Nazi Propaganda, Opposition & Non-Conformity (AQA A Level History: Component 2: Depth study): Revision Note

Summary

• The Nazis utilised a broad range of propaganda techniques to repeat their messages to the German people

  • They also controlled what information the German people had access to through censorship

  • The intention of this was to make the German people believe that they lived in a society where everything worked well, everyone was happy, and they led lives that were better than people who lived in other countries

• The intended impact of this propaganda, combined with the threat posed by the SS, Gestapo and concentration camps, was to remove all opposition to the Nazi government

  • Although it was very effective and most Germans supported the Nazi regime, there was still significant opposition from several different areas

  • These included rival political parties, factory workers, Catholic and Protestant priests and youth groups

Nazi propaganda: Aims, methods and impact

• The SS and Gestapo repressed and removed any opposition to the Nazi Party

  • But the Nazis also sought to influence people’s attitudes through propaganda

  • This took a variety of forms but repeated the same messages

Newspapers 

• Journalists were briefed on what they could and could not publish

• Control of newspapers allowed the Nazis to spread their messages to the public:

  • They controlled most newspapers by 1939, compared to 3% in 1933

  • Around 1,600 newspapers were closed down in 1935

• Der Völkischer Beobachter (The People’s Observer) was the official newspaper of the Nazi Party and was published daily:

  • It reached 1.1 million people by 1941

Radio 

• Radios were an increasingly popular tool to communicate political messages:

  • Goebbels had relied on radio during the pivotal election years of 1932 and 1933

• After 1933, Goebbels censored most radio stations. The stations were used to spread Nazi beliefs and messaging

• The introduction of the Volksempfänger (The People’s Receiver) in 1933 was hugely important for several reasons

  • It was one of the cheapest radios available in all of Europe

  • It could only be tuned to Nazi channels

  • Over 75% of all radios sold in Germany in 1934 were Volksempfänger

Nazi Rallies

• Rallies had been used by the Nazi Party throughout the 1920s and early 1930s

• The declaration of Hitler as Führer in 1934 allowed him to merge the identity of the Nazi Party with that of Germany:

  • Rallies became more frequent and created a sense of unity

  • Used to advertise the strength of the German army, the rallies were held despite the military restrictions of the Treaty of Versailles

The Nuremberg Rallies

• Nuremberg is a city in the centre of Germany and was chosen to host annual rallies from 1933-38

• Hitler’s favourite architect, Albert Speer, designed the grounds where the rally took place

• The 1934 Nuremberg rally had 200,000 in attendance:

  • 152 searchlights were used as pillars of light around the audience, known as the Cathedral of Light

  • Films like Triumph of the Will by Leni Riefenstahl presented the strength and power of the Nazi Party at the Nuremberg rallies

“The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of the individual, but in calling the attention of the masses to certain facts, processes, necessities, whose significance is for the first time placed within their field of vision…

All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be… We must avoid excessive intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot be extended in this direction. The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively it exploits the emotions of the masses, the more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign – not its success in impressing a few scholars.

The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are. Once understood how necessary it is for propaganda in be adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:

It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific instruction, for instance. The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.

In consequence of these facts, 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. As soon as you sacrifice this slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away, for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered. In this way, the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled out. Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly the basic tactics must be psychologically sound."

Hitler's views on propaganda as laid down in his autobiography, Mein Kampf, in 1925

The extent and effectiveness of opposition

• The impact of Nazi propaganda, combined with the use of the SS, the Gestapo and the death penalty for those convicted of political crimes, limited the amount of opposition

• However, that does not mean there was no opposition

Political opposition

• As all political parties other than the Nazi Party were banned, it was difficult for any political opposition to have an impact

  • The communist KPD established an underground network that met in secret, but these were often detected and broken up by the Gestapo

  • The Social Democrats continued to campaign against the Nazis from abroad

Trade union opposition

• As trade unions were banned in 1933, it was very difficult for coordinated industrial action to take place

  • When unhappy workers went on strike, they were arrested and imprisoned

  • However, opposition continued in the form of workers failing to attend due to alleged sickness or factory machinery being secretly damaged

  • These acts impacted how much the Nazi factories produced

Church opposition

• Hitler and the Nazis tried to control the Christian Churches in Germany:

  • After the Concordat failed, the Nazis targeted Catholic priests and shut down Catholic schools

  • The Reich Church was created to ‘Nazify’ the Protestant Church

  • The German Faith Movement aimed to turn Nazism into a religion

• However, there was still opposition within the two main Christian churches:

Catholic opposition

• Around 400 priests were sent to Dachau Concentration Camp for speaking out

• Catholic services still continued, but people were scared to oppose the Nazis

• The Pope’s ‘With Burning Anxiety’ statement was read out in churches

• Hitler ordered crucifixes to be removed from Catholic churches, which was met with fierce opposition:

  • Of the 43 crucifixes removed from schools in the Mühldorf district in Bavaria, 42 were returned by the police

• The 1939 census of Germany showed that over 40% of people still considered themselves to be Catholic

Protestant opposition 

• The Pastors' Emergency League (PEL) was the main source of opposition from Protestants:

  • Formed by Pastor Martin Niemöller

  • They opposed the formation of the Reich Church

  • They believed that Jewish people should be able to become Christians

• The PEL created the Confessional Church in 1934:

  • Around 6,000 pastors joined, and only 2,000 pastors were part of the Reich Church

  • Around 800 pastors were sent to concentration camps for opposing the Nazis

• The 1939 census of Germany showed that 43 million people still considered themselves to be Protestant

Youth opposition

• After Hitler became Chancellor in 1933, all young people were expected to attend one of the Nazi-run youth groups

  • From 1936, attendance at these groups became compulsory for boys and girls

  • Many resented this and, although there was no national, organised opposition, many young people refused to conform

Non-conformity in Nazi Germany

• Much of the non-conformity in Nazi Germany came from the youth

  • They used dress and musical taste to express their individuality

The Edelweiss Pirates 

• Used the symbol of the edelweiss flower 

• Had different names depending on where they came from:

  • Members in Essen were called ‘Travelling Dudes’

  • Members in Cologne were called ‘Navajos’

• Resented the military discipline of the Hitler Youth

• Wanted a sense of freedom similar to the youth in Britain and the USA

• By 1939, there were only 2,000 Edelweiss Pirates compared to nine million Hitler Youth

The Swing Youth 

• They admired American culture, especially music:

  • Played music from their record players

  • Gathered together to smoke and drink alcohol

• Organised illegal dances of up to 6,000 members:

  • The 'jitterbug' was a favourite dance

• Heinrich Himmler disliked the Swing Youth’s focus on jazz music because it was associated with Black people

• They presented more cultural opposition rather than a genuine threat to the Nazi regime

The problem of the threat to youth and juvenile criminality manifests itself in particular in the formation of youth gangs. For, since the beginning of the war, and above all since the start of the terror air raids, there has been an increasing number of reports about combinations of young people who are pursuing partly criminal, but also to some extent political and ideological, goals.

In Gelsenkirchen, a gang of approximately fifty young people were involved in thefts and robberies. They called themselves “Edelweiss Pirates,” met together every evening and were opposed to the Hitler Youth. Similar observations have been made in Essen, Bochum and Wattenscheid. In Cologne, the Edelweiss Pirates have also made an appearance. They carried printed propaganda leaflets.

An extract from a report by the Reich Ministry of Justice on the emergence of 'Youth Cliques and Gangs' in 1944.

How effectively did the Nazis control the German people?

• Some people argue that the Nazis were extremely effective at controlling the lives of the German people and effectively created a totalitarian state

  • This means they controlled every aspect of their lives and strictly controlled what information the German people received

  • They created a one-party state and crushed both opposition political parties and trade unions

  • The SS, Gestapo, courts and concentration camps meant that very few people spoke out or acted against the Nazis

• However, others argue that the Nazis never achieved complete control

  • They point to the political opposition that existed both underground and abroad

  • They argue that workers showed their opposition through low productivity rather than strikes

  • They believe that the actions of Catholics, Protestants and youth groups indicate that complete control of the German people evaded the Nazis