Nazi Propaganda Research Articles

Fighting an Armed Doctrine: The Struggle to Modernize German Propaganda During World War I (1914–1918)

During the First World War (1914–1918), all belligerent governments realized that propaganda proficiency was critical to selling their causes and stirring up support for the war. Yet German propagandists in particular struggled to master mass media, manage their messages, and build audience trust during the Great War in their goal to control domestic and foreign public opinion. Although previous scholarship has agreed that the German propaganda machine failed, little has been said about how Germany recognized these failures early on and sought to remedy them through increasingly modern propaganda strategies—even if those strategies were ultimately no match for the public’s growing distrust of official information. This monograph examines how it was that more institutions, more manpower, new publicity initiatives, copying tactics from enemies, crowdsourcing ideas, and eventually focusing on visuals and film did little to boost morale at home or improve Germany’s reputation abroad. The findings rest on a historical analysis of military dispatches, federal policy documents, letters, news stories, propaganda materials, and memoirs located in German and U.S. archives. Although many of the methods and tactics these early propagandists used would fail, others would become part of the universal toolbox governments still rely on to influence people’s views and spread information.

Do Politics Repel Truth? Hannah Arendt on Political Controversies in Dialogue with Plato

This article uncovers Hannah Arendt’s debt to Plato’s work in her analyses of political controversies of her time, as Nazi propaganda and state lies on American involvement in the Vietnam War, and her assessment of the failure of the French Revolution. While her relation to Plato’s oeuvre when she tackles political issues most often took the form of a stormy and one-sided dialogue resembling a monologue, her treatment of these controversies shows that Arendt had at times an authentic, open, and fruitful dialogue with the Greek philosopher. To make sense of these phenomena and events, she uses a range of concepts and philosophical motives first developed through her account of the antagonism between the philosopher and the polis and draws from Plato’s discussions of the relations between truth and opinion. Uncovering this crucial source of Arendt’s thinking allows a more nuanced and perceptive grasp of her political thought.

At Wit's End: The Deadly Discourse of the Jewish Joke

At Wit's End: The Deadly Discourse of the Jewish Joke

At Wit's End: The Deadly Discourse of the Jewish Joke

At Wit's End: The Deadly Discourse of the Jewish Joke

Filthy Animals: Integrating the Behavioral Immune System and Disgust into a Model of Prophylactic Dehumanization

The behavioral immune system (BIS) is an evolved psychological mechanism that motivates prophylactic avoidance of disease vectors by eliciting disgust. When felt toward social groups, disgust can dampen empathy and promote dehumanization. Therefore, we investigated whether the BIS facilitates the dehumanization of groups associated with disease by inspiring disgust toward them. An initial content analysis found that Nazi propaganda predominantly dehumanized Jews by portraying them as disease vectors or contaminants. This inspired three correlational studies supporting a Prophylactic Dehumanization Model in which the BIS predicted disgust toward disease-relevant outgroups, and this disgust in turn accounted for the dehumanization of these groups. In a final study, we found this process of prophylactic dehumanization had a downstream effect on increasing anti-immigrant attitudes during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, consistent with the evolutionary logic of a functionally flexible BIS, this effect only occurred when the threat of COVID-19 was salient. The implications of these results for the study of dehumanization and evolutionary theories of xenophobia are discussed.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40806-021-00296-8.

National socialist propaganda in late Reza-Shah Iran: the case of Khaterat-e Hitler by Mohsen Jahansuz

ABSTRACT The attempts of national socialist Germany to influence the Iranian public are an important dimension of the relations between the two countries during the last years of Reza Shah’s rule. Yet previous studies on this aspect have barely considered Iranian sources to assess the actual impact of these propaganda efforts on Iranian society. One of these sources is the 1938-published Khaterat-e Hitler by Mohsen Jahansuz. By analysing the book in depth and situating it within the context of Jahansuz’s biography, this study provides new findings concerning the reception of national socialist ideology in 1930s Iran and challenges previous claims concerning the publication, which has hitherto been considered the first translation of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It argues that Jahansuz, by inserting his own ideas and interpretations into the text without explicitly indicating his authorship, did not create a translation but an adaptation of the German original that transcended the limits of Hitler’s exclusivist Germanocentrism in order to establish a theory of the ‘racial superiority’ of the rural population at Iran’s mountainous periphery. The paper shows how a representative of the Iranian literati appropriated national socialist ideology and distributed it in an altered way to further his own cause.

Немецкая политика и пропаганда в области культуры на территории Генерального округа Белоруссия в 1941–1944 годах

The article deals with the problem of policy and propaganda in the field of culture of the German civil administration in the territory of the General District of Belarus. The aim of the research is to analyze the content of German propaganda materials in the field of culture, to determine its main directions, goals and effectiveness, as well as the content of the real occupation policy in the field of culture. Research methods-analysis and synthesis are applied in the article. The researcher comes to the conclusion that the true goals of German policy and propaganda in the field of culture were the desire to provide a calm rear, to attract the population of the district to solve their own economic problems. The author believes that the effectiveness of propaganda was leveled by the extremely brutal occupation regime, the policy of «scorched earth», methods of fighting partisans, recruiting ostarbeiters and partisan counter-propaganda.

Transnational Far Right and Nazi Soft Power in Eastern Europe: The Humboldt Fellowships for Romanians

Foreign students and researchers in Germany became, after 1933, a tool of Nazi propaganda. Those receiving financial support from the Germans, such as the recipients of the Humboldt fellowships, were further compromised. This article aims to shed light on the role played by Humboldt fellowships in the political and ideological transfer between Nazi Germany and Romania. It aims to re-create the profile of the fellows and the influence of the fellowship on the Romanian fellows’ political and ideological development, in order to establish how they functioned as Nazi propaganda tools. Throughout the 1930s, the number of young Romanians going to study and carry out research in Nazi Germany increased considerably, while the financial support they received from the Germans became more significant—including a larger number of Humboldt fellowships. This shows not only that Nazi Germany had a special interest in developing its relations with Romania but also that Romania was embarked on a path of far-right radicalization, with students and youth becoming sympathizers of Nazi Germany and sometimes members of the Iron Guard. The Romanian Humboldt fellows were politically instrumentalized by the Third Reich: they were engaged in far-right political activism, were influenced in their professions and writings by the Nazi ideology, and sometimes they even went on to occupy various positions in the Romanian bureaucratic or diplomatic apparatus.

Influence of German Propaganda on the Combat Effectiveness of Soviet Units in 1942 (as illustrated by the 408th Rifle Division)

Influence of German Propaganda on the Combat Effectiveness of Soviet Units in 1942 (as illustrated by the 408th Rifle Division)

Reading Poison: Science and Story in Nazi Children's Propaganda.

Children’s books of Nazi propaganda prove that a society can venerate science to the point of making biology the organizing principle of its educational system yet nevertheless produce children’s literature shot through with fabrication and falsehood. Three children’s books of Nazi propaganda that are frequently mentioned in accounts of anti-Semitism but seldom analyzed are discussed: Elvira Bauer’s Trau keinem Fuchs auf grüner Heid und keinem Jud auf seinem Eid (1936), Ernst Hiemer’s Der Giftpilz (1938), and Hiemer’s Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher (1940) illustrate the ways in which racist science and ideological narrative tautologically reinforce each other in an extreme version of how “narratives play a key role in communicating science” (Pauwels, 2019, p. 434) in children’s nonfiction. These texts of lurid racism, all issued by the book publishing arm of Julius Streicher’s virulently anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, offer a monitory case study of how bad science and toxic narrative can coalesce into a literary poison intended to indoctrinate young readers. This analysis of Nazi nonfiction for children demonstrates how science and story can be exploited to promote a racist agenda.

The Boys in the Boat: A Lesson About Teamwork

The Boys in the Boat1 is a dramatic account of what teamwork and determination can accomplish: 9 boys from the rural woods of the American Northwest outcompeting the elite rowers of nations across the globe at the 1936 Olympics in Berlin – the Olympics that took place under the darkening shadows of Nazi propaganda, bloodshed, and lust for power.

Education, Intelligence and Cultural Diplomacy at the British Council in Madrid, 1940–1941 Part 2: Shock Troops in the War of Ideas

In 1940, the British Council founded its first Spanish branch by launching a new school for children as well as a rich cultural programme to counter Nazi and Fascist propaganda in Madrid. Secretly, it also supported the British Intelligence Services’ wartime effort. Based on new sources, the current article (the second in a two-part series) examines these activities in the early 1940s. It also brings to light the crucial contribution of the Council’s first representative in Spain, Walter Starkie. No other British Hispanist has played the role of cultural diplomat in Spain with such great practical significance.

Audiovisual Production by the Contemporary European Extreme Right: Filmic Inheritances and Intertexts to Spread the Hate

This article analyses the narrative techniques of major far-right political parties in contemporary Europe, based on their promotional videos on YouTube. It argues that the construction of their discourse is based mainly on cinematic references that connect with both the post-modern epic and the propaganda machinery of the Third Reich. Their visual motifs are thus positioned on two intertextual axes: post-classical cinema and Nazi propaganda. To support this hypothesis, a qualitative methodology of discourse analysis is applied, with special emphasis on the textual analysis of both formal features (staging, framing, and editing) and thematic content (the political messages conveyed). After offering a brief outline of the current state of the dissemination of right-wing extremist messages on YouTube, the article examines a sample of 53 of the most important institutional videos by the 12 far-right parties that have been most successful in their respective national elections. The results confirm that their visual motifs evoke three of the most characteristic fields of signification of the extreme right: the construction of the leader, the idea of nation, and the creation of an external enemy. In all three cases, a series of images is used with the aim of both captivating the audience with historical-military references and appropriating stylistic features from the nationalist iconography of the Heimat, which inspired many of the UFA films of the Nazi era.

Okręg kwidzyński w przededniu plebiscytu w świetle niemieckiej broszury dla komisji alianckiej - tłumaczenie tekstu źródłowego z komentarzem

This article contains a faithful translation of a German propaganda booklet issued before the plebiscite in Kwidzyn in July 1920. The entire booklet written by the German Committee for Western Prussia is addressed at the Inter-Allied Commission and consists of six chapters informing on the area’s geography, historical conditions, economic structure, current social structure and rivers: Vistula, Nogat and Osa. The passage selected for trans�lation regards the social aspects and describes the inhabitants of Powiśle, area included in the Western Prussian Plebiscite District headquartered in Kwidzyn, in terms of nationality. The publication was created to serve the needs of the German plebiscite agitation and should be approached critically for this specific reason. Nevertheless, this little-known German document holds great historical value, particularly useful to scholars and persons pas�sionate about the history of the interwar period.

To be or not to be human: Resolving the paradox of dehumanisation

Dehumanisation is a puzzling phenomenon. Nazi propaganda likened the Jews to rats, but also portrayed them as ‘poisoners of culture’. In the Soviet Union, the Stalinist regime called opponents vermin, yet put them on show trials. During the Rwandan genocide, the Hutus identified the Tutsis with cockroaches, but nonetheless raped Tutsi women. These examples reveal tensions in the way in which dehumanisers perceive, portray and treat victims. Dehumanisation seems to require that perpetrators both deny and acknowledge the humanity of their victims in certain ways. Several scholars have proposed solutions to this so-called ‘paradox of dehumanisation’ that question the usefulness of dehumanisation as a concept to explain genocidal violence, claim that dehumanisation is characterised by an unstable belief in the non-human essence of the dehumanised, or contend that dehumanisation revolves around a denial of metaphysical human status. The main aim of this article is to present a novel framework for theorising dehumanisation that offers a more straightforward solution to this paradox based on the idea that perpetrators deny their victims’ human standing in a moral sense without necessarily negating their biological human status or human subjectivity. The article illustrates this framework through examples drawn from Primo Levi’s memoirs of Auschwitz.

Samuel Beckett and the Politics of Aftermath by James McNaughton, Beckett’s Political Imagination by Emilie Morin

<i>Samuel Beckett and the Politics of Aftermath</i> by James McNaughton, <i>Beckett’s Political Imagination</i> by Emilie Morin

Recontextualising the news: How antisemitic discourses are constructed in extreme far-right alternative media

Abstract This study explores how an extreme far-right alternative media site uses content from professional media to convey uncivil news with an antisemitic message. Analytically, it rests on a critical discourse analysis of 231 news items, originating from established national and international news sources, published on Frihetskamp from 2011–2018. In the study, we explore how news items are recontextualised to portray both overt and covert antisemitic discourses, and we identify four antisemitic representations that are reinforced through the selection and adjustment of news: Jews as powerful, as intolerant and anti-liberal, as exploiters of victimhood, and as inferior. These conspiratorial and exclusionary ideas, also known from historical Nazi propaganda, are thus reproduced by linking them to contemporary societal and political contexts and the current news agenda. We argue that this kind of recontextualised, uncivil news can be difficult to detect in a digital public sphere.

When William Came: A Prophetic Propaganda War

When William Came by Saki (H. H. Munro) is a unique novel in the genre of invasion literature. Starting after a fictional war between Britain and Germany, it depicts no scenes of invasion. Recently, there have been studies from the perspective of how Munro and other authors in the genre viewed Germany and Britain. Some studies also refer to Munro’s deliberate lack of depiction of the war. However, it seems that no studies have looked into the reasons why the war is not depicted. This paper argues that the story is not about showing British military unpreparedness but about how psychological weapons work. It could even be said that depictions of war would distract from the focus on propaganda and its effect on people. Considering this work as being about a British and German propaganda war opens up a new perspective that is different from previous studies. When William Came is a work that points out Britain’s unpreparedness for psychological war by imagining and detailing possible propaganda strategies. It has been said that the novel’s ending is unsatisfactory, as it only ends up showing the potential for youth resistance. However, if it is understood that this novel, from beginning to end, is about a propaganda battle, a war that is fought under the surface, then the final chapter can also be understood as a thrilling one.

La vulnerabilidad intencionada durante la dictadura en Chile, en las novelas La literatura nazi en América, Estrella distante y Nocturno de Chile de Roberto Bolaño

Las novelas La literatura nazi en América, Estrella distante y Nocturno de Chile del escritor Roberto Bolaño vislumbran que la vulnerabilidad de algunos personajes es un asunto intencionado y de interdependencia que se despliega en secuestro, tortura, asesinato y desaparición forzada a consecuencia de una subjetivación que sale de la norma que establece el poder de Estado neoliberal. Apoyo mis aseveraciones en la noción de vulnerabilidad e interdependencia que desarrolla Judith Butler; en el planteamiento de Adriana Fuentes sobre subjetividad; y en la propuesta de David Harvey acerca del neoliberalismo. El objetivo es mostrar cómo estas narrativas de Roberto Bolaño dialogan con personajes vulnerables que fueron aniquilados sistemáticamente a causa de una ideología política discrepante con los principios neoliberales. Mediante las reflexiones del artículo llego a la conclusión de que la postura de Bolaño al escribir sobre los personajes disidentes políticos es la de visibilizarlos como cuerpos que importan.

The Aryan Race of Animals

This article analyses the role of colour in the representation of animals in Nazi propaganda. It demonstrates that colour, as applied to animals, was a communicational strategy of paramount relevance in setting boundaries and creating differences between the Nazis and their enemies. Drawing on propaganda studies, colour studies, and representational zoosemiotics, it semiotically investigates visual items published from 1923 to 1945. The results show that Nazi propaganda created an Aryan race of animals via colours. In fact, white animals always supported the regime’s ideologies; dark animals, conversely, very often symbolised the enemy (the Soviet Union, the Jews, and others). Semiotically, Nazi propaganda represented these animals as symbols, even though the links between signifier and signified were not shared within a community but only within the racist ideology of the Nazis..