Goebbels on Lenin and Hitler (1926)

In 1926 Goebbels frequently gave a speech titled “Lenin or Hitler,” an effort to win over the Marxists. It is a good example of his early rhetoric.

Rudolf Hess and Complainers

By mid-1934 Nazism's initial popularity was showing cracks. People complained about unsolved problems and abuses by Nazi party leaders. in June 1934 Rudolf Hess, then next-in-line to Hitler and head of the party chancellery, gave a speech to the Gau Essen party rally dealing with complainers. He is not happy.

Goebbels on Victory (March 1942)

On the fourth anniversary of Hitler’s takeover of Austria, Goebbels gave a speech in Vienna on “Victory at Any Price.” It was after the first winter of the war with the Soviet Union. Goebbels expresses optimism and congratulates the Viennese on their sacrifices for the Reich.

Völkischer Beobachter Front Pages

I've gotten a start on a long-term project: Posting the front pages of the Völkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party’s daily newspaper, for the war years. It is an interesting way to follow the trajectory of the war, beginning with victories in Poland and ending in disaster.

Since there are 1500 or so issues this will take me a while, but if you check the page occasionally new months will be added.

The Big Lie in 1945

I have added a rather mediocre article by Helmut Sündermann, a high official in the Nazi Party press department. The title is what attracted by interest: “The Big Lie.” In this case, Sündermann’s claim is that the Allies are using the “big lie” to falsely accuse Germany of being responsible for the war, when in fact he says it has only fought for its self-preservation. The Allies are the warmongers. Given the date, 21 January 1945, it is a weak effort. Given that Germany was being driven back on all fronts, it hardly seemed useful to argue that Germany’s cause was just.

Goebbels’s Penultimate Speech

 Goebbels delivered his penultimate speech over the radio on 28 February 1945, which I am adding today.  His final speech was on 19 April on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday. 

The military situation was grim. The Soviets were charging in from the east, the Americans and British from the west. Goebbels had no good news to give, as he commented privately in his diaries.  He was forced to resort to what Earnest Bramsted called the “lure of historical parallels.” If Frederick the great had done it then, Germany could to it in 1945.

On Nazi Speaking Guidelines

The Nazi Party had a large speaker corps.  They needed regular instruction on what to say in meetings throughout Germany.  There is a fair amount of material on the system on the GPA.

Recently, I added to my collection of the Aufklärungs- und Redner-Informationsmaterial issued by the party’s central propaganda office in cooperation with the  German Labor Front, although I am not sure how much of a contribution the latter organization made

I am adding some anti-Semitic instructions from March and April 1943.

That got me to review material on the GPA issued during the anti-Semitic campaigns of spring 1943.  There are general campaign guidelines, speaker information, articles by Joseph Goebbels, and directives for magazine editors.  Since it might be interesting to compare what was said in various places, here is a list of the material available on the GPA.

• Directives for the Anti-Bolshevist Propaganda Action: 20 February 1943
• Goebbels’s essay “The European Crisis”: 28 February 1943
• What Does Bolshevization Mean in Reality?: March 1943
• Speaker Express Information (“The Jewish Question as a Weapon at Home and Abroad”): 5 May 1943
• Goebbels’s essay “The War and the Jews”: 9 May 1943
• Speaker Express Information (“Twilight of the Jews”): 18 May 1943
• Anti-Semitic directives for magazine editors: 21 May 1943
• Goebbels’s essay “Driving Forces”: 6 June 1943

I don’t know of a complete set of this material.  I have most, but all of it.  For those who might find it useful, I provide an index to my collection.

Premature Nazi Claims of Victory over the Soviet Union (1941)

Goebbels preferred to avoid claiming victory until there actually was one to claim, realizing that building up hopes only to dash them made for poor propaganda. One of his competitors in the Nazi system, Press Chief Otto Dietrich, was less cautious. In early October Dietrich ordered the press to claim the Soviet Union had been so badly mauled by the ongoing German offensive as to assure its defeat. The result was this front page of the Völkischer Beobachter, the official party daily newspaper. Today I am adding a translation of the article claiming victory.

Other German newspapers followed suit.  Before  long, it became evident that however badly the Soviets had been defeated, they were not yet out of the war.   It was still more than a year away from the German defeat at Stalingrad, perhaps the major turning point of the war.

1942 Stuermer Article

Julius Streicher was convinced that there was an international Jewish conspiracy involving every single Jew on the planet.  Today I’m adding a 1942 article that asserts a Jewish gathering in Moscow provided proof of that conspiracy.  The orders from Jews in Moscow allegedly would be followed by their racial comrades wherever they might be.

  

The cover is by Fips (Phillipp Rupprecht), the regular Stürmer cartoonist. Its title: “Checking the Devil.”

More Directives for Propagandists

Thanks to the Landesarchiv Nordrhein-Westfalen I’ve added four new issues of the Redner-Schnellinformation, an irregular newsletter for the Nazi Party’s speakers.  There is no complete collection of these anywhere that I have been able to find, so I am always happy to discover new ones.  These deal with a variety of topics and provide interesting insight into the focus of the propaganda system at various times.

 The new material includes one issue of the successor to the newsletter, the Redner-Schnellbrief, which contained much less material.  I suspect it was because the staff at party propaganda headquarters had been reduced (and sent to the military), so there was less time to prepare material.

More Information Bulletins for Nazi Speakers

Goebbels was only the top of the Nazi propaganda apparatus.  It extended down to every corner of the country.  Speakers were a major part of the system.  They could be mobilized on short notice, and could be a little more open about some issues than the press.

They needed to be informed, and the party’s Reichspropagandaleitung put out a variety of publications to assist speakers.  The one I find most interesting is the Redner-Schnellinformation (Speaker Express Information) which provided them with material they were expected to put to immediate use.  Although the material had nothing all that confidential (despite the claims that it was “strictly confidential”), it provides a window into the specific content of Nazi propaganda at various times.

The first issue I’ve seen is from September 1941, although since that is #19 there were numerous earlier issues. The last issue I’ve seen is from February 1944. 

Today I’m adding six new issues, including interesting ones on the Russian murder of thousands of Polish officers at Katyn, training sessions for party members, and the loss of Sicily.

I have now translated all the issues I have access to (with two exceptions that I think of less interest).  Should you know of others I’ve not yet found, please let me know.

A Lot of New Material on the Nazi Speaker System

I have a particular interest in the lower levels of the Nazi propaganda system.  A significant part of that was the speaker corp that delivered the Nazi message to people throughout Germany.  These speakers needed to be informed  — and kept from saying the wrong things.

Today I’m adding a dozen or so editions of the Redner-Schnellinformation, an irregular publication for speakers. Some are from the beginning of the crisis on the Eastern Front.  Others deal with how to treat foreign leaders, how to present Rommel’s victories in Africa, or what to say to women.

This material was done in haste, often in response to immediate events.  Mistakes sometimes occur.  For example, in #24 (4 January 1942) speakers are instructed:

We have a political interest in distinguishing clearly and intentionally that part of the American continent, namely North America, that is waging war against us from the other countries of the American continent. Avoid, therefore, speaking of America as the enemy, but rather always heed the fact that our enemy is not all of America, but rather onlyNorth America or the United States of North America, or the USA. Speakers should be sure to clearly distinguish these terms.

Issue #26 (21 February 1942) followed these instructions.  However, they were forgotten by issue #28 (14 March 1942), in which there is this passage:

Given the continuing attempts through using reports of German losses in the East, through lying reports of vast armaments capacity in America, through political agitation in the occupied territories and in the neutral world, etc., they try to create the impression that they have not been affected by the results of the war and that we have no chance of final victory. 

I also added two essays by Joseph Goebbels from Das Reich that speakers were instructed to use as the basis of their speeches: “What is Sacrifice” and “A Word to All.”

Advice to Nazi Propagandists: January 1945

The Nazi propaganda apparatus functioned almost to the end.  Today I’m adding advice to propagandists in Gau Sachsen at the end of January 1945. A major Russian offensive had begun two weeks earlier.  The Battle of the Bulge was no longer a bulge.

The material does its best to find reason for hope, giving propagandists the outlines of arguments to use in talking with their fellow citizens, but any half-aware propagandist knew by then that things were grim.

Nazi Press Directives on the Invasion of the Soviet Union

For another purpose I’ve been looking through the Zeitschriften-Dienst again.  It was a weekly newsletter for magazine editors with instructions on how to cover the news.  I thought it would be interesting to trace instructions on the Soviet Union, beginning at the high point of Nazi optimism, October 1941, and ending in mid-January 1942.  It's interesting to see how the system responded when victory did not occur as rapidly as expected.

Two Nazi Anti-Semitic Posters from the East

A visitor to the site provided me with two vivid Nazi anti-Semitic posters I’d not seen before.  The first is, I think, in Ukrainian:

Google’s translation site suggests a meaning of “Satan has taken off his mask.”

The second I find particularly interesting:

I think it is in Ukrainian, which Google translates as “He poisons our lives.”  I had not realized that there was a Ukrainian translation of the book.

Dealing with the the Soviet Union (1939 and 1941)

I’ve been working at the German National Library in Leipzig this week, adding a burst of material as those those who follow this blog will have noticed.  Today I add two items from the Zeitschriften-Dienst.  This was a weekly newsletter that went to all magazine editors with material to incorporate into their publications.

First, there are guidelines from August 1939 when the German-Soviet agreements shocked the world and prepared the way for Hitler’s attack on Poland. This was a remarkable shift in German policy, which throughout the previous years had argued that Bolshevism was a great threat to the world. The material focuses on the economic benefits to Germany of the alliance and tells journalists to avoid all ideological matters.

Second is the directive from June 1941. Now the emphasis is on the great ideological differences between the two totalitarian states. The invasion started well from the Nazi perspective, and at the end of the article editors are told to remember that the invasion of the Soviet Union is a phase in the greater war against England. Things turned out a bit differently.

A 1932 Nazi Pamphlet for the Communists

I’m continuing to add early Nazi propaganda material to the site.  Today, I add a translation of The Bolshevist Swindle, a pamphlet published early in 1932 that was directed to the communists. It takes most German communists to be honest but deluded workers, and tries to prove that Stalin’s policies in the Soviet Union are worse than those of any Western capitalism.  At about the same time, a pamphlet by the same author titled The Sensationalist Newspapers Lie!  was released that was directed at the Socialists.

There are other pamphlets from the period on the GPA as well, including several published during the March and April 1932 presidential elections.  They demonstrate how serious the Nazis were in adapting their appeals to reach the most disparate audiences.

Advice to Nazi Speakers on the Invasion of the Soviet Union

As a rhetorician, I'm particularly interested in Nazi oratory.  Today I’m adding another page of advice sent to Nazi speakers, who addressed meetings throughout the country.  This material was released in September 1941, and gives speakers directions on how to handle the unexpectedly stubborn resistance on the part of the Soviet Union. The article basically says that it is the result of the primitive thinking of those in the Soviet Union and effective propaganda on the part of the communist government.

Anti-Bolshevist Poster from 1937

In 1937, the Nazis staged a major anti-Communist exhibition, part of a broad campaign. I've added a poster advertising the event. Parts of the program were already available on the GPA.

New Booklet for Boys on the Russian Campaign

Between 1940 and the end of 1942, the Nazis issued weekly 32-page booklets in a series titled Kriegsbücherei der deutschen Jugend ("War Library of the German Youth"). 156 appeared in the regular series, along with about a dozen special issues at the end.

I've added a translation of one of the last of the series, Waffen SS in Battle near Leningrad. Although it appeared in the late fall of 1942, it covered events of over a year before, when German forces were advancing toward Leningrad. I assume that, since the news on the Eastern Front was not all that good (the crisis at Stalingrad was clear to the leadership, if not yet the public), they were looking for a story of rapid advances rather than looming defeat.