Inside Hitler’s Propaganda Machine: Power, Lies & Control DD

The image of Adolf Hitler, the furer, leader of the Nazi party, cast a long shadow over the second half of the 20th century. A vision of incomprehensible evil that endures today. But behind this figure was an ordinary man, a master manipulator whose talent for public speaking and deep understanding of how to effectively use propaganda propelled him to ultimate [Music] power.

In the 1920s, Hitler used these skills to build the Nazi brand, relying heavily on words, images, and symbolism to define the struggle of the German people against unjust foreign oppressors. And the traitors and enemies within their own country, endlessly repeating the same simple messages until they took hold. Soldiers marching in unison under the swastika.

Crowds of party members and supporters in perfect rows saluting their fura. Symmetry and symbolism and flags, buildings, people, weapons, all communicating a single message. discipline, order, power. These are the images we associate with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party at the peak of their control over Germany. But this was born out of a carefully constructed narrative developed for over 10 years before Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933.

a pervasive, manipulative propaganda campaign that wrapped the truth of Germany’s dire circumstances in the 1920s in a mythology of a new Germany that only Hitler could [Music] deliver. The term propaganda always has these two lives. On the one hand, it is seen as a decidedly negative term that involves manipulation, brainwashing, fake news, and so on.

On the other hand, it’s a neutral term. is about shaping, strategizing, communicating a political message with a view to persuading people, a particular kind of audience to act in a particular way and then looking at how they are responding to this in order to take the feedback and recalibrate that system of communication. The place propaganda had in the Nazi party’s rise and regime remains infamous.

But it was not the first time it had been used for mass manipulation and mobilization. Hitler’s long relationship with the power of propaganda began in the trenches of World War I. There was a popular view in Germany, one that Hitler believed and perpetuated, that the Allied forces had won the First World War through their superior use of propaganda.

He could not believe that the great German army could have been defeated by listenit means. There had to be some kind of magic which the British and Americans later used to destroy that great invincible army. It could not be by military means. And the particular necromancy he identified was propaganda. Suddenly it was the new thing. It was the happy pill.

It was the hypodermic syringe uh which would transform everything. and he had limitless faith in the power of propaganda because he blamed it for German defeat. Propaganda had emerged as a powerful tool of psychological warfare viewed as so virulent and manipulative that it would spark decades of debate about its power, its dangers, and its place in a democratic society. To Hitler, it was power.

and he identified in Allied propaganda a superiority of style and substance that he would later emulate. He noted that British propaganda was fundamentally believable. It did not diminish the fighting power of the Germans whereas German propaganda portrayed the British as bumbling incompetence.

And Adolf Hitler picked up on this idea that the sophistication of propaganda had to have a small element of realism in if it was completely devoid from reality then it ceased to be effective. The new reality for Germany in the aftermath of the first world war was the humiliation of defeat. A reality that Hitler would use to fuel his propaganda.

On the 28th of June 1919, the German government agreed to a treaty at Versailles that was grossly unpopular with the German people. Under the treaty, Germany had to disarm, relinquish territories that effectively broke up their colonial empire, pay billions of dollars in war reparations, and accept fault for all losses and damage suffered by the Allies.

Their side was a terrible shock uh to the German people. They had been told that really they weren’t to blame that they were encircled by Britain and and the other powers and Hitler personally took it as a great humiliation. He identified himself with Germany. So he exploited it in very quickly and made great use of it in his early propaganda.

Before Hitler could exploit the treaty and the sentiment of the German people, he would need to find a platform for his rhetoric. In September 1919, Hitler attended a meeting of the German Workers Party, a small right-wing nationalist group with only a few dozen members. And he saw in this naent German workers party an opportunity for his racial ideas, his uh national ideas to find a home.

And he saw opportunity too because of the personnel he met that he could become a leading figure in this. By November that year, Hitler was one of the party’s most important figures, the man responsible for their propaganda and recruitment. He was originally their PR man. And what he did essentially was emphasized posters, the meeting and the poster, but the posters he produced were incredibly vivid and striking with powerful colors, uh, rich representations of various enemies, uh, powerful images like dragons and so forth.

And and so this this got them audience and and this was the first building block. The second building block was words. Hitler believed in the power of speech to persuade an audience above all other methods. His particular brand of rhetoric and delivery crafted in these early years would remain a fixture of his propaganda methodology. Fore,000.

[Applause] In the party’s first mass meeting in February 1920, they renamed themselves the Nationalist Socialist German Workers Party or Nazi Party. Here, Hitler presented the party’s 25point plan. What could have been a dull reading of political ideology, Hitler turned into a rousing speech.

Hitler had two particular advantages um when it came to public speaking. The first was his unusual voice, which was actually a result of him being gassed in the First World War. If you listen to Hitler’s speeches now, there’s a certain rasp to his speech that gives him an air of authenticity. [Music] He’s also an Austrian by birth, although he’s picked up a Bavarian accent during his time in Germany.

And this sets him aside from the other politicians of the 20s and 30s who are almost uniformly Prussians and speak with a very received form of German. He has a genuine voice, not merely from the army, but from the streets, from the provinces. In his first year with the party, Hitler delivered speeches at over 30 meetings to crowds ranging from 800 to 2,500 people, quickly gaining a reputation as a masterful speaker.

[Music] It’s extraordinary that before 1918, he had never really appeared in public in this way. He’d never tried to address groups. He’d been a very shadowy figure in the army and with no really strong opinions. It’s not until the humiliation of 1918 that he arouses himself to think there’s a way out of this as the way I can make Germany great again.

Uh and I have the means by which to put the idea over. Hitler would begin his speeches quietly gauging the mood of the audience and then build slowly. [Applause] working in stronger language and more dramatic gestures, raising his volume and pace until his excitement caught on with the crowd. [Music] He found the short sentence, the rhetorical question he realized worked very well with an audience didn’t want deep intellectual arguments.

They wanted slogans. They wanted punchy statements they could relate to. And of course he played upon that. In every speech, Hitler spoke to the German people’s discontent. Defeat in the First World War and the terms of the Treaty of Versailles was viewed by many Germans as their national shame. [Music] Most in touch. [Applause] I start.

What we have is a very modern thing. The politics of grievance. A lot of what the Nazis and he did comes across as a kind of protracted bratish wine. They were actually planting this idea of grievance and betrayal in the German people and they did it very effectively and there were good grounds for grievance. This was not irrational. There was substance to them.

Dear me and Hitler gave the people enemies, an external threat to the German ideal, the Jews and Bulsheists that he accused of stabbing Germany in the back during the war. An idea that was fed by a long history of anti-semitism in Europe. If a propaganda message is aligned to popular perceptions, then it has already gained the attention of the people and then it can start shaping popular perception perhaps even in a different direction.

A lot of the anti-semitic propaganda that was put forward by the Nazi regime in the 1930s and during the war built on pervasive anti-semitic stereotypical images amongst German society. The stab in the back became a central notion of Hitler’s rhetoric and a common motif in right-wing political commentary and Nazi propaganda posters.

It was this stab in the back that Hitler argued had weakened Germany’s position and allowed the signitaries of the Treaty of Versailles, who he called the November criminals, to betray the German people. The first thing was the leaders, those who had been prepared to compromise with the Allies in their demands and allowed Germany to be humiliated at a time when it should have shown resource and strength and resolution.

And that was the idea he punched over in the beer halls and it came across very well. As Hitler’s ability to draw large crowds grew, he began to expand the party’s reach beyond meetings. Buying the newspaper Vulka Shabir Baka or People’s Observer in December 1920, filling the paper with short exaggerated pieces that repeated the same Nazi party rhetoric that featured heavily in his speeches.

So, propaganda, visual particularly, uh, is the means by which you arouse people’s attention. And Hitler said people will believe what you tell them. If you tell them in a strong enough way. He introduces the idea of the big lie. If you tell a small one, they might not. They might dismiss it. Tell a big lie, people believe it.

And tell the lie in a big way. Announce it, promulgate it. They went around with loud hailers, the Nazis, chanting slogans. And all this encouraged attention. It may have been negative in the sense of some people, they’re troubled. We don’t want that. But they made themselves heard. They make themselves known and it gets around.

[Music] After little more than a year as a member, Hitler was party leader. His influence and power as a propagandist were undeniable. This was not just because he was a charismatic speaker. He was also adept at drawing on everything from art and music to the activities of his political adversaries to construct a cohesive, compelling Nazi mythology.

Hitler was known to love German myths and theater, in particular Vagnner’s operas and their use of staging, lighting, and music to amplify the emotional power of the mythological storytelling. Staging techniques that he would later use in his own events, rallies, and films. Despite being ideologically at odds with Germany’s communists, the Nazi party borrowed heavily from their propaganda methods in the 1920s.

The Bolsheviks had been great pioneers of propaganda and they influenced the Nazis partly because of course a lot of German soldiers had been prisoner at war in Russia. They’d had direct experience of the Russian Revolution. Secondly, the German army and specifically the air force trained in Russia after the first world war. The Bolsheviks allowed that.

The 20s and early 30s were a protracted tutorial in the art of propaganda for both wings of of the political [Music] spectrum. Nazi propaganda repeatedly capitalized on their opponents activities and brand recognition to draw attention to their own cause. Hitler would use the communist trademark red on Nazi posters and flags in a bid to attract German workers to their cause.

He would send the Nazi party’s paramilitary stormtroopers, the SA, to opponent’s meetings. There they would beat people up to get the party mentioned in rival newspapers. The staging of the Nazi party’s rise in the early 1920s was also heavily influenced by events in Italy. There, Mussolini and his fascistity were gaining ground, fueled by social discontent and fear among the middle class of a socialist uprising.

From Hitler’s point of view, Mussolini was the absolute blueprint of how to contest the power of mainstream politics and how to get there. As their influence grew, Mussolini and his black shirts prepared to march on Rome. But in October 1922, Mussolini was instead offered the role of prime minister and accepted. While Mussolini was handed power, he didn’t pass up the opportunity for spectacle.

Marching his black shirt through the streets of Rome in a highly orchestrated publicity stunt, a manufactured revolution. The March on Rome was one of the great propaganda inventions of all time. Mussolini had to make it appear that it was a great populist outpouring of rage which just took control of the state in a good time.

The march on Rome um had a number of different significances for uh Hitler. First of all, it was a spectacle. It was something that looked good on celluloid on news reel. Put this together, the theatricality, the novelty, and the brutal effectiveness of this, and you have a winning uh recipe for this new era of mass politics.

After Mussolini became Illuche, Hitler would be more commonly known by his own version, Fura. Both simply meant leader. He even modeled the uniforms worn by the Nazi party’s paramilitary arm, the SA, on Mussolini’s black shirts, except in brown. A year after the march on Rome, Hitler would attempt his own similar revolution, only to discover the disconnect between romanticized propaganda and reality.

Conditions in 1923 Germany seemed ripe for uprising. Two big things happen outside the political control really. One is inflation huge rapid inflation which destroys the German currency. The other is the occupation by the French of the rur region occupation of factories etc. because Germany hadn’t met its reparations commitments.

The claim was this aroused fierce indignation among the German people. Hitler and General Eric Ludenorf, a national hero of the First World War, led roughly 2,000 Nazi party members in a march into the center of Munich. There they were confronted by police with heavy machine guns. The revolution or push ended in a hail of bullets.

He underestimated the legalism of the German people and also the willingness of the German army to come over to him. But it was pure opportunism and really self-d delusion that he misread not only German people but not for the first time German culture. In other words, Germany had very strong civic state ethos.

A coup is something you do in South America, not Germany. Hitler was arrested 2 days later and put on trial for treason. German constitutionalism and rationalism had prevailed. The failure of the push, named after the beer hall where the revolution began, was an important lesson for Hitler. You had to stick by the book.

You had to follow the law. You you couldn’t actually fight the law or delegitimize it because it would get you. You couldn’t undermine the state militarily. You could do it in other ways, but those means had to be legal, and they included, of course, propaganda. At his trial, Hitler turned the courtroom into his stage, using it to speak directly to the German people and position his actions as those of a true patriot.

He returned to the Nazi party’s core messages, giving an impassion criticism of the Treaty of Versailles, the November criminals, and the unfair terms of peace inflicted upon Germany. And these speeches were reported in the national press. You’d be reading about this guy Hitler and you think, you know, Hitler’s the man who who really did the job.

He failed, but you know, he tried. And that was a huge boost. And Gerbles was one of many people away from Munich and Bavaria who first heard of Hitler. And we can trace this very clearly in a series of entries um in March. and April 1924 where Gerbles describes in his diary uh how he starts reading Hitler’s speeches.

He is immediately taken by the content and the tone of them. Uh bizarrely he compares Hitler to Christ. He says there’s something almost Christlike about this figure. His um his passion, his enthusiasm, his nobility, his German feeling. These are the kind of words he used. The trial turned Hitler into a national celebrity, both martyr and victim.

A perception that was reinforced by Hitler’s imprisonment and by the ban on him speaking publicly after he was released in December [Music] 1924. Later, the beer hall push would form a founding element of Nazi party mythology. [Music] In prison, Hitler would begin to confer his ideology into his book, Minecom or My Struggle. Hitler’s book is really unusual as a kind of political manifesto.

It starts with lots of personal stories about his childhood, his relationship with his mom and dad. book before he says anything at all about politics and then he later explains how his political worldview arises from these kind of personal experiences, emotions, personal dramas and stories.

I think it’s a moment where he’s trying to establish himself as a serious politician and not just the leader of a protest movement. He’s trying to root himself in the respectable cultural cannon and through that of course he’s also trying to woo a new audience not just the disaffected but also if you like the the cultural mainstream the middle classes mine functions both as a work of propaganda and a blueprint for Hitler’s understanding of how to use propaganda as a tool for mass manipulation.

He talked about hammer schlleiger, hits of the hammer, repeating, repeating, repeating your message until you have no resistance left in your audience. You have to develop an image of your enemy as dangerous, almost subhuman, and you exaggerate your message massively in order to bring people on side without them even realizing that they’re being brought on side.

Through mine, Hitler also detailed his notion of the racial state, the superiority of the Arian and the role that society plays in supporting the superior race. Hitler argued that the state is a vessel and the race was its content. That the vessel has meaning only if it can preserve and protect the content. He positioned the Nazis as revolutionaries for their role in fighting for his idea.

He didn’t know he was doing so, but he picked up on a very wellworn and wellused group of metaphors which are referred to as the great chain of being. And according to the principles of the great chain of being, you have living entities who are innately superior to others on a scale and obviously humans are at the top.

And then as he works down through the populations that he’s interested in, he is much more effective talking about the people he considered to be his enemies. The book was released in two parts in 1925 and 1927. By 1933, it had sold around 1.5 million copies. [Music] Hitler understood that his role was to sell an idea, to convince the audience that he and the Nazi party was their best and only choice.

And he used every tool at his disposal to package and sell Nazi ideology. Words were important to Hitler, but symbols also formed an essential part of Nazi propaganda. a visual communication of what they stood for and what they reviled. Symbols of power and national pride. One of Hitler’s first acts when he became head of party propaganda was to design the party’s flag.

Black swastika on a white circle in the center of a sea of red. As with many elements of Nazi imagery, this was symbolism with existing meaning. Hitler spent hours in Munich public library looking at ancient symbols and refining them and refashioning them. The Susta flag, it had been used for years as a symbol on the German right.

Hitler didn’t invent it. Uh it’s emerged in many cultures over time. But Hitler stylized it. He stylized the flag. And all these symbol structures were his own design. uh he didn’t have them delegated to some copywriter. He stylized them [Music] himself. Hitler believed the national socialist program could be read in a party’s flag.

In mine, he wrote, “In red we see the social idea of the movement. In white, we see the nationalistic idea. In the swastika, the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Arian man. For over 15 years, it would be present on flags, armbands, banners, posters. As Nazi influence, power, and control spread, so too did the visibility of this symbol.

It was a simple, visceral advertisement of the movement that spoke to their audience without a word being uttered. [Music] Hitler’s salute used by him for the first time in 1926 while surveying a parade of SA troops was also derived from other sources. An ancient Roman gesture, it was already being used by Mussolini’s fascist. The whole of fascism, the whole of Nazism is really contains a sort of pastiche reminisce of uh the glory of Rome and the symbols of Rome.

And so it’s really hil Caesar. This salute would become an important symbol not only of Nazism but of the suggestive and coercive power Hitler had over his audience. Made a mandatory gesture for all party members as an acknowledgement of Hitler’s supreme leadership. [Music] Hitler was also aware how important images were to instantly communicate an idea.

There was this notion of the world of masses. And the masses are moved by images, not so much by intellect and by argument and reason, but by emotion. And key to emotion is creating images. The Nazi regime was incredibly adept at using the new mass media that this is something that is completely transformed through technological innovation, cheaper printing, especially of photographic images.

Now everything is suddenly illustrated that wasn’t before, flooding the market, saturating the market. So it becomes a much more kind of visual sphere of politics and the Nazis kind of jump onto that bandwagon very early on. And I think images are absolutely key to how they transport their message. [Music] In Hitler’s early years as a party member, he avoided being photographed at all.

Later, he would create carefully planned and composed images with his official photographer, Hinrich Hoffman. It was Hoffman who came to meet Hitler when he was released from jail, taking his photo outside the gates before they left. an image that was propagated across the covers of many German newspapers. Hitler was convinced that image was everything.

He he needed to set himself up as a strong man and in opposition to all those elements that were working to bring down Germany. But to achieve all of this, he had to project his own personal image as a man who was almost predestined to take Germany back to its its former greatness. Before Hitler wore any new outfit in public, he would commission a photograph from Hoffman.

And he never allowed himself to be photographed wearing a bathing suit in case it could be used as a source of ridicule by the press. He was very wary of appearing absurd, you know, in in some context of being ridiculous. Um, he was a very sensitive man. I mean, very sort of sensitive to his own dignity. And so, you know, his personal image, I think, was very important.

[Music] Hitler trusted Hoffman enough that the two collaborated on a series of photos of Hitler practicing poses for his speeches. The images reveal the extent of Hitler’s carefully practiced physicality. His focus on the importance of body language in communicating with his audience.

His posture often stiff, his hands raised or fisted, his face always expressive, brow furrowed, resolute and serious. poses designed to convey power and decisiveness. Hitler spent hours rehearsing in front of a mirror to look good, to get all the kind of hand gestures right uh for the photographs. Hoffman and his increasingly large staff were the official photographers of Hitler.

They produced somewhere between 1 and 2 million pictures of Hitler in this relatively short time span. and nothing was published that Hitler hadn’t personally cleared for publication. After his release from jail, Hitler would have to rely on more than his skill as a public speaker to revive the Nazi movement.

Banned by the government from public speaking until as late as 1927 in some parts of the country, Hitler turned to writing editorials for the newly relaunched Nazi party newspaper, Vulca Bayaka. On the 26th of February 1925, Hitler used the paper to publish his directives for rebuilding the party, a new beginning.

Joseph Gerbles also used the paper to perpetuate the notion of Hitler as a larger than-l life figure of the nationalist movement. He wrote in July 1926 that insiders knew what Adolf Hitler’s personality had meant for the solidarity of the movement in the past few years of struggle. The party also expanded their propaganda network, strengthening their grassroots movement.

New chief of propaganda Gregor Strasa worked with a young Hinrich Himmler to organize party recruitment and strengthen ties with local groups across Germany enabling them to in turn develop and use their own local propaganda specialists. And we have to allow here I think for something that Hitler wasn’t responsible for personally and that is the spread of Nazism in the north.

The Nazis were strong under him in the south around Bavaria for example. But Strassa and Gerbles went north and they spread the message there. So the identification of Nazism as a national movement is really down to people like Gerbles and Strassa, not simply to Hitler in the south.

And that’s an important phase in the development of the party. Hitler revived the party rally at VHimar in 1926 and then moved the event to the new location at Nuremberg from 1927. Though in these early years the event wasn’t the polished ceremonial construct it would later become. It took a long time to refine the act, but they really were a way of solidifying the internal relationships within the party.

When you got people to Nuremberg, you’d got them forever. And this really was the point. They were a great big combine of boot camp, summer camp, holiday camp, and evangelical revival rally. By 1927, they had also started making films of their rallies, allowing more Germans to bear witness to this orchestrated projection of Nazi supremacy.

Gerbles, in particular, was enamored with the power of film to captivate and persuade. His inspiration drawn from the most unlikely source, Soviet cinema. After he saw battleship pmpkin, he was so impressed with the skill expressed in the film that he declared, “I wish we had one like it.” Gerbles had been interested in the cinema on a theoretical basis.

He was somebody who seriously thought about for a long time about the cinema in a period when the cinema was going through its most extensive development all the way from the German expressionism uh from the change from silent to sound and so on. Early rally films were almost amateur-ish standard documentary style newsre products, not the highly stylized ode to the power of Hitler and the Nazi movement that they would be in later [Music] years.

I think you’ve got to bear in mind at the time this was an entirely new thing. The whole notion of news reporting or documentary cinema was entirely new. So, how one went about this, how you filmed, where you filmed from, what made for a reasonable film, how you created a narrative, all of these things were were entirely experimental.

And so, the first Nazi films were um I I think pretty crude, naive productions. Not only were the Nazi party noviceses in this medium, their resources were too limited to produce anything significant. They understood the power of compelling visuals, though, and these early experiences in film making would ultimately build to a mastery of mass media propaganda tactics.

Despite the advances Hitler and the Nazi party were making, there was still considered to be a regional fringe party. The results of the country’s 1928 elections confirmed this. The Nazi party only attracted around 2.5% of the vote and won 12 seats in the Reich, Germany’s parliament. Ultimately, their fortunes would be turned by a series of events that shifted national sentiment once again, creating a crucible in which Hitler could light the fire of right-wing nationalism.

American economist Owen Young proposed a new rigorous plan for Germany to pay their war reparations. Signed in June 1929, it was an incredibly unpopular proposal that aligned the agenda of the Nazi party with corporate Germany. Among Hitler’s powerful new allies was media mogul Alfred Hugenberg.

Hugenberg’s media empire would drastically expand the Nazi party’s influence. Hitler realized that he needed the support not merely of workers and the lower order of people as it were he would call them. It wanted people of influence and finance and Hugenberg had many contacts with industrialists with people of note in society.

Hugenberg called industrialists together and Hitler meets them and he gets money from them. He puts his ideas over to them and he tells them industry is safe in Nazi hands. If ever we come to power, it’ll be a partnership. It won’t be a bolevik takeover. You won’t lose your position. You won’t lose your ownership.

We’ll work together. No one could compete with the force of Nazi rhetoric when combined with the reach and influence of their newfound resources. Hitler seized this opportunity to put himself and the Nazi movement into the center of German politics, eclipsing Hugenberg’s own more conservative nationalist party.

He later regretted it. Hugerberg obviously because he didn’t see quite where it was going. But it’s it’s a useful technique using someone to get support from the established classes. The personality cult of Hitler, supreme leader and messianic figure was growing stronger. Fueled by Hitler and his increasingly powerful propaganda machine, the building blocks for Nazi Germany propaganda state were in place.

Then the American stock market crashed on the 29th of October 1929 and the ripples were felt around the world, including in Germany. The number of people without a job in Germany rose to astronomical numbers. By February 1930, the unemployment rate had skyrocketed to 3.4 million people.

By 1932, 6 million people were out of work. Faith in the system was crumbling. When people ask me, you know, how on earth did the Nazis come to power? I always say, well, you have to understand that Germany in the late 20s, early 30s was in a massive crisis, a political crisis, an economic crisis, a social crisis.

The system was breaking down. demonstrations and at times violent street protests were rife instigated by both the Nazis and their leftist adversaries. People felt well in a sense democracy has been imposed on us by the allies you know with the side peace settlement and so on and it hasn’t delivered the goods. It’s just not working and we have no real respect for it.

The majority didn’t feel in the sense it was part of a strong German tradition. Hitler capitalized on this crisis by presenting himself as the savior, the only one to bring Germany back from the brink. The Nazis very cleverly appealed to the nation and said, you know, we are um a party in favor of the national community. That was the the slogan they used, the folks mine shaft.

So they were appealing and saying, we are the national party and we are going to save the nation. and look at all these other parties. They’re just interested in their own selfish, their particular interest. It worked. When Germany went back to the polls in late 1930, the Nazi party vote increased to 6.4 million, winning them 107 seats and making them the second largest party in parliament.

By 1930, Nazi propaganda efforts were not only focused on how Germans consumed information. This was as much about preventing access to other ideas as it was about what Hitler and the party were saying themselves. When the anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front was released in late 1930, Gerbles organized the Nazi party’s efforts to disrupt the film’s premiere.

Gerbles at this point believed very strongly that the party in Berlin needed publicity. So in his view any publicity was good publicity and uh anything which therefore could generate a sensation in the newspapers was an ideal opportunity for them. He later described the moment they succeeded in turning the crowd who were yelling Jews out and Hitler is at the gates.

To avoid more protests, the film was banned from being shown in Germany. Gerbles and the Nazi party had won an important battle. As he put it, the National Socialist Street is dictating behavior to the government. 1932 began with Hitler challenging Hindenburg, the incumbent president and old ally of Hitler and the Nazi party for the presidency.

The Nazi party campaign had Hitler as its star and Gerbles as its architect. Gerbles threw himself into that cause and he discovered that he was actually very good at electioneering and his particular brand of electioneering which was focused around public speaking uh around uh the use of political posters, cartoons, public demonstrations.

He found he was absolutely brilliant at this. Between April and November 1932, Hitler conducted four airborne campaigns across Germany, reaching an incredible number of people targeting rural Germany as well as the big cities. And here you actually see the Nazis at their stage managing best. A moment of pure theater that Hitler is in an aircraft flying over Germany.

A tremendously modern thing to do in the late 1920s. It emphasizes the fact that Hitler is something different. He’s something modern. He’s a force of energy who can change things. This was a campaign where Hitler could make full use of one of his greatest weapons, his skill as an orator. [Music] 00 Hitler spoke at over 150 rallies to audiences of up to 30,000 people, getting in front of as many people as possible to engender a personal connection.

In every speech, he positioned himself as the agent of change, ready to save Germany. [Applause] By contrast, Hindenburg was positioned as representing the status quo that they needed to uproot. It was strategically difficult for Hitler to deal with the phenomenon of Hindenburg, the great uh general of the first world war, the great symbol of German patriotism and Persian integrity and discipline.

So he had a positioning strategy. He said he is our great leader, but the time has come for a younger man. [Music] [Applause] The Nazis campaign was also significantly boosted by Hugenberg’s media empire. He gave Hitler and his party message exposure through newspapers and weekly news reels. The reach of the Nazi party campaign was also achieved through Gerbal’s clever poster marketing.

Many designed entirely around Hitler’s persona as savior of Germany. They made no specific promises and explained no policies. One showed nothing but Hitler’s face appearing from darkness, his name spelled out in bold letters beneath his head. The idea of presenting the man and that bold full frontal straight look at the camera, his face alone becomes identifiable.

And no politician was identifiable in that same way. Very clever piece of psychology. Very basic, very simple, but people would look and see this is a pre-television age. People get their ideas either from the cinema, newspapers, or the public place. And the public place is skillfully used by posters.

Common symbols of Nazi ideology also pervaded their campaign posters. In one, the strong, physically powerful Arian towering over the figures that the Nazis blamed for Germany’s problems. The Marxist in his red cap, the Jew whispering in his ear. Behind them, another figure wields a bloody knife, evoking the popular Nazi narrative of the stab in the back.

The poster declares, “We workers have awakened.” Using bold colors, strong imagery, and simple slogans, they captured the attention of the people. If you look at the posters of the other parties, they’re really dull. They’ve got numbers on them. They’ve got very boring slogans. They still live in a rational world. Whereas what the Nazis offered was vividness and color.

And remember, this is a world where the entertainment distractions we have today were far, far fewer. Their campaign methodology may have been radical, but it still wasn’t enough to gain Hitler power. The Nazis were not elected into power. The most they got um before Hitler was appointed chancellor in the vote was 37% in July 1932.

In November 1932, their vote dropped to 30%. And in January 33, the newspapers in Berlin were writing him off. They were saying, you know, the whole Nazi thing is kind of ground to wall. It’s it’s it’s on its way out. Despite the Nazi party’s faltering trajectory, President Hindenburg still viewed Hitler as a threat that he was desperate to control.

And to many in the right, the threat of communism seemed greater. They were frightened that if Hitler was not appointed, then the left would take over. And the only support which the right might be able to have was the Nazis. They felt right, okay, we’ll have to do a deal with the Nazis. Of course, you know, Hitler’s an amateur.

You know, he’s somebody who has no education, really hasn’t been to university. We’ll we’ll be able to control him. I think uh at one point said, “Don’t worry, we’ve hired him.” Von Taffan and the conservatives and Hugenberg and so forth thought that they could tame Hitler. This was a a common delusion that somehow the possession of power, his treatment as a great dignified statesman and so on would draw out his fangs and the Nazis would be nothing more than rather robust conservatives, thapping, beerrinking conservatives,

uh but still conservatives. They were nothing of the kind. There is a huge difference between a right-wing conservative and a revolutionary. A fascist, a Nazi is a revolutionary. They don’t believe in the things the others believe in. Hitler was sworn in as chancellor on the 30th of January 1933.

Just under 10 years after the failed beer hall push, Hitler had finally completed the first great leap to ultimate power. That night, the Nazi party and their paramilitary arm, the SA, marched through the streets in the thousands, celebrating the rise of their leader as Hitler stood illuminated in the window of his chancellory office.

On that night, Hitler succeeded in delivering the brand he had spent 10 years building. He had become both statesman and savior. The highly orchestrated celebrations were a display of nationalistic fervor that foreshadowed the country that Germany would now quickly [Applause] become in power. Hitler and the Nazi party would build a propaganda and terror machine to persuade, coersse, and ultimately mobilize the population of Germany, defining the Nazi state through the notion of strength through unity. One people, one rife, one fura.

[Music] Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor of Germany on the 30th of January 1933 was celebrated that night by thousands of party members marching through the streets. An instant and overt display of Nazi party power and influence. [Music] But in reality, he was the head of a coalition government with only two other members of the Nazi party in his cabinet.

Herman Gering and the lawyer Wilhelm Frrick. Hitler’s first radio address as chancellor on the 1st of February 1933 had to be approved by his cabinet and revealed the new role he would play that of the moderate politician. For a time after after Hitler became chancellor, he seemed to tone down his rhetoric a little. There was very much a sense of okay, now we’re in power.

We’ll do things more by the book. In this speech, Hitler avoided anything that wouldn’t appeal to a broad base. carefully chosen language conveying a positive outlook. Conspicuously absent from this speech was any sign of anti-semitism. Two days later, his speech to German Navy and army commanders had a marketkedly different focus.

In it, Hitler declared that only battle can save us and everything else must be subordinated to this thought. What Hitler did was really not present a consistent image but a whole number of images depending on the audience. There was a civic Hitler for the civic-minded. There was a revolutionary Hitler for the revolutionaries.

There was a holy Hitler for the church implied at least. So everyone could in other words read into Hitler what they wanted to see. What followed was a year of considerable change in which Hitler would establish absolute power through propaganda of persuasion and terror, compelling Germans to flee, comply, or convert to their cause, exerting control over every aspect of German culture and ideology.

[Applause] On the night of the 27th of February 1933, Hitler would be given his first major propaganda opportunity as chancellor when a fire broke out in the Reichag, Germany’s parliament building. A young communist was arrested at the scene. The fire fed neatly into Hitler’s narrative of anarchy, his promise to restore order, and the communist as enemy sabotur.

Hitler capitalized on this by issuing a decree on the protection of the people and the state, suspending the right to assembly, freedom of speech, and freedom of the press. It gave his regime the power to suppress publications and arrest political opponents without specific charges.

They made it clear that anybody who resisted them was going to have a nasty time. and uh that very quickly established their authority. Never underestimate weapons in the in the hands of the state um that can be used to dominate a population and control a population. Less than a month after the fire, Hitler stood under the looming presence of the swastika and presented his enabling act to Parliament.

The bill would allow the Nazi party to bypass the usual parliamentary due process, the country’s constitution and the president to pass their own unilateral laws. The enabling act was passed by the majority of the Reicha while armed members of the Nazi party’s own police and military forces along with right-wing paramilitary group, the Steel Helmets, stood at every door and surrounded the building.

Hitler had finally gained legislative control of Germany, aided by the Nazi party’s intimidation tactics. Basically, he took over the engines of power. So, the police, the administration, everything which gives a state the power to exercise power. um and he used it very ruthlessly. Using the enabling act, Hitler would enact a range of legislation aimed at marginalizing, disempowering, and removing the Jewish population of Germany.

On the street, his intimidation apparatus was trading off the persuasive power of fear. groups like the SA who had merged with the Steel Helmets in June 1933. The Gestapo, the Nazi secret police headed by Herman Guring, founded to monitor and quash political activity dangerous to the regime. And Hitler’s personal bodyguard, the Shuttafo or SS, which had grown by 1933 into an elite group of 52,000 men led by Hinrich Himmler.

The role the SS, the SA and the Gestapo played as far as Hitler’s attempt to create a kind of image of the Reich was of strength, but also of violence. And this element of violence or the threat of violence was very much a part of Hitler’s politics. The SASS and Gustapo were an extension of the Nazi propaganda machine. Agents of control and chaos.

Instigators of violence and protests in the streets. Enforcers and security men marching in unison at rallies and demonstrations. [Applause] He grows inside. [Music] [Applause] For weeks after Hitler was made chancellor, the SA and Nazi party members had been assaulting and imprisoning Jewish people, targeting their businesses for raids and violent attacks. On the 1st of April 1933,

Gerbles formalized this into an organized campaign, orchestrating a boycott of Jewish businesses across Germany, using his resources as head of the new ministry for public enlightenment and propaganda. [Music] This gazette Hitler realized that he had a real asset there. somebody who understood modern communication, who understood modern media, who was very much thoughtful in the way in which he was organizing things.

So he gave him quite a lot of power in organizing the party propaganda machines. In 1933 when the Nazis ceized power, anti-semitism became the doctrine of the state, a state ideology and the anti-semitic regulations were immediately put into reality. Crucially, the core element was the notion that whilst not all Jews represented some kind of criminal threat to Germany, nevertheless, there was in a sense some abstract collective Jewish threat to Germany.

Some Germans didn’t comply with the boycott, but it was considered a political act to walk into one of these shops, a stand many weren’t willing to make. So in a sense there was both genuine persuasion going on here about this notion that the Jews were a genuine threat. At the same time there were huge incentives to go along and support this kind of propaganda whether one really believed in it or not because it was the propaganda that showed what the regime believed and how the regime was operating.

While it was only one day it served its purpose as a statement of propaganda and policy. fear in the Nazi regime became one of their most potent persuaders. I sometimes think that um fear is underestimated. Not in a direct sense. I mean, for most people, if you kept your nose clean, then you could get on with your life.

You’d have to make the regular gestures. You’d have to raise your arm uh you know, when you went into state offices and that kind of thing. Otherwise, the regime, you know, on the whole wouldn’t wouldn’t bother you. But at the back of your mind, it seems to me if I’d been living in that regime, I would have been aware that if I did step out of line, then nasty things could happen to me.

The party perpetrated the idea that if you stepped out of line, if you were seen to not be a good German, they would come for you. And come they did. The first concentration camp near the town of Dhaka was opened on the 22nd of March 1933. The first inmates of the camps which opened as soon as he took part were communists, they were liberals.

They were conservatives. So he literally defanged the opposition by physically eliminating it. Many of course fled into exile. They were the clever ones. By July of that year, Dhaka and other hastily established camps around Germany held almost 27,000 people. Many had been denounced by friends and neighbors.

None had been indicted or convicted at trial. At odds with this reality was the pervasive myth of the benevolent concentration camp rehabilitating its inhabitants. A stark example of how the Nazi party used propaganda to make their policies palatable, masking their true intent behind a facade of righteousness. Hitler was also fixated on unifying Nazi ideology and German identity using carefully managed plebites to legitimize his policies and actions.

Now these figures can be challenged but in so far as they are a measurement of public opinion they are worth considering. Manipulating public perception using one of the pillars of democracy as a propaganda tool. The first of these referendums would seek endorsement for Hitler’s foreign policy. The referendum asked Germans to literally internalize Hitler’s rhetoric.

Do you, a German man and German woman, approve of this policy of your Reich government? And are you prepared to declare it to be your own view and your own will to solemnly profess your belief in it? Of the 45 million Germans who voted, over 95% said yes. The question and the response were both products of a state where every poster, picture, and slogan reminded you to conform to the notion of one people, one Reich, one furer.

There is one particular poster which I think encapsulates Adolf Hitler’s imagery and that’s a famous poster in which he’s painted. It’s not a photograph. He’s standing there in full color in his brown uniform. And the slogan is one vul, one Reich, one fur, one people, one empire, one leader. And nowhere on that is mentioned the government or the party.

It’s linking those three key elements of Nazi propaganda. The people, the vulk, the Reich, the empire, and the furer, the leader. It’s a remarkable example of how the Fury is portrayed as almost godlike, besiding Germany beyond the concerns of day-to-day bureaucracy. Behind the propaganda, the Nazi party were taking steps to align the realities of government with this vision.

a revolution of power that involved intimidating, coercing, and otherwise persuading Germany’s remaining political parties to disband. Within a matter of months, Hitler and the Nazi party had completely dismantled Germany’s democratic multi-party system. While Hitler’s power and influence grew, so too did the Nazi party’s own paramilitary forces.

But Germany’s army viewed this privately controlled force that by mid1934 was four times their size with unease. Army leadership saw the SA as a potential barrier to their own expansion. Hitler didn’t want that at all. He wanted it to be subordinate to the party. Simply a strong arm sort of movement for the party to basically beat up opponents and march through towns and generally give an impression an image of strength and determination and action and so on.

But he didn’t want them being military. It was a problem Hitler would have to resolve. On the 29th of May 1934, he ordered the SA to cease military exercises. This was followed over June and July by a violent bloodletting of the SA’s command, including Ernst Rome, one of Hitler’s closest allies since the early years of the party.

Rome was very useful as a bully boy, a tough guy on the street, led the SA. But his belief was you wanted violent revolution, you seize power, you repeat the coup. And for Hitler, this was dated. This was out of fashion. It wouldn’t work. Largely orchestrated by Hitler, Gerling, and Himmler. This period would later be known as the night of the long knives.

At least 70 party members were killed, but the figure was possibly as high as 400. So after that the SA was totally tamed and became fairly unimportant. It was replaced by the SS. They took over as the main sort of enforcers, the main terror organization of the regime from then onwards. Presented to the public as the quelling of a threatened revolt, it was widely supported as restoring order to an organization viewed as difficult to manage.

What the depiction of an event does is uh give us the regime’s view of it. Uh it doesn’t tell us the truth of the event. the depiction of the event can be changed by the alchemy of propaganda into something entirely different. The interesting thing is that the German people were not prepared to interrogate these very uh pastiche justifications.

They looked the other way. They just accepted this fatal comply of something absolutely appallingly degenerate, the random murder of a lot of key figures in their political civilization. Hitler capitalized on the narrative value of these events, declaring certain death for anyone who threatened the regime.

Himmler benefited greatly from the coup. Already in control of the Gestapo, the Nazi secret police, his inimitable SS force was made its own independent organization, making him second only to Hitler. Hitler’s path to absolute power was completely cleared when on the 2nd of August 1934, President Hindenburg died.

Two weeks later, Hitler held another referendum to gain support for combining his position as Chancellor of Germany with the now vacated role of president. While turnout was low, almost 90% of voters agreed with his proposal. Hitler was now head of state and head of the government. In response, the Nazi party generated a cacophony of celebratory propaganda in images, radio, and print.

Posters were distributed with such slogans as yes, Fura, we will follow you. The Nazi propaganda narrative of one people, one Reich, one furer was finally reflected in Germany’s power [Applause] structure. While Hitler was consolidating power, Gerbles was using his propaganda ministry to gain control of German art, culture, and education.

The Nazis control of art and culture was a fundamental part of their propaganda. Art has traditionally been a way in which dissent is expressed whether that’s in the form of poetry, music or indeed um painting. But the Nazis are very quick to take full control of art, abolishing some or banning it on the grounds that it was decadent.

On the 12th of April, school organizations declared a period of cleansing that would end in a ritualized burning of blacklisted books. On the 10th of May, 1933, bonfires were set up in Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Dresdon, and Brel, and lines of torch wielding students and SA members flung books onto the p. Gerbles and other key party members watched as these unger works were burned in front of the Berlin Opera House.

He declared to the crowd that out of these ashes, the phoenix of a new age will rise. These ritualized ceremonies held by torch light with singing, chanting, and oaths made were broadcast by radio around Germany. [Music] The Nazis targeted education as an important facet of their propaganda machine.

Education was used to shape the nation and what the Nazis called the national community. So it was about fostering a sense of creation and belonging to the nation. And this took the form of all kinds of different um changes to the to the curriculum and to school textbooks. The national socialist idea of the national community was in fact an exclusive club meant only for strong healthy arians.

Educational content produced by the Nazis provided a framework for justifying this. textbooks began to incorporate anti-semitism disguised as objective biological or anthropological fact. One of them was called the poisonous mushroom. And again, it was just about really trying to show a whole gamut of allegations.

So the Jew as a communist, the Jew as a financier. Classrooms became an important frontier for perpetuating Nazi ideology disguised as education. The way that German was taught was also important too. So that there was a focus in education in German lessons, not just on the language but on the literature as well and on folk tales and German myths and legends as well as on components of the blood and soil ideology that meant that people were bound up to the nation and to the [Music] land.

Germany’s youth were considered incredibly important to the national socialist movement. Their exposure to Nazi propaganda took place in and out of the classroom. The Nazis had a concept of total education and this meant a combination of formal education in the school system complemented by informal socialization. We could say membership in the Hitler Youth grew from around 100,000 members in 1932 to over 7 million in 1939.

Groups like Hitler Youth and the League of German Girls indoctrinated children through exposure to Nazi publications and participation in Nazi party rallies, summer camps, and almost militarized games. It was the idea of each German girl or boy playing their part in the nation almost as building blocks to create an organic hole and this organic hole would be the foundation of the future.

So the youth were absolutely essential to everything that the Nazis did. [Applause] In late 1933, Gerbles expanded his control over German culture by establishing the Reich Culture Chamber or RKK through his propaganda ministry. The RKK was made up of seven chambers: literature, film, theater, music, visual arts, press, and radio.

You can see this is a pretty ambitious program. Gerbles again brought his characteristic energy to this and had um you know the help of thousands of employees and uh all all manner of resources in an attempt to control public discourse. Gerbles mandated that every artist or journalist who wanted to practice in Germany had to apply to the RKK.

Gerbles was particularly aware of the power of mass media. He required all films produced in Germany to be reviewed and approved by the RKK and he identified radio as the most modern and important instrument of mass influence that exists anywhere. By 1932, there was a radio in one out of every four German homes.

Gerbles sought to improve on that figure. The Nazi regime introduced a new radio set called the folks empher, the people’s receiver. And this was a very cheap radio set which practically anyone could afford. So what this meant was that when there were Nazi speeches or Hitler speaking or one of the other key leaders or different messages that they wanted to get across, they could use the radio.

When Gerbles took control of the Reich Broadcasting Company, it gave the Nazi party unfettered access to the airwaves for blatant propaganda programming. Gerbles also targeted German publishing, taking control of the assets of rival political parties and Jewish companies. Those still allowed to practice chose self censorship following daily directives from the press chamber.

Gerbles though was very careful not to drum propaganda you know and ideology into people. He very quickly told the press that they shouldn’t bore people. He very quickly realized that what people wanted was basically uh what they had before and with a sort of judicious doses of propaganda but carefully calibrated so that it didn’t appear like propaganda.

If you disobeyed directives, at best you would be fired. At worst, sent to a concentration camp. In response to the Nazis tightening grip, hundreds of scientists and artists fled Germany, figures who had greeted the rise of national socialism with deep hostility and concern. Over the course of the 1930s, 300,000 Germans would leave their country.

Among them was Albert [Music] Einstein. The RKK sought to define what works expressed the narrow Nazi view of German culture. In 1937, they used their control over museums and theater to run an anti-semitic exhibition called The Eternal Jew in Munich, supported by a similarly themed play run by the Bavarian State [Music] Theater.

They wanted a very wholesome German art that emphasized myths like blood and soil, people’s connection to literally to the German earth and to their German heredity as well. and how that could be portrayed in art. Over 400,000 people attended the exhibition, but even more attended their exhibition of degenerate art that targeted anything abstract or interpretive, which was visited by 2 million people.

Turnout that reinforced the reach that art could have. The other thing that’s quite important is the way that Hitler was portrayed in art as well. The artistic portraits that were made of him were also quite evocative, whether as the military leader in his uniform or as the as a kind of Tutonic messianic leader that was going to lead the nation to greatness again.

[Music] Hitler and his supporters used every aspect of their control over German culture to perpetuate his cult of personality. The way Hitler created and staged managed his own image is a remarkably instructive into how the Nazi party actually saw Hitler too. Hitler actually separated himself in some ways from the Nazi party itself.

He was portrayed almost as a king-like figure beyond the minor concerns of party squables. Unimpeachable, unapproachable, and yet also the embodiment of German strength. The pinnacle of Nazi propaganda depicting Hitler, the messianic leader, was the 1935 film Triumph as Villains or Triumph of the Will.

Filmed as a documentary of the 1934 Reich Party Congress at Nuremberg. England and Dutch land and five and onion on the Dutch 5. It really represents the kind of edited quintessence of the party, its image of itself, its projection to the world of what it was. It is truly disturbing because it’s a kind of militarized ballet in which it elevates certain human virtues like discipline and others it entirely not merely neglects but throws into the rubbish bag. Uh, you know, you

have to have a pointy blonde Aryan face and be athletic and disciplined and [Music] obey. Disciplined forces stand to attention in rows, cheering masses with arms raised as they hail in unison. Children with blonde curls greeted by their furer. The film also showcases the neocclassical architecture of the rally grounds designed in part by Albert Spear.

The architecture that Spear built for it is in itself a kind of filmic architecture. So it’s that kind of austere neocclassicism that we associate with Nazi and fascist official architecture today. But it’s also something that’s specifically designed to look good for camera. It’s almost like a kind of grand Hollywood stage set enhanced at the time by special lighting shoes.

Triumph of the Will, like the Vagarian operas Hitler was known to love, used staging, lighting, and music to amplify the emotional power of the story. [Music] seeking to create and perpetuate an enduring mythology of the Third Reich. The Nazis were always conscious of propaganda, not just affecting people in the moment, but also about how it would affect the way future generations would remember and recall their achievements.

They’re not just adopting a neocclassical style for all official buildings of state, but they’re also anticipating what these buildings would look like in the future, including in the very distant future. So, what are they going to look like in a thousand or 2,000 years time? Will these buildings still be awe inspiring once they’re in ruin state as the Acropolis is today? The rally itself was an expression of Nazi symbols, power, unity, cohesion, an artifact of party propaganda titled Reich Party Rally of Unity and Strength. The 1934 rally was

the first since Hitler had successfully combined the position of chancellor and president, taking comprehensive control of Germany. And only months after the night of the long knives had resulted in a bloody upheaval of SA leadership. The rally and the film were also a work of propaganda turned inwards aimed at the party itself calling on all to come together.

All random. [Applause] It’s the moment that Hitler becomes a god. He is now no longer only immortal. And this is what Trump for the rule is really doing. It’s about the supremacy, the superheroism of Hitler, but also his superhumity. He’s no longer human. Long after Hitler had gained power, he continued to hold these rallies aimed at mobilizing the German people and generating a kind of self-actualized acclaim for the Nazi party, displaying their own power and the rapturous celebrations of rally participants. In 1935, the rally became

the site for the passing of Hitler’s Nuremberg laws. laws that severely limited civil rights of anyone the Nazis deemed undesirable, particularly for Jews in Germany. The Nuremberg laws paved the way for all subsequent laws and regulation and there were more than 1,000 anti-Jewish laws. They all went back to the Nenberg laws and these legal process more or less also paved the way for the final aim of the Nazis to exterminate the Jews.

The Nuremberg laws only heightened the importance of the rally in the Nazi state. They would be held each year at Nuremberg until the outbreak of World War II. Each rally promoted through posters filled with Nazi iconography. The Nuremberg rallies were only one of many methods the party had for generating symbols of Nazi power and German strength rebuilt.

One of the Nazis greatest propaganda successes was the 1936 Berlin Olympics. The 1936 Olympics is dripping with Nazi propaganda. This is in some ways the opportunity for Nazi Germany to show its public face to the world. There’ll be cameras there. There’ll be reporters there. For the first time since the Nazis took over the government in 1933, there’s large-scale foreign visit to Germany.

And they want to portray Nazi Germany in the very best possible light. This was a chance to present a sanitized version of Nazi Germany to the international community. It had been managed at every level. Uh, gypsies had been removed to concentration camps. Most of the signs saying Jews forbidden were removed.

It was a fantasy of Germany to present to the world. Hitler funneled massive resources into realizing this potential, spending more to host the games than any previous Olympia. This included a new stadium designed by Albert Spear in the neocclassical style that Hitler favored for Nazi architecture. Built to hold 250,000 spectators, the Berlin games were also treated as an opportunity for the Nazis to showcase the strength and efficiency of this new Germany.

Rebuilt from the ruins of World War I and the Great Depression. He’s not merely satisfied with portraying the image of Berlin as a fabulous, modern, and vibrant city. He also wants to show that the German race is on a higher level than those of others who are visiting the place. And it’s actually a very effective propaganda tool, a narrative that was disrupted by the success of African-American athletes like long jumper Jesse Owens, who beat German Loot Long.

Over 45 countries, including the US, Great Britain, and France, participated in the games. A fact that acknowledged the legitimacy of Hitler’s regime both within Germany and overseas. Remember that this happens after the Nuremberg laws, after the opening of the concentration camps. There’s an awful lot leaking out to the international uh community about how truly wicked Nazi Germany was.

But Germany produced this brilliant PR campaign. It really was effectively bribing journalists with marvelous facidities. Nothing like it had ever been done before in all of history. The Olympics in Berlin became another opportunity to generate propaganda artifacts and harness new technologies. The Berlin Olympics were the first sporting event to ever be broadcast live on television.

Another display of the technical proficiency and superiority of Nazi Germany. Nazi propaganda often reflected Hitler’s focus on the idea of building a modern, innovative Germany. Soon after becoming chancellor, Hitler took control of the fledgling autoban program, a plan to build a network of intercity freeways across Germany.

Breaking ground on construction became another ritual. Columns of marching figures with shovels replacing flags or weapons. So there’s the sort of physical side of the propaganda. So the outerb barn and the motorways talked about putting the people back to work and being very important in turning around the economy entirely.

Hitler dedicated the new roads to the German people and specifically the German worker. Reasoncraft [Applause] and commencement of works of building a new Germany in the Nazi image. became another facet of the propaganda machine. Two years later, Hitler was starting to open sections of the network to great agilation. So, what these successes were doing was distracting from the apparatus of terror and use of force and intimidation.

It wasn’t completely out of view, but people weren’t focusing on it in those first five or so years of the Third Reich. Once Hitler was in power, for a time it seemed as if he was a very effective leader. He he brought back a lot of um public works. German economy, at least for a time, looked like it was booming, but it was a paper tiger.

It was an economy that was only going to operate if they could bring in enough raw materials for from abroad. And they could only do that if they could get territorial conquests either by negotiation or by war. Hitler converted this need to expand into neighboring territories into a new propaganda narrative.

The urgent need for Libans or living space for the German people. The idea of Lebanon’s realm was was very much the hidden agenda. Mine has a lot to say about it and it had always been uh the big theme in Nazi policy. It was to create an empire to the east where you’d settle German NCOs as farmers and you’d have a surviile semislave surf population carved out of the Slavic peoples.

The way to achieve it for Hitler was through military power and the rearmament of Germany as a priority. Rearmament was sold as a way to return Germany to its former glory. It was also a valuable propaganda tool. a new industrial program that would be a way to get Germans back to work. This growing military power was paraded at party rallies and in marches through the streets, symbols of new German strength and [Music] unity.

But Lieben wouldn’t be achieved through military strength alone. Each new territorial gain was lubricated by the Nazi propaganda machine. Their first test came in 1935 when the population of the SA land in southwest Germany were given the chance to vote for their fate. Stay under League of Nations control or become part of either France or Germany.

The Nazi Propaganda Ministry ran an intensive campaign, handing out cheap radios to make sure their message was heard in as many homes as possible, using those radios to spread false claims about their opponents and calling for the SAR to return home to the Reich. Over 90% of the population voted to return to Germany, to join the Third Reich.

In March 1936, Hitler flaunted the Treaty of Versailles by moving 30,000 troops into the Rhineland. A move justified through a mass media campaign that suggested Germany was under threat from France and Russia. When his actions drew little reaction from the international community, Hitler would tell a crowd in Munich, “I go with the certainty of a sleepwalker along the path laid out for me by Providence.

Bolstered by these successes, Hitler continued his program of expansion. His first major target of 1938 was Austria. The incorporation or anush of Austria into the Reich was an orchestrated affair. Hitler’s chance to demonstrate the new military power of his regime and a prime propaganda opportunity.

the Angelus, the return of Austria to the great German fatherland was a natural move for him because he was Austrian and as he said after the taken over after the Angelus um your son has returned to his homeland. Hitler used Nazi symbols and military strength to reinforce the idea that Austria was returning to the fold.

The swastika flag hung on the facade of Austrian buildings. Hitless evade German tanks as they rolled through the streets of Vienna. Cheering crowds lined streets there to welcome the Nazi takeover. Well, the Angelus was another of those masterpieces of propaganda that the Austrian people were univocal in wanting Hitler.

The regime was quick to spread Nazi controlled information, approved German newspapers, replacing Austrian publications on news stands. Hitler would also personally brief 400 media representatives on how the ancelus should be presented. Then in October 1938, Hitler took another step towards expanding his new empire when he successfully negotiated to bring the Sudetan land region of Czechoslovakia into greater Germany.

I think what it changes is is Czechoslovakia because this is something you can justify with a good narrative built around some facts and ideas. So yes, what do you have in Czechoslovakia? You have a new state that was carved at the end of the first world war, but you’ve got a little bit of a problem because you’ve got quite a sizable German minority uh in that area called Sudetla.

So of course that becomes part of an agenda of um irredentism of trying to redeem certain territories in Germany. At the time almost one in four people living in Czechoslovakia were German. Yet only 8% of Czech broadcast were in German. So instead they were tuning in to Nazi broadcasts fed on a diet of Nazi propaganda.

Hitler went beyond the standard issues associated with Versail revisionism. Rhineland, Austria, SAR, reparations, remilitarization and so on into I would like to break up the boundaries of another state and annex bits of territory that had been awarded to another state against the will was a change of uh attack completely.

It was stepping up the gears quite substantially. Many would welcome their return to the German fold, not the Jewish population. [Music] If they had any doubt about the terrible threat they faced, the events over one night in November 1938 would cast those aside. In response to the murder of a German diplomat in Paris by a young Jew, Gerbles made an impassioned speech calling for retaliation.

It was the embodiment of Nazi rhetoric that all Jews were responsible for the sin of one. On the night of the 8th of November, 7,500 Jewish businesses across Germany and Austria were damaged or destroyed. For Jews, it has a deep impact on their consciousness and their memory because most Jews realize experiencing the burning of their synagogues, of their prayer houses, the destruction of their homes, the arrest of 30,000 males, the murder of Jews, and the terror in streets.

It symbolized the end of a German Jewish relationship. The whole event was framed and contextualized by Nazi propaganda dictating how the press could cover what had happened. Crystal Nakt, the night of broken glass, named in reference to the broken shop windows, led to a spike not only in Jewish immigration, but also suicides.

The world was shocked by this fresh brutality enacted against Jews by the Nazi regime. But you see that was part of the plan to actually inject fear into the global community and the brutality was also part of the propaganda because they wanted people to fear them. They wanted people to be terrified of them which they were.

Despite the horrors of events like Crystal Knuck, the international community remained unwilling to stop Hitler. No one wanted another war. As the negotiations to hand over the Sudetan land had shown, the Allies were willing to put up with a lot to avoid one. And so 1939 began with Time magazine naming Hitler 1938’s man of the year.

His influence on world events considered more significant, more comprehensive than any other figure. [Music] German conquests of other nations had so far been relatively bloodless and the general sentiment among the German people remained opposed to the idea of allout war. Hitler was faced with a propaganda challenge.

There’s no question that Germans didn’t want war. What they wanted was, so to speak, what Hitler gained. And I think they’d been very happy if he’d stopped, you know, disobeying that and and left it at that. Despite everything that had happened since he came to power, Hitler still needed to mobilize the nation. To make them feel like there was no choice but to fight, Hitler needed the propaganda ministry to introduce a new angle.

Up until 38, he had spoken of peace a lot, his pe, you know, his speeches. But after Munich, he hauled the various editors of newspapers in to a big meeting and said, “Right, from now onwards, we’ve been talking peace. Now, we’ve got to prepare the German population for war.” Within this narrative, Hitler was positioned as wanting nothing but peace, a notion he would play to repeatedly each time he made a show of sincere peace offerings.

But on the 1st of September 1939, Hitler would confirm once again that the very opposite was true. Marching Germany towards the goal he had set out to achieve when he came to power, the ultimate Nazi narrative device. Conquest through military supremacy. The force of Hitler’s cult of personality, his single-minded drive to restore the power of his country, engulfed Europe and drew the world into war.

A war that would be fought on the ground, at sea, in the air, and on the radio, in posters, photographs, films, and newspapers. Before there was war, there was Hitler’s bloodless campaign of empire building. The German people celebrated the annexation of Austria and the Sedatinland as diplomatic victories. The German public opinion are happy about Anelus, the union with Austria.

They’re happy about the fact that the Sudatan Germans in Czechoslovakia has been reunited with the motherland as it were. They’re happy that all these things result in a nationalist dream if you like. All the Germans together, Germany is recovering from the humiliation of Versailles.

They’re happy that all these major successes have been achieved diplomatically more or less without a major complication. But they do not want to risk far more the eyeire of other countries. Hitler wanted to continue expanding his new German empire, but he would need to sway public opinion in favor of war.

By the time he was planning to invade Poland in late 1939, Hitler had a complex propaganda apparatus at his disposal. All information, education, and culture was fed through the Nazi propaganda machine. This apparatus was turned to generating a narrative of Poland as Germany’s enemy. Newspaper articles were filled with inflated and false accounts of Poland’s war fever, their rejection of Germany’s attempts to negotiate peace, and their acts of terror against German nationals.

And in this case, the isolated part of Germany, East Prussia, cut off by the so-called Polish corridor from the rest of Germany is the Cassbelli for invading Poland. The need to go and free these Germans who are trapped in Polish territory. The need to restore greater Germany just as he had done in Czechoslovakia when he annexed the Sudatland and then Czech Slovakia itself.

This idea of unifying Germans lies at the heart of all Hitler’s expansion from 1936 until 1939. A unified Germany could deliver Hitler’s ambitions for expansion. While Hitler made plans to invade Poland, Nazi propaganda painted them as the aggressor. Films focused on Poland’s armed forces and fueled the idea that Poland was on the verge of enacting their own expansionist agenda.

On the 31st of August 1939, SS officers dressed up in Polish army uniforms and attacked a German radio station. There’s a huge amount of effort to turn the Poles into oppressors. So always they projected their own identity onto their victims. If you want to understand the essence of the Third Reich, it’s the lies they told about their enemies.

When Germany invaded Poland the day after the incident at the radio station, Hitler positioned his actions as a response to Polish incursions, perpetuating the idea that Germany was under threat, the perennial victim. Always Germans, you must remember, are presented as the victims. Victims of Versailles, the victims of conspiratorial enemies, uh the victims of the Anglosphere.

The Germans are just trying to establish their right to nationhood all the time. They’re fighting against encirclement. They’re fighting against conspiracy. And so the destruction was admitted and shown very vividly but attributed as entirely the fault of the allies who hadn’t negotiated with Germans had not accepted Hitler’s mature and kind peacemaking initiatives.

Sensitive to the mood of the German people the Reich press office instructed the press to avoid using the word war and to report that German troops were responding to Polish attacks. preserving their narrative of foreign aggression forced the British and French to be the first to openly declare war and they did on the 3rd of September 1939.

Up to the very last it would have been quite possible to have arranged a peaceful and honorable settlement between Germany and Poland. But Hitler would not have it. His action shows convincingly that there is no chance of expecting that this man will ever give up his practice of using force to gain his will. Two weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east, revealing the extent of the secret provisions of the non-aggression path they had made with Germany.

Battle lines were drawn. Europe was at war once again. From 1939 on when Hitler becomes the war leader, he sees that role in a much more positive way than did the domestic leader and he wanted to be seen as war leader. He very rarely gives speeches and talks in public after the war starts certainly from 41 on.

Gerbles is the main spokesman and Gerbles complained at times why won’t the furer say more? Why doesn’t he appear more? And Hitler believed he didn’t need to. Now Hitler’s new role as war leader became an opportunity for Gerbles to assert greater control over the war propaganda effort to establish his power and influence among Hitler’s inner circle.

Gerbles also knew how to use the masses to generate and perpetuate convincing propaganda. It’s estimated that when the German army goes to war in 1939, about 10% of soldiers had a camera on them and they were using it during the war. Gerbles famously said that the private photos that Germans were taking of the war experience both at home and the front were a thousand times more valuable than what the photographers of the propaganda companies, the official embedded war artists if you like were doing because they had that sort of authenticity

effect. Gerbles had to use every tool at his disposal to paint a positive picture of the war. A task that would become increasingly difficult as the war dragged on. But between late 1939 and the middle of 1940, Germany waged a war of conquest across Europe. The propaganda narrative that supported this phase promised a swift end with Germany as the victor.

From the beginning of 1940, the uh language of the regime shifts to a quick victory. Hence, the Blitz campaign in every possible setting. and the idea that we’re going to do one more thing in order to end the war quickly. One country after another fell to Germany’s military strength. After Poland, it was Denmark and Norway, then Luxembourg, the Netherlands, and Belgium.

Victories that helped turn the tide of public opinion. The German public were euphoric about these early early victories. In other words, uh what Hitler really does is conform to the classic Max Vber definition of the charismatic as being essentially governed by success. And the Germans, although initially very skeptical about the war, became drunk with the success of these extraordinary battles.

Each new offensive was presented to the German people as a defense of those countries against the threat of inevitable French and British invasion. Nazi propaganda also proposed that national unity was threatened by the creeping poison of liberal ideology, the cultural degeneracy of countries like France and Britain.

The French in particular were a clear enemy positioned in propaganda as the antithesis of the Nazi state. Architects of the Versail Treaty and racially impure, Nazi propaganda pointed to the many ethnicities present in the French army. [Music] The war in Nazi propaganda was also about defending European civilization from the threat of Judaism.

Most German propaganda was saying that Churchill was in the pay of the Jews, that ordinary people had been manipulated into this war, that it wasn’t in their interest and so on. So, a long-term aim to undermine morale and national unity in that sense. In May 1940, the Germans tightened their encirclement of Belgian, French, and British forces in the northwest corner of France.

British and French forces retreated towards Dunkirk. [Music] The German Luftwaffer dropped leaflets on the retreating [Music] soldiers, declaring that they were surrounded with arrows depicting the threat of German soldiers closing in from all directions. But providing a map showing the Dunkerk beach head did not have the desired effect.

It provided hope to British soldiers who hadn’t realized they were so close to a potential evacuation point. From this beach, the combined efforts of the British Navy and civilian mariners retrieved over 300,000 troops. Within weeks, France surrendered to the Nazis. Dunkirk could well have been the last gasp of a defeated army.

But to the British people, it became a symbol of their defiance and ability to overcome any odds. A vision of British resilience that was fostered by Prime Minister Winston Churchill in his speech to Parliament after Dunkirk. We shall fight on the beaches. We shall fight on the landing grounds. We shall fight in the fields.

We shall never surrender. Church explicitly said during the war that when you’re the leader of a nation at war, you’re really addressing three different audiences. So, you’re addressing your home domestic audience. You’re also uh addressing your allies, but thirdly, you’re talking to enemy countries as well.

So, there was no way in which the Germans could disguise from their people that Churchill was making speeches. people could listen to British broadcasts illegally and we know that a large number of them did and so rather than just ignoring what Churchill had said the German newspapers would produce selective accounts or spun accounts if you like they would pour scorn on Churchill equally the British couldn’t disguise from the British people that that Hitler was making speeches to and these were translated and and very fully reported

and then interpreted in the newspapers and discussed as well. So in fact there was a kind of hostile dialogue going on between Churchill and Hitler and and other orators in Britain and Germany even whilst the hostilities were going on. Despite Churchill’s defiance the German people had their share of victories to celebrate.

When France capitulated, propaganda wasn’t needed. The news was good enough. So, they’re cutting out the headlines and the surrender of France and they’re decorating them with their press flowers and you know their little pretty pictures in exactly the same way as they document their own personal family celebrations or you Hitler’s birthday.

official propaganda material features right next to the birthday of auntie or granny that is celebrated on the on the facing page of the album. In July 1940 the German library of information in New York released their latest volume of facts in review. In it they summarized the current situation declaring only one enemy remains England.

For months, the German and British air forces clashed in the air over England. Then, as we move into the autumn of 1940, when the heavy German bombing begins, the aim there is to create panic to terrorize people. It’s a form of psychological warfare aimed at wearing down the morale of people who hadn’t yet been bombed, who feared they were about to be, to create sort of panic and discord and perhaps some sort of mass movement to demand that the war be brought to an end.

Against this onslaught, Britain stood firm, but they were also attacked over the airwaves by German radio broadcasts, some with presenters who pretended to be English, targeting British morale. The most notorious German propagandist was in fact an Englishman known as Lord Hawhor. The Blitzcree will be carried over the British islands with greater more appalling rapidity than over Poland, Norway, Holland, Belgium or France.

Originally the name just applied to anyone who was broadcasting in English on the German radio stations. But as William Joyce who was a former member of the British Union of Fascists, an absolutely convinced Nazi, a ferocious anti-semite, he went to Germany in 1939 just before the outbreak of the war and almost by accident managed to stumble into a job with the German broadcasters.

He was so assiduous, so self-confident, worked so hard, wrote so many scripts, came up with so many new ideas, uh, and did so much broadcasting himself that in time the nickname applied to him. But no traitor could crush British resolve. They were not going to be beaten, nor were they going to surrender.

As Hitler’s hopes of a peace agreement with Britain faded, Nazi propaganda became more overt. Propaganda attacks on Britain revived old notions of colonialism, evoking the idea of the long hand stretching across the globe in films like The Fox of Glennavven in 1940 and My Life in Ireland in 1941. Depictions of the United Kingdom by the Nazis also called on their own familiar propaganda narratives.

Nazi publications like Signal compared the vast living space England enjoyed across their empire to the meager land that Germany could use to produce food for their population. This was an imperialist Britain who would deny Germans their right to living space while reaping the rich rewards of their own empire. The 1941 film Sie invest or victory in the west returned to the threat of encirclement of foreign enemies planning to invade and destroy Germany.

This time Britain was the enemy. The focus on films in the war years was a reflection of Gerbal’s personal fascination. Film is the main area of Gerbles’s propaganda expertise. Although from uh 1933 onwards he’s politically in control of every aspect of Nazi propaganda, he finds out that a lot of other people are actually claiming slices of of different pies, press, radio, events and everything.

But film remains very much uh his own domain. In many ways, Gerbles was Hitler’s propaganda machine. He had an intuitive understanding of popular culture and the role of creative thought in preventing the work from becoming bland and stale. He knew how to use mass communication and the idea of the mass mind to manipulate and mobilize people.

Gerbles placed high value on the power of film to move the masses. Through the Reich film chamber, he controlled the content of all films made and shown in Germany. For Gerbles, film is a very um versatile medium. It is something that can tick a number of boxes. It is information, it is entertainment, it is emotional, it is rational and it can be a mixture of all these things and it’s a very versatile one because you can adjust how these different functions actually operate.

Going to the movies was an incredibly popular pastime during the war. Over 1 billion cinema tickets were sold in Germany in 1942 alone. News reels screened in cinemas captured this audience and were one of the most pervasive tools of propaganda during the war. The German news will centralized early in the war and became a single news, the Deutsche Ven.

And as such it had a more monolithic appearance um content and therefore it was more concentrated uh on if you like the serious business in Han. Cinema goers in Germany and in allied countries were exposed to news reels that presented a curated, often sanitized version of events, manipulating perceptions of the war and its progress.

This was a particularly potent form of propaganda in occupied territories, like the German produced news reels that regularly screened in occupied France. Some early films produced by Gerbles used the familiar newsreal style to perpetuate the idea that the war would be swift and the Germans victorious. There were a lot of um documentary style films that were u authorized by Gerbles.

A subset of them were shot in the first stages of the war and they are very much they’re like extended news reels and they were easy films to make partly because there was so much footage and again here is where Gerbles is absolutely crucial in making sure that all the Vermachar units are equipped with good equipment and and and personnel to shoot pretty much everything.

These films are actually very very successful partly because they show the victory and partly because they promise that swift victory that uh uh the public opinion really wants. Other films had a more insidious purpose. In 1940, the Nazi regime released some of its most overtly anti-semitic films. One of these films was The Eternal Jew.

Subtitled A Cinematic Contribution to the Problem of World Jewelry, the film perpetuated one of the Nazis core myths of Jews as a global threat to civilization. The Eternal Jew is the one that Hitler had most involvement with. It’s a documentary that cuts together material from previously shot films, both fiction and non-fiction, plus new material.

So there’s a sort of flash of Peter Lori um as the sort of serial killer from M in there but not labeled as such. There’s other material from other films that have very sort of misleading intertitles or voice over to give this material a very different meaning within this film. The Eternal Jew foreshadows the terrible nature and scale of the atrocities to come, constructing and perpetuating the kind of insidious narrative that will be used to justify the mass murder of Jews across Europe.

The Eternal Jew, which is one of those milestone moments in the history of anti-semitism because it’s such a vile piece of of of propaganda, shot in the Polish ghettos that the Nazis had forced the Jews to go in, but the film shows the Jews as responsible for what’s happening. At the time, the film was seen as an ideological ambassador for Nazi ideas of racial identity.

It was mandated that it be screened in Nazi occupied territories like the Netherlands. Gerbles on the other hand had these other two films um sort of in the pipeline uh Jude Seuss and the Rothschild. So Jude Seuss for instance had been made in Britain in 1934 but in Gerbal’s hands it becomes a very different film.

You know the emphasis is switched from this kind of uh emotional drama to very much look out for the the the Jewish people hiding amongst us. Gerbles also oversaw films that perpetuated the well-worn narrative of foreign aggression. Films like Heker or Homecoming, released in 1941. The film depicts imagined atrocities enacted against Germans in Poland, intended to incite hatred in German audiences.

Released 2 years after the invasion of Poland, the film is typical of Nazi propaganda. feeding their audience the same simple ideas, tying past, present, and future events together into one common cause, one common goal. The justification of war as a means to create a new, stronger Germany. These films were only approved by the Reich Culture Chamber if they reflected the Nazi worldview.

They worked to justify the Nazi regime’s actions, but also to stoke the fires of hatred and righteousness in the German people. This period between 1940 and 1941 saw the highest concentration of political propaganda films in Germany. A period that ended with a propaganda challenge, a new enemy to target. [Music] December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy.

The United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. Until that moment, the US could view the war as Europe’s problem. Within days of the attack, America had declared war on Japan. Then Hitler declared war on the United States, an uncharacteristic move that could position Germany as the aggressor.

Nazi propaganda had a new focus. America, the enemy. The United States was depicted as another brutal empire builder. While there were similarities in the depiction of both Britain and America as imperialists, Hitler saw America as obsessed with money. Gerbles instructed his propagandists to assert that America had no culture that they had created themselves.

In Hitler’s propaganda, America was a country that fetishized wealth and goods where self-ceelebration and grotesque consumerism had corrupted and replaced real culture. He thought they’re an aeat nation in many ways. They lacked the German spirit. He was shocked as indeed the allies were by the sheer tenacity of the Americans once they commit themselves to war.

Pledge algiance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation indivisible with liberty and justice for all. With America and Japan entering the fray, this was now truly a global war. The Nazi propaganda machine responded accordingly. In early 1942, Ribbentrop, Hitler’s foreign minister, issued global guidelines for Nazi propaganda, carefully maintaining a consistent narrative worldwide.

One of the directives of these guidelines was to sell the idea of world jewelry, a global conspiracy to regain the control world jewelry had before the Third Reich. All Nazi publications were required to promote this notion as an imminent threat. That world jury was behind America’s entry into the war. That they were using the Americans to achieve their goal.

Nazi propaganda would consistently return all blame for the problems faced by Germany for the war back to the Jew. A strategy that was a harbinger of the terrible fate awaiting millions of Jews across Europe. This theme was also used against the Soviet Union when Nazi Germany turned on their once ally in June 1941.

Then in the second half of June 1941, Germany breaks the pact with the Soviet Union that they had signed in in August of 1939 and attacks the Soviet Union. So there has to be a very quick juggling of language uh and so on because between 1939 1941 there’s almost nothing against the Soviet Union. Hastily constructed justifications for the Soviet campaign leaned heavily on the supposed Jewish threat.

Stark imagery and Nazi propaganda posters perpetuated this idea. one showing a shadowy figure with a star of David hanging from his waist coat emerging from behind the British, American, and Soviet flags. The caption reads, “Behind the enemy powers, the Jew.” New press directives were issued requiring Nazi publications to perpetuate the idea of Europe fighting against bulcheism.

Pamphlets were produced that elaborated terrible Soviet atrocities. In many ways, the attack on the Soviet Union is being sold as a preventative war. It’s like we are doing it now because they are about to do it. This couldn’t be further away from the truth. The attack on the Soviet Union takes the Soviet leadership completely by surprise and explains why there was such a meltdown in the first weeks and months even in the front. It doesn’t matter.

However, this is the idea. So, you know, they are preparing anyway. They are the prefidious uh half in this alliance. Therefore, we’re going to just do it before they do it. Hitler perpetuated the claims of his regime’s propaganda in his speech to the Reich on the 11th of December 1941, linking the imminent Soviet threat to the long European history of struggle between civilization and barbarity.

returning to the old threats that Hitler had relied on in his early days as party [Music] leader. While the Germans were reviving old narratives, the Americans were using mass communication to target their new enemies. America had entered the war, and so too had Hollywood. Germany and America would trade blows across their cinema screens, radios, and newspapers.

Great American film directors of the day found themselves in the employ of the US government. Men like Frank Capra, who had already built his name directing Academy Award-winning films like It Happened One Night and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. Capra was hired by the US Army in 1942 to direct a series of sevenformational films for new recruits.

His mandate, maintaining morale and instilling loyalty and discipline into the civilian army being assembled to make war on professional enemies. The series was simply titled Why We Fight. The films were very well made um quite sophisticated in their use of documentary techniques. Indeed, they adopted some of the techniques that have been used in German propaganda films of cartoons, maps, diagrams and so on alongside archive and actuality footage.

They were so successful that they were in fact shown to a wider audience than originally intended. And when the films were released in Britain, uh, the first one, Pale to War, had a recorded introduction from none other than Winston Churchill. The purpose of the Why We Fight series was to inform and inspire, to sell the idea that while America didn’t ask to fight, they will fight and win.

It’s us or them. The chips are down. Two worlds stand against each other. One must die, one must live. 170 years of freedom decrees our answer. What CAPRA produced from this mandate shows what is possible at the intersection between the commercial and creative power of Hollywood and the propagandistic needs of war. Twoth3s of Americans went to the movies every week.

There was no more effective way to deliver propaganda to the people. Walt Disney Studios became one of the most prolific producers of war propaganda. Their satirical cartoon Deura’s face released in 1943 even won an Academy Award for best animated short film. The whole way through the shot, the Nazi regime is ridiculed.

It’s made to look absolutely ridiculous and it’s made to look like something that doesn’t need to be feared at all. The opening marching sequence where we see members of the the Nazi elite, you know, you see um you know, you see Guring and you also see Mussolini as well. Um you know, you see them and they look ridiculous.

We own the world in space. And I think that as well juxtaposed with the conditions that Donald is living in as part of um he’s part of this animated Nazi Germany. The the really kind of poor little um little house that he’s living in. The essence of eggs and bacon that he has for his breakfast.

The the moldy little coffee bean he has to put in his coffee cup. Um his bread is so hard that he has to saw it. Turning possibly one of the most evil regimes has ever existed on this planet. turning that into something that can be ridiculed is an incredibly sophisticated piece of propaganda. [Music] While the Nazis depicted Americans as greedy and weak, the Americans were depicting conditions in Nazi Germany as grim.

Other Disney propaganda products were deeply serious. The 1943 film Education for Death doesn’t feature any of the Disney stable of characters. It depicts an all-encompassing ideology, a highly militarized totalitarian state in which children are indoctrinated from birth to national socialism. I think another way in which Education for Death actually fits in with a lot of the Hollywood propaganda is that it’s very anti-Nazi and not very anti-German.

We feel sorry for Hans because we we’ve we’ve followed him throughout all his life and you see the kind of ideas that he’s getting exposed to in his education um as they show it in in the schoolroom sequence and you know you see everything that’s happening to him and at the end that truly disturbing image you really feel for him that he’s that he’s stuck and that he’s trapped as a slave within the German army.

the truest, most effective form of propaganda. A grain of truth encompassed in compelling [Music] hyperbole. Films like Education for Death offered an exaggerated glimpse into life inside the totalitarian Nazi state. But for anyone deemed undesirable by the regime, the reality in that totalitarian state was far worse.

Nazi propaganda targeted the Jewish population of Europe as a blight on civilization. But their policies were far more sinister than propaganda alone. Reflected in the Nazi final solution to the Jewish problem, the extermination of millions of Jews along with Romani, homosexuals, people with disabilities, and other persecuted minorities across Europe.

While these actions may have aligned with Nazi worldview, they also deployed propaganda to cover up the extent of their crimes. The SS and other officials at concentration camps would routinely force prisoners to send postcards to their loved ones back home, assuring them that living conditions in the camps were good and that they were being treated well.

Forcing victims of the Holocaust to perform in the cover up of their own terrible mistreatment and murder. The concentration camp Tazinstat in the modern-day Czech Republic was a transit point for Jews being transported to death camps. But it was also an important tool of domestic propaganda for the Nazi regime.

Described in Nazi propaganda as a spa town, it was a cover for the killing centers and ghettos Jews were sent onto after they arrived. Propaganda concealed the nature and extent of the Holocaust along with the reality of what was happening to political opponents and others deemed undesirable to the regime, giving everyday Germans a way to not look too closely at what was happening around them.

One should emphasize this that there was a remarkable amount of devish cunning in what they did with getting people not to look. In other words, if people had looked in their peripheral vision, they would have seen the darkness of the regime. But the regime said to you, don’t look. And that’s the advice people mostly took. And finally, of course, what they did do was create very care cleverly a public political and a private civic sphere.

People were living two lives. a binary life, in other words, a life in Nazi Germany and a private life uh full of the goodies of consumption and so forth. And this is how they did it. In many ways, it was a bit like Huxley’s Brave New World. And this is how the regime uh managed to bamboozle people.

They encouraged them not to look. In 1944, the Terzinstat was beautified with newly planted gardens and renovated buildings, efforts that were aimed at amplifying the propaganda value of the camp for an inspection by the International Red Cross. The Nazi party made use of the newly improved camp by using it as the location of a propaganda film.

The Fura gives the Jews a city, a propaganda product in service of Hitler’s preoccupation with the appearance of legitimacy. Many who were forced to work as cast and crew on the film were later sent to their deaths at Achvitz. In stark contrast, some documents of the Holocaust reveal a desire to celebrate and preserve their actions for posterity.

So one of the most famous photographic documentations of the Holocaust is the clearing of the Warsaw Ghetto. So Jurgen Schro the commandant in charge of that he wanted this documented through photography. So we have his official report but we also have an album or rather three albums. He made three copies uh lesser bound photo albums and he personally selected out of thousands of photos that were taken just on this one day uh the 30s something images that went into the album.

One album he dedicated to Himmler, one to Hitler himself and the third one disturbingly to the historians of the future. So they are pre-planning uh if you like the use of photography for future commemoration of these events. The title Stro gave to this album was the end of Jewish life in Eastern Europe.

So that for him was a momentous part in the Nazi regime achieving its core mission that he wanted documented through photography. Propaganda infiltrated every aspect of the regime and the war. So when the German Sixth Army suffered a crushing defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, the reaction was to lie.

Over German radio, a communique was read that described the fate of the German Sixth Army as being true to its oath to fight to the last breath. In reality, tens of thousands of German soldiers at Stalingrad had been taken captive. For a time, the German propaganda machine tried to hide the reality of Stalingrad. So the earlier film, the earlier news reel showed successful attacks and indeed there were claims made and and Hitler said in the richard staling has fallen.

It was untrue. By this stage they’re becoming a victim of their own propaganda. Senior people were beginning to stay. You know propaganda is is becoming a hindrance to this war. specifically Stalinrad where they they said they’d won. Of course, they hadn’t won and they were surrounded. Stalingrad was a major turning point in the war, bringing an abrupt end to any remnants of German optimism.

They found they rapidly had to develop a new language of communication to deal with the fact that they are actually losing the war. And so, uh, what they did was not have the same kind of direct reference to Hitler, but present him remotely at the front in newsreels as this distant wise allseeing figure who was actually fighting the war for them.

Gerbles was a great admirer of Churchill’s errations and particularly of the way he found victory in defeat after Dunkirk. He believed that he could turn the German defeat at Stalingrad into their Dunkirk. At the memorial service for the defeated sixth army, Gerbles is the main speaker. And what Gerbles says is, “These men died bravely fighting for your nation.

Let you do the same. Sacrifice everything as these men did. They turn it into a martr’s cause, as it were, to try and hide the reality of this shattering defeat. The Sixth Army On the 18th of February 1943, Gerbles made a rousing speech to a massive carefully selected crown at the Berlin Sports Palast Stadium.

In it, he introduced his new endgame, Totair Creek, Tvo War. The speech was a highly staged affair. Standing in a stadium drenched in Nazi symbols, delivering a speech laden with rhetorical questions and slogans like a total war is the shortest war. Gerbles played to the emotions of the crowd. He didn’t propose total war, but asked the crowd if they wanted it, manipulating them into enthusiastic consent for the concept.

The total war speech was a to force. It was an extraordinary thing and it was the apotheiois of Gerbles, the great high point of his career and one of the greatest rhetorical set pieces in all of the Third Reich is an extraordinary thing to watch. Do you want war? And and it’s the involvement of the crowd that ya ya.

He whips them up into a frenzy just like in the old days. Nazi architect Albert Spear would later describe his shock at observing Gerbles dissecting every emotional outburst for its strategic value and success in eliciting the correct responses from the crowd. The concept of total war was underpinned by the idea of Europe’s fight against bulcheism, a repackaging of old Nazi narratives, but with a new twist.

If it was up to Germany to lead the defense, then the German people would have to make greater sacrifices to not only support but want a total war. The country would have to be allin to defeat the looming threat of bulcheism and an international Jewish conspiracy. Gerbal’s speech was also directed at Hitler himself, aimed at convincing him to give Gerbles greater control over the war economy.

By 1944, Hitler had rewarded Gerbles for his efforts by making him general planetary for total war, effectively controlling the war on the domestic front. With this new power, Gerbles launched what would be the final phase of Nazi propaganda. By the end of the Second World War, there was no disguising the fact that Germany was losing.

What Nazi propaganda then did was actually twist and portray this as some sort of harrowing for the German people. A got a damarong, a twilight of the gods, the end of the world. And the idea that if the Germans just had sufficient will and will is such a common theme in Nazi propaganda, the will to resist, then they would somehow triumph or even if they were crushed, they would be reborn.

One can never crush the will of the people. In this new wave, Gerbles produced the color epic Colberg. The film depicted the encirclement of the city of Colberg by Napoleon’s forces in the 19th century. For Gerbles, the propaganda value of this story was that resistance in the city was led by the people.

It fed neatly into his new push for total war. Colberg was so important to Gerbles that he withdrew 187,000 German soldiers, 4,000 sailors, and 6,000 horses from the warfront to complete the film on time. Thousands of Vermont soldiers who are fighting a a desperately losing war are diverted to act as stunts in the scenes of the film.

A few hundred miles away from the actual front where things are going horribly wrong. The production of the film, a large number of the facilities had already been destroyed because of the Allied bombardment, but the the production goes on. Technically, the film was the culmination of everything Gerbles had learned about film making to that point.

Colberg is the first showpiece of the new generation of German filmmakers, which is why it really is in cinematic terms way above what the German general cinema has been able to do. Thank God they haven’t had the opportunity to prove where this could have led to. But it would indicate that had they won the war there might have been a a powerful almost the Soviet level ideological cinema there.

It shows a number of things about how Gerbles personally and the Nazi regime in itself saw film as the most powerful as the most impactful means of propaganda as the one that could really manipulate emotions, could really rally the views of the people. But he also saw that film as his personal testament.

It was his masterpiece, something that he nurtured as an idea from the beginning till the very end. and he wanted it to be completed and he wanted no expenses spared. It would not be enough. The tide of war had turned and the most cunning propaganda techniques were ultimately no match for the strength of the Allied war machine.

Despite the complex, carefully constructed and all-encompassing nature of Hitler’s propaganda machine, he could not prevail through words and symbols alone. Every day Hitler held the military talks as to movement. There aren’t any troops left. There are no armies. They’re they’re ghosts. But nobody would say mind fury. You’ve got, you know, be real, please.

Nobody says it. I suppose it shows the nature of Nazism. You might say in that culmination, that tragedy indicates the absurdity of pledging themselves to the one man who was by then deranged. No matter how dire Germany’s circumstances seemed, the propaganda machine kept operating. The Nazi propaganda authorities were editing and launching news reel up until April 1945. That’s an extraordinary thing.

It was a tiny news reel. There was no film left. What do you say to people? Everybody knows that it’s over, but they don’t give up. That is dedication to a medium that is accepted as the most versatile, powerful, adaptable, and effective means of propaganda. It never stopped. Not until the very end.

And even at the end, newspapers were still being printed in Berlin saying Hitler is victory. [Music] On the 30th of April 1945, Hitler took his own life. But the propaganda continued over German airwaves. It was announced that Hitler had died at the Reich Chancellery, fighting till his last breath against Bulcheism.

7 days later, Germany surrendered unconditionally. reality had finally brought the illusions of the Nazi regime crashing down. For over 10 years, Hitler and key propagandists of the Nazi regime carefully constructed their simple but effective narrative. The Nazi propaganda narrative was built around simple, repetitive messages, easy to digest concepts that gave the people an external enemy to blame for their problems and an external threat to justify war.

As they took control of the country, they imbued every facet of German life with propaganda. Hitler took propaganda further than any other person had done in history. Many regimes have used propaganda as an instrument. Stalin, the communists, and so forth. The British weren’t bad at it either. But with the Nazis, it served a different function.

It wasn’t just an instrument of government. It was the medium of government. They lived it. Every surface carried propaganda. Everything was propaganda. As the elucorary power of Nazi propaganda grew, so too did the delusions of the regime. They were manufacturers of reality, but also consumers of their own unreality, buying into their narratives of moral and racial superiority, of their destined path to a new German empire, a level of hubris that proved unsustainable and that led their country and the world inexraably to disaster.

Perceptions of propaganda in the wake of national socialism are tainted by its place in Hitler’s Germany. A nation built on mass manipulation and control through propaganda with the most terrible goals. Propaganda in the service of power, war, and mass murder.