Adolf Hitler - His Manipulation of Propaganda and the Media

By Eva Kratochvil

When Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany, one of the first things he did to secure his power was to seize control of the media and make use of propaganda to spread his anti-semitic, racist, anti-communist and nationalist messages. Hitler saw how powerful a tool the media was and he used it to his every advantage in winning support from his people.

Adolf Hitler took the use of propaganda and media censorship so seriously that he hired Joseph Goebbels as his propaganda minister. Under the Nazi regime, Goebbels' task was to ensure that the German people were never exposed to material that was defamatory to Hitler and the Nazis, he was also in charge of making sure that Hitler's message was relayed to the German people in the most convincing and efficient way possible.

Goebbels worked with the SS and the Gestapo, Hitler's secret police, to hunt down and arrest anyone who would put out anything damaging to Hitler's regime. Under Goebbels the Nazis even went so far as to set up the Reich Chamber of Commerce in 1933. This organization's role was to regulate art, literature, music, film, radio and newspapers. Anyone who wanted to produce materials from these categories had to be granted membership first and the Nazis didn't just admit anyone. They were very selective of who would be given the rights to produce any type of media and they had to conform with Nazi views.

Hitler used propaganda in a variety of ways to rally the German people to him. He produced films in which the greatness of the Nazi state were displayed and others which sent out very explicit anti-semitic messages. One example of this is “The Eternal Jew”, in which the jewish people are depicted as an infestation of rats. This is a scene from the movie. It's message is very disturbing and shows the extend of Hitler's anti-semitism:

Hitler also targeted children through movies depicting the proper behaviour of a loyal Nazi. Hitler's aim in this was to train the next generation of Nazis to continue his work when he stepped down.

Another way in which Hitler and Goebbels used propaganda to their advantage was through posters depicting the Allied powers as monsters, jewish people as a plague on society and communists as hellish creatures. There were even posters glorifying the Nazi regime and displaying how Hitler turned Germany into a prosperous country. Goebbels even staged Nazi rallies and televised them to convince the German people of Hitler's popularity.

The Nazi regime censored all media in a variety of ways. The first was through the sale of the Volksempfänger, also known as the people's receiver, which was an inexpensive radio set that anyone could afford. It was the only radio available in Germany and its reception was so weak that it could not receive any signals from outside the country. Hitler used this to his advantage because it ensured that the German people were not getting any outside information and because he seized control of the media, he could have his messages broadcast all the time. He even had speakers set up in the streets so that whenever he gave a speech, it was always heard. He would also force all public places to play his speeches. Here is an example of Goebbels used Hitler's speeches were used:

Another way by which he censored the media was through a technique called “jamming”. This meant that he would purposely block the radio signals from other countries so that they would not be accessible to the people in Germany. He also forced outside reporters who were doing stories in German-occupied territories to submit their scripts to his officers so that they could see whether they were acceptable. If they found defamatory material in the scripts, they did not allow the reporter to go on air.