Making of the Modern World

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Making of the Modern World
Lecture Fascism and Modern Propaganda
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Propaganda

• a specific type of message presentation, aimed at
  serving an agenda.
• Even if the message conveys true information, it
  may be partisan and fail to paint a complete
  picture.
• Appeal to the emotions.
• Mobilizing and influencing perceptions, behaviour
  and actions.

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Propaganda is absolutely necessary, even if it
is only a means to an end. Otherwise, the idea
could never take over the state. I must be able
to get what I think important across to many
people. The task of a gifted propagandist is to
take that which many have thought and put it in a
way that reaches everyone from the educated to
the common man. Joseph Goebbels, Knowledge and
Propaganda (1928)
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We do not want to be a movement of a few straw
brains, but rather a movement that can conquer
the broad masses. Propaganda should be popular,
not intellectually pleasing. I do not enter the
meeting hall to discover intellectual truths, but
to persuade others of what I think to be right. I
learn methods there that I can use to reach
others with what I have found to be right.
Joseph Goebbels, Knowledge and Propaganda (1928)
The task of propaganda is not to discover a
theory or to develop a programme, but rather to
translate that theory and programme into the
language of the people, to make them
comprehensible to the broad masses of the people.
Joseph Goebbels, Will and Way (1931)
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Fascist propaganda before 1933
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Hypodermic model small doses have incremental
drip-drip effect The receptivity of the great
masses is very limited, their intelligence is
small, and their power of forgetting is enormous.
In consequence all effective propaganda must be
limited to a very few points and must harp on
these in slogans until the last member of the
public understands what you want him to
understand by your slogan.' Hitler (Mein Kampf,
1925)
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Nazi propaganda poster (1931-1932)
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Propagandas limitations

• Least effective among those with
  counter-experience (older generation) or
  counter-ideology (Marxists or Christians)
• Most effective when receivers defences are down
  (passive media, e.g. film TV) versus active
  media (newspapers, books)

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Propaganda and the State
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Key themes of NS-Propaganda

• Anti-Semitism
• Militarism
• Nationalism
• Supremacy of the Aryan race
• Economic recovery and welfare measures
• Cult of the Führer
• Traditional German Volks culture
• The Mass Spectacle

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Anti-Semitic propaganda
Key themes of German propaganda
Where something is rotten, the Jew is the
cause. Nazi newspaper Der Stürmer (1931)
Propaganda can reinforce existing prejudices
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The headline reads (1934) Jewish Murder Plan
against Gentile Humanity Revealed.
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Key themes of German propaganda Economic recovery
and welfare measures
No one shall go hungry! No one shall be cold!"
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Key themes of German propaganda The Cult of the
leader
1935 portrait by Heinrich Knirr.
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Radio (home front)

• Cheap, mass produced medium wave radio
• Goebbels described radio as the spiritual weapon
  of the totalitarian state
• All news broadcasts came through the Nazi Office
  of Propaganda
• By 1939 Germany largest radio audience in world
• Group-listening to Fuehrer speeches
• Gendered scheduling for predominantly female
  listeners
• High proportion of musical entertainment

All Germany hears the Fuehrer with the Peoples
Receiver
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If one wants the spoken and heard word of the
radio to realise a common will, it cannot be done
only through transmitters and receivers instead,
a real human connection between sender and
receiver must be established. The radio warden
is the living bridge between the two, and in a
larger sense, also the grouping of radio
listeners that occurs in radio listener
organizations. On the one hand, radio is in a
certain sense the ideal propaganda instrument
because it brings the human voice to every ear.
On the other hand, it is totally ineffective if
these technical qualities are not supplemented by
human organisational means. One of the most
important ways of doing this is to bring many
radio listeners together for community listening,
which National Socialism has developed to a major
degree... Eugen Hadamovsky, "Die lebende
Brücke Vom Wesen der Funkwartarbeit," in Dein
Rundfunk (Munich Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1934),
pp. 22-26.
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Radio, the double-edged sword

• Germany Calling throughout WW2, infamously by
  William Joyce, aka Lord Haw-Haw
• BBC overseas service counter-broadcast by end of
  war perhaps half of all Germans listened in to
  Allied broadcasting for real news
• Cf. German triumphalism early in war (then
  Wagnerian self-sacrifice towards end), with
  British limited self-criticism
• Attraction of dance music jazz for younger
  generation NS forced to sanction sanitised jazz,
  despite official condemnation as degenerate
  music

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Cinema Film
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Historians interpretations

• Siegfried Kracauer, 1943 German audiences
  brainwashed by propaganda
• David S. Hull, 1969 cinema a free space
  relatively devoid of overt propaganda (Hollywood
  rivalry, commercial pressures)
• David Welch, 1983 analyses more obviously
  political films of Third Reich (self-sacrifice,
  anti-Semitism)
• Linda Schulte-Sasse, 1996 psychoanalytic model
  cinema creates illusion of wholeness,
  reconciling individual desire as part of mass
  will
• Eric Rentschler, Ministry of Illusion, 1996
  highlights entertainment films of Third Reich
• Erica Carter, Dietrichs Ghosts, 2005 star
  system cultivates an anti-modernist aesthetic of
  sublime beauty Zarah Leander is not the same
  sort of star as Marlene Dietrich

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Dietrich vs. Leander
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Propaganda as entertainment?

• Disagreed with Hitler on propaganda strategy
• Need to sugarcoat bitter pill of propaganda
  with entertainment
• It may be a good thing to possess power that
  rests on arms. But it is better and more
  gratifying to win and hold the heart of the
  people. (1934)
• Our historic mission is to transform the very
  spirit itself to the extent that people and
  things are brought into a new relationship with
  one another.

Joseph Goebbels, 1897-1945, Nazi Minister of
Propaganda
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Youth Dynamism

• Biopic based on life of Herbert Norkus, martyr
  to communists
• Emphasis on flags uniforms
• Official viewing for youth groups

Hitler Youth Quex (Steinhoff, 1933)
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Wartime sacrifice

• Cameraderie self-sacrifice of air squadron
• Heavy use of singing
• The ultimate purpose of all National Socialist
  films is to show the test of an individual within
  the community for the individuals fate only
  has meaning when it can be placed at the service
  of the community, whereupon it becomes part of a
  people and nation. Goebbels

Stukas (Ritter, 1941)
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Anti-Semitism

• Historical biopic of 1738 hanging of Jewish
  manipulative financier after raping Aryan woman
• Echoes Nuremberg race laws of 1935
• Highlights perceived danger of assimilated Jews

Jew Suess (Harlan, 1940)
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Wunschkonzert (1940)

• Centres on radio request show, uniting four
  corners of Reich
• Goebbels personally worked on script

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Marika Rökk, 1913-2004

• Hungarian-born, athletic dancer
• Cf. Ginger Rogers Eleanor Powell in Busby
  Berkeley dance musicals
• Escapism of highly ornate, Agfacolor films such
  as The Woman of My Dreams (1944)

The Woman of My Dreams (Jacoby, 1944)
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The Fascist Historical Film

• Identification of current regime and leaders with
  illustrious predecessors (Roman Empire Frederick
  the Great)
• Biopics favoured great men
• Scipio the African (Gallone, 1937) When you see
  the battlefield at Zama and a soldier says,
  Troops, we have conquered Cannae! I thought
  about our Duce who said, Lets conquer Adua!
  And a few months later he said, Weve conquered
  Adua! (youth interviewed in Bianco e nero
  magazine)

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Leni Riefenstahl, 1902-2003

• Star of pre-Nazi mountaineering epics
• Asked by Hitler to film 1934 Nuremberg rally
  (Triumph of the Will, 1935)
• Use of elaborate staging, moving cameras, night
  shots
• Long footage of marching past political
  speeches put off audiences
• Always denied political content of her
  documentaries

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Triumph of the Will (Riefenstahl, 1935)
Opening sequence September 4, 1934. 20 years
after the outbreak of World War I, 16 years after
German woe and sorrow began, 19 months after the
beginning of Germanys rebirth, Adolf Hitler flew
again to Nuremberg to review the columns of his
faithful admirers.
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• Juxtaposition of leader and masses

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How successful was Nazi propaganda?

• Difficult to find out
• How the people responded
• The impact of social, political, economic and
  religious context for attitudes
• The effect of Nazi repression on attitudes and
  behaviour in comparison with propaganda
• So different opinions in historiography

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How successful was Nazi propaganda?

• Mason (Nazism, Fascism, and the Working Class
  1995), sceptical of effect of Nazi propaganda on
  all social groups (working class)
• Welch (Third Reich. Politics and Propaganda
  1993), argues Nazi propaganda was successful in
  reinforcing overall support for Hitler, but not
  its policies e.g. anti-Semitism and some
  propaganda was arguably counter-productive, e.g.
  anti-Church propaganda and it was a relative
  failure in its role of indoctrinating Germans
  with Nazi world view
• Geary (Hitler and Nazism 1993) and Evans (The
  Third Reich in Power 2005) believe Nazi
  propaganda was most successful when it played on
  traditional German prejudices, e.g. nationalism,
  fear of Bolshevism, etc. but when it opposed
  traditional loyalties, it was far less successful

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Appendix Historians and Film methodologies

• Film as film watch the films, dont just read
  about them take notes watch again!
• Note dialogue, but also camera movements for
  mise-en-scène (pan, tilt, point-of-view shots)
• Note the cutting techniques (are juxtapositions
  significant?)
• Is a linear narrative being told (classical
  Hollywood) or is the screen a painterly canvas
  (European arthouse)?

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Production Histories

• Who was the director? (auteur theory)
• How many people made the film (Hollywood
  production-line techniques involved hundreds)
• Who financed the film (private companies, banks,
  state?)
• Who censored the film (what was omitted?)
• Did new technologies (mobile cameras, sound,
  deep-focus film stock) alter filmic possibilities?

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Reception Histories

• How did the audience respond (what were the box
  office sales readers letters to press fan mail
  to stars?)
• How did reviewers rate a film? (do you have a
  decent range of papers?)
• Were certain sociological groups more likely to
  be viewers (women families teenagers)
• How did competing technologies (TV in 1950s)
  change film audiences?
• Reception theory can we know the psychological
  response of an audience then compared with your
  viewing now?

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Intertextuality

• Is the film based on a book which you should
  consider too?
• How did the stars off-screen persona interact
  with his/her fictional persona? (my character
  wouldnt do that)
• How are directors quoting from one anothers
  work? (e.g. is the end of Star Wars, 1977 a
  reference to Triumph of the Will, 1935?)

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