As we continue to think about Germany then and America now, one of the things that stands out is the way Hitler made such effective use of propaganda.
As you know, propaganda is the use of ideas or statements that are false or exaggerated in order to promote the goals of a person or a group.
Once Hitler was named Chancellor by President Hindenburg in 1933, he began making plans to “Nazify” the whole of German life and culture. To that end he appointed Josef Goebbels as Minister of Propaganda and National Enlightenment, the name itself quite telling.
To achieve Hitler’s goals, Goebbels decided to do two things. First, to do everything possible to make sure Germans did not read or see anything that was even remotely anti-Nazi. Second, to use whatever means available to present Nazi views in the most effective ways possible.
One example worth noting is the film “Triumph of the Will,” written, produced, and directed by the well known German actress/director at the time, Leni Riefenstahl.
The film became an iconic example of propaganda films, and, if you can believe it, had as its primary theme making Germany great again. Predictably, the film portrayed Hitler as the one leader who could restore glory to a once proud German people.
The film was wildly successful, leading Riefenstahl to make a second one, “Olympia,” about the 1936 Olympic Games held in Berlin, less overtly Nazi, though still filled with political propaganda.
Goebbels, of course, used many other methods of propaganda to demonize opponents of Nazi ideas and policies. He made radios available at dirt cheap prices so people could hear Hitler’s speeches. He used newspapers as an outlet for all things Nazi (playing them, he remarked, “like a keyboard”), and distributed leaflets and posters that promoted Hitler as having risen from the ranks of ordinary people and could, therefore, understand their economic suffering and frustrations at being forgotten by the discredited Weimar Republic.
For Goebbels propaganda didn’t have to be, in his words, “intelligent.” Instead, it had to be successful, measured solely on the basis of whether or not people believed it. And he knew the key to achieving that aim.
“If you tell a lie big enough,” he said, “and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”
But that well known statement was followed by another one that was even more revealing and perhaps more relevant for us today: “The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie.”
In other words, Goebbels learned that lies could be maintained as long as people did not understand or pay any attention to what the consequences would be if they believed them.
Think about that for a moment, about the consequences of Germans believing “the lies” Goebbels told.
All across Germany ordinary people ended up supporting Hitler’s policies that eventually led the world into a devastating war that literally killed multi-millions of people, came close to annihilating all the Jews in Europe, and finally resulted in the nation of Germany as they knew it being destroyed.
They didn’t see it coming because they believed one “big lie” after another until it was too late.
I wonder how many conversations in homes, bars, clubs, schools, social gatherings found people discussing what Hitler was doing, some supporting him and others adamantly opposed to him.
What we do know is that eventually enough people believed the propaganda so that “truth tellers,” people who dared to speak against Nazification, including a few prominent theologians, were labeled unpatriotic, communist, and even un-Christian because of the support the German Christian movement had given to Hitler.
Many of them were reported to the Gestapo, or German Secret Police, arrested and never heard of again.
One of the troubling parts of this story is the fact that it is actually relatively easy to distinguish truth from propaganda.
Truth gives evidence, cites sources, uses reason and logic to explain itself, welcomes criticism, and demands analytical examination.
Propaganda, on the other hand, refuses to provide facts, has no credible sources, cannot stand up under credible scrutiny, and often contradicts itself in its different expressions.
This is why propaganda is most effective among people who are, to be candid, intellectually lazy, people who seldom bother to seek truth for themselves, who are willing to believe what they are told because it reinforces their own prejudices.
The German public proved that the failure to seek truth when being inundated with propaganda can be catastrophic.
I said last time that when I think about what happened in Germany then and what is happening in America now, I am worried.
After reading about the impact of propaganda on the German people, I am even more worried than I was.
Is this déjà vu all over again?
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