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Propaganda in the Third Reich

The purpose of this research is to examine the issue of propaganda and reality in the Third Reich. The plan of the research will be to set forth the historical context in which this issue becomes a relevant subject of study in the modern period and then to discuss ways in which propaganda functioned in the Third Reich as both instrument and product of German policy.

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 supposed have-not nation."

Hitler and the Nazis perpetuated the gulf but transformed its emphasis, by means of propaganda. The power of the Hitler "myth," conceived and developed during the years of the Weimar Republic, increased, to be used as a nationalistic rallying symbol and counterpoint to competing symbols of German character (the church and rival political conceptualizations such as democracy and communism), which were exposed as inadequate to the task ...

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Propaganda in the Third Reich. (1969, December 31). In LotsofEssays.com. Retrieved 07:33, March 29, 2024, from https://www.lotsofessays.com/viewpaper/1712020.html