To understand the roots of the second giant war of the 20th century, we need to return to the aftermath of the First World War (1914-1918). Although no single nation and no single grievance r underlied that conflict, the victorious World War I allies (Britain, France, U.S. dominated that alliance) officially blamed a defeated Germany for causing that war. The Versailles Treaty of 1919 codified Germany war guilt and handed them the reparations bill to pay for financial losses. To keep future German aggression at bay, Germany also had to dismantle their army to only 10% of its previous strength. A humilated, proud German nation spent much of the 1930s under the leadership of the Nazi party plotting its revenge for the Versailles.
The political system called fascism began in 1920s Italy with its emphasis on (1) military strenghth and military values of obedience to authority, (2) nationalism and devotion to a strong, charismatic leader, (3) cultivation of capitalism and businesses oriented to the nationalist cause, (4) anti-socialist, anti-Communist, and anti-trade unionist, and (5) willingness to use paramilitary vigilante violence to provoke enemies and build a base of support. The German fascists, the Nazis, added another key element to their national version of fasicism: (6) extreme racism built on the myth of white Aryan supremacy and anti-semitism.
The Nazis and their leader, Adolf Hitler, spent the 1920s as a small, obscure party that won about 2% of the vote in various elections. After the Great Depression of the 1930s swept away jobs and life savings worldwide, the Nazis promised to restore prosperity to families and respect to impoverished German. Their popularity soared in the early 1930s elections, rising to about one-third of the electorate. Other mainstream conservative parties who shared some values with the Nazis offered Hitler the leadership position of Chancellor (like prime minister of the Reichstag legislature) in 1933. That fatal mistake opened the doors of power to the violent and illegal tactics of the Nazis. Soon after 1933, the Nazis swiftly moved to murder or imprison their opponenents at home.Prisons filled with socialists, trade unionists, and liberal activitsts. Germany withdrew from the international organization the League of Nations and tore up their demilitarized obligations in the Versailles Treaty. They began to rearm, rebuild, and threaten weaker adjoining nations such as Austria, Czechoslovakia, and Poland. And they passed the Nuremberg Laws in 1935 that segregated Jewish Germans and stripped them of many civil rights.
THIS WEEK’S TOPIC focuses on new 20th century technologies and political propaganda. Specifically, we examine film as a new method of cultural expression that held the potential to transform popular entertainment and popular political discourses.
Government-sponsored propaganda was ancient; Augustus Caesar built monuments and minted coins to cement his god-like imagine in the popular imagination. In World War I, Britain enlisted newpaper publishers to produce posters and inspiring copy to motivate military enlistment. The Nazs appointed a dedicatedi propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, to create mass publicity using public posters, radio broadcasts, and flashy rallies with lights, military formations, and music. Remember that the Nazis came to power in the 20th century German nation through democratic elections. Keeping the people engaged was a real concern.
Some of the pageantry of the Nazi aesthetic can be seen in Leni Riefenstahls 1935 and 1936 films Triumph of the Will and Olympia. They can be viewed on YouTube. As one American journalist, William Shirer noted, the lights, music, and mesmerizing crowds and speeches were unrivaled in secular society. He noted that they felt like a religious ritual that he had witnessed before in a Roman Catholic mass! The Nazis had created almost a national religion around the cult of the Fuhrer, Hitler.
Your topic this week is to analyze 2-3 examples of 1930s political propaganda.
1. describe the topic and message
2. what technologies and/or aesthetic techniques convey the message. This may include visual and the tone of the communication.
