Nazi Propaganda: Slogans, Myths and Images - Simon Wiesenthal Center Multimedia Learning Center

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Nazi Propaganda: Slogans, Myths and Images

"Another great pageant tonight. Two thousand party officials packed in the Zeppelin Wiese with their twenty-one thousand flags unfurled in the searchlights like a forest of weird trees...until under the mystic lights and at the sound of the magic words of the Austrian they were merged completely in the Germanic herd." William Shirer, Berlin Diary September 7, 1934

Olympic torch arrives at the stadium, signaling the start of the Olympics in Berlin, August 1936. CL:Bundesarchiv

Josef Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda, possessed a diabolical flair for orchestrating mass fervor and ecstasy. With sober calculation, he designed the ritual rallies of the Nazis--the repeated oaths, the arm raising, the songs.

"Josef Goebbels has worn down the nerves of the enemy: he played the register of the propaganda organ. so that they soon thought they were hearing the shrieks of the last trumpet." Alfred Frauenfeld, Nazi Deputy Propaganda Minister

Adolf Hitler (on reviewing stand) addresses half a million Nazi faithful at Nuremberg, 1933. CL:Deutschland erwacht: Werden, Kampf und Sieg der NSDAP. (Altona-Bahrenfeld. 1933)

Propaganda was the essence and genius of National Socialism. Flags, uniforms, Sieg Heils. fanfares, marching columns, banners, searchlights, every form of physical stimulation and manipulation was used to mold the Nazi party, and later all of Germany into total compliance with Nazi policy.

Hitler and the Nazis transformed the fears, impulses, and dissatisfaction of the prewar German masses into a subservient political machine, capable of systematic persecution and murder.

Der Stuermer kiosks with the motto, "The Jews are our Misfortune," appeared throughout Nazi Germany. CL:Bundesarchiv, Koblenz

Antisemitic book for children compares the "German" and the "Jew." CL:Ein Bilderbuch fuer Gross und Klein (Nuremberg. 1936)

Der Stuermer (antisemitic German newspaper), January 1934. CL:SWC

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