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Rachel Brenner
English 220
Gammage
5/5/2014
Research Argument

Nazi Propaganda

Abstract

Is Nazi Propaganda nihilistic? The Nazi party as a whole is not, but Nazi propaganda is
very nihilistic. Defining Nihilism is difficult, but it boils down to a lack of care of human life.
Propaganda is a message that a party wants to promote to invoke action in the community. The
Nazi party as a whole is to promote and advance Aryan Germans to center stage and in center
control. Nazi propaganda as a whole was to promote hate for Jews and to promote their death.
With the lack of care about human life, Nazi propaganda is nihilistic.
Introduction

The Nazi party had a great deal of care for their party and their partys message,
propaganda. Even though the Nazi party as a whole was not nihilistic, their message,
Propaganda, was. Throughout this paper I will show all aspects. First, what is nihilism?
Second, what is propaganda? Third, what was the Nazi party and how it came to be. Fourth,
what is Nazi propaganda? Lastly, I will make the connection between nihilism and Nazi
propaganda through historical articles.
Methods
I came up with the idea of Nazi propaganda when we were discussing Nietzsche and how
his work was used for the Nazi partys message. After already being fascinated by World War
Two and all the things surrounding it I thought I would take an in depth look at Nazi propaganda
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and how it relates to nihilism. The articles that I found through University of New Mexico
library online search show that Nazi propaganda is very nihilistic. I found two articles that were
on Joseph Goebbels who was the head of Nazi propaganda. He was the one that delivered the
Nazi message to the masses. Then I found a few articles that explained the reason for Genocide.
Every reason was extremely nihilistic. I then found an article explaining how doctors changed
their medical ethics when dealing with Jews because of the Nazi message. After all my research
I concluded that the Nazi party is not nihilistic, but their message, propaganda, certainly was.
Background
What is Nihilism?
In order to show the connection between Nihilism and Nazi propaganda we must first
learn what nihilism is. Looking up nihilism can be a bit tricky because it does not have one
definition. There are many forms and many ways to interrupt nihilism. What we do know is that
nihil is a Latin word that means nothing and adding the ism is the act of caring for nothing. In
relation to this topic it is the lack of care for human life. The people that were unlike the Nazis
were different so they lacked meaning or care for by the Nazi party and needed to be gotten rid
of.
What is Propaganda?
Propaganda and central message are in many cases the same thing. According to
Historians.org, Propaganda isnt an easy thing to define, but most students agree that it has to
do with any ideas or beliefs that are intentionally propagated (Historians.org, webpage).
Although, propaganda is used in controversial mattersit is also used to promote things that
are generally acceptable and noncontroversial (Historians.org, webpage). In this case I am
talking about controversial propaganda. Propaganda is used in a way that effects people
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emotionally and tries to appeal to a sense of reason in a person. Propaganda uses words and
pictures to try to achieve their goal of spreading the propaganda to the target people. The best
type of propaganda is to make people act out of fear. The idea that something is going to happen
if the person does not join in on the central message. This type of propaganda is used mostly by
the controversial type of propaganda. It is the type that makes people do what they usually
would not because they are afraid of the consequences of not acting. This is one of the many
types of methods that I will discuss later that the Nazi used to promote Jews genocide.
What was the Nazi Party?
The National Socialist German Workers Party, also called the Nazi Party was run by its
leader Adolf Hitler. This party was in control of Germany from 1933-1945. According to
History.com the party was, Founded in 1919 as the German Workers Party, the group
promoted German pride and anti-Semitism, and expressed dissatisfaction with the terms of the
Treaty of Versailles, the 1919 peace settlement that ended World War I (1914-1918) and
required Germany to make numerous concessions and reparations (History.com, Webpage).
Adolf Hitler joined the party when it was founded in 1919 and later became their leader in 1921.
He then became the German Chancellor in 1933 and his party gained control.

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Adolf Hitler was an army veteran that joined the party because he was angry that
Germany lost World War I. He thought that the treaty was harsh against Germany because it
required them to make repairs and pay for damages that they could not afford. This left
Germany in a very poor economic state. He became the leader of the Nazi party because he was
a wonderful public speaker. He spoke about the Aryan race being the master race and that
people should have pride in Germany. He said that the communist and Jews were to blame for
the growing unemployment and inflation and needed to be driven out. This had a great effect on
young members because of their economic situation.

After failed attempts to take over the government, Hitler was convicted of treason and
served a year in prison. This turned him into a great figure within the party. Later, In 1929,
Germany entered a period of severe economic depression and widespread unemployment. The
Nazis capitalized on the situation by criticizing the ruling government and began to win
elections (History.com, Webpage). They won, 230 out of 608 seats in the Reichstag, or
German parliament. In January 1933, Hitler was appointed German chancellor and his Nazi
government soon came to control every aspect of German life (History.com, Webpage).
Once the party was in control many things started to change. The treaty was the first
thing Hitler started to undo. He withdrew from the League of Nations in 1933. He said that
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Germans were split from each other and he invaded Austria and Czechoslovak. He grew his
forces beyond what was permitted and started to evaded Poland. This was the last straw for
Great Britain and France and they declared war in 1939.
What is Nazi Propaganda?
Beyond what was happening outside, there were many unmoral things happening inside
Germany. This was all because of Nazi Propaganda. Nazi Propaganda was largely controlled by
Joseph Goebbels. According to Holocaust Encyclopedia, Following the Nazi seizure of power
in 1933, Hitler established a Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda headed by
Joseph Goebbels (Holocaust Encyclopedia, Webpage). Hitler thought that, "Propaganda tries
to force a doctrine on the whole people... Propaganda works on the general public from the
standpoint of an idea and makes them ripe for the victory of this idea Adolf Hitler wrote these
words in his book Mein Kampf (1926), in which he first advocated the use of propaganda to
spread the ideals of National Socialism -- among them racism, antisemitism, and anti-
Bolshevism (Holocaust Encyclopedia, Webpage).

The Propaganda ministry was responsible to spread the partys central message through
art, music, theater, film, books, radio, press, and through educational means. The propaganda
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made it acceptable to be violent against Jews. That, Propaganda also encouraged passivity and
acceptance of the impending measures against Jews, as these appeared to depict the Nazi
government as stepping in and restoring order (Holocaust Encyclopedia, Webpage).

Argument
Reason for Genocide
The Nazi party argued for the genocide of Jews. The Nazi party had a major claim that it
made to its people. They said that the Jews were going to try to take Germany down and kill
their population. According to Randall Bytwerk, Jews were attempting to destroy Germany and
the Germans used this to justify Nazi efforts to murder Jews, (Bytwerk, 10) that the Nazi party
used Theoredore N. Kaufmans book Germany Must Perish! They used the book to prove that
Jews were trying to take over Germany. This piece of propaganda is very nihilistic. It shows the
lack of care of human life because they are promoting killing Jews. They justify it by saying get
them before they get us, but this shows they care about their partys message not about life.
Children and the Nazi Party
Children were not treated any better than adults. They were shot in Poland and Germany
alongside the adults. They were also gassed with the adults. In Stargardt book he talks about
that it was not just the Germany SS police that were annexing Jews and Poles that it was also the
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League of German girls and students. One of the girls later wrote that this people seemed so
alien.

Stargardt writes, Children would be saved or damned according to their racial
Value, (Stargardt, 20) meaning children were treated like money. The Nazis later created, a
continental-wide system of rationing and agricultural delivery quotas, (Stargardt, 22) for the
children. That, Whatever emotional similarities children exhibited across national boundaries
in the ways they dealt with hunger or loss of home, the death of parents or physical terror, their
experiences of the war would be forever separated by the places they had occupied within the
Nazi system of rule (Stargardt, 25). This shows that the Nazis had many nihilistic views when
it came to their propaganda that caused this. First, that the Jews seemed alien so they had no
right to life. Second, children were valued or should I say not valued at all by their racial
ethnicity. Lastly, the Nazis had no care about the impact on the children or whether they lived or
died. This was all caused by Nazis nihilistic propaganda.

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Medical Ethics

Doctors ethics shifted under Nazi control in an unmoral way. One main point is that all
patients have the right to refuse an experiment being done on them. Which was clearly violated
because all the terrible experiments done on Jews were not done with consent. Warren Reich
writes, The massive execution of children as part of the Nazi euthanasia program, the behaviors
of camp physicians who selected inmates on a diagnostic basis for the gas chamber, and the
professional activities of nurses who gave lethal injections to hospital patients while persuading
them to cooperate with the treatment they were administering (Reich, 3).
The nihilistic propaganda of the Nazi party had reached all the way to medical ethics.
Physicians were not following their oath of do no harm. This was because Jews were not treated
as humans they were treated worse than lab rats. Experiments were done on them that they did
not consent to. This shows once again the lack of care about life through the propaganda by the
Nazi party.

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Joseph Goebbels
Newspaper

Joseph Goebbels was in charge of the Nazi propaganda office and wrote every week in
the newspaper Das Reich where he would spread the hate of Jews. He uses propaganda as Finlay
describes, (a) is produced by particular groups of people; (b) is disseminated to a mass
audience; (c) aims at promoting a particular ideology through reinforcing or changing particular
sets of beliefs and/or behaviours; (d) is part of a body of such communication (Finlay, 2).
Goebbels was the single most influential propagandist that the Nazi party had in Germany. This
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is where nihilism is seen clearest. Goebbels wrote every week to promote the death of Jews in
the final solution plan. This is nihilism at its core because the clear disregard for life and the
want to spread the disregard for life.
Film

Joseph Goebbels had a major role in the cinema in Nazi Germany. He found a way to put
Nazi propaganda in yet another source. He did this by banning the media to criticize films that
Germany made. He also controlled what was being shown and he did this by banning foreign
films in 1937. Gary Jason writes, One of the most philosophically fascinating uses of cinema is
as a vehicle for propaganda (Jason, 1). This is exactly what Goebbels figure out and used. This
was yet another place where he promoted death of Jewish people for the good of the nation. This
is obviously nihilistic due once again to the lack of care about life.
Nietzsches Writings
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Hitler wanted to be perceived a certain way. He wanted people to know he was an
artistic man and believed that people should love their country and try to get rid of the enemies.
He spread his ideas through propaganda and used the propaganda in the newspaper along with
Nietzsche writings. David Dennis wrote that the paper believed that, Nietzsche as a fervent
patriot and strong representative of "Germanness." (Is why he wrote for the paper?) In fact, the
paper reminded, Nietzsche actually said of himself that "I am perhaps more German than the
Germans of today (Dennis, 4)


Nietzsche was also considered the Nazi partys spiritual comrade. The Nazi party used Nietzsche
writings to service the Nazi outlook. That it helped the party by being able to define itself. If the
party defined itself through Nietzsche than its propaganda must be nihilistic. This is because
Nietzsche is one of the great philosophers and one of the greatest nihilistic writers.
Conclusion
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As seen above Nazi propaganda is nihilistic even though the party is not. Nihilism is the
lack of care. Propaganda is the promotion of a partys central message. The Nazi party formed
for Aryan Germans and the promotion of their race. Their message was hate for Jews and the
need to get rid of Jews. This most clearly ties in with nihilism because the party used some of
Nietzsches writings to promote their propaganda.
Bibliography
Bytwerk, Randall L. "The argument for genocide in Nazi propaganda." Quarterly Journal of
Speech 91.1 (2005): 37-62.
Dennis, David B. "Nietzsche Reception As "Philosopher Of Fhrermenschen" In The Main Nazi
Newspaper." International Journal Of The Humanities 5.7 (2007): 39-47. Humanities
International Complete. Web.
DENNIS, DAVID B. "Culture WAR." Humanities 35.1 (2014): 36. History Reference Center.
Finlay, W. M. L. "The propaganda of extreme hostility: Denunciation and the regulation of the
group." British journal of social psychology 46.2 (2007): 323-341.
"Defining Propaganda I." Defining Propaganda. American Historical Society, Historian.org.
Jason, Gary. "Film And Propaganda: The Lessons Of The Nazi Film Industry." Reason Papers
35.1 (2013): 203-219. Humanities International Complete. Web.
"Nazi Party." History.com. A&E Television Networks, 2009.
"Nazi Propaganda Photograph." United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. United States
Holocaust Memorial Council, Web.
Reich, Warren T. "The Care-Based Ethic Of Nazi Medicine And The Moral Importance Of What
We Care About." American Journal Of Bioethics 1.1 (2001): 64-74. Academic Search Complete.
Stargardt, Nicholas. Witnesses of war: childrens lives under the Nazis. London, 2005.