Hitler, Gadhafi and Propaganda

By Sarah Volstad

Hitler and Gadhafi differ on many levels.   They lived in different times, and in two very dissimilar socio-cultural milieus.  Still, many resemblances exist between both men, the most important being that they were powerful dictators who used the media for propaganda.
Hitler’s strongest tool for success was propaganda.  In fact, it is often said that propaganda was the Nazis’ most dangerous weapon during the Second World War. 
By the time Hitler’s Nazis turned Germany into a single-party dictatorship, they were well on their way to orchestrating an incredible propaganda campaign.  Under the direction of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Propaganda Ministry took control of all forms of German communication to ensure that any ideology in any way opposing Nazi beliefs and the regime would be censored or eliminated.  To do this, Goebbels used many sophisticated and effective tools.  Books, often by Jewish authors, were burned in massive bonfires.  Reporters were strictly censored by German authorities. The Volksempfanger, or the “people’s receiver”, was the only radio available to the German people.  Newsreels were manipulated.  Loud speakers were installed in the streets. Even private communication was censored.  All grounds were covered to ensure complete control over the information people received.  Goebbels set out to prove that if lies were repeated frequently enough in mass media, people would begin to accept them as the truth.  Hitler himself took this one step further by writing in Mein Kampf:
“The chief function of propaganda is to convince the masses, whose slowness of understanding needs to be given time so they may absorb information; and only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea on their mind."


Hitler was fully aware of what he was doing.  He was brainwashing his people, constantly feeding them ideas and information that would further him and his cause.  With little technology available in the 1930s and 1940s and strict Nazi censorship, the German people had no means of consuming objective, outside information.  They had little choice but to bite the bait.


While Gadhafi may have hoped to achieve success similar to Hitler’s, it would have been very difficult to do given the technology available to the Libyan people in 2011.  With computers, digital cameras, cell phones and the Internet, censoring all the information going in and out of a country is nearly impossible.  It would have been very difficult for Gadhafi to “brainwash” to the extent that Hitler did because Libyans were able to communicate and connect freely with the rest of the world.  With the click of a mouse, an email could be sent to friends and family around the globe describing the sorry state of politics in the country.  Due to technology, the world could see what was really going on in Libya.  This led to the creation of a coalition of NATO Allies and non-NATO contributors intervening to protect civilians under threat of attack in Libya. 


Gadhafi’s use of propaganda is evident.  In fact, Libya's state TV station was used to broadcast pro-Gadhafi propaganda since the unrest began in February.  Take this video for example:

Gadhafi made good use of Libyan state TV to promote himself.  His loss of the station in August is thought to have contributed to his demise.


Hitler was an intelligent man.  He knew that not all of his people agreed with the regime and Nazi ideology.  This is one of the reasons he felt it necessary to use such strong, widespread propaganda and censorship.  He needed to get people thinking like him and keep them in line. 


Gadhafi, on the other hand, seems to have been disillusioned about the way people felt about him.  In the famous interview with the BBC (posted above), Gadhafi’s message was that his people loved him.  “[My people] are supporting us.  They are not against us,” he is heard saying.  “They love me.  All my people with me.  They love me all.  They will die to protect me, my people.”  Perhaps he truly believed this.   Or perhaps he was using Goebbels’s method whereby he believed that repeating this phrase enough times could actually sway public opinion. If this was the case,it didn't work the way he hoped it would as he was ultimately captured, beaten and shot by his own people.