Rallying the Masses

Many Nazis assumed everyone shared their anti-semetic beliefs which created power in numbers. The example below shows this type of propaganda in the popular antisemetic newspaper, Der Sturmer (The Attacker).

"Good god, let's try to find one corner of the earth where no one reads Der Sturmer."
~ Der Sturmer Newspaper (captioning caricature to the right)

Rescue Expedition, Der Stumer

"Nazis targeted younger generations with propaganda exposure at a very early age by establishing the Hitler Youth. Hitler Youth was mandatory for all Aryans between ages 10 to 18"(USHMM).

The goal was to discourage individual thinking and promote self sacrificing behavior to cultivate a generation of loyal soldiers in the nazi regime.

"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to."
~ Adolf Hitler

Hitler Youth, Emma Butcher

Propaganda targeted the uneducated because Hitler believed that it was meant for those “who cannot comprehend logic and intellect, but can be convinced of anything if their emotions are manipulated”. Repetition was one of the primary tactics used in Nazi propaganda. Hitler stated this was necessary so Nazi ideals could be “engraved in the mind of even the slowest person” because they tended to be “of very little intelligence and quite forgetful”.

"All propaganda must be confined to a few bare necessities and then must be expressed in a few stereotyped formulas...Only constant repetition will finally succeed in imprinting an idea upon the memory of a crowd."
~ Adolf Hitler

Nazi propaganda poster, 1937, Herbert Agricola, Library of Congress

Repetition helped rally masses of uneducated people, but it also built up tolerance in the educated. While propaganda was not meant to elicit support from this group, exposure to simplistic and repetitive propaganda created a new version of normalcy, which resulted in their complacency.