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226-734: Final solution Parties Propaganda was a crucial tool of the German Nazi Party from its earliest days in 1920, after its reformation from the German Worker’s Party (DAP), to its final weeks leading to Germany's surrender in May 1945. As the party gained power, the scope and efficacy of its propaganda grew and permeated an increasing amount of space in Germany and, eventually, beyond. Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf (1925) provided
452-583: A Reichsleiter , the second highest political rank in the Nazi Party. On 3 October 1933, on the formation of the Academy for German Law , Goebbels was made a member and given a seat on its executive committee. In a move to manipulate Germany's middle class and shape popular opinion, the regime passed on 4 October 1933 the Schriftleitergesetz (Editor's Law), which became the cornerstone of
678-694: A meeting of the Nazi Party (the Reichsleiter ) and of regional party leaders (the Gauleiter ). The day after Hitler's speech, on 13 December 1941, Joseph Goebbels wrote in his diary: With respect of the Jewish Question, the Führer has decided to make a clean sweep. He prophesied to the Jews that if they again brought about a world war, they would see their annihilation in it. That wasn't just
904-577: A "socialist nationalist state" to arise in Russia. In 1926, Goebbels published a pamphlet titled Nazi-Sozi which attempted to explain how National Socialism differed from Marxism. In hopes of winning over the opposition, Hitler arranged meetings in Munich with the three Greater Ruhr Gau leaders, including Goebbels. Goebbels was impressed when Hitler sent his own car to meet them at the railway station. That evening, Hitler and Goebbels both gave speeches at
1130-562: A Minor Key , 1943), Große Freiheit Nr. 7 ( The Great Freedom, No. 7 , 1944), and Unter den Brücken ( Under the Bridges , 1945). Schools were also provided with motion picture projectors because the film was regarded as particularly appropriate for propagandising children. Films specifically created for schools were termed "military education." Triumph des Willens ( Triumph of the Will , 1935) by film-maker Leni Riefenstahl chronicled
1356-564: A Protestant church. Hitler was his best man. For two further elections held in 1932, Goebbels organised massive campaigns that included rallies, parades, speeches, and Hitler travelling around the country by aeroplane with the slogan "the Führer over Germany". Goebbels wrote in his diary that the Nazis must gain power and exterminate Marxism. He undertook numerous speaking tours during these election campaigns and had some of their speeches published on gramophone records and as pamphlets. Goebbels
1582-475: A beer hall rally. The following day, Hitler offered his hand in reconciliation to the three men, encouraging them to put their differences behind them. Goebbels capitulated completely, offering Hitler his total loyalty. He wrote in his diary: "I love him ... He has thought through everything," "Such a sparkling mind can be my leader. I bow to the greater one, the political genius." He later wrote: "Adolf Hitler, I love you because you are both great and simple at
1808-653: A caller on the stock exchange and as a bank clerk in Cologne , a job he detested. He was dismissed from the bank in August 1923 and returned to Rheydt. During this period he read avidly and was influenced by the works of Oswald Spengler , Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Houston Stewart Chamberlain , the British-born German writer whose book The Foundations of the Nineteenth Century (1899) was one of
2034-641: A catch-word. The world war is here and the annihilation of the Jews must be the necessary consequence. Cesarani notes that by 1943, as the military position of the German forces deteriorated, the Nazi leadership became more openly explicit about the Final Solution. In March, Goebbels confided to his diary: "On the Jewish question especially, we are in it so deeply that there is no getting out any longer. And that
2260-448: A common fatherland for which all Germans must fight. Throughout Mein Kampf , he pushed Germans worldwide to make the struggle for political power and independence their main focus, made official in the Heim ins Reich policy beginning in 1938. On 13 March 1933, a Ministry of Propaganda was established, with Goebbels as its Minister. Its goals were to establish enemies in the public mind:
2486-399: A corps commander, explained to his German troops regarding their actions toward Jews, "We want to bring back peace, calm and order to this land…" German leaders tried to make their soldiers believe that Jews were a threat to their society. Thus, German soldiers followed orders given to them and participated in the demonisation and mass murders of Jews. In other words, German soldiers saw Jews as
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#17327811718462712-619: A cyanide compound . Paul Joseph Goebbels was born on 29 October 1897 in Rheydt , an industrial town south of Mönchengladbach near Düsseldorf , Germany. Both of his parents were Roman Catholics with modest family backgrounds. His father, Fritz, was a German factory clerk; his mother, Katharina Maria ( née Odenhausen), was born to Dutch and German parents in a Dutch village close to the border with Germany. Goebbels had five siblings: Konrad (1893–1949), Hans (1895–1947), Maria (1896–1896), Elisabeth (1901–1915) and Maria (1910–1949), who married
2938-515: A few others speaking at public meetings until 1929. One study finds that the Weimar government's use of pro-government radio propaganda slowed Nazi growth. In April 1930, Hitler appointed Goebbels head of party propaganda. Goebbels, a former journalist and Nazi Party officer in Berlin, soon proved his skills. Among his first successes was the organisation of riotous demonstrations that succeeded in having
3164-460: A group that was trying to infect and take over their homeland. Bartov's description of Nazi Germany explains the intense discipline and unity that the soldiers had which played a role in their willingness to obey orders that were given to them. These feelings that German soldiers had toward Jews grew more and more as time went on as the German leaders kept pushing further for Jews to get out of their land as they wanted total annihilation of Jews. Until
3390-574: A joint assault in Kovno , Wilno , and Lwów). The murders continued uninterrupted. On 12 October 1941, in Stanisławów , some 10,000–12,000 Jewish men, women, and children were shot at the Jewish cemetery by the German uniformed SS-men and Ukrainian Auxiliary Police during the so-called " Bloody Sunday [ de ; uk ] " (de) . The shooters began firing at 12 noon and continued without stopping by taking turns. There were picnic tables set up on
3616-417: A lack of coherence and planning for the future in Jewish policy, even when we would most expect it. The classic instance is the invasion of Poland in 1939, when not even the most elementary consideration had been given to what should happen to Poland's Jews either in the shorter or longer term. Given that Poland was home to the largest Jewish population in the world, and that, in a couple of years, it would house
3842-544: A legal system with no "Jewish system of exploitation ... for plundering of our people." The future would be secured by acquiring land, not through expropriation of the estates of the former nobility, but through colonising territories to the east. Goebbels was horrified by Hitler's characterisation of socialism as "a Jewish creation" and his assertion that a Nazi government would not expropriate private property. He wrote in his diary: "I no longer fully believe in Hitler. That's
4068-586: A mirror. Meetings were preceded by ceremonial marches and singing, and the venues were decorated with party banners. His entrance (almost always late) was timed for maximum emotional impact. Goebbels usually meticulously planned his speeches ahead of time, using pre-planned and choreographed inflection and gestures, but he was also able to improvise and adapt his presentation to make a good connection with his audience. He used loudspeakers, decorative flames, uniforms, and marches to attract attention to speeches. Goebbels' tactic of using provocation to bring attention to
4294-409: A newspaper published by the Nazi Party (NSDAP) from December 1920 onwards, whose circulation reached 26,175 in 1929. It was joined in 1927 by Joseph Goebbels 's Der Angriff , another unabashedly and crudely propagandistic paper. During most of the Nazis' time in opposition, their means of propaganda remained limited. With little access to mass media, the party continued to rely heavily on Hitler and
4520-650: A part of Reinhard, and neither was Auschwitz-Birkenau functioning as an extermination center until November 1944 in Polish lands annexed by Hitler and added to Germany proper . The conference at Wannsee gave impetus to the so-called second sweep of the Holocaust by the bullet in the east. Between April and July 1942 in Volhynia , 30,000 Jews were murdered in death pits with the help of dozens of newly formed Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft . Owing to good relations with
4746-561: A philosophy of life and as a conception of government." In 1934, Goebbels published Vom Kaiserhof zur Reichskanzlei ("From the Kaiserhof to the Reich Chancellery"), his account of Hitler's seizure of power, which he based on his diary from 1 January 1932 to 1 May 1933. The book sought to glorify both Hitler and the author. It sold around 660,000 copies, making it Goebbels's best-selling publication during his lifetime. At
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#17327811718464972-423: A platform for propaganda. Hitler was sentenced to five years in prison, but was released on 20 December 1924, after serving just over a year, including pre-trial detention . Goebbels was drawn to the Nazi Party mostly because of Hitler's charisma and commitment to his beliefs. He joined the Nazi Party around this time, becoming member number 8762. In late 1924, Goebbels offered his services to Karl Kaufmann , who
5198-589: A propaganda vehicle for the Berlin area, where few supported the party. It was a modern-style newspaper with an aggressive tone; 126 libel suits were pending against Goebbels at one point. To his disappointment, circulation was initially only 2,000. Material in the paper was highly anti-communist and antisemitic. Among the paper's favourite targets was the Jewish Deputy Chief of the Berlin Police Bernhard Weiß . Goebbels gave him
5424-462: A propagandistic casus belli . Its credibility doesn't matter. The victor will not be asked whether he told the truth. The main part of this propaganda campaign was the false flag Operation Himmler , which was designed to create the appearance of Polish aggression against Germany, in order to justify the invasion of Poland . Research finds that the Nazis' use of radio propaganda helped it consolidate power and enroll more party members. There are
5650-596: A prophet: If the international Jewish financiers in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! Raul Hilberg , in his book The Destruction of the European Jews , was the first historian to systematically document and analyse
5876-612: A relatively short period of time. The plans to exterminate all the Jews of Europe were formalized at the Wannsee Conference , held at an SS guesthouse near Berlin, on 20 January 1942. The conference was chaired by Heydrich and attended by 15 senior officials of the Nazi Party and the German government. Most of those attending were representatives of the Interior Ministry , the Foreign Ministry , and
6102-605: A revision. Hitler viewed Strasser's actions as a threat to his authority, and summoned 60 Gauleiters and party leaders, including Goebbels, to a special conference in Bamberg , in Streicher's Gau of Franconia , where he gave a two-hour speech repudiating Strasser's new political programme. Hitler was opposed to the socialist leanings of the northern wing, stating it would mean "political bolshevization of Germany." Further, there would be "no princes, only Germans," and
6328-466: A semi-autobiographical novel, Michael , a three-part work of which only Parts I and III have survived. Goebbels felt he was writing his "own story". Antisemitic content and material about a charismatic leader may have been added by Goebbels shortly before the book was published in 1929 by Eher-Verlag , the publishing house of the Nazi Party (National Socialist German Workers' Party; NSDAP). At
6554-605: A sense of direction. Diary entries from mid-December 1923 onwards show Goebbels was moving towards the Völkisch nationalist movement. Goebbels first took an interest in Adolf Hitler and Nazism in 1924. In February 1924, Hitler's trial for treason began in the wake of his failed attempt to seize power in the Beer Hall Putsch of 8–9 November 1923. The trial attracted widespread press coverage and gave Hitler
6780-530: A short-lived group of about a dozen northern and western German Gauleiter ; Goebbels became its business manager and the editor of its biweekly journal, NS-Briefe . Members of Strasser's northern branch of the Nazi Party, including Goebbels, had a more socialist outlook than the rival Hitler group in Munich . Strasser disagreed with Hitler on many parts of the party platform, and in November 1926 began working on
7006-403: A spontaneous series of acts by the German people. At least a hundred Jews were killed, several hundred synagogues were damaged or destroyed, and thousands of Jewish shops were vandalised in an event called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass). Around 30,000 Jewish men were sent to concentration camps. The destruction stopped after a conference held on 12 November, where Göring pointed out that
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7232-527: A storybook that equated the Jewish people to poisonous mushrooms and aimed to educate children about the Jews. The book was an example of antisemitic propaganda and stated that "The following tales tell the truth about the Jewish poison mushroom. They show the many shapes the Jew assumes. They show the depravity and baseness of the Jewish race. They show the Jew for what he really is: The Devil in human form." "Geopolitical atlases" emphasised Nazi schemes, demonstrating
7458-551: A tale of how the prince's racial instincts lead him to reject the stepmother's alien blood (present in her daughters) for the racially pure maiden. Nordic sagas were likewise presented as the illustration of the Führerprinzip , which was developed with such heroes as Frederick the Great and Otto von Bismarck . Literature was to be chosen within the "German spirit" rather than a fixed list of forbidden and required, which made
7684-452: A torchlight parade in Berlin on the night of 30 January of an estimated 60,000 men, many in the uniforms of the SA and SS. The spectacle was covered by a live state radio broadcast, with commentary by longtime party member and future Minister of Aviation Hermann Göring . Goebbels was disappointed not to be given a post in Hitler's new cabinet. Bernhard Rust was appointed as Minister of Culture ,
7910-483: A triumphal reception. The townsfolk lined the main street, which had been renamed in his honour. On the following day, Goebbels was declared a local hero. Goebbels converted the 1 May holiday from a celebration of workers' rights (observed as such especially by the communists) into a day celebrating the Nazi Party. In place of the usual ad hoc labour celebrations, he organised a huge party rally held at Tempelhof Field in Berlin. The following day, all trade union offices in
8136-496: A variety of factors that increased the obedience of German soldiers in terms of following the Nazi orders that were given to them regarding Jews. Omer Bartov, a professor on subjects such as German studies and European history, mentioned in his book, Hitler’s Army: Soldiers, Nazis, and War in the Third Reich , how German soldiers were told information that influenced their actions. Bartov mentioned that General Joachim Lemelsen ,
8362-503: A variety of purposes. It was hoped that people in Allied countries would be persuaded that Jews should be blamed for the war. The Nazis also wished to ensure that German people were aware of the extreme measures being carried out against the Jews on their behalf, in order to incriminate them and thus guarantee their continued loyalty through fear by Nazi-conjectured scenarios of supposed post-war "Jewish" reprisals. Especially from 1942 onwards,
8588-469: Is a good thing. Experience teaches that a movement and a people who have burned their bridges fight with much greater determination and fewer constraints than those that have a chance of retreat." When Himmler addressed senior SS personnel and leading members of the regime in the Posen speeches on 4 October 1943, he used "the fate of the Jews as a sort of blood bond to tie the civil and military leadership to
8814-460: Is an unwritten—never to be written—and yet glorious page in our history. Final solution Parties Joseph Goebbels Paul Joseph Goebbels ( German: [ˈpaʊ̯l ˈjoːzɛf ˈɡœbl̩s] ; 29 October 1897 – 1 May 1945) was a German Nazi politician and philologist who was the Gauleiter (district leader) of Berlin, chief propagandist for the Nazi Party , and then Reich Minister of Propaganda from 1933 to 1945. He
9040-435: Is not complex, but simple and consistent. It is not highly differentiated, but has only the negative and positive notions of love and hatred, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. As to the methods to be employed, he explains: Propaganda must not investigate the truth objectively and, in so far as it is favorable to the other side, present it according to the theoretical rules of justice; yet it must present only that aspect of
9266-584: The Ark Royal proved to have survived an attack that German propaganda had hyped. Goebbels instructed Nazi propagandists to describe the invasion of the Soviet Union ( Operation Barbarossa ) as the "European crusade against Bolshevism " and the Nazis then formed different units of the Waffen-SS consisting of mainly volunteers and conscripts . After Stalingrad, the main theme changed to Germany as
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9492-640: The Kirchenkampf (church struggle) should be a priority, but his frequent inflammatory comments on the issue were enough to convince Goebbels to intensify his work on the issue; in February 1937 he stated he wanted to eliminate the Protestant church. In response to the persecution, Pope Pius XI had the " Mit brennender Sorge " ("With Burning Concern") Encyclical smuggled into Germany for Passion Sunday 1937 and read from every pulpit. It denounced
9718-576: The Waffen SS , not the Einsatzgruppen . An additional 17,000 Jews perished there in a ghetto uprising crushed a year later with the aid of Belarusian Auxiliary Police . An Israeli historian Dina Porat claimed that the Final Solution, i.e.: "the systematic overall physical extermination of Jewish communities one after the other—began in Lithuania" during the massive German chase after
9944-502: The 1936 Summer Olympics , held in Berlin. It was around this time that he met and started having an affair with the actress Lída Baarová , whom he continued to see until 1938. A major project in 1937 was the Degenerate Art Exhibition , organised by Goebbels, which ran in Munich from July to November. The exhibition proved wildly popular, attracting over two million visitors. A degenerate music exhibition took place
10170-584: The Anschluss with Austria in 1938, Central Offices for Jewish Emigration were established in Vienna and Berlin to increase Jewish emigration, without covert plans for their forthcoming annihilation. The outbreak of war and the invasion of Poland brought a population of 3.5 million Polish Jews under the control of the Nazi and Soviet security forces , and marked the start of the Holocaust in Poland . In
10396-511: The Berlin section in August 1926. He travelled to Berlin in mid-September and by the middle of October accepted the position. Thus Hitler's plan to divide and dissolve the northwestern Gauleiters group that Goebbels had served in under Strasser was successful. Hitler gave Goebbels great authority over the area, allowing him to determine the course for organisation and leadership for the Gau . Goebbels
10622-493: The Communist Party of Germany (KPD). Goebbels adapted recent developments in commercial advertising to the political sphere, including the use of catchy slogans and subliminal cues. His new ideas for poster design included using large type, red ink, and cryptic headers that encouraged the reader to examine the fine print to determine the meaning. Like Hitler, Goebbels practised his public speaking skills in front of
10848-631: The Fall of France , Adolf Eichmann devised the Madagascar Plan to move Europe's Jewish population to the French colony, but the plan was abandoned for logistical reasons, mainly a naval blockade . There were also preliminary plans to deport Jews to Palestine and Siberia . Raul Hilberg wrote that, in 1941, in the first phase of the mass-murder of Jews, the mobile killing units began to pursue their victims across occupied eastern territories; in
11074-684: The Final Solution to the Jewish Question ( German : Endlösung der Judenfrage , pronounced [ˈɛntˌløːzʊŋ deːɐ̯ ˈjuːdn̩ˌfʁaːɡə] ) was a Nazi plan for the genocide of individuals they defined as Jews during World War II . The "Final Solution to the Jewish question " was the official code name for the murder of all Jews within reach, which was not restricted to the European continent. This policy of deliberate and systematic genocide starting across German-occupied Europe
11300-773: The General Government on 16 December 1941, Governor-General Hans Frank said: "But what will happen to the Jews? Do you believe they will be lodged in settlements in Ostland ? In Berlin, we were told: why all this trouble; we cannot use them in the Ostland or the Reichskommissariat either; liquidate them yourselves!" Two days later, Himmler recorded the outcome of his discussion with Hitler. The result was: " als Partisanen auszurotten " ("exterminate them as partisans"). Israeli historian Yehuda Bauer wrote that
11526-553: The German film industry became entirely nationalised. The National Socialist Propaganda Directorate, which Goebbels oversaw, had at its disposal nearly all film agencies in Germany by 1936. Occasionally, certain directors such as Wolfgang Liebeneiner were able to bypass Goebbels by providing him with a different version of the film than would be released. Such films include those directed by Helmut Käutner : Romanze in Moll ( Romance in
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#173278117184611752-484: The Goebbels children joined Hitler in Berlin. They moved into the underground Vorbunker , part of Hitler's underground bunker complex, on 22 April 1945. Hitler committed suicide on 30 April. In accordance with Hitler's will , Goebbels succeeded him as Chancellor of Germany ; he served one day in this post. The following day, Goebbels and his wife Magda committed suicide, after having poisoned their six children with
11978-602: The Janowska concentration camp , who were interviewed in the film Janovska Camp at Lvov , among other witnesses, have argued that the Final Solution began in Lwów (Lemberg) in Distrikt Galizien of the General Government during the German advance across Soviet-occupied Poland . Statements and memoirs of survivors emphasize that, when Ukrainian nationalists and ad hoc Ukrainian People's Militia (soon reorganized as
12204-429: The Jewish question ." After the Nazis seized control, he repeatedly urged Hitler to take action against the Jews. Despite his extreme antisemitism, Goebbels spoke of the "rubbish of race-materialism" and of the unnecessity of biological racism for the Nazi ideology. He also described Himmler's ideology as "in many regards, mad" and thought Alfred Rosenberg 's racial theories were ridiculous. The Nazi Party's goal
12430-795: The Justice Ministry , including Ministers for the Eastern Territories. At the conference, Heydrich indicated that approximately 11,000,000 Jews in Europe would fall under the provisions of the "Final Solution". This figure included not only Jews residing in Axis-controlled Europe, but also the Jewish populations of the United Kingdom and of neutral nations (Switzerland, Ireland, Sweden, Spain, Portugal, and European Turkey). Eichmann's biographer David Cesarani wrote that Heydrich's main purpose in convening
12656-678: The Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre of 26–28 August 1941 some 23,600 Jews were shot in front of open pits (including 14,000–18,000 people expelled from Hungary). After an incident in Bila Tserkva in which 90 small children left behind had to be shot separately, Blobel requested that Jewish mothers hold them in their arms during mass shootings. Long before the conference at Wannsee, 28,000 Jews were shot by SS and Ukrainian military in Vinnytsia on 22 September 1941, followed by
12882-418: The Kulmhof extermination camp . Victims were misled under the deceptive guise of " Resettlement in the East", organised by SS Commissioners, which was also tried and tested at Chełmno. By the time the European-wide Final Solution was formulated two months later, Heydrich's RSHA had already confirmed the effectiveness of industrial murder by exhaust fumes, and the strength of deception. Construction work on
13108-457: The Nuremberg Laws , which were claimed to allow the German and Jewish peoples to co-exist without the danger of mixing. Science was to be presented as the most natural area for introducing the "Jewish Question" once teachers took care to point out that in nature, animals associated with those of their own species. Teachers' guidelines on racial instruction presented both the handicapped and Jews as dangers. Despite their many photographs glamorising
13334-408: The Reichstag fire of 27 February 1933, with Hindenburg passing the Reichstag Fire Decree the following day at Hitler's urging. This was the first of several pieces of legislation that dismantled democracy in Germany and put a totalitarian dictatorship—headed by Hitler—in its place. On 5 March, yet another Reichstag election took place, the last to be held before the defeat of the Nazis at the end of
13560-408: The Reserve Police Battalion 309 arrived in the city and set the Great Synagogue on fire with hundreds of Jewish men locked inside. The burning of the synagogue was followed by a frenzy of murders both inside the homes around the Jewish neighbourhood of Chanajki, and in the city park, lasting until night time. The next day, some 30 wagons of dead bodies were taken to mass graves. As noted by Browning,
13786-536: The Reserve Police Battalion 101 hand-in-hand with the Trawniki men from Ukraine. Auschwitz alone had enough capacity to fulfill the Nazis' remaining extermination needs. Unlike Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Lublin-Majdanek , which were built in the occupied General Government territory inhabited by the largest concentrations of Jews, the killing centre at Auschwitz subcamp of Birkenau operated in Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany directly. The new gas chambers at Bunker I were finished around March 1942 when
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#173278117184614012-414: The Soviet demarcation line in 1941, what had been regarded as exceptional in the Greater Germanic Reich became a normal way of operating in the east. The crucial taboo against the murder of women and children was breached not only in Białystok but also in Gargždai in late June. By July, significant numbers of women and children were being murdered behind all front-lines not only by the Germans but also by
14238-404: The Ukrainian Auxiliary Police ) began to murder women and children, rather than only male Jews, the "Final Solution" had begun. Witnesses have said that such murders happened both prior to and during the pogroms reportedly triggered by the NKVD prisoner massacre . The question of whether there was some coordination between the Lithuanian and Ukrainian militias remains open (i.e. collaborating for
14464-437: The Ukrainian People's Militia . Formed officially on 20 August 1941, the Reichskommissariat Ukraine —stretching from prewar east-central Poland to Crimea—had become operational theatre of the Einsatzgruppe C. Within the Soviet Union proper, between 9 July 1941 and 19 September 1941 the city of Zhytomyr was made Judenfrei in three murder operations conducted by German and Ukrainian police in which 10,000 Jews perished. In
14690-413: The University of Heidelberg Goebbels wrote his doctoral thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz , a minor 19th-century romantic dramatist. He had hoped to write his thesis under the supervision of Friedrich Gundolf , a literary historian. It did not seem to bother Goebbels that Gundolf was Jewish. Gundolf was no longer teaching so directed Goebbels to associate professor Max Freiherr von Waldberg . Waldberg, who
14916-434: The ghetto uprisings , irrespective of death camps' quota. In two weeks of July 1942, the Słonim Ghetto revolt , crushed with the help of Latvian, Lithuanian, and Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft , cost the lives of 8,000–13,000 Jews. The second largest mass shooting (to that particular date) took place in late October 1942 when the insurgency was suppressed in the Pińsk Ghetto ; over 26,000 men, women and children were shot with
15142-416: The " Jewish-Bolshevik intelligentsia would have to be eliminated" and that the forthcoming war would be a confrontation between two completely opposing cultures. In May 1941, Gestapo leader Heinrich Müller wrote a preamble to the new law limiting the jurisdiction of military courts in prosecuting troops for criminal actions because: "This time, the troops will encounter an especially dangerous element from
15368-444: The "Nordic" type, the texts also claimed that visual inspection was insufficient, and genealogical analysis was required to determine their types and report any hereditary problems. However, the National Socialist Teachers League (NSLB) stressed that at primary schools, in particular, they had to work on only the Nordic racial core of the German Volk again and again and contrast it with the racial composition of foreign populations and
15594-452: The "encirclement" of Germany, depicting how the prolific Slav nations would cause the German people to be overrun, and (in contrast) showing the relative population density of Germany was much higher than that of the Eastern regions (where they would seek Lebensraum ). Textbooks would often show that the birth rate amongst Slavs was prolific compared to Germans. Geography text books stated how crowded Germany had become. Other charts would show
15820-526: The "sequence of steps in a destruction process is thus determined". If a bureaucracy is motivated "to inflict maximum damage upon a group of people", it is "inevitable that a bureaucracy—no matter how decentralized its apparatus or how unplanned its activities—should push its victims through these stages", culminating in their annihilation. In his monograph, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939 – March 1942 , Christopher Browning argues that Nazi policy toward
16046-415: The 18th-century Ordenspalais across from the Reich Chancellery , was to centralise Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural and intellectual life. Goebbels hoped to increase popular support of the party from the 37 per cent achieved at the last free election held in Germany on 25 March 1933 to 100 per cent support. An unstated goal was to present to other nations the impression that the Nazi Party had
16272-651: The 29 September massacre of 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar . In Dnipropetrovsk , on 13 October 1941 some 10,000–15,000 Jews were shot. In Chernihiv , 10,000 Jews were murdered and only 260 Jews were spared. In mid-October, during the Krivoy-Rog massacre of 4,000–5,000 Soviet Jews the entire Ukrainian auxiliary police force actively participated. In the first days of January 1942 in Kharkiv , 12,000 Jews were murdered, but smaller massacres continued in this period on daily basis in countless other locations. In August 1942 in
16498-506: The Allied Nations. After Germany’s defeat and subsequent surrender on May 7, 1945, the Allied governments banned all forms of Nazi propaganda and the organizations which produced and disseminated such materials during the years of denazification . Nazi propaganda promoted Nazi ideology by demonising the enemies of the Nazi Party, notably Jews and communists , but also capitalists and intellectuals . It promoted
16724-628: The American anti-war film All Quiet on the Western Front banned in Germany. A major political and ideological cornerstone of Nazi policy was the unification of all ethnic Germans living outside the Reich's borders (e.g. in Austria and Czechoslovakia ) under one Greater Germany. In Mein Kampf , Hitler denounced the pain and misery of ethnic Germans outside Germany, and declared the dream of
16950-556: The Aryan master race ( Herrenvolk ) while the Jews were untrustworthy, parasitic, and Untermenschen (subhumans). Course content and textbooks unnecessarily included information that was propagandistic, an attempt to sway the children's views from an early age. Maps showing the racial composition of Europe were banned from the classroom after many efforts that did not define the territory widely enough for party officials. Fairy tales were put to use, with Cinderella being presented as
17176-661: The Bureau of Romani Affairs in Munich was taken over by Interpol and renamed the Center for Combating the Gypsy Menace. Introduced at the end of 1937, the " final solution of the Gypsy Question " entailed round-ups , expulsions, and incarceration of Romani in concentration camps built at, until this point, Dachau , Buchenwald , Flossenbürg , Mauthausen , Natzweiler , Ravensbruck , Taucha and Westerbork . After
17402-608: The Christian churches to weaken their influence. Throughout 1935 and 1936, hundreds of clergy and nuns were arrested, often on trumped up charges of currency smuggling or sexual offences. Goebbels widely publicised the trials in his propaganda campaigns, showing the cases in the worst possible light. Restrictions were placed on public meetings, and Catholic publications faced censorship. Catholic schools were required to reduce religious instruction and crucifixes were removed from state buildings. Hitler often vacillated on whether or not
17628-411: The Final Solution was officially launched at Belzec. Until mid June, 20,000 Silesian Jews were murdered there using Zyklon B . In July 1942, Bunker II became operational. In August, another 10,000–13,000 Polish Jews from Silesia were murdered, along with 16,000 French Jews declared 'stateless', and 7,700 Jews from Slovakia. The infamous 'Gate of Death' at Auschwitz II for the incoming freight trains
17854-577: The German diplomat Ernst vom Rath was killed in Paris by the young Jewish man Herschel Grynszpan . In response, Goebbels arranged for inflammatory antisemitic material to be released by the press, and the result was the start of a pogrom. Jews were attacked and synagogues destroyed all over Germany. The situation was further inflamed by a speech Goebbels gave at a party meeting on the night of 8 November, where he obliquely called for party members to incite further violence against Jews while making it appear to be
18080-408: The German filmmaker Max W. Kimmich in 1938. In 1932 Goebbels commissioned the publication of a pamphlet of his family tree to refute the rumours that his maternal grandmother was of Jewish ancestry. During childhood Goebbels experienced ill health, which included a long bout of inflammation of the lungs. He had a deformed right foot , which turned inwards and was due to a congenital disorder . It
18306-401: The German grasp" took shape during a five-week period, from 18 September to 25 October 1941. During this time, the sites of the first extermination camps were selected, different methods of murder were tested, Jewish emigration was forbidden, and 11 transports departed for Łódź as a temporary holding station. Of this period, Browning writes, "The vision of the Final Solution had crystallised in
18532-471: The German top echelon's newfound intent to pursue Hitler's new anti-Semitic plan to eradicate, rather than expel, Jews. Hitler's earlier ideas about forcible removal of Jews from the German-controlled territories to achieve Lebensraum were abandoned after the failure of the air campaign against Britain , initiating a naval blockade of Germany. Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler became
18758-569: The German-occupied zone of Poland, Jews were forced into hundreds of makeshift ghettos , pending other arrangements. In April 1941, the German agriculture and interior ministries designated the SS as an authorized applier of Zyklon B , which meant they were able to use it without any further training or governmental oversight. The launch of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 coincided with
18984-496: The Holocaust was submitted at Nuremberg . The Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union codenamed Operation Barbarossa , which commenced on 22 June 1941, set in motion a " war of annihilation " which quickly opened the door to the systematic mass murder of European Jews. For Hitler, Bolshevism was merely "the most recent and most nefarious manifestation of the eternal Jewish threat". On 3 March 1941, Wehrmacht Joint Operations Staff Chief Alfred Jodl repeated Hitler's declaration that
19210-441: The Jewish people" as such. We were faced with the question: what about the women and children?–I have decided on a solution to this problem. I did not consider myself justified to exterminate the men only—in other words, to kill them or have them killed while allowing the avengers, in the form of their children, to grow up in the midst of our sons and grandsons. The difficult decision had to be made to have this people disappear from
19436-777: The Jews during World War II. For example, Hitler claimed that the international language Esperanto was part of a Jewish plot and makes arguments toward the old German nationalist ideas of " Drang nach Osten " and the necessity to gain Lebensraum ("living space") eastwards (especially in Russia). Other books such as Rassenkunde des deutschen Volkes ("Racial Science of the German People") by Hans Günther and Rasse und Seele ("Race and Soul") by Dr. Ludwig Ferdinand Clauß [ de ] (published under different titles between 1926 and 1934) attempt to identify and classify
19662-473: The Jews shot in Surazh were women and children of all ages. In late August 1941 the Einsatzgruppen murdered 23,600 Jews in the Kamianets-Podilskyi massacre . A month later, the largest mass shooting of Soviet Jews took place on 29–30 September in the ravine of Babi Yar , near Kyiv , where more than 33,000 Jewish people of all ages were systematically machine-gunned. In mid-October 1941, HSSPF South, under
19888-575: The Jews was radicalized twice: in September 1939, when the invasion of Poland implied policies of mass expulsion and massive loss of Jewish lives; and in spring 1941, when preparation for Operation Barbarossa involved the planning of mass execution, mass expulsion, and starvation—to dwarf what had happened in Jewish Poland. Browning believes that the "Final Solution as it is now understood—the systematic attempt to murder every last Jew within
20114-529: The Jews. In occupied France, the German Institute encouraged the translation of German works although chiefly German nationalists, not ardent Nazis, produced a massive increase in the sale of translated works. The only books in English to be sold were English classics, and books with Jewish authors or Jewish subject matter (such as biographies) were banned, except for some scientific works. Control of
20340-639: The Nazi Party Congress of 1934 in Nuremberg . It followed an earlier film of the 1933 Nuremberg Rally produced by Riefenstahl, Der Sieg des Glaubens . Triumph of the Will features footage of uniformed party members (though relatively few German soldiers), who are marching and drilling to militaristic tunes. The film contains excerpts from speeches given by various Nazi leaders at the Congress, including Hitler. Frank Capra used scenes from
20566-531: The Nazi Party in 1924, and worked with Gregor Strasser in its northern branch. He was appointed Gauleiter of Berlin in 1926, where he began to take an interest in the use of propaganda to promote the party and its programme. After the Nazis came to power in 1933, Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry quickly gained control over the news media, arts and information in Nazi Germany . He was particularly adept at using
20792-421: The Nazi Party proceeded to rapidly bring all aspects of life under control of the party. All civilian organisations, including agricultural groups, volunteer organisations, and sports clubs, had their leadership replaced with Nazi sympathisers or party members. By June 1933, virtually the only organisations not in the control of the Nazi Party were the army and the churches. On 2 June 1933, Hitler appointed Goebbels
21018-528: The Nazi Party's control of the popular press. Modelled to some extent on the system in Benito Mussolini 's Fascist Italy , the law defined a Schriftleiter as anyone who wrote, edited, or selected texts and/or illustrated material for serial publication. Individuals selected for this position were chosen based on experiential, educational, and racial criteria. The law required journalists to "regulate their work in accordance with National Socialism as
21244-405: The Nazi Party, along with violence at the public party meetings and demonstrations, led the Berlin police to ban the Nazi Party from the city on 5 May 1927. Violent incidents continued, including young Nazis randomly attacking Jews in the streets. Goebbels was subjected to a public speaking ban until the end of October. During this period, he founded the newspaper Der Angriff ( The Attack ) as
21470-497: The Nazi Party, the civil service, industry, and the Wehrmacht armed forces—but their cooperation is viewed as "so complete that we may truly speak of their fusion into a machinery of destruction". For Hilberg, the key stages in the destruction process were: definition and registration of the Jews; expropriation of property; concentration into ghettoes and camps; and, finally, annihilation. Hilberg gives an estimate of 5.1 million as
21696-488: The Nazi cause". Today, I am going to refer quite frankly to a very grave chapter. We can mention it now among ourselves quite openly and yet we shall never talk about it in public. I'm referring to the evacuation of the Jews, the extermination of the Jewish people. Most of you will know what it's like to see 100 corpses side by side or 500 corpses or 1,000 of them. To have coped with this and—except for cases of human weakness—to have remained decent, that has made us tough. This
21922-489: The Nazi leadership decided that the European Jews should be exterminated. The controversy is commonly described as the functionalism versus intentionalism debate which began in the 1960s, and subsided thirty years later. In the 1990s, the attention of mainstream historians moved away from the question of top executive orders triggering the Holocaust and focused on factors that were overlooked earlier, such as personal initiative and ingenuity of countless functionaries in charge of
22148-405: The Nazi project to murder every Jew in Europe. The book was initially published in 1961, and issued in an enlarged version in 1985. Hilberg's analysis of the steps that led to the destruction of European Jews revealed that it was "an administrative process carried out by bureaucrats in a network of offices spanning a continent". Hilberg divides this bureaucracy into four components or hierarchies:
22374-474: The Nazis, such as German nationalism, eugenics , and antisemitism had been in circulation since the 19th century, and the Nazis seized on this body of existing work in their own publications. The most notable is Hitler's Mein Kampf , detailing his beliefs. The book outlines major ideas that would later culminate in World War II. It is heavily influenced by Gustave Le Bon 's 1895 The Crowd: A Study of
22600-547: The Order Police varied between locations, but for Police Battalion 309 participating in the first mass murder of 5,500 Polish Jews in the Soviet-controlled Białystok (a Polish provincial capital ), Major Weiss explained to his officers that Barbarossa is a war of annihilation against Bolshevism, and that his battalions would proceed ruthlessly against all Jews, regardless of age or sex. After crossing
22826-563: The Popular Mind , which theorised propaganda as a way to control the seemingly irrational behavior of crowds. Particularly prominent is the violent antisemitism of Hitler and his associates, drawing, among other sources, on the fabricated " The Protocols of the Elders of Zion " (1897), which implied that Jews secretly conspired to rule the world. This book was a key source of propaganda for the Nazis and helped fuel their common hatred against
23052-620: The Red Army across the Reichskommissariat Ostland . The subject of the Holocaust in Lithuania has been analysed by Konrad Kweit from USHMM who wrote: "Lithuanian Jews were among the first victims of the Holocaust [beyond the eastern borders of occupied Poland]. The Germans carried out the mass executions [...] signaling the beginning of the 'Final Solution'." About 80,000 Jews were murdered in Lithuania by October (including in formerly Polish Wilno ) and about 175,000 by
23278-500: The Reichstag, making it the second-largest party in the country. In late 1930 Goebbels met Magda Quandt , a divorcée who had joined the party a few months earlier. She worked as a volunteer in the party offices in Berlin, helping Goebbels organise his private papers. Her flat on Reichskanzlerplatz soon became a favourite meeting place for Hitler and other Nazi Party officials. Goebbels and Quandt married on 19 December 1931 at
23504-586: The Restoration of the Professional Civil Service , passed on 7 April 1933, forced all non- Aryans to retire from the legal profession and civil service. Similar legislation soon deprived Jewish members of other professions of their right to practise. The first Nazi concentration camps (initially created to house political dissenters) were founded shortly after Hitler seized power. In a process termed Gleichschaltung (coordination),
23730-469: The Second World War. While the Nazi Party increased their number of seats and percentage of the vote, it was not the landslide expected by the party leadership. Goebbels finally received Hitler's appointment to the cabinet, officially becoming head of the newly created Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda on 14 March. The role of the new ministry, which set up its offices in
23956-720: The Soviet Union. One of the primary sources for propaganda was the Wehrmachtbericht , a daily radio broadcast from the High Command of the Wehrmacht , the OKW . Nazi victories lent themselves easily to propaganda broadcasts and were at this point difficult to mishandle. Satires on the defeated, accounts of attacks, and praise for the fallen all were useful for Nazis. Still, failures were not easily handled even at this stage. For example, considerable embarrassment resulted when
24182-836: The Ukrainian Hilfsverwaltung , these auxiliary battalions were deployed by the SS also in Russia Center, Russia South, and in Byelorussia; each with about 500 soldiers divided into three companies. They participated in the extermination of 150,000 Volhynian Jews alone, or 98 percent of the Jewish inhabitants of the entire region. In July 1942 the Completion of the Final Solution in the General Government territory which included Distrikt Galizien ,
24408-540: The United States on 11 December 1941, "meant that holding European Jews hostage to deter the US from entering the conflict was now pointless". Cesarani concludes, the Holocaust "was rooted in anti-Semitism, but it was shaped by war". The fact that the Nazis were, ultimately, so successful in murdering between five and six million Jews was not due to the efficiency of Nazi Germany or the clarity of their policies. "Rather,
24634-714: The Wannsee Conference Protocol) was found by the Allies in March 1947; it was too late to serve as evidence during the first Nuremberg Trial , but was used by prosecutor General Telford Taylor in the subsequent Nuremberg Trials . After the end of World War II, surviving archival documents provided a clear record of the Final Solution policies and actions of Nazi Germany. They included the Wannsee Conference Protocol, which documented
24860-539: The aid of Belarusian Auxiliary Police before the ghetto's closure. During the suppression of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising (the largest single revolt by Jews during World War II), 13,000 Jews were killed in action before May 1943. Numerous other uprisings were quelled without impacting the pre-planned Nazi deportations actions. About two-thirds of the overall number of victims of the Final Solution were murdered before February 1943, which included
25086-516: The annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe ". From gaining power in January 1933 until the outbreak of war in September 1939, the Nazi persecution of the Jews in Germany was focused on intimidation, expropriating their money and property, and encouraging them to emigrate. According to the Nazi Party policy statement , Jews and the Romani people were the only "alien people in Europe". In 1936,
25312-519: The announcement that Jews were being exterminated served as a group unification factor to preclude desertion and force the Germans to continue fighting. Germans were fed the knowledge that too many atrocities had been committed, especially against the Jews, to allow for an understanding to be reached with the Allies. Nazi media vilified arch-enemies of Nazi Germany as Jewish ( Franklin D. Roosevelt ) or in
25538-467: The annual Party Congress , held in Weimar in 1926. For the following year's event, Goebbels was involved in the planning for the first time. He and Hitler arranged for the rally to be filmed. Receiving praise for doing well at these events led Goebbels to shape his political ideas to match Hitler's, and to admire and idolise him even more. Goebbels was first offered the position of party Gauleiter for
25764-527: The attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (...) The great majority of a nation is so feminine in its character and outlook that its thought and conduct are ruled by sentiment rather than by sober reasoning. This sentiment, however,
25990-614: The beginning of July 1941, and requested that, "as a matter of principle, any Jew" behind the German-Soviet frontier was to be "regarded as a partisan". His new orders gave the SS and police leaders full authority for the mass-murder behind the front lines. By August 1941, all Jewish men, women, and children were shot. In the second phase of annihilation, the Jewish inhabitants of central, western, and south-eastern Europe were transported by Holocaust trains to camps with newly built gassing facilities. Raul Hilberg wrote: "In essence,
26216-784: The bodies faster. The size of the Sonderkommando was nearly quadrupled in preparation for the Special Operation Hungary ( Sonderaktion Ungarn ). In May 1944, Auschwitz-Birkenau became the site of one of the two largest mass murder operations in modern history, after the Großaktion Warschau deportations of the Warsaw Ghetto inmates to Treblinka in 1942. It is estimated that until July 1944 approximately 320,000 Hungarian Jews were gassed at Birkenau in less than eight weeks. The entire operation
26442-416: The broad masses of the people. (...) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (...) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest
26668-436: The cases of Joseph Stalin and Winston Churchill abject puppets of an international Jewish conspiracy intent on ruining Germany and Nazism. Problems in propaganda arose easily in this stage; expectations of success were raised too high and too quickly, which required explanation if they were not fulfilled, and blunted the effects of success, and the hushing of blunders and failures caused mistrust. The increasing hardship of
26894-458: The catastrophic rate of killing was due to German persistence ... and the duration of the murderous campaigns. This last factor was largely a consequence of allied military failure." The entry of the U.S. into the War is also crucial to the time-frame proposed by Christian Gerlach , who argued in his 1997 thesis that the Final Solution decision was announced on 12 December 1941, when Hitler addressed
27120-497: The chief architect of a new plan, which came to be called The Final Solution to the Jewish question . On 31 July 1941, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring wrote to Reinhard Heydrich (Himmler's deputy and chief of the RSHA ), authorising him to make the "necessary preparations" for a "total solution of the Jewish question" and coordinate with all affected organizations. Göring also instructed Heydrich to submit concrete proposals for
27346-460: The church. Historians, including Richard J. Evans and Roger Manvell , speculate that Goebbels' lifelong pursuit of women may have been in compensation for his physical disability. At Freiburg he met and fell in love with Anka Stalherm, who was three years his senior. She went on to Würzburg to continue studying, as did Goebbels. By 1920 the relationship with Anka was over; the break-up filled Goebbels with thoughts of suicide. In 1921 he wrote
27572-646: The civilian population, and therefore, have the right and obligation to secure themselves." Himmler and Heydrich assembled a force of about 3,000 men from Security Police , Gestapo , Kripo , SD , and the Waffen-SS , as the so-called "special commandos of the security forces" known as the Einsatzgruppen , to eliminate both communists and Jews in occupied territories. These forces were supported by 21 battalions of Orpo Reserve Police under Kurt Daluege , adding up to 11,000 men. The explicit orders given to
27798-592: The clergy to be much more cautious in their criticism of the regime. Partly out of foreign policy concerns, Hitler ordered a scaling back of the church struggle by the end of July 1937. Goebbels was antisemitic from a young age. After joining the Nazi Party and meeting Hitler, his antisemitism grew and became more radical. He began to see the Jews as a destructive force with a negative impact on German society. In 1930, he criticised Italian Fascist dictator Benito Mussolini for his relative lack of hostility towards Jews, stating that "Mussolini appears to have not recognized
28024-482: The co-operation of various German state agencies in the SS-led Holocaust, as well as some 3,000 tons of original German records captured by Allied armies, including the Einsatzgruppen reports , which documented the progress of the mobile killing units assigned, among other tasks, to murder Jewish civilians during the attack on the Soviet Union in 1941. The evidential proof which documented the mechanism of
28250-440: The coalition government that had been elected in 1928. Paul von Hindenburg appointed Heinrich Brüning as chancellor . A new cabinet was formed, and Hindenburg used his power as president to govern via emergency decrees . Goebbels took charge of the Nazi Party's national campaign for Reichstag elections called for 14 September 1930. Campaigning was undertaken on a huge scale, with thousands of meetings and speeches held all over
28476-471: The command of Friedrich Jeckeln , had reported the indiscriminate murder of more than 100,000 people. By the end of December 1941, before the Wannsee Conference, over 439,800 Jewish people had been murdered, and the Final Solution policy in the east became common knowledge within the SS. Entire regions were reported " free of Jews " by the Einsatzgruppen . Addressing his district governors in
28702-527: The conclusion of the Battle of Stalingrad on 2 February 1943, German propaganda emphasised the prowess of German arms and the humanity German soldiers had shown to the peoples of occupied territories. Pilots of the Allied bombing fleets were depicted as cowardly murderers and Americans in particular as gangsters in the style of Al Capone . At the same time, German propaganda sought to alienate Americans and British from each other, and both these Western nations from
28928-412: The conference was to assert his authority over the various agencies dealing with Jewish issues. "The simplest, most decisive way that Heydrich could ensure the smooth flow of deportations" to death camps, according to Cesarani, "was by asserting his total control over the fate of the Jews in the Reich and the east" under the single authority of the RSHA . A copy of the minutes of this meeting (later called
29154-490: The cost of disabled children as opposed to healthy ones, or show how two-child families threatened the birthrate. Math books discussed military applications and used military word problems, physics and chemistry concentrated on military applications, and grammar classes were devoted to propaganda sentences. Other textbooks dealt with the history of the Nazi Party. Elementary school reading text included large amounts of propaganda. Children were taught through textbooks that they were
29380-571: The country were forcibly disbanded by the SA and SS, and the Nazi-run German Labour Front was created to take their place. "We are the masters of Germany," he commented in his diary entry of 3 May. Less than two weeks later, he gave a speech at the Nazi book burning in Berlin on 10 May, a ceremony he suggested. Meanwhile, the Nazi Party began passing laws to marginalise Jews and remove them from German society. The Law for
29606-574: The country. Hitler's speeches focused on blaming the country's economic woes on the Weimar Republic , particularly its adherence to the terms of the Treaty of Versailles , which required war reparations that had proven devastating to the German economy. He proposed a new German society based on race and national unity. The resulting success took even Hitler and Goebbels by surprise: the party received 6.5 million votes nationwide and took 107 seats in
29832-535: The course of the previous year. Goebbels continued to be elected to the Reichstag at every subsequent election during the Weimar and Nazi regimes. In his newspaper Berliner Arbeiterzeitung ( Berlin Workers Newspaper ), Gregor Strasser was highly critical of Goebbels' failure to attract the urban vote. However, the party as a whole did much better in rural areas, attracting as much as 18 per cent of
30058-789: The deadliest phase of the Final Solution. More Jews were murdered at Treblinka than at any other Nazi extermination camp apart from Auschwitz . By the time the mass killings of Operation Reinhard ended in 1943, roughly two million Jews in German-occupied Poland had been murdered. The total number of people murdered in 1942 in Lublin/Majdanek , Bełżec , Sobibór , and Treblinka was 1,274,166 by Germany's own estimation , not counting Auschwitz II Birkenau nor Kulmhof . Their bodies were buried in mass graves initially. Both Treblinka and Bełżec were equipped with powerful crawler excavators from Polish construction sites in
30284-540: The derogatory nickname "Isidore" and subjected him to a relentless campaign of Jew-baiting in the hope of provoking a crackdown he could then exploit. Goebbels continued to try to break into the literary world, with a revised version of his book Michael finally being published, and the unsuccessful production of two of his plays ( Der Wanderer and Die Saat ( The Seed )). The latter was his final attempt at playwriting. During this period in Berlin he had relationships with many women, including his old flame Anka Stalherm, who
30510-399: The destruction of Jewish property was in effect the destruction of German property since the intention was that it would all eventually be confiscated. Goebbels continued his intensive antisemitic propaganda campaign that culminated in Hitler's 30 January 1939 Reichstag speech , which Goebbels helped to write: If international finance Jewry in and outside Europe should succeed in plunging
30736-475: The differences between the German, Nordic , or Aryan type and other supposedly inferior peoples. These books were used as texts in German schools during the Nazi era. The pre-existing and popular genre of Schollen-roman , or novel of the soil, also known as blood and soil novels, was given a boost by the acceptability of its themes to the Nazis and developed a mysticism of unity. The immensely popular "Red Indian" stories by Karl May were permitted despite
30962-596: The earth. On 19 October 1943, five days after the prisoner revolt in Sobibór , Operation Reinhard was terminated by Odilo Globocnik on behalf of Himmler. The camps responsible for the murder of nearly 2,700,000 Jews were soon closed. Bełżec, Sobibór, and Treblinka were dismantled and ploughed over before spring. The operation was followed by the single largest German massacre of Jews in the entire war carried out on 3 November 1943; with approximately 43,000 prisoners shot one-by-one simultaneously in three nearby locations by
31188-435: The election, Hitler considered appointing Goebbels as party propaganda chief. But he hesitated, as he worried that the removal of Gregor Strasser from the post would lead to a split in the party. Goebbels considered himself well suited to the position, and began to formulate ideas about how propaganda could be used in schools and the media. By 1930 Berlin was the party's second-strongest base of support after Munich. That year
31414-551: The end of 1941 according to official reports . Within one week from the start of Operation Barbarossa , Heydrich issued an order to his Einsatzgruppen for the on-the-spot execution of all Bolsheviks, interpreted by the SS to mean all Jews. One of the first indiscriminate massacres of men, women, and children in Reichskommissariat Ukraine took the lives of over 4,000 Polish Jews in occupied Łuck on 2–4 July 1941, murdered by Einsatzkommando 4a assisted by
31640-575: The end of June 1934, top officials of the SA and opponents of the regime, including Gregor Strasser, were arrested and killed in a purge later called the Night of Long Knives . Goebbels was present at the arrest of SA leader Ernst Röhm in Munich. On 2 August 1934, President von Hindenburg died. In a radio broadcast, Goebbels announced that the offices of president and chancellor had been combined, and Hitler had been formally named as Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor). The propaganda ministry
31866-468: The experience and personnel from earlier population resettlement programmes—especially the HSSPF and Adolf Eichmann 's RSHA for "Jewish affairs and evacuations". Peter Longerich argues that the search for a finite date on which the Nazis embarked upon the extermination of the Jews is futile, in his book Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution and Murder of the Jews (2011). Longerich writes: "We should abandon
32092-519: The extermination camps, this is remarkable." Whereas Browning places the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews in the context of the Wehrmacht victories on the Eastern front, Cesarani argues that the German subsequent realisation that there would be no swift victory over the Soviet Union "scuppered the last territorial 'solution' still on the table: expulsion to Siberia". Germany's declaration of war on
32318-535: The external enemies which had imposed the Treaty of Versailles on Germany, and internal enemies such as Jews, Romani , homosexuals, Bolsheviks , and cultural trends including " degenerate art ". For months prior to the beginning of World War II in 1939, German newspapers and leaders had carried out a national and international propaganda campaign accusing Polish authorities of organising or tolerating violent ethnic cleansing of ethnic Germans living in Poland. On 22 August, Hitler told his generals: I will provide
32544-527: The fate of the Jews, a subject they discussed almost every time they met. He was aware throughout that the Jews were being exterminated, and completely supported this decision. He was one of the few top Nazi officials to do so publicly. As early as February 1933, Hitler announced that rearmament must be undertaken, albeit clandestinely at first, as to do so was in violation of the Versailles Treaty. A year later he told his military leaders that 1942
32770-535: The film began on 26 February 1944. Directed by Kurt Gerron , it was meant to show how well the Jews lived under the "benevolent" protection of Nazi Germany. After the shooting, most of the cast, and even the filmmaker himself, were deported to the concentration camp of Auschwitz where they were murdered. Hans Fritzsche , who had been head of the Radio Chamber, was tried and acquitted by the Nuremberg war crimes tribunal . Antisemitic wartime propaganda served
32996-477: The film industry were required to join, was created in June 1933. Goebbels promoted the development of films with a Nazi slant, and ones that contained subliminal or overt propaganda messages. Under the auspices of the Reichskulturkammer (Reich Chamber of Culture), created in September, Goebbels added additional sub-chambers for the fields of broadcasting, fine arts, literature, music, the press, and
33222-608: The film, which he described partially as "the ominous prelude of Hitler's holocaust of hate", in many parts of the United States government's Why We Fight anti-Axis seven-film series, to demonstrate what the personnel of the U.S. military would be facing in World War II, and why the Axis had to be defeated. During 1940 three antisemitic films were shown: The Rothschilds , Jud Süß , and Der ewige Jude . Final solution The Final Solution ( German : die Endlösung , pronounced [diː ˈʔɛntˌløːzʊŋ] ) or
33448-412: The first 25 months of war leading to the attempt at "murdering every last Jew in the German grasp". Christopher Browning , a historian specializing in the Holocaust, wrote that most historians agree that the Final Solution cannot be attributed to a single decision made at one particular point in time. "It is generally accepted the decision-making process was prolonged and incremental." In 1940, following
33674-548: The first killing centre at Bełżec in occupied Poland began in October 1941, three months before the Wannsee Conference. The new facility was operational by March the following year. By mid-1942, two more death camps had been built on Polish lands: Sobibór operational by May 1942, and Treblinka operational in July. From July 1942, the mass murder of Polish and foreign Jews took place at Treblinka as part of Operation Reinhard ,
33900-429: The first transport from Berlin leaving on 18 October. Some Jews were shot immediately on arrival in destinations such as Riga and Kaunas . In preparation for the deportations, Goebbels ordered that all German Jews wear an identifying yellow badge as of 5 September 1941. On 6 March 1942, Goebbels received a copy of the minutes of the Wannsee Conference , which indicated indirectly that the Jewish population of Europe
34126-590: The following year. Meanwhile, Goebbels was disappointed by the lack of quality in the National Socialist artwork, films, and literature. In 1933, Hitler signed the Reichskonkordat (Reich Concordat), a treaty with the Vatican that required the regime to honour the independence of Catholic institutions and prohibited clergy from involvement in politics. However, the regime continued to target
34352-399: The full and enthusiastic backing of the entire population. One of Goebbels' first productions was staging the Day of Potsdam, a ceremonial passing of power from Hindenburg to Hitler, held in Potsdam on 21 March. He composed the text of Hitler's decree authorising the Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses , held on 1 April. Later that month, Goebbels travelled back to Rheydt, where he was given
34578-715: The groundwork for the party’s later methodology while the newspapers, the Völkischer Beobachter and later Der Angriff , served as the early practical foundations for later propaganda during the party’s formative years. These were later followed by many media types including books, posters, magazines, photos, art, films, and radio broadcasts which took increasingly prominent roles as the party gained more power. These efforts promulgated Nazi ideology throughout German society. Such ideology included promotion of Nazi policies and values at home, worldview beyond their borders, antisemitism , vilification of non-German peoples and anti-Nazi organizations, eugenics and eventually total war against
34804-527: The heroic treatment of the hero Winnetou and "coloured" races; instead, the argument was made that the stories demonstrated the fall of the Red Indians was caused by a lack of racial consciousness, to encourage it in the Germans. Other fictional works were also adapted; Heidi was stripped of its Christian elements, and Robinson Crusoe 's relationship to Friday was made a master-slave one. Children's books also made their appearance. In 1938, Julius Streicher published Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom),
35030-413: The idea that has been put forward. (...) Every change that is made in the subject of a propagandist message must always emphasize the same conclusion. The leading slogan must, of course, be illustrated in many ways and from several angles, but in the end one must always return to the assertion of the same formula. Hitler put these ideas into practice with the reestablishment of the Völkischer Beobachter ,
35256-436: The implementation of the new projected goal. Broadly speaking, the extermination of Jews was carried out in two major operations. With the onset of Operation Barbarossa , mobile killing units of the SS , the Einsatzgruppen , and Order Police battalions were dispatched to the occupied Soviet Union for the express purpose of murdering all Jews. During the early stages of the invasion, Himmler himself visited Białystok at
35482-421: The initial news of Hitler's death on the night of 1 May; an announcer claimed he had died that afternoon as a hero fighting against Bolshevism . Hitler's successor as head of state , Karl Dönitz , further asserted that the U.S. forces were continuing the war solely to spread Bolshevism within Europe. The Nazis and sympathisers published many propaganda books. Most of the beliefs that would become associated with
35708-560: The killers of the occupied USSR moved to the victims, whereas outside this arena, the victims were brought to the killers. The two operations constitute an evolution not only chronologically, but also in complexity." Massacres of about one million Jews occurred before plans for the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to annihilate the entire Jewish population that extermination camps such as Auschwitz II Birkenau and Treblinka were fitted with permanent gas chambers to murder large numbers of Jews in
35934-449: The killing fields. No written evidence of Hitler ordering the Final Solution has ever been found to serve as a "smoking gun", and therefore, this one particular question remains unanswered. Hitler made numerous predictions regarding the Holocaust of the Jews of Europe prior to the beginning of World War II. During a speech given on 30 January 1939 , on the sixth anniversary of his accession to power, Hitler said: Today I will once more be
36160-403: The labour force, and enlisting men in previously exempt occupations into the Wehrmacht . Hitler finally appointed him as Reich Plenipotentiary for Total War on 23 July 1944, whereby Goebbels undertook largely unsuccessful measures to increase the number of people available for armaments manufacture and the Wehrmacht. As the war drew to a close and Nazi Germany faced defeat, Magda Goebbels and
36386-487: The lands of a conquered USSR". For Longerich, to see mass-murder as the Final Solution was an acknowledgement by the Nazi leadership that there would not be a German military victory over the USSR in the near future. David Cesarani emphasises the improvised, haphazard nature of Nazi policies in response to changing war time conditions in his overview, Final Solution: The Fate of the European Jews 1933–49 (2016). "Cesarani provides telling examples", wrote Mark Roseman , "of
36612-443: The large death factory at Treblinka for the destruction of the Warsaw Jews, and the addition of a gas chamber to the concentration camp at Auschwitz for the murder of the Jews of Silesia". Longerich suggests that it "was only in the summer of 1942, that mass killing was finally understood as the realization of the Final Solution, rather than as an extensively violent preliminary to some later program of slave labor and deportation to
36838-482: The largest number of murders in the Final Solution, as bringing together three separate developments within Nazi Germany : the concentration camps which had been established in Germany since 1933; an expansion of the gassing technology of the Nazi euthanasia programme to provide a murder technique of greater efficiency and psychological detachment; and the creation of "factories of death" to be fed endless streams of victims by mass uprooting and deportation that utilized
37064-553: The lead-up to the Sudetenland crisis in 1938, Goebbels took the initiative time and again to use propaganda to whip up sympathy for the Sudeten Germans while campaigning against the Czech government. Still, Goebbels was well aware there was a growing "war panic" in Germany and so by July had the press conduct propaganda efforts at a lower level of intensity. After the Western powers acceded to Hitler's demands concerning Czechoslovakia in 1938, Goebbels soon redirected his propaganda machine against Poland. From May onwards, he orchestrated
37290-508: The local Ukrainian and Lithuanian auxiliary forces . On 29 July 1941, at a meeting of SS officers in Vileyka (Polish Wilejka , now Belarus), the Einsatzgruppen had been given a dressing-down for their low execution figures . Heydrich himself issued an order to include the Jewish women and children in all subsequent shooting operations. Accordingly, by the end of July the entire Jewish population of Vileyka, men, women and children, were murdered. Around 12 August, no less than two-thirds of
37516-447: The main defender of what they called "Western European culture" against the "Bolshevist hordes". The introduction of the V-1 and V-2 "vengeance weapons" was emphasised to convince Britons of the hopelessness of defeating Germany. On 23 June 1944, the Nazis permitted the Red Cross to visit the concentration camp Theresienstadt to dispel rumors about the Final Solution , which was intended to kill all Jews. In reality, Theresienstadt
37742-573: The main phase of the extermination programme in the West launched by Eichmann on 11 June 1942 from Berlin. The Holocaust trains run by the Deutsche Reichsbahn and several other national railway systems delivered condemned Jewish captives from as far as Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Moravia, Netherlands, Romania, Slovakia, and even Scandinavia. The cremation of exhumed corpses to destroy any evidence left behind began in early spring and continued throughout summer. The nearly completed clandestine programme of murdering all deportees
37968-448: The minds of the Nazi leadership, and was being turned into reality." This was the peak of Nazi victories against the Soviet Army on the Eastern Front , and, according to Browning, the stunning series of German victories led to both an expectation that the war would soon be won, and the planning of the final destruction of the " Jewish-Bolshevik enemy". Browning describes the creation of the extermination camps, which were responsible for
38194-414: The murders were led by a commander "who correctly intuited and anticipated the wishes of his Führer " without direct orders. For reasons unknown, the number of victims in the official report by Major Weis was cut in half. The next mass-shooting of Polish Jews within the newly formed Reichskommissariat Ostland took place in two days of 5–7 August in occupied Pińsk , where over 12,000 Jews were murdered by
38420-477: The nations once more into a world war, then the result will not be the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe! While Goebbels had been pressing for expulsion of the Berlin Jews since 1935, there were still 62,000 living in the city in 1940. Part of the delay in their deportation was that they were needed as workers in the armaments industry. Deportations of German Jews began in October 1941, with
38646-406: The notion that it is historically meaningful to try to filter the wealth of available historical material and pick out a single decision" that led to the Holocaust. Timothy Snyder writes that Longerich "grants the significance of Greiser's murder of Jews by gas at Chełmno in December 1941", but also detects a significant moment of escalation in spring 1942, which includes "the construction of
38872-402: The opposition as " November criminals ", "Jewish wire-pullers", or a communist threat. Support for the party continued to grow, but neither of these elections led to a majority government. In an effort to stabilise the country and improve economic conditions, Hindenburg appointed Hitler as Reich chancellor on 30 January 1933. To celebrate Hitler's appointment as chancellor, Goebbels organised
39098-520: The outbreak of World War II , Nazi propaganda vilified Germany's enemies, notably the United Kingdom , the Soviet Union , and the United States , and in 1943 exhorted the population to total war . Adolf Hitler devoted two chapters of his 1925 book Mein Kampf , itself a propaganda tool, to the study and practice of propaganda. He claimed to have learned the value of propaganda as a World War I infantryman exposed to very effective British and ineffectual German propaganda. The argument that Germany lost
39324-526: The paper supply allowed Germans the easy ability to pressure publishers about books. The Nazi-controlled government in German-occupied France produced the Vica comic book series during World War II as a propaganda tool against the Allied forces. The Vica series, authored by Vincent Krassousky , represented Nazi influence and perspective in French society, and included such titles as Vica Contre le service secret Anglais , and Vica défie l'Oncle Sam . The Nazis produced many films to promote their views, using
39550-402: The party's Department of Film for organising film propaganda. An estimated 45 million people attended film screenings put on by the NSDAP. Reichsamtsleiter Karl Neumann declared that the goal of the Department of Film was not directly political in nature, but was rather to influence the culture, education, and entertainment of the general population. On 22 September 1933, a Department of Film
39776-431: The party's national newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter ( People's Observer ). He still had to wait until 3 July for Otto Strasser and his supporters to announce they were leaving the Nazi Party. Upon receiving the news, Goebbels was relieved the "crisis" with the Strassers was finally over and glad that Otto Strasser had lost all power. The rapid deterioration of the economy led to the resignation on 27 March 1930 of
40002-440: The post that Goebbels was expecting to receive. Like other Nazi Party officials, Goebbels had to deal with Hitler's leadership style of giving contradictory orders to his subordinates, while placing them into positions where their duties and responsibilities overlapped. In this way, Hitler fostered distrust, competition, and infighting among his subordinates to consolidate and maximise his own power. The Nazi Party took advantage of
40228-792: The pre-war years rather than work under these restrictions. Goebbels was particularly interested in controlling the radio, which was then still a fairly new mass medium . Sometimes under protest from individual states (particularly Prussia , headed by Göring), Goebbels gained control of radio stations nationwide, and placed them under the Reichs-Rundfunk-Gesellschaft (German National Broadcasting Corporation) in July 1934. Manufacturers were urged by Goebbels to produce inexpensive home receivers, called Volksempfänger (people's receiver), and by 1938 nearly ten million sets had been sold. Loudspeakers were placed in public areas, factories, and schools, so that important party broadcasts would be heard live by nearly all Germans. On 2 September 1939 (the day after
40454-473: The presence of only a few German SS men over 5,000 Jews were massacred in Polish Zofjówka by the Ukrainian Auxiliary Police leading to the town's complete sweep from existence. Historians find it difficult to determine precisely when the first concerted effort at annihilation of all Jews began in the last weeks of June 1941 during Operation Barbarossa. Dr. Samuel Drix ( Witness to Annihilation ), Jochaim Schoenfeld ( Holocaust Memoirs ), and several survivors of
40680-456: The radio and loudspeaker, 80 million people were deprived of independent thought." A major focus of Nazi propaganda was Hitler himself, who was glorified as a heroic and infallible leader and became the focus of a cult of personality . Much of this was spontaneous, but some was stage-managed as part of Goebbels' propaganda work. Adulation of Hitler was the focus of the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, where his moves were carefully choreographed. The rally
40906-410: The relatively new media of radio and film for propaganda purposes. Topics for party propaganda included antisemitism, attacks on Christian churches, and (after the start of the Second World War ) attempts to shape morale. In 1943, Goebbels began to pressure Hitler to introduce measures that would produce " total war ", including closing businesses not essential to the war effort, conscripting women into
41132-456: The remark is probably as close as historians will ever get to a definitive order from Hitler for the genocide carried out during the Holocaust. Within two years, the total number of shooting victims in the east had risen to between 618,000 and 800,000 Jews. Several scholars have suggested that the Final Solution began in the newly formed district of Bezirk Bialystok . The German army took over Białystok within days. On Friday, 27 June 1941,
41358-453: The same requirement applied to the spouse. Members of any chamber were not allowed to leave the country for their work without prior permission of their chamber. A committee was established to censor books, and works could not be re-published unless they were on the list of approved works. Similar regulations applied to other fine arts and entertainment; even cabaret performances were censored. Many German artists and intellectuals left Germany in
41584-422: The same time. What one calls a genius." As a result of the Bamberg and Munich meetings, the National Socialist Working Association was disbanded. Strasser's new draft of the party programme was discarded, the original National Socialist Program of 1920 was retained unchanged, and Hitler's position as party leader was greatly strengthened. At Hitler's invitation, Goebbels spoke at party meetings in Munich and at
41810-407: The second phase, stretching across all of German-occupied Europe, the Jewish victims were sent on death trains to centralized extermination camps built for the purpose of systematic murder of Jews. The term "Final Solution" was a euphemism used by the Nazis to refer to their plan for the annihilation of the Jewish people . Some historians argue that the usual tendency of the German leadership
42036-452: The side with bottles of vodka and sandwiches for those who needed to rest from the deafening noise of gunfire. It was the single largest massacre of Polish Jews in Generalgouvernement prior to mass gassings of Aktion Reinhard , which commenced at Bełżec in March 1942. Notably, the extermination operations in Chełmno had begun on 8 December 1941, one-and-a-half months before Wannsee, but Chełmno—located in Reichsgau Wartheland —was not
42262-423: The standard works of the extreme right in Germany. He also began to study the social question and read the works of Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels , Rosa Luxemburg , August Bebel and Gustav Noske . According to German historian Peter Longerich , Goebbels's diary entries from late 1923 to early 1924 reflected the writings of a man who was isolated, preoccupied with "religious-philosophical" issues and lacked
42488-420: The start of the war), Goebbels and the Council of Ministers proclaimed it illegal to listen to foreign radio stations. Disseminating news from foreign broadcasts could result in the death penalty. Albert Speer , Hitler's architect and later Minister for Armaments and War Production, later said the regime "made the complete use of all technical means for domination of its own country. Through technical devices like
42714-571: The summer of 1922 he met and began a love affair with Else Janke, a schoolteacher. After she revealed to him that she was half-Jewish, Goebbels stated the "enchantment [was] ruined." Nevertheless he continued to see her on and off until 1927. He continued for several years to try to become a published author. His diaries , which he began in 1923 and continued for the rest of his life, provided an outlet for his desire to write. The lack of income from his literary works – he wrote two plays in 1923, neither of which sold – forced him to take employment as
42940-515: The systematic hostility of the regime toward the church. In response, Goebbels renewed the regime's crackdown and propaganda against Catholics. His speech of 28 May in Berlin in front of 20,000 party members, which was also broadcast on the radio, attacked the Catholic church as morally corrupt. As a result of the propaganda campaign, enrolment in denominational schools dropped sharply, and by 1939 all such schools were disbanded or converted to public facilities. Harassment and threats of imprisonment led
43166-426: The teachers all the more cautious although Jewish authors were impossible for classrooms. While only William Shakespeare 's Macbeth and The Merchant of Venice were actually recommended, none of the plays were actually forbidden, even Hamlet , denounced for "flabbiness of soul." Biology texts, however, were put to the most use in presenting eugenic principles and racial theories; this included explanations of
43392-412: The terrible thing: my inner support has been taken away." After reading Hitler's book Mein Kampf , Goebbels found himself agreeing with Hitler's assertion of a "Jewish doctrine of Marxism ". In February 1926, Goebbels gave a speech titled "Bolshevism or National-socialism? Lenin or Hitler?" in which he asserted that communism or Marxism could not save the German people, but he believed it would cause
43618-410: The theatre. As in the film industry, anyone wishing to pursue a career in these fields had to be a member of the corresponding chamber. In this way anyone whose views were contrary to the regime could be excluded from working in their chosen field and thus silenced. In addition, journalists (now considered employees of the state) were required to prove Aryan descent back to the year 1800, and if married,
43844-493: The total number of Jews murdered. He breaks this figure down into three categories: Ghettoization and general privation: over 800,000; open-air shootings: over 1,300,000; extermination camps: up to 3,000,000. With respect to the "functionalism versus intentionalism" debate about a master plan for the Final Solution, or the lack thereof, Hilberg posits what has been described as "a kind of structural determinism". Hilberg argues that "a destruction process has an inherent pattern" and
44070-437: The truth which is favorable to its own side. (...) The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp
44296-421: The values asserted by the Nazis, including heroic death, Führerprinzip (leader principle), Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), Blut und Boden (blood and soil), and pride in the Germanic Herrenvolk (master race). Propaganda was also used to maintain the cult of personality around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and to promote campaigns for eugenics and the annexation of German-speaking areas . After
44522-445: The vicinity, capable of most digging tasks without disrupting surfaces. Although other methods of extermination, such as the cyanic poison Zyklon B , were already being used at other Nazi killing centres such as Auschwitz, the Aktion Reinhard camps used lethal exhaust gases from captured tank engines. The Holocaust by bullets (as opposed to the Holocaust by gas ) went on in the territory of occupied Poland in conjunction with
44748-450: The violence between the Nazis and communists led to local SA troop leader Horst Wessel being shot by two members of the KPD. He later died in hospital. Exploiting Wessel's death, Goebbels turned him into a martyr for the Nazi movement. He officially declared Wessel's march Die Fahne hoch ( Raise the flag ), renamed as the Horst-Wessel-Lied , to be the Nazi Party anthem. The Great Depression greatly impacted Germany and by 1930 there
44974-414: The vote in some regions. This was partly because Hitler had publicly stated just prior to the election that Point 17 of the party programme, which mandated the expropriation of land without compensation, would apply only to Jewish speculators and not private landholders. After the election, the party refocused their efforts to try to attract still more votes in the agricultural sector. In May, shortly after
45200-444: The vote. Goebbels was one of the first 12 Nazi Party members to gain election to the Reichstag . This gave him immunity from prosecution for a long list of outstanding charges, including a three-week jail sentence he received in April for insulting the deputy police chief Weiß. The Reichstag changed the immunity regulations in February 1931, and Goebbels was forced to pay fines for libellous material he had placed in Der Angriff over
45426-433: The war for the German people also called forth more propaganda that the war had been forced on the German people by the refusal of foreign powers to accept their strength and independence. Goebbels called for propaganda to toughen up the German people and not make victory look easy. After Hitler's death , his successor as chancellor of Germany , Goebbels, informed the Reichssender Hamburg radio station. The station broke
45652-493: The war largely because of British propaganda efforts, expounded at length in Mein Kampf , reflected then-common German nationalist claims. Although untrue—German propaganda during World War I was mostly more advanced than that of the British—it became the official truth of Nazi Germany thanks to its reception by Hitler. Mein Kampf contains the blueprint of later Nazi propaganda efforts. Assessing his audience, Hitler writes in chapter VI: Propaganda must always address itself to
45878-458: Was Gauleiter (Nazi Party district leader) for the Rhine-Ruhr District. Kaufmann put him in touch with Gregor Strasser , a leading Nazi organiser in northern Germany, who hired him to work on their weekly newspaper and undertake secretarial work for the regional party offices. He was also put to work as party speaker and representative for Rhineland - Westphalia . Strasser founded the National Socialist Working Association on 10 September 1925,
46104-458: Was photographed by the SS . In total, between April and November 1944, Auschwitz II received over 585,000 Jews from over a dozen regions as far as Greece, Italy, and France, including 426,000 Jews from Hungary, 67,000 from Łódź , 25,000 from Theresienstadt , and the last 23,000 Jews from the General Government. Auschwitz was liberated by the Red Army on 27 January 1945, when the gassing had already stopped. Historians disagree as to when and how
46330-419: Was a difficult boss and liked to berate his staff in public. Goebbels was successful at his job, however; Life wrote in 1938 that "[p]ersonally he likes nobody, is liked by nobody, and runs the most efficient Nazi department." John Gunther wrote in 1940 that Goebbels "is the cleverest of all the Nazis", but could not succeed Hitler because "everybody hates him". The Reich Film Chamber, which all members of
46556-426: Was a dramatic increase in unemployment. During this time, the Strasser brothers started publishing a new daily newspaper in Berlin, the Nationaler Sozialist . Like their other publications, it conveyed the brothers' own brand of Nazism, including nationalism, anti-capitalism, social reform, and anti-Westernism. Goebbels complained vehemently about the rival Strasser newspapers to Hitler and admitted that their success
46782-410: Was a transit camp for Jews en route to extermination camps . In a sophisticated propaganda effort, fake shops and cafés were erected to imply that the Jews lived in relative comfort. The guests enjoyed the performance of a children's opera, Brundibár , written by inmate Hans Krása . The hoax was so successful for the Nazis that they went on to make a propaganda film Theresienstadt . The shooting of
47008-453: Was also Jewish, recommended Goebbels write his thesis on Wilhelm von Schütz. After submitting the thesis and passing his oral examination, Goebbels received his PhD on 21 April 1922. By 1940 he had written 14 books. Goebbels returned home and worked as a private tutor. He also found work as a journalist and was published in the local newspaper. His writing during that time reflected his growing antisemitism and dislike for modern culture. In
47234-402: Was also involved in the production of a small collection of silent films that could be shown at party meetings, though they did not yet have enough equipment to widely use this medium. Many of Goebbels' campaign posters used violent imagery such as a giant half-clad male destroying political opponents or other perceived enemies such as "International High Finance". His propaganda characterised
47460-469: Was built of brick and cement mortar in 1943, and the three-track rail spur was added. Until mid-August, 45,000 Thessaloniki Jews were murdered in a mere six months, including over 30,000 Jews from Sosnowiec (Sosnowitz) and Bendzin Ghettos . The spring of 1944 marked the beginning of the last phase of the Final Solution at Birkenau. The new big ramps and sidings were constructed, and two freight elevators were installed inside Crematoria II and III for moving
47686-412: Was causing his own Berlin newspapers to be "pushed to the wall". In late April 1930, Hitler publicly and firmly announced his opposition to Gregor Strasser and appointed Goebbels to replace him as Reich leader of Nazi Party propaganda. One of Goebbels' first acts was to ban the evening edition of the Nationaler Sozialist . Goebbels was also given control of other Nazi papers across the country, including
47912-419: Was explicitly addressed by Heinrich Himmler in his Posen speeches made to the leadership of the Nazi Party on 4 October and during a conference in Posen ( Poznań ) of 6 October 1943 in occupied Poland. Himmler explained why the Nazi leadership found it necessary to murder Jewish women and children along with the Jewish men. The assembled functionaries were told that the Nazi state policy was "the extermination of
48138-432: Was formulated in procedural and geopolitical terms by Nazi leadership in January 1942 at the Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, and culminated in the Holocaust , which saw the murder of 90% of Polish Jews , and two-thirds of the Jewish population of Europe. The nature and timing of the decisions that led to the Final Solution is an intensely researched and debated aspect of the Holocaust. The program evolved during
48364-503: Was given control over the local Sturmabteilung (SA) and Schutzstaffel (SS) and answered only to Hitler. The party membership numbered about 1,000 when Goebbels arrived, and he reduced it to a core of 600 of the most active and promising members. To raise money, he instituted membership fees and began charging admission to party meetings. Aware of the value of publicity (both positive and negative), he deliberately provoked beer-hall battles and street brawls, including violent attacks on
48590-400: Was incorporated into the Chamber of Culture. The department controlled the licensing of every film prior to its production. Sometimes the government selected the actors for a film, financed the production partially or totally, and granted tax breaks to the producers. Awards for "valuable" films would decrease taxes, thus encouraging self-censorship among movie makers. Under Goebbels and Hitler,
48816-487: Was now married and had a small child. He was quick to fall in love, but easily tired of a relationship and moved on to someone new. He worried too about how a committed personal relationship might interfere with his career. The ban on the Nazi Party was lifted before the Reichstag elections on 20 May 1928. The Nazi Party lost nearly 100,000 voters and earned only 2.6 per cent of the vote nationwide. Results in Berlin were even worse, where they attained only 1.4 per cent of
49042-433: Was one of Adolf Hitler 's closest and most devoted followers, known for his skills in public speaking and his deeply virulent antisemitism which was evident in his publicly voiced views. He advocated progressively harsher discrimination, including the extermination of the Jews in the Holocaust . Goebbels, who aspired to be an author, obtained a doctorate in philology from the University of Heidelberg in 1921. He joined
49268-446: Was ordered personally by Himmler. He set the initial deadline for 31 December 1942. When the Wehrmacht invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the area of the General Government was enlarged by the inclusion of regions that had been annexed by the Soviet Union since the 1939 invasion. The murders of Jews from the Łódź Ghetto in the Warthegau district began in early December 1941 with the use of gas vans (approved by Heydrich) at
49494-420: Was organised into seven departments: administration and legal; mass rallies, public health, youth, and race; radio; national and foreign press; films and film censorship; art, music, and theatre; and protection against counter-propaganda, both foreign and domestic. Goebbels's style of leadership was tempestuous and unpredictable. He would suddenly change direction and shift his support between senior associates; he
49720-412: Was the subject of the film Triumph of the Will , one of several Nazi propaganda films directed by Leni Riefenstahl . It won the gold medal at the 1935 Venice Film Festival . At the 1935 Nazi party congress rally at Nuremberg , Goebbels declared that "Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself." Goebbels was involved in planning the staging of
49946-404: Was the target date for going to war in the east. Goebbels was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of Hitler aggressively pursuing Germany's expansionist policies sooner rather than later. At the time of the Reoccupation of the Rhineland in 1936, Goebbels summed up his general attitude in his diary: "[N]ow is the time for action. Fortune favors the brave! He who dares nothing wins nothing." In
50172-430: Was the top student of his class and was given the traditional honour of speaking at the awards ceremony. His parents initially hoped that he would become a Catholic priest, which Goebbels seriously considered. He studied literature and history at the universities of Bonn , Würzburg , Freiburg and Munich , aided by a scholarship from the Albertus Magnus Society. By this time Goebbels had begun to distance himself from
50398-454: Was thicker and shorter than his left foot. Just prior to starting grammar school he underwent an operation, which failed to correct the problem. Goebbels wore a metal brace and a special shoe because of his shortened leg and walked with a limp. He was rejected for military service in World War I because of this deformity. Goebbels was educated at a Gymnasium , where he completed his Abitur (university entrance examination) in 1917. He
50624-413: Was to be extremely guarded when discussing the Final Solution. For example, Mark Roseman wrote that euphemisms were "their normal mode of communicating about murder". However, Jeffrey Herf has argued that the role of euphemisms in Nazi propaganda has been exaggerated, and in fact Nazi leaders often made direct threats against Jews. For example, during his speech of 30 January 1939 , Hitler threatened "
50850-484: Was to be sent to extermination camps in occupied areas of Poland and killed. His diary entries of the period show that he was well aware of the fate of the Jews. "In general, it can probably be established that 60 per cent of them will have to be liquidated, while only 40 per cent can be put to work. ... A judgment is being carried out on the Jews which is barbaric but thoroughly deserved," he wrote on 27 March 1942. Goebbels had frequent discussions with Hitler about
51076-468: Was to remove Jews from German cultural and economic life, and eventually to remove them from the country altogether. In addition to his propaganda efforts, Goebbels actively promoted the persecution of the Jews through pogroms , legislation, and other actions. Discriminatory measures he instituted in Berlin in the early years of the regime included bans against their using public transport and requiring that Jewish shops be marked as such. In November 1938,
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