minister for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, was Goebbels’ view of the political function of propaganda in the National Socialist system of government? Any historian has to face the difficulties involved in separating fact from fiction. The historian of propaganda confronts the added problem of distinguishing fact from propaganda and in the case of Goebbels this problem is particularly acute. The source materials available to us are limited: the destruction of the Propaganda Ministry building in Berlin by RAF bombing in late 1944 has deprived historians of what would have been a veritable treasure-house of material. Such Propaganda Ministry files and records as do survive are either fragmentary, such as those in the Bundesarchiv in Koblenz, 13 or inaccessible (at least to Western historians), such as those in the Zentrales Staatsarchiv der DDR in Potsdam, or both

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  Hitler's Henchmen

  • Guido Knopp(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • The History Press

    (Publisher)

  was at risk. So the fire-raiser earned no praise, only harsh criticism for his excess of zeal and the uncontrollable violence. Himmler, the Gestapo Chief and his Deputy, Heydrich, felt their authority had been infringed, Göring complained about the damage to the economy, and Hitler was concerned about Germany’s image abroad. The removal of the Jews from public life should be carried out ‘noiselessly’ by bureaucratic regulation. From then on it was done that way. As the worldwide protests soon ebbed away, Goebbels was once again on top of things. True, Hitler kept his henchman well away from the business of government, but he needed him to prepare the population mentally for the coming war.

  According to the vox populi , which means, for example, my rather talkative barber, the general mood is going rapidly downhill. There have even been complaints about high party functionaries apparently made in a tone and with a lack of caution that are quite unheard of: ‘Complaints about what, particularly?’ I asked. ‘About everything!’ was the answer. ‘Joseph’ [Goebbels] was said to be the chief offender. But the whole mix-up of party and state couldn’t go on like this. Then all this big-noise posturing, with Goebbels again at the top of the list.

  Ulrich von Hassell, German diplomat and anti-Nazi

  On Hitler’s fiftieth birthday, Goebbels’ propaganda team presented the head of state as a military commander bent on war, taking the salute at the greatest parade of armed forces in German history, which took place along Berlin’s newly built east–west thoroughfare. The martial display acted like a call to arms. The promoter received the signals with a show of confidence: ‘The goddess of victory gleams in the blazing sunshine. A wonderful portent.’

  In reality Goebbels was not at all comfortable with the thought that a war in the west might shatter the structure they had so carefully created. The man he suspected of pushing Hitler into war was the Foreign Minister, Joachim von Ribbentrop. In consternation he watched as his adversary forged the pact in Moscow between the arch-enemies Hitler and Stalin. Although he proclaimed the pact as a ‘brilliant move in the propaganda game’, and affirmed his faith in the ‘genius of the Führer’, the alliance with ‘World Enemy Number One’ seemed to him nonetheless ‘rather strange’.

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  Hitler and Nazi Germany

  • Stephen J. Lee(Author)
  • 2013(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Indoctrination and Propaganda

  DOI: 10.4324/9780203717851-4

  Background

  Indoctrination and propaganda were the means by which the Nazis aimed to secure voluntary support for the new regime; coercion and terror were reserved for those individuals or groups who failed to respond or who were not included within the scope of the People’s Community or Volksgemeinschaft. The former process was dominated by Joseph Goebbels, the latter by Heinrich Himmler (see Chapter 5 ).

  Goebbels had started his political career as Gauleiter of Berlin in 1926, progressing to Party Reichspropagandaleiter from 1929. After the rise of the Nazis to power, he made a considerable contribution to the process of Gleichschaltung in the administration (see Chapter 3 ) and headed the new Ministry of People’s Enlightenment and Propaganda. This took over various functions of other Ministries, especially the Interior, its task made easier by the nazification of the civil service and the imposition of controls on the media. Goebbels made his overall intention clear from the start. He told a press conference on 15 March: ‘It is not enough for people to be more or less reconciled to our regime, to be persuaded to adopt a neutral attitude towards us; rather we want to work on people until they have capitulated to us, until they grasp ideologically that what is happening in Germany today not only must be accepted but also can be accepted’.1 He also emphasised the need to take full advantage of the latest technology in order to achieve maximum saturation to create complete loyalty and subservience.

  This chapter looks at the impact of his policies on youth and the remainder of the population. The former were subject to the dual impact of educational changes from the Ministry of Education under Bernard Rust, and the initiatives from the Hitler Youth headed by Baldur von Schirach. Analysis 1 considers the extent to which the Nazis succeeded in their efforts to transform the curriculum and teaching methods, as well as the administrative conflicts between the Ministry of Education and the Hitler Youth movement. The latter had been established within the Nazi movement in 1926 and, for a while, had to compete with rival organisations set up by the Catholic Church and the Centre Party, the Communists and Social Democrats on the left and the DNVP on the right; this was in non-political youth movements. By 1933 the Hitler Youth was still in a minority but the banning of other groups soon inflated its numbers. In 1939 all Germans between the ages of 10 and 18 were compulsorily recruited. Below the age of 10 boys joined the Pimpf, between 10 and 14 the German Young People (Deutsches Jungvolk or DJ) and from 14 to 18 the Hitler Youth itself (Hitler Jugend, HJ). The equivalent for girls between 10 and 14 was the League of German Girls (Jungmädelbund or JM) and League of German Maidens (Bund Deutscher Mädel, BDM). Analysis 1

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  Public Relations History

  Theory, Practice, and Profession

  • Cayce Myers(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In no degree was the Committee an agency of censorship, a machinery of concealment or repression. Its emphasis throughout was on the open and the positive. At no point did it seek or exercise authorities under those war laws that limited the freedom of speech and press

  . [original capitalization and italics]6

  Conversely, in Germany, the term propaganda had a neutral meaning prior to World War II, and it was only after the rise of Joseph Goebbels as the Reich Minister of Propaganda that the term became associated with manipulative communication practices.7 Goebbels was keenly aware of public opinion and how media in all forms, such as film, radio, and newspapers, created shaped people’s attitudes and beliefs. In an early meeting with the German press on April 6, 1933, Goebbels said, “Public opinion is made and those who work at forming public opinion take upon themselves an enormous responsibility before the nation and the whole people.”8 Later, in 1965, Edward Bernays, the famous American PR practitioner, even claimed Goebbels used Bernays’s 1923 book, Crystallizing Public Opinion , to influence German public opinion.9

  The Study of Public Opinion

  Propaganda and public relations are inextricably linked to the rise and formalization of the study of public opinion. The recognition of public opinion and its importance to society began in the nineteenth century. There was awareness of the power and problems of public opinion as evidenced in Hugh Smith’s (1842) address entitled “Theory and Regulation of Public Sentiment” at Columbia College on public opinion. In his address, Smith, the Rector of St. Peters Church in New York, detailed the malleability of public opinion, and the inherent deception that comes with the perception of public sentiment.10 In 1861, a series called Public Opinion was published in London, covering thoughts and opinions about current events.11 However, it was French sociologist Gabriele Tarde’s work, notably Les lois d’imitation [The Laws of Imitation], published in 1890, and Les lois sociales: Esquisse d’une sociologie [Social Laws: An Outline of Sociology], published in 1898, that was a watershed moment for public opinion scholarship.12 Tarde’s development of psychology, which focused largely on criminology and social behavior, provided a basis for the scholarship of Gustav Le Bon’s 1895 book The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind , which was widely read and translated.13 Le Bon was a French doctor who wrote extensively about socio-psychological issues. In his book, Le Bon argued that crowd have certain characteristics that make it take on its own crowd psychology or “mental unity.”14

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  The Third Reich

  Politics and Propaganda

  • David Welch(Author)
  • 2008(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  4

  PROPAGANDA AND PUBLIC OPINION, 1933–9

  Domination itself is servile when beholden to opinion; for you depend upon the prejudices of those you govern by means of their prejudices.

  Rousseau, Emile

  The point has to be made at once that any attempt to quantify public reaction to Nazi propaganda is fraught with difficulties. Accurate measurement of the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda is weakened by the absence of public opinion surveys and the fact that in a society that resorted so readily to coercion and terror reported opinion did not necessarily reflect the true feelings and moods of the public, especially if these views were opposed to the regime. Nevertheless, to state that public opinion in the Third Reich ceased to exist is not strictly true. After the Nazi ‘seizure of power’ in 1933 the Minister for Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels, stressed the importance of coordinating propaganda with other activities. In a dictatorship, propaganda must address itself to large masses of people and attempt to move them to uniformity of opinion and action. Nevertheless, the Nazis also understood that propaganda is of little value in isolation. To some extent this explains why Goebbels impressed on all his staff at the Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda the imperative necessity constantly to gauge public moods. Goebbels therefore regularly received (as did all the ruling elites) extraordinarily detailed reports from the Secret Police (SD) about the mood of the people and would frequently quote these in his diary. Hitler too was familiar with these reports, and his recorded determination to avoid increasing food prices at all costs for fear that this would undermine the regime's popularity suggests a political sensitivity to public opinion. To assure themselves of continued popular support was an unwavering concern of the Nazi leadership, and of Hitler and Goebbels in particular.

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