How Hitler's Propaganda Machine Worked

Adolph Hitler's legendary propaganda programs steered public opinion with unprecedented precision. Learn how this massive campaign influenced the average war-time German in this podcast from HowStuffWorks.com.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff you missed in History Class from how
Stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast
I'm at a Turkey and to Skipson, joined by staff
writer Jane mcgrad. Hey there, Jane. We've got a pretty
hot Putton issue to talk about today. Propaganda and propaganda

(00:23):
isn't just I want you posters featuring Uncle Sam has
a dark side too. That's right, it does have a
dark side. I think it's most known for back in
World War Two with the Hitler and his propaganda machine.
But we're gonna take a step back first and uh
and talk about the origin of propaganda, which dates back
to about sixteen twenty two with actually the Catholic Church
when Popa named Gregory the fifteenth I believe he uh

(00:47):
started the Congregation of Propaganda. And you know, at this
at the time, it's not like a hot button word.
It just meant that he wanted to convert back people
who had converted to Protestantism from the Reformation at the
time exactly. So it was a type of missionary work. Really,
and you may not think that missionary work is synonymous
with propaganda, but when you take the term propaganda and

(01:10):
look at it in a nutshell, you can see that.
You know, it does fall into the big umbrella. And essentially,
propagandas a type of media, whether it's print or broadcast,
it's used to convey a message to persuade someone to
do something, and it could be good or it could
be bad. When you're trying to convince someone to act
in a way that would benefit himself or herself, then

(01:32):
you know, you could say that propaganda isn't too harmful.
But if you're trying to disseminate information that's really one
sided and you're not sharing all the facts, and ultimately,
if you persuade a person to act a certain way
it's going to be detrimental to him or her, then
you've got a case of bad propaganda. And if we're
dancing around the issue, what exactly is propaganda is because
it is such a widely disputed definition, like scholars like

(01:54):
dedicate their their academic lives to defining propaganda, So you know,
we have to take this talk with a grain of
salt of wood. Is propaganda it's different leagues of different people. Yeah,
and we know that origins of propaganda may stretch back
as far as biblical times when an Assyrian king actually
used fear propaganda, which is a type that will get
into in a second, to wage the surrender of the

(02:16):
Kingdom of Judah. And there are some scholars who say
that Caesar may have used propaganda propaganda to bolster his reputation.
So ultimately, Jane is going to get into a really
interesting story about propaganda. But before we can get there,
we're going to cover some basic so that you guys
can have a better, more scholarly understanding of what propaganda is.

(02:37):
And I think that a good place to start, just
to get you guys thinking about that, is to tell
you about a few different types of groups that use
propaganda today. So think about the last anti smoking commercial
you saw, or a safe driving campaign, or maybe some
of you out there are high schoolers and there's someone
who comes right before senior prom and you know, brings
a smashed up car into the quad, someone who is

(03:00):
driving drunk, you know, gotten to an accident with This
is propaganda. It's a it's a visual technique, it's an
oral technique, something to convince you to act a certain way.
And it's not just anti something groups. That's businesses, it's
political groups, it's governmental organizations, it's political candidates. Certainly all
of out there heard a radio add or saw a

(03:21):
television spot back, you know, before the November elections. Right
off of this time, we're like, we're just inundated with
these political messages commercial every two seconds for this candidate
or that candidate. Oh, this is propaganda, and you're right
to mention. Uh, we usually think of propaganda as these
sort of political messages, but of course everything from anti
smoking ads to drinking ads, etcetera, etcetera. And don't confuse

(03:43):
propaganda with advertisements. You have to think about who's disseminating
the message to you, who is trying to get you
to act in a certain way. And we'll get into
a couple of different ways that you can tell advertisements
from propaganda. So now let's talk about some different techniques
that people use propaganda. Uh. The first one is usually
associated with propaganda is called name calling. And that's exactly

(04:04):
what it sounds like, you guys, Yeah, it is. It's
it's basically from the schoolyard, you know, when you used
to call someone a name, and basically people say that
you can do this or people usually do do this
when they want to take the focus off of themselves,
and they don't want to answer a question directly, they
don't have a very good argument to return with, and
so they just turn it on the their opponent and
they call them something like a hypocrite or a traitor. Yeah,

(04:25):
and it's really effective. And to hearken back again to
the November elections. In the campaign, we saw a lot
of name calling surrounding Barack Obama because it was really
easy to throw terms into the into the mix, like
you know, he's a terrorist, or you know he's an
Arab or a Muslim. These are some of the terms
that people use to name call him. And a lot
of the people who were calling him these names did

(04:47):
it out of fear or essentially miseducation of of who
he really was. It's a cheap and easy and direct
way to get the side rallied again to someone. Yeah,
that's right. And you bring us to another version or
another method for using propaganda, which is fear. And you
can see this a lot. I mean not to say
one way or the other about about global warming, but
global warming proponents who want us to start paying attention

(05:09):
to the issue will use fear um in terms of saying, look,
what will happen to our society is that planet in
general if we don't act, all different kinds of uh
of movements use the force of fear to get people
to come to their side, and that leads to another
good one, and that will not a good one necessarily,
but one that's analogous to it, and that's the bandwagon technique.

(05:29):
And the idea is that you convince someone well, everybody
else is on this side, don't you want to be
on this side too? And it plays on the human
emotion to not want to be left alone in the dust.
So if you know everyone is going to vote a
certain way, or everyone you know believes in global warming,
then why not jump on the bandwagon? You be part
of it too. That's true. And the idea of wanting

(05:50):
to be like everyone else brings us to another one
that we call plane folks, where elite, lofty politicians can
can try to identify with the average ordin person by
making him or herself seem like they're dis ordinary exactly.
And if you guys remember an earlier podcast we did
about a vaparone, we mentioned that she spent a lot

(06:10):
of her time going around Argentina kissing babies, cutting ribbons
and at grand openings and things like this, and this
is you know, politicians around the world use this technique
because it's a way to be a part of the mass.
And how many pictures have you seen of people running
for president or people who are presidents? Um, oh, I
don't know, say, jogging to McDonald's for breakfast or lounging

(06:30):
on a fishing boat. It's a really good way to
keep in touch with the common man when you're not
exactly common, that's right. And another method kind of related
to that is the idea of transfer, which is taking
like a symbol or something that most people like and
transferring it to your own cause I correct me if
I'm wrong, Candice, But I kind of associate this with
the bloody shirt sort of method in terms of calling

(06:53):
on emotions that people already have with one thing like uh,
you know, the death of a hero or something like that,
and bringing it over to their own side and saying,
if you if you feel anything for this fallen hero,
then you have to join our side sort of thing. Oh, definitely,
I think that is applicable or anytime you see again,
we we keep coming back to political office, but it's
just such, you know, a sellient point. Anytime you see

(07:15):
a political figures face in front of an American flag
or an eagle or something like that, you get that
sense that they're aligned with a symbol that we have
a lot of trust in a lot of history. What
if you have patriotism? If you exactly? And that brings
us to a final technique that we're going to discuss,
and that is glittering generalities and use of words like
patriotism and liberty and dream and family. The idea of

(07:39):
these very scintillating, sweet little messages in terms that you
can throw around in context with a person's name, makes
it seem like that person is is criticism. If if
you say that you know so and so is a
family man and he believes in patriotism, well how could
he be bad? But if you say, you know, Adolf
Hitler is a fly man and he certainly has a dream,

(08:02):
we know that, you know, at least retrospectively, his dream
wasn't such a good idea. And that brings us to
the most popular, the most famous, i should say, propaganda
machine run by Hitler. He actually eliminated propaganda from the
other side. That's what that's one way to do it
is just to get rid of everything that's contrary to
what you believe, cut the people off from from their

(08:22):
access to that information. And he actually had a Minister
of Propaganda in Joseph Goebbel's and he ran the National
Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda, which I think is
very interesting name. And Goebel's basically ran all media. Uh
he ran news, radio, literature, uh, movies, you name it.
There's a famous one called Triumph of the Will. He

(08:43):
actually even banned jazz, or at least he tried to,
because the music itself seemed too individualistic and he wants
to bring people in line, which I didn't know before,
and that that was a very interesting fact. Um he
was very cunning, and that like even when Germany lost
a battle and things didn't look so great, he didn't
even falsify and nation. He he didn't want to seem
like someone who was covering up. He Um would just

(09:04):
sort of, uh draw historical parallels to drive up some spirit.
And he would sometimes he would actually say, oh, Germany
as a secret weapon. Don't worry guys, Like everything's gonna
be all right. So Gobel's is one of the most
famous and he is very effective too. I mean, just
the whole hype over over Hitler and the idea that
Hitler would be bringing Germany back as a world power.

(09:27):
It really worked and it was an essential part of
Hitler's whole regime, definitely, And I think that the Nazis
took a cure from the success of propaganda and World
War One and really made propaganda a vital component of
their campaign. And as far as I understand, like you
were saying, Jane, they dispelled all information that would cast

(09:48):
the Nazis and an unfavorable light, and they did things
like selling radio is a really rock bottom prices so
that everyone could have a medium through which to hear
the Nazi message. They were silent films made during the
Nazis at work, and Hitler was made to appear very large,
larger than life really and and god like, and he
was everywhere. He was a very pervasive part of the war.

(10:11):
And on the other side, if if you were with
the Allies, you could see that it worked pretty well
to use Hitler in a way to motivate people back
home to act in favor of the war. Say you
were trying to ration. Um. There were a couple of
US World War Two posters that said things like um uh,
waste helps the enemy, or they were trying to get

(10:32):
people to conserve fuel by car pooling. And so there
was this one poster of a guy in a little
car and he's got this um ghost of a figure
next to him, which is clearly supposed to be Hitler,
and the line reads, when you ride alone, you ride
with Hitler. And another one of my favorite one just
trying to encourage women to get a wartime job while

(10:52):
the men were away. And so it shows this very
glamorous looking woman looking very forlorn and staring into the distance.
Um and the line that when read's longing won't bring
him home any sooner, get a war job, just you know.
And and propaganda like that sort of makes you feel
good because you look back and you remember when and
you you can imagine that people were really, you know,

(11:13):
bucking app and and working hard to to feel patriotic
and get the country through the war. And I think
that's one of the reasons that propaganda like that today
is sort of an art form. You know, we can
look at it as a piece of art and study
the color and the way that the figures are drawn
and how art is used versus photography, and we see

(11:33):
a photography being used and propaganda from this time too,
especially when um, I guess that the people, the masterminds
behind the propaganda wanted a really visceral image to really
drive the fact home that people were dying out there.
And so you can look back at World War two
propaganda and see different levels of I guess, of seriousness
and appeal to people, trying to get people involved. Yeah,

(11:56):
it's interesting you mentioned art. That's one thing I find
really interesting about propaganda, and like it calls back to
an earlier podcast we did on Rosie the Riveter of
a They brought in Norman Rockwell uh to pay in
a very famous image of of Rosie. UM. But also
you look at art in terms of literature, which I
find interesting. You take a look at Harriet beecher Stowe's
Uncle Tom's Cabin, for instance, one of the most famous

(12:17):
pieces of propaganda anti slavery propaganda, and books like Marx's
Communist Manifesto obviously, Yeah, yeah, incredibly um influential. And actually
I was going to say about Marxists, UM later Marxists
that came after Karl Marx actually defined propaganda as the
reasoned use of historical and scientific arguments to indoctrinate the

(12:38):
educated public, and they contrasted this to what they called agitation.
Agitation to them was using half truths and like more
underhanded ways to exploit the uneducated. And I find this
in an interesting um differentiation. But also they came to
the conclusion that they needed to use both of these
things in order to succeed at all, and they put

(12:58):
it together. They actually all to edgit prop interesting word,
but it was just interesting that they knew that they
needed to go after the educated and and the uneducated
through underhanded means in order to succeed at all. Well,
that's really smart, because you can get the uneducated people
on your side using techniques like the bandwagon method or
glittering generalities. But if you're going to go after college

(13:20):
educated people who pride themselves on being independent thinkers and
being able to think above the average man, you're going
to need a more scruptitious means. Where else you're going
to have to appeal to ideological pre steps that no
one can argue with. And that's what's so interesting. You
brought up Uncle Tom's Cabin. I I read that back
in grad school and if you look at you know
that the style of prose and the level of vocabulary,

(13:43):
I use, it's pretty basic. Anyone could get through that
book and the level of reader. It's really long, but
you can get through it. It's written very simplistically, and
there's something very beautiful about it too, and it's certainly
a touching story, but it's meant for any reader, and
it brings to mind the idea of it's each communication
one I want to a pathos appeal and an ethos appeal.
Are you appealing to someone's emotions or you appealing to

(14:05):
someone's ethics? And I think it takes two different types
of intelligence to relate there, and it helps if you've
got both. But if you know, if you're trying to
get a wider audience, I think your emotional pills usually
the quickest way. And that's when you see people, even
like anti abortion protesters standing on the street corner holding
up a sign of a fetus or an arm or

(14:25):
something that's you know, sort of gory that really gets
you right and there. Sure, yeah, and it's interesting. I mean,
if we're gonna convey anything in this discussion of propaganda.
I think it's the idea that barbaganda can come in
so many different forms and for so many different purposes. UM.
I know one topic that you're interested in, Candice, is
the idea of the cult of Jonestown, which you know,
the article we have on site actually mentions drinking the

(14:47):
kool aid and that comes from from this cult of
convincing people just to um to drink poison basically out
of propaganda. And that's that's pretty effective. It's amazing what
people can be convinced to do if words are spun.
In my such messages are spun and just the right way.
And at least in the United States, we should be
very grateful for the fact that back in two thousand five,

(15:08):
the George W. Bush administration signed into law of the
Stop Government Propaganda Now Bill. Essentially, this bill made it
unlawful for TV reporters to take money to spend a
story and also any messages that are disseminated have to
clearly state who's funding them. And the idea is that
UM government funds can't be allocated to pay for propaganda.

(15:30):
That's right, and this came out of some scandals I
think right, uh, if governmental agencies paying TUV reporters to
actually skew messages towards UM what they wanted to convey
to the people. And so we're really lucky, I know
that UM. In China, for instance, the people who live
there aren't quite as lucky because the government actually back
in two thousand and seven, there was Public Security Ministry

(15:51):
hired nearly thirty thousand people to oversee electronic activity. And
these are online forums, and the internet is a really
largely unmonitored source of propaganda. And it's a double edged
sword because while the internet can be helpful for you
to research both sides of the story to see, you know,
who's trying to get you to think what, it also
is a really big center of these confusing propaganda type messages.

(16:15):
But in China, when people are browsing online, the government
had these two cartoon police caricatures created that sort of
pop up every now and then to remind people that
their activity was being tracked. And so not only would
you be made to feel that you weren't free to
educate yourself and to research both sides of the story,
but it's known that you know, people over there can't

(16:38):
trust necessarily all the statistics that come from the government.
There was one case where really heavy rains when summer
had flooded parts of of different villages and towns and
there were a lot of deaths from drowning, and the
government released the stanmth that only thirty or so people
had died, and that clearly wasn't the case because a
grocery store had been flooded and at least a hundred
of people had died in that disaster. And so it's

(17:00):
the floodwaters had received at and people could see, you know,
the corpses flooding everywhere. It was clear that the government
had lied. So again we we should be grateful for
our freedoms and also be really responsible and think about
who's sending a message and what point is that person
trying to get across who's paying them? So buck up,
you guys and do your research. That's true, and it's
interesting you say it's a double edged sword being having

(17:21):
the Internet and everything even I mean horrible of course
that that China would would suppress the information from the Internet.
But at the same time, when we have more options,
people tend to only go to those those places where
they know their their own um already established opinions are
going to be reinforced. And so you know, you take
like if you if you think that some UH news channels,

(17:41):
for instance, lean towards the left and some lean towards
the right, the idea um that people fear is that
people who are more towards the left will only listen
to the leftist stations and people towards the right when
we listen to the right, and nobody's ever going to
get like a moderately objective story. And so that is
one drawback to having the Internet and so many variety
of of of you know, sources of information, right, I agree,

(18:03):
variety It can be bad as well as it can
be good. And I know that was an issue that
even came up with the Tea thousand eight elections. There
were a lot of criticisms thrown out against the media
for not being objective and portraying the two presidential candidates
and even leading up to the Democratic National Convention, the
portrayal of Obama and Clinton respectively, and how things turn out.

(18:25):
There so a lot of club of and I think
that this year especially and even during the first one
days of the administration, the media is really going to
be called the task to be fair and to be objective.
I think it's easy when you have a young president
in office who has such a beautiful family and who
is capable of such great things, and the country is
going through a hard time. I think it's easy to
sway one way and to give out, you know, really excited,

(18:48):
hopeful messages. But you can't overlook the facts. So it'll
be interesting to see what happened. And as always, when
you guys are reading your newspapers and reading your internet
news sources and listening to the news on the radio
and TV, to be careful and think for yourselves, and
be sure to visit our website to get more information
on propaganda and some other historical figures that we've discussed

(19:08):
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