Dissecting Nazi Propaganda

By Eric George Tauber

CINCINNATI, Ohio — The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., gave a lecture via Facebook entitled How the Nazis Manipulated the Masses. Historian Dr. Edna Friedberg and USHMM Teacher Educator Kim Blevins-Relleva were the presenters.

Nazi propaganda didn’t begin with hatred, but a kind of patriotism. In the 1920s, the German people had been soundly defeated in World War II and were further punished by the Treaty of Versailles. Their nation was treated as a pariah by the rest of Europe and their money was next to worthless making it a time of great despair. Then came voices of encouragement, bold voices telling them to pick themselves up, stand tall and be proud of who they were. It was a message of hope that they were desperately hungry for.

Gradually, the message of hope and pride turned to demonizing the “Other,” the “impure” elements in their midst including Jews, Roma/Gypsies, Communists, Jehovah’s Witnesses and Homosexuals. The lies used to demonize Jews were not new. Blood libel — the false accusation that the blood of babies is a key ingredient for matzah — had been a tool of the churches for centuries. Also, cartoon images depicting Jews as rats, spiders and devils clutching bags of money had been around for some time. The propaganda was effective precisely because it was so familiar.

Before the Nazis’ rise to power, Germany had the freest press in all of Europe. There were multiple parties in the Bundestag and each had its own newspaper, putting its own spin on current events. As they criticized Nazi conspiracy theories, Hitler decried them as Der Lügenpresse (the Lying Press) and those who wanted to believe him did so wholeheartedly. Once the Nazis came to power, all papers were shut down except for Der Stürmer (The Attacker), a weekly tabloid owned by Julius Streicher which printed hateful cartoons and articles that called for the extermination of the Jewish people.

Knowing that they also had to seize the minds of their youth, Streicher also published children’s books like Der Giftpilz (The Poisonous Mushroom). With rhyming verses and pictures, this collection of short stories taught children to fear their treacherous Jewish neighbors.

“Just like poisonous mushrooms sprout from the earth everywhere, so is the Jew to be found in all the lands of the world….”

Friedberg and Blevins-Relleva warn that such anti-Jewish propaganda is not just a relic of the past. Who can forget the tiki-torch wielding throngs marching through Charlottesville, VA chanting “Jews will not replace us!?”

Moreover, the annual Easter parade in the city of Aalst, Belgium includes grotesque caricatures of Jews complete with streimels, payos, rats, and money bags. UNESCO wanted to include this parade in their list of national heritage events, but found such caricatures problematic. Rather than eliminate the images of bigotry, the Mayor of Aalst told UNESCO to take them off the list.

And the nation of Iran has sponsored a cartoon contest in their efforts to deny the veracity of the Holocaust even though it is by far the most extensively documented event in human history. A common theme in these cartoons is that the State of Israel uses the Holocaust to justify their own persecution of Muslim Palestinians.

Derek Black is only too familiar with Nazi and White Supremacist propaganda as he was raised in a White Supremacist home. His father, Don Black is the founder of The Stormfront online community and Derek is the godson of KKK Grand Wizard David Duke. According to Derek Black, hateful, anti-Jewish sentiments are expressed in these circles as freely and frequently as pro-White sentiments. To his credit, Derek Black has broken free from this mindset and now works as an anti-bigotry author and lecturer.

Friedberg and Blevins-Relleva didn’t touch upon any parallels between the Nazis and Trumpniks, but they’re pretty hard to miss. Trump referred to the Charlottesville Neo-Nazis as “very fine people.” Just as Hitler decried Der Lügenpresse, Trump calls “Fake News” at anything critical of him. Like Blood Libel, it’s nothing new. For decades, right-wing conservatives have been casting aspersions on what they call “the lame-stream media” whenever the facts don’t work in their favor. Those who want to believe them do so wholeheartedly, preferring a world of “alternative facts” to real ones.

When Derek Black was interviewed on The Daily Show, he explained that his family would watch Tucker Carlson on Fox News religiously, twice, taking copious notes. Carlson hits all of The Stormer’s talking points, but in a way that a much larger portion of the U.S. population does not find so off-putting.

Because the traditional blood libel wouldn’t play well with American Evangelicals, the story has morphed into “Hollywood Elites” drinking the blood of young children. But just like the old days, the absence of evidence is no hindrance to fervent belief.

Today, American right-wingers are going after children’s books. Crying “Critical Race Theory,” they are having picture books about Rosa Parks and Ruby Bridges taken off the shelves of school and public libraries around the country. It is “Cancel Culture” at its worst. Their children can’t be horrified by Jim Crow if they don’t know about it and they can’t develop empathy from stories they haven’t heard.

I’ve heard it said that learning history is not just knowing that six million Jews were murdered in camps; it’s understanding how tens of millions of ordinary Germans could let it happen. It’s also understanding how hundreds of Americans could storm the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, break windows, attack police officers, erect a gallows and chant “Hang Mike Pence!” It’s understanding how ordinary Americans could sit idly by as thousands of refugees from Central America could come to this country seeking peace and security — just as our immigrant forebears did — only to be held in squalid conditions, separated from their parents, in ICE detention camps. Learning history is also about inspiring profiles in courage like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, Ruby Bridges, César Chavez, and Harvey Milk, stories that encourage us all to work together to build a better world. But children cannot learn what they are never taught.

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Eric George Tauber, a former San Diegan now residing in Cincinnati, is a teacher, performer, and a drama critic.  He may be contacted via eric.tauber@sdjewishworld.com