Propaganda in the Third Reich

The importance of propaganda to the Reich appears partly due to the confluence of Hitler's fascination with its power to give coherence and shape to political events and the fact that the events unfolding in Germany after World War I seemed without coherence. This was not least because the ostensibly democratic Weimar Republic was floundering in a nation-state that had no experience of the inexactitude of democracy or political pluralism. Kershaw cites the Weimar period's increasing gulf between the perceived need for national integration and unity and the patent lack of integration which prevailed in reality." This gulf, Kershaw continues,

was enhanced and accentuated by three interlinked factors; the social and political disruption accompanying a practically simultaneous transition to nation-state, constitutional government (if strongly authoritarian in character), and industrialized society; the deep fragmentation of the political system (reflecting fundamental social cleavages); and, not least, the spread of a chauvinistic-imperialist ideology clamouring for a rightful "place in the sun" for Germany, a suppose

. . .
re pure fraud." Kershaw identifies two strands of propagandistic activity in connection with the Hitler myth: aimed at the people of Germany on one hand and aimed at the internal apparatus of the Nazi Party on the other. Mein Kampf was instrumental in facilitating Hitler's personal plans within he Nazi Party, and the Hitler cult in the Party apparatus served as a mobilizing focus, especially after Hitler's release from prison. Shirer notes that at a memorial mass meeting of the beer hall putsch in 1925 he declared that he bore "the whole responsibility for everything that occurs in the movement." It can be seen that as a practical matter Hitler had nothing to lose if the National Socialist movement were to lose power in the mid-1920s but much to gain if, as indeed happened, it gathered strength. For if the movement grew, then the leader responsible for it would consolidate power inside the party. Kershaw cites the Nazi "secular redemptionism soaked in pseudo-religious imagery," which used the outlines of religion to destroy it, as well as the employment of religious imagery and allusions by party members to describe their attraction to Nazism and Hitler: "The rebirth of Germany can be done only by a man born not in palaces, but
. . .

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Approximate Word count = 2263
Approximate Pages = 9 (250 words per page)

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