Abstract
In his epic Mein Kampf, Adolf Hitler made a point of disparaging the intelligentsia. He asserted that propaganda was the most effective tool to use in political campaigns since especially the popular masses generally possessed limited astuteness and were generally devoid of intellect. This article examines the part played by Nazi propaganda in bolstering the National Socialist cause and how it netted the German youth. Nazi indoctrination nurtured racial hatred and resulted in especially vitriolic anti-Semitism. The policy of Gleichschaltung (coordination) brought state governments, professional bodies, German political parties and a range of cultural bodies under the Nazi umbrella, thus education, legal systems and the entire economy became “captured” entities. Germany became dominated by the effective propaganda machine via which virtually all aspects of life was dictated. In this, the Protestant church played a huge part. An analogy is drawn with Erwin Schrodinger’s Cat paradox, according to which a macroscopic entity can be simultaneously alive and dead. Thus while people believed they were alive in Nazism, they were in essence dead from a human consciousness perspective even if they were adherents of the Protestant and Catholic churches due to the effectiveness of the propaganda machinery.
Highlights
Nicolaides DOIIn 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP—Nazi Party) was elected as the Chancellor of Germany
Introduction and MethodologyThe research philosophy for this article was interpretivistic in that the social world is constructed and given its meaning subjectively by individuals
An analogy is drawn with Erwin Schrödinger’s Cat paradox, according to which a macroscopic entity can be simultaneously alive and dead. While people believed they were alive in Nazism, they were in essence dead from a human consciousness perspective even if they were adherents of the Protestant and Catholic churches due to the effectiveness of the propaganda machinery
Summary
In 1933, Adolf Hitler, the leader of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP—Nazi Party) was elected as the Chancellor of Germany He almost instantaneously began laying the fundamentals of the Nazi State which he had introduced in his book Mein Kampf, (My Struggle) which was penned during the post Great War years. Propaganda in Germany was not due to Hitler, Joseph Goebbels, or the Nazis It was essentially in existence long before the advent of the NSDAP (Coupe, 1998). Hitler asserted that “Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favourable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of the truth which is favourable to its own side” (Murphy, 1939) Hitler and his cohorts persuaded the majority of Germans that the extermination of explicit groups of people was the right course of action to ensure the preservation of the German Herrenvolk or master race. Targets of choice were homosexuals, the mentally and physically disabled, and all Jews, Slavs, and non-whites (Nazi State, 2010)
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