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.

Goebbels Boasts of Electoral Success

Hitler did not win the German presidential election of 10 April 1932, but did well enough to make Goebbels write a boasting article titled "The Rising Tide."

The Red Plague (1930)

I’ve got a peculiar fondness for Fritz Reinhardt, who appeared in my first published article as the founder of a Nazi correspondence school that trained public speakers. Today I’m adding part of a pamphlet titled The Red Plague, a 1930 attack on the Social Democrats. I’d started out intending to translate the whole pamphlet, but the economic language is tough going so I'm not doing it all.

Goebbels on a Lost Election (1932)

After great success in the July 1932 Reichstag election, Nazi vote totals sank four months later during  the 6 November election.  The party’s momentum seemed at an end and there was considerable depression among the Nazis.

The day after the election Goebbels wrote an article titled “The Chancellor without a People.” He minimized Nazi losses while claiming (with some justice) that the election had been a disaster for Reich Chancellor von Papen.  With no hope of a parliamentary majority, he dissolved the Reichstag before it was able to do anything.

Goebbels Responds to Insults

Joseph Goebbels was himself a master of invective, but wasn’t happy when others used it against him.  Today I am adding a 1929 essay from Der Angriff in which he takes up a variety of accusations against him.  He basically says he will not dignify them with a reply, but will instead respond in ways his enemies do not expect.

Erwin Schockel's "The Political Poster"

Erwin Schockel’s book Das politische Plakat is one of the most interesting Nazi books on propaganda.  Published in 1938 (with a second printing in 1939), it was intended as the first of a series of books for Nazi propagandists.  The outbreak of war put an end to the plan.

I’ve translated what to me is the most interesting chapter: a discussion of good and bad posters, with many examples.  For example, this poster from the Economic Party is discussed as an amusingly bad poster.

This, on the other hand, is a good one:

Schockel thinks it has a serious weakness: Hitler looks like a Hollywood film actor in soft focus rather than the all-powerful Führer.

Nazi History in Gau Westfalen-Süd

The Nazis produced a series of histories of their early years in various German districts.  These were typically thick volumes filled with stories of brave Nazis fighting against great odds until Hitler’s victory in 1933.

Today I am adding sections of one such book, a history of party activities in Gau Westfalen-Süd.  Since the book runs over 600 pages, I am translating only enough to give a sense of its contents.

Goebbels on Depravity in Berlin

Today I’m adding an article from January 1928 in which Goebbels claims that the center of Berlin is a den of iniquity that the Nazis will clean up once in power.

The image is the dust jacket  to a later collection of essays in which the article is reprinted.

Two New Early Goebbels Articles

I’ve added two more articles by Goebbels from Der Angriff. The first is a 19928 article titled “Why Do We Oppose the Jews?” The second (also 1928), titled “When Hitler Speaks,” is another example of Goebbels’s attempt to present Hitler as a superhuman figure.

A 1932 Nazi Pamphlet

I particularly like to add ephermera to the site, items that may have had mass distribution at the time but have largely disappeared.

Today I’m adding a pamphlet from the first round of the 1932 German presidential election, titled Adolf Hitler: German Worker and Front Soldier.  It was issued by the party’s propaganda office in Munich and surely had an enormous distribution.

It gives a brief biography and attempts to demonstrate Hitler’s leadership by a variety of examples. 

Julius Streicher Meeting Posters

I’m adding a collection of eight posters advertising meetings addressed by Julius Streicher between 1922 and 1933.  After joining Hitler’s Nazi Party in 1922, Streicher began speaking extensively outside his home city of Nuremberg.

This poster promotes an August 1923 meeting in Vienna.

Goebbels on International High Finance (1928)

I’m adding a 1928 article by Joseph Goebbels titled “The World Enemy.” Usually that phrase meant the Jews in Nazi rhetoric, but in this case Goebbels doesn’t make that explicit.  He argues that the forces of world finance are at the brink of destroying Germany.

An Anti-Semitic Poster from 1932

A friend of the site provides me with this interesting image that I have added to the poster page:

Death to Marxism

Join Us!

It probably was issued for one of Reichstag elections of 1932, since the snake has the three-arrow symbol of the “Iron Front,” an anti-Nazi coalition established in December.  It could also be from the Prussian elections that year.  It looks to be something produced by a regional party organization, since posters produced by the Reichspropagandaleitung were generally more polished.

The Nazi-Sozi: A Goebbels Pamphlet from 1926

I’ve been rather remiss in adding to the GPA for the past several months, given other things going on.  Today, I’m adding an early effort by Joseph Goebbels titled The Nazi-Sozi.  It first appeared in 1926, before Hitler sent him to Berlin.

It takes the form of a dialogue between Goebbels and a rather dense German who has difficulty understanding what the Nazis are about.

It’s a good look at early Nazi thinking.

Goebbels on the Political Situation (August 1931)

Before Hitler’s takeover in 1933 Joseph Goebbels wrote a monthly essay for Unser Wille und Weg, the party periodical for propagandists, that outlined the Nazi take on current events.  Today I add his essay from August 1931, an interesting period.  There were no national elections that year, and there was frustration within the Party since things seemed to be moving slowly.  Goebbels laid out the propaganda line that the party was following.

He makes the claim that Germany would long-since have collapsed had it not been for the restraint of the Nazi Party.

A 1927 Nazi Caricature: Killing Jews with Poison Gas

In Mein Kampf, Hitler writes that Germany would not have lost World War I if 12,000 - 15,000 “Hebrew corruptors of the people” had been killed with poison gas.

There were not a lot of such suggestions in Nazi propaganda before 1933 of killing Jews en masse, but Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer did run occasional cartoons like this one that I am today adding to the page on pre-1933 cartoons from Der Stürmer.

A Nazi is pumping poison gas into a tunnel beneath an oak tree representing Germany. Dead Jewish rats are strewn about.  The caption: “When the vermin are dead, the German oak will flourish.”

Germans to be Exported (1931)

Fritz Reinhardt was a significant figure in Nazi propaganda.  Before 1933 he instituted a correspondence school that trained about 6,000 Nazi speakers.  He issued a barrage of material to support those speakers.

In 1929 he issued a pamphlet claiming that under the Young Plan, an international agreement on German reparations, Germans would be sent abroad to work for the French.  This is a follow-up pamphlet that appeared in October 1931, making the same claim.

Although like all good propaganda it provides enough evidence to make the argument at least superficially plausible, he does make the astonishing (and completely unsupported) statement that twenty to thirty million Germans would have to be sent abroad under the Young Plan.

New Nazi Propaganda Methods (1933)

The article I add today was obsolete when published.  It proposes a new method of propaganda, assigning speakers to go house-to-house during the periods between elections.

This was a strategy that had been used during the campaign in Lippe in January 1933, with some success.  The author, Leopold Gutterer, later a high official in the Propaganda Ministry, proposes that the method be applied throughout the country.

However, by the time the article appeared Hitler was Chancellor and the proposal was outdated.

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.

Nazi Pamphlet “Hitler to Brüning” (December 1931)

I’m gradually adding translations of material from before 1933.  Today, I’m posting an interesting pamphlet titled Hitler to Brüning. It’s the text of Hitler’s response to Chancellor Brüning’s emergency decree of early December 1931, which among other things banned political uniforms, meetings, and insignia.  Brüning at the time lacked a parliamentary majority and was maintained in power by Reich President Hindenburg, who under the Weimar Constitution had the authority to permit that.

It is an interesting example of Hitler’s rhetorical style — and was at the time persuasive not only to his Nazi followers, but probably to many others as well.