The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic
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Democratic marriage ritual. Party members are not expected to share the same dogmatic view on the nature of language or agree on how the Girl Scouts should conduct their activities. Standard political parties, in short, are groups of people with overlapping but not identical attitudes and interests who do not expect their parties to resolve all of life’s questions.
In contrast, the assertion of the totalitarian parties was explicitly total.
Both Nazism and Marxism-Leninism claimed to have truth. Lacking a god to stand behind, their truths could triumph only if their adherents fought for them. Christians may assume they have done their duty by acting as their faith commands and that God will act should he wish. Nazis or Marxist-Leninists depended on their own efforts or on those of the party to realize truth. As I noted in the introduction, Nazism and Marxism-Leninism resembled state religions, an intermingling of the secular and the sacred. They made claims not only on party members, but on everyone. No corner of culture or society was in theory exempt. For Christianity, everything is subject to the will of God. For totalitarianism, everything is subject to the human will (that is, all is political). The totalitarian party knows that to permit islands of the nonpolitical is to allow breeding grounds of heresy or apathy.
Totalitarians were therefore explicit in their claim on every aspect of human life. A speaker at a 1938 Hitler Youth leadership gathering made the totalitarian claim forthrightly: “The worldview of National Socialism, having conquered the entire nation, now begins to place its stamp on every area of life. . . . [The goal is] the transformation of every aspect of our life, down to the smallest detail.”6 Many similar statements were made by Nazi leaders.
They meant it. In 1939 the Nazi party’s confidential magazine for political leaders carried an article on home decoration. It claimed that it was
“the unspoken duty of political leaders, as it is of all National Socialists, to live their personal lives according to the National Socialist idea. . . . A major part of this is our environment, which we ourselves create: in our families, our homes, our ceremonies.” The article goes on to explain how one should, as a National Socialist, decorate one’s home.7 If interior decoration falls under the purview of the party, what does not? Totalitarian worldviews suffuse private life within public ideology, leaving few avenues for political apostasy to develop.
The GDR was equally sweeping in its claims. The GDR’s approved definition of a worldview is enlightening: “A systematic and complete explanation of nature, society, the role of people in the world, and the formation of This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:33 UTC
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Chapter One
rules for the social behavior of human beings. . . . The role of a worldview is to give a person a full orientation for all of his thought, behavior and practical activity.”8 As the book presented to fourteen-year-olds in the Jugendweihe ceremony (the socialist equivalent of the Christian rite of confirmation) in the mid-1970s put it: “To keep you from going astray in the world so that the happiness you dream of will largely become reality, you need a compass for your life, an ever-present way of knowing which direction to go, an intellectual framework. In the world-wide battle of our day between the new and the old, between what is coming and what is perish-ing, between a changing world and one holding stubbornly to the past, between peace and aggression, between truth and lies—in our day of the battle between socialism and imperialism there is only one correct intellectual framework: the worldview of Marxism-Leninism.”9 Consequently, the GDR’s worldview provided ways to see education, the family, leisure, and sports from an approved political angle. The front-page editorial in a 1980
issue of Trommel, a weekly for children, responded to complaints that it had too much political content: “Nothing against pleasant trivialities, but only he has the right to enjoy them who also is concerned with the main issues of life. That includes politics. That is important. There cannot be too much about politics. It guides all our lives.”10 Everything was political.
Just as Christians maintain that personal salvation is necessary to transform the human soul, Marxism-Leninism insisted on a kind of intellectual salvation, sometimes termed “clarity.” A 1958 report from Berlin noted the view that some citizens could become politically active only when difficulties in production and distribution were resolved. Instead, the report argued: “The mistakes and errors can only be remedied when people are clear in their heads.”11 Clarity, in its GDR definition, meant that people had to accept Marxism-Leninism before they could see reality correctly and eventually resolve their problems.
Both National Socialism and Marxism-Leninism, in short, defined themselves as worldviews that claimed every aspect of life. Who determined what that gospel was? What was its content? I shall begin by looking at the
“deities” and “scriptures” of the systems, then consider their methods of
“worship,” and conclude with a summary of their respective “theologies.”
“The Führer Is Always Right”
National Socialism resembled a religious cult whose founder still walked among the faithful. There was an aura of the superhuman in the way Nazis This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:33 UTC
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presented Hitler. Hermann Göring used the language of papal infallibility in 1941: “We National Socialists declare with complete conviction that for us, the Führer is infallible in all political and other matters that affect the people’s national and social interests.”12 Germans believe “deeply and unshak-ably” in Hitler’s divinely ordained mission, he continued. German soldiers and members of the Hitler Youth swore a personal oath to Hitler, pledging absolute obedience, as if professing and confirming their faith before their god and their fellow believers. A common poster during the Nazi years had a towering image of Hitler with the caption: “One people, one Reich, one Führer.”13 A small 1941 book published by the Nazi Party’s publishing house can only be called devotional literature. People were asked what the Führer meant to them. In the words of a soldier: “Our Führer is the most unique man in history. I believe unreservedly in him and in his movement.
He is my religion.”14 These examples could be multiplied.
An interesting manifestation of the Hitler cult is the thousands of poetic hymns to the Führer. A slim volume titled The Song of the Faithful appeared in 1938. It contained twenty-nine short poems by anonymous members of the Hitler Youth organization in Austria before the 1938 Anschluß. A typical poem was titled “Our Führer”:
There are so many people who bless you,
Even if their blessing is a silent one—
There are so many who have never met you,
And yet you are their Savior.
When you speak to your German people,
The words go across the land
And sink into countless hearts,
Hearts in which your image long has stood.
Sometimes the vision of you brings life
To those in the midst of hard labor and heavy obligation . . .
So many are devoted to you
And seek in your spirit a clear light.15
The language is unmistakably religious, with words like bless, Savior, life, devoted, spirit, and light. It makes sense only if one sees Hitler as a Christ figure, a union of the divine and the human. The Song of the Faithful received the German national book award (which Goebbels used to favor books with the correct content). In the dust jacket copy, Goebbels wrote:
“We had almost decided to split the award or draw lots for it when a thin This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:33 UTC
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Chapter One
little book of poetry appeared on the market. It made all further consideration pointless. This book fulfills the goals of the our book prize better than any other.”
Such poetry would have been ludicrous if written about Roosevelt or Churchill, but Nazis did not see Hitler as an ordinary mortal. Although they had to recognize Hitler’s mortality, as did he himself (he sometimes noted his uniqueness and the importance of accomplishing his goals before his death), Hitler was presented as the person in whom Germans could place absolute trust.
Goebbels gave annual speeches on the occasion of Hitler’s birthday, 20
April. They are remarkable reading. Even in 1945, Goebbels drew on religious language: “We feel him [Hitler] in us and around us.”16 Earlier speeches in the series made similar claims.17 Hitler’s spirit was palpable, omnipresent.
The quintessential Hitler is presented visually in Triumph of the Will, Leni Riefenstahl’s film of the 1934 Nuremberg rally. Hitler is seen in ways that emphasize his extraordinary nature. His plane drifts silently through the clouds, accompanied by ethereal music. The shadow of his plane, in the shape of a cross, falls on marching columns of his faithful followers. He enters Nuremberg in a triumphal procession. The camera views him close up or from below, magnifying his stature. Radiance emanates from him, as, for example, in the motorcade into Nuremberg, when Hitler’s cupped hand catches the light. Hitler, holding the Blood Banner ( Blutfahne, the flag carried during the 1923 putsch), consecrates new party standards. Rudolf Hess announces that Hitler is Germany and Germany is Hitler. These are not images of an ordinary human being.
Hitler’s remarkable status is evident from iconographic images. Photographs, paintings, and sculptures were carefully controlled, requiring Hitler’s personal approval.18 At least 2,450,000 copies of a 1936 album titled Adolf Hitler: Pictures of the Life of the Führer, with tributes to Hitler written by Nazi leaders, were printed.19 People bought the album and pasted in pictures received as premiums for buying cigarettes. Heinrich Hoffmann published over a dozen books of Hitler photographs, and they sold in large numbers. The Hitler No One Knows, a collection of “private” photographs, for example, sold at least 400,000 copies.20 Rudolf Herz comments that Hitler’s
“photographic omnipresence” during the Third Reich “was an integral means of presenting the charismatic image of the leadership.”21
The Nazis did not have time to develop a television system, but if they had, Hitler’s image would have filled it as well. As Eugen Hadamovsky, the This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:33 UTC
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Nazi director of broadcasting, said when experimental transmissions began in 1935: “Now, in this hour, broadcasting is called upon to fulfill its biggest and most sacred mission: to plant the image of the Fuehrer indelibly in all German hearts.”22
As the superhuman figure in the religion of Nazism, Hitler knew the importance of defining the Nazi worldview. Even Hitler’s own speeches could be printed only with his approval, according to a 1937 party directive.23 In 1939 Hitler ordered the texts of speeches that dealt with the Nazi worldview be approved in advance by Rudolf Hess.24 After Hess flew to England, Hitler personally approved such speeches.
Worldviews have texts of varying degrees of importance. Mein Kampf was the bible of National Socialism.25 George L. Mosse doubts that Hitler’s book was a bible in the same sense that the works of Marx and Lenin were to the Communists, since “the ideas of Mein Kampf had been translated into liturgical forms and left the printed page to become mass rites of national, Aryan worship.”26 It is true that the ideas of Mein Kampf were realized in a variety of ways, but the book remained central to Nazism. It was published in enormous editions (over ten million copies by 1945). City mayors presented elegant editions to newlyweds. The goal was to have a copy in every home and library. Like a family Bible, it was often unread, but its mere presence testified to its importance.
Hitler’s speeches had equal canonical authority. They were events of major significance. Just after the war began the party propaganda office in Linz published advice on studying and using Hitler’s speeches. It is a remarkable document:
The Führer’s words are seeds in the people’s hearts. The party member must care for this seed and see that it bears fruit. He will therefore study the Führer’s speech word for word over and over again in order to master the arguments that he will need in face-to-face propaganda. If he is able to rely on the words of the Führer in all his conversations, he will be able to draw on the Führer’s powerful authority to reach and silence even the most stubborn complainer. . . .
The task of each propagandist, therefore, is to guard the national experience of each Führer speech, to nourish the flame of enthusiasm, ever to encourage it. He will be able to do this if he gives his full devotion and earnestness to studying each word, letting them work on him each day anew. Then his conversations with citizens will be imbued with a glimmer of the rousing and unifying power that dwells in all the Führer’s words.27
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Chapter One
This is a description of a sacred text, not a political speech. The sacredness of Hitler’s words was emphasized in a widely distributed picture titled “In the Beginning Was the Word,” not an accidental quotation of the opening words of the Gospel of John. Hitler is seen speaking to a group of rapt early followers.28
Just as the Bible is assiduously mined for proof texts, Hitler citations flooded the Third Reich. Enormous numbers of examples could be given. A 1942 biology textbook cited Mein Kampf seven times on “The Laws of Life.”29 Unser Wille und Weg (the monthly for propagandists) regularly quoted it. The party propaganda office published 300,000 copies of a weekly quotation poster intended for public display, many of which carried Hitler quotations.30 The one for 4–10 May 1941, for example, quoted Hitler as saying: “No one will take the ground on which the German soldier stands.” Die Kunst im Deutschen Reich, the party’s magazine of the arts, included elegantly printed Hitler quotations, suitable for framing, during the early months of the war.
Some homes had a “Hitler shrine.” As Julius Streicher’s Der Stürmer put it in 1936: “German citizens give expression to their attitude toward the Third Reich by hanging the Führer’s picture in their home.”31 The same year, a German children’s magazine told its readers how to respond to Hitler’s birthday: “All German children think about the Führer on 20 April, his birthday. We want to decorate his picture, which should hang in every home, with a green wreath we have made with our own hands. That is how we show our love to the man to whom we owe so much thanks.”32
Germans had hung pictures of saints and political leaders on their walls before the Nazis. The difference was that reluctance to hang Hitler’s picture on the wall now became evidence of disloyalty.
By May 1933 cities and towns were already renaming prominent streets and public squares for Hitler, and soon after for other prominent Nazis as well. Kaiser-Straße became Adolf-Hitler-Straße (and after 1945, Karl-Marx-Straße in the GDR).
Not only did Germans encounter Hitler’s image or words wherever they turned, they were expected to add their own voices to the chorus. The most obvious way was through the Heil Hitler greeting, the “German Greeting,” as the Nazis called it. It quickly became a ritual of everyday life.
Publicly posted signs announced: “Our greeting is Heil Hitler.” Television broadcasts ended with the announcer’s Heil Hitler.
The greeting was a barometer of Nazi loyalty. An American visitor wrote in 1935: “‘Heil Hitler!’ is now the nation’s greeting, with people of all This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:33 UTC
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rms
Secular Faiths
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classes, everywhere.”33 In 1943, on the other hand, a party member gave the greeting to fifty-one people he encountered in the town of Barmen.
Two returned it.34 The worsening war situation made citizens less eager to proclaim their faith in the Führer. Newspaper obituary notices for soldiers who fell in combat were expected to announce that they had died “for Führer, people and fatherland.” When the percentage of announcements actually doing so fell to 4 percent in some newspapers by late 1944, the phrasing became obligatory.35
Hitler’s personal popularity was high. It was, however, dependent on his successes. As a visible deity, Hitler’s power rested on his “miracles,” a word the Nazis regularly used to describe his accomplishments. Failure of any kind could not be admitted. Hitler was accustomed to appearing at moments of triumph, as, for example, at the spectacular reception in Berlin after the fall of France. As the war went on and those moments grew fewer, his appearances declined as well. Goebbels’s diaries regularly note his efforts to persuade Hitler to make public appearances late in the war, something Hitler was reluctant to do absent victory. Churchill began a speech on 4 June 1940 by admitting that what had happened in France was “a colossal military disaster,” but Hitler could not say the same about Stalingrad. A deity who loses battles has limited credibility, as Hitler well knew. Even in private conversations with his intimates, he blamed reverses on others, never himself.
The Nazi canon went beyond Mein Kampf. Works by Alfred Rosenberg, Rudolf Hess, Joseph Goebbels, Otto Dietrich, Hermann Göring, and Robert Ley also had near canonical authority. They lacked the power of Hitler’s words and were not cited as frequently, though Goebbels and Göring were regulars on the “Quotation of the Week” posters.