Miscellaneous Nazi Speaker Directives (May 1942)

 Today I am adding a May 1942 set of Nazi speaker directives covering an interesting range of topics.  One deals with foreign press reports that could be used in speeches. Another directive orders speakers to use the word “propaganda” only for German efforts to influence opinion. The enemy efforts are “agitation.” This is the last of these for a while, since I’ve gone through what I have at hand.

Nazi Speaker Information on Wendell Willkie

I’ve had a bit of extra time the last two days, so I’ve translated another example of the material intended for Nazi speakers.  This one is from November 1942, and mines a speech by Wendell Willkie (who had run against Roosevelt in 1940) for evidence to use in speeches attacking the Allies. It also spends some time on submarine warfare, which at the time was one of the few bright spots from the Nazi perspective.

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.

Another Fabricated Hitler Quotation

Although there is no shortage of quotations from Nazi sources that demonstrate its evil, people occasionally invent quotations that sound like what they think the Nazis would say to support a point.  I have a page on false Nazi quotations that looks into such matters.

Today I’m adding a quotation found in more than 1,700,000 web pages and a fair number of books.  Hitler is alleged to have said: “What luck for rulers that men do not think.” I’m not absolutely certain is it a fabrication, but I’m almost sure.  It isn’t in Mein Kampf, nor the published edition of Hitler’s speeches.  No one I can find who cites it provide a source. One book cited by several others provides the quotation, but no source.

But it sounds like what people think Hitler would have said, so it keeps spreading.

German Foreign Office Propaganda from 1941

In the convoluted system of Nazi propaganda, all sorts of people and offices produced propaganda, sometimes to the considerable annoyance of Joseph Goebbels. One interesting outlet was the Deutsche diplomatisch-politsche Korrespondenz, something of a mimeographed press release that was a semi-official  service of the German Foreign Office.  It was intended primarily for the press.   I’m adding translations of three of the issues from 1941.  The first, dated 10 October 1941, earned the wrath of Joseph Goebbels, since it claimed that the campaign in Russia was essentially over and that Russia had collapsed.  That turned out not to be entirely accurate.  Goebbels would have preferred to hold back claims of complete victory until complete victory had been attained.  The second is a completely misguided analysis of British politics.  The third was issued after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, but before Hitler’s declaration of war on 11 December.

Another Youth Talk by Walter Groß (1935)

I recently bought two pamphlets with radio talks for the youth  by Walter Groß, head of the Nazi Party’s Racial Policy Office.  The first I added about a week ago.  Now I’m adding the second, Blood is Holy, delivered a year later (1935). Like the first, it is an effort to translate Nazi racial theory into language understandable by children.

There was a great deal of Nazi material on this topic.  The best book on the subject is Claudia Koonz’s The Nazi Conscience.

The Ministry of Propaganda in 1942

A year or so back, I bought a stack of Signal, a bi-monthly illustrated propaganda magazine the Nazis issued in about two dozen languages.  The stack was missing one issue I particularly wanted from August 1942 — a story on Goebbels’s  Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment.  Just recently, I managed to secure the missing issue, and have added it to the GPA. It’s most interesting for a variety of pictures, two of which are below.

This a device that allowed Goebbels to interrupt all German radio programming to make an announcement.

Every day at 11:00 a.m., Goebbels held a conference with top propagandists.