Nazi Propaganda and Culture

The loudest state in Europe

On 13 March 1933, six weeks after Hitler became Chancellor, a new ministry was created with no precedent anywhere: the Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda, under Joseph Goebbels, aged 35. By the end of the year it controlled every newspaper, radio station, film studio, theatre and gallery in the country. Its tools were new. A radio set cheap enough for a factory worker, sold at 76 marks from August 1933, put the voice of Hitler into seven homes in ten by 1939, the highest share of any country in the world. The party rally at Nuremberg became a film. The Olympic Games became a shop window. The exam asks how the Nazis controlled what Germans saw, heard and believed, how they handled the two institutions they could not simply close, the Churches, and how far it worked. This module gives you the dated evidence and the source questions built on it.

Five words the examiners use

Each definition ends with a date or a figure, because a term without support earns nothing on this paper.

The machine, in order

Put these six events in the order they happened.

• Goebbels is given a new Ministry of Propaganda
• Students burn tens of thousands of books on the Opernplatz in Berlin
• The Concordat is signed with the Vatican
• The Reich Chamber of Culture is created and membership made compulsory
• The Olympic Games open in Berlin before 49 nations
• The Degenerate Art exhibition opens in Munich

Why radio?

Goebbels put more effort into radio than into any other medium: a state-designed set at 76 marks, loudspeakers on every street, wardens to make sure workplaces tuned in for speeches. Which explanation best accounts for the priority?

• Radio reached people who never read a newspaper, put the voice of Hitler in the home rather than the hall, could be controlled from a single studio, and, with a cheap set of limited range, made foreign stations hard to hear.
• Radio was cheaper to run than newspapers.
• The Nazis wanted Germans to hear foreign broadcasts.
• The newspapers refused to print Nazi material.

Persuade and silence

Propaganda did two jobs, and a good answer keeps them apart: filling the air with the message, and emptying it of every other voice.

Question 1: inference from a source

Source A: a description of a poster issued in 1936 for the People Receiver. A student infers that the regime wanted its message inside every home, not only in the party halls. Tap the TWO details that support that inference most directly.

• The poster shows a crowd of many thousands, drawn as a single dark mass filling the picture to the horizon.
• In the foreground, larger than any figure, stands a single radio set of the standard state design.
• The slogan across the top reads: All Germany listens to the Fuehrer with the People Receiver.
• The colours are the red, black and white of the party flag.
• No face is shown; there is no picture of Hitler anywhere on the poster.

The Berlin Olympics

Select the THREE statements that are true of the Games of August 1936.

• Forty-nine nations took part, the most yet, and the Games were the first to be televised.
• Antisemitic signs were taken down in Berlin for the duration and one Jewish athlete, the fencer Helene Mayer, was allowed to compete for Germany.
• Germany topped the medal table with 33 golds, while Jesse Owens of the United States won four.
• The United States boycotted the Games in protest at Nazi racial laws.
• Hitler refused to attend.
• The Games were held in Munich, the home of the party.

The two institutions that could not be closed

Two thirds of Germans were Protestant and one third Catholic, and the Churches were the only organisations left in 1933 with their own buildings, their own press and a loyalty older than the party. The regime tried two methods. With the Catholics, a bargain. The Concordat of 20 July 1933 promised that the Church would stay out of politics and the state would protect Catholic schools, youth groups and worship. Within a year the youth groups were being closed and Catholic newspapers shut; by 1937 the Pope had had enough, and the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge was smuggled in and read from every Catholic pulpit on 21 March. With the Protestants, a takeover. The German Christians, the Nazi faction inside the Church, won the church elections of July 1933 and in September made Ludwig Mueller the first Reich Bishop of a single Reich Church, swastika on the altar. Some 2,000 pastors joined instead the Confessing Church that Niemoeller helped to found in 1934, which is where the sibling module on opposition picks up. The exam word is attempts: the question is how far the control worked, and the honest answer is only partly.

Goebbels decides

Four decisions at the Ministry, 1933 to 1937. Choose as Goebbels chose, and notice what each choice bought.

• Spring 1933. Germany has some 4,700 newspapers, most of them not Nazi. You cannot close them all without leaving the country with nothing to read. What do you do?
• September 1934. The party rally at Nuremberg will bring hundreds of thousands to the parade grounds for a week. Fewer than one German in a hundred will be there. What do you do about the other ninety-nine?
• Summer 1936. Foreign journalists and half a million visitors are coming to Berlin for the Games, and the streets carry signs barring Jews from shops and parks. What do you do?
• 1937. Thousands of modern paintings have been removed from German galleries. Burning them would make martyrs of the painters. What do you do with them?

From cause to consequence

Because a radio could be built cheaply to a state design, the message reached seven homes in _____ by 1939. Because the Editors Law made each editor answerable to the Ministry, the newspapers did not need to be closed to be _____. Because the Games of 1936 drew _____ nations and the first television audience, the regime took its antisemitic signs down for a month. Because the Churches could not be closed, the regime signed a _____ with one and imposed a Reich Bishop on the other. And because the message was everywhere, a historian has to ask how far it _____, which is the interpretation question.

Radios in every home

By 1939 about 70% of German households owned a radio, the highest share in the world. In a town of 20,000 households, roughly how many had a radio?

Question 3(a): how useful?

The enquiry is how the Nazis tried to control the attitudes of the German people. How useful is the People Receiver poster of 1936 described on the earlier step? Which paragraph uses it best?

• The poster is useful for the enquiry because its content shows the method: one radio, one crowd and the slogan that all Germany listens, which my own knowledge confirms with the 76-mark set of 1933 and the seven homes in ten that owned one by 1939. Its provenance adds to that: it was made by the regime to sell the set, so it is direct evidence of what the Nazis wanted the medium to do. Its limit is the same provenance: it shows the intention, not the result, and cannot tell us whether Germans listened or believed.
• The poster is not useful because it is propaganda and therefore biased.
• The poster proves that all Germany listened to the Fuehrer, because that is what it says.
• The poster shows a crowd, a radio and a slogan in red, black and white.

A 12-mark paragraph, marked

Question 2: Explain why the Nazis were able to control the German media in the years 1933 to 1939. One reason the Nazis were able to control the media was the way they handled radio. In August 1933 the Ministry of Propaganda put on sale a receiver built to a state design at 76 marks, about a week of wages, and cheaper models followed; broadcasting itself had been placed under the Ministry within weeks of Hitler taking office, so that every station carried the same programme. Radio wardens made sure that factories, offices and cafes tuned in for the speeches of Hitler, and loudspeakers on the streets reached those who still had no set. This meant that by 1939 about seven homes in ten owned a radio, the highest proportion in the world, and the voice of the regime was heard in the home every evening by people who never read a newspaper. Radio gave the Ministry what no earlier government had possessed: a single channel into the private life of the nation. What earned the marks: a cause named in the first sentence; specific support (the date, the price, the wardens, the seven in ten); the link phrase this meant that; and a final sentence that returns to the question. Two more paragraphs, on the press and on the Chamber of Culture, and the answer reaches the top level.

Write the 12-mark answer

Explain why the Nazis used propaganda so heavily in the years 1933 to 1939. You may use the following in your answer: the Berlin Olympics; the People Receiver. You must also use information of your own.

• Support that counts: a date, a figure, a name or an event
• Causes of your own: the need to hold a population that had not voted for a dictatorship, the Fuehrer cult, the Churches, or foreign opinion

How far did it work?

A statement says: "By 1937 the Nazis had brought the Churches fully under their control." Which piece of evidence is the strongest AGAINST it?

• On 21 March 1937 the encyclical Mit brennender Sorge was read from every Catholic pulpit in Germany, having been smuggled in and printed in secret, and the regime could neither prevent it nor punish the whole Church for it.
• The Concordat of July 1933 was signed by the Vatican.
• Ludwig Mueller was made Reich Bishop in September 1933.
• Church attendance rose during the war.