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Making of the Modern World

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Title: Making of the Modern World


1
Making of the Modern World
Lecture Fascism and Modern Propaganda
2
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.

3
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)
4
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)
5
Fascist propaganda before 1933
6
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)
7
Nazi propaganda poster (1931-1932)
8
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)

9
Propaganda and the State
10
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

11
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
12
The headline reads (1934) Jewish Murder Plan
against Gentile Humanity Revealed.
13
Key themes of German propaganda Economic recovery
and welfare measures
No one shall go hungry! No one shall be cold!"
14
Key themes of German propaganda The Cult of the
leader
1935 portrait by Heinrich Knirr.
15
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
16
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.
17
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

18
Cinema Film
19
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

20
Dietrich vs. Leander
21
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
22
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)
23
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)
24
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)
25
Wunschkonzert (1940)
  • Centres on radio request show, uniting four
    corners of Reich
  • Goebbels personally worked on script

26
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)
27
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)

28
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

29
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

35
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36
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

37
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

38
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)?

39
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?

40
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?

41
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?)

42
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