PROPAGANDA AND CENSORSHIP

 

One of the most important posts in the Nazi government was held by the Minister of National Enlightenment and Propaganda, Joseph Goebbels. Propaganda is a form of advertising. Its aim is to persuade large numbers of people to think what you want them to think and to believe what you want them to believe. Goebbels' job was to make the Germans believe in Nazi ideas and to be loyal to Hitler and the Party. Goebbels used every available method for "winning people over". First, he made sure that newspapers printed only stories favourable to the government. Every morning the editors of Berlin's newspapers had to go to the Propaganda Ministry where Goebbels told them what news to print and what the headlines should be. Newspapers which printed stories he had not approved were closed down.

All Germany's radio stations were under Goebbels' control, so he used the radio to hammer the Nazi message home. He encouraged people to listen to the radio by producing cheap radio sets which most people could afford. The V.E. radio -- the People's Receiver -- sold for 76 marks, while the D.K.E. -- the German Mini Receiver -- cost only 35 marks, about a week's wages. To make sure that people heard the radio when they were not at home, Goebbels had loudspeaker pillars built in the streets, and ordered all cafes to have their radios turned on for important programmes.

Goebbels' most spectacular form of propaganda was the mass rally. The most famous of the mass rallies were held in August each year at Nuremburg. A Nuremburg rally lasted a whole week and was held in four specially built arenas outside the town. Just one of these arenas could hold 400,000 people. There they watched army parades and gymnastic displays. They listened to massed choirs, brass bands and to speeches. They looked up at air force fly-pasts and firework displays. Every event at a rally was staged to perfection. At the 1937 rally, 100 000 men, each exactly 0.75 metres apart, marched past Hitler carrying 32,000 flags and banners. Above them in the night sky, 150 vertical searchlights created a dome of light that could be seen stabbing into the sky from over 100 kilometres away.

Goebbels was a brilliant organiser of propaganda, but he could not trust propaganda alone to win people over. He also had to use censorship to stop other ideas from spreading. Censorship means to ban information or entertainment which the government thinks is harmful. Every kind of information and entertainment was censored. Jazz music was not allowed at dances because it had its origins among the black people of America. Films were censored for all sorts of reasons : a Tarzan film of 1933 was banned because both Tarzan and Jane were scantily dressed, while a war film about the German navy could not be screened because it showed a sailor drunk. Goebbels even encouraged students to censor books written by Jews or communists by burning them; in 1933, students in Berlin destroyed 20,000 books in a bonfire outside the University of Berlin. People could not even say things about the Nazis in private that was hostile. Complaining about the government was against the law. Anti-Hitler jokes were forbidden and the penalty for anti-Hitler jokes was death.

 

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