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In examining the events leading up to the Holocaust and how such a crime of epic proportions could have occurred, it is important to analyze the role that Nazi propaganda played in bringing the German people’s ideals in line with the Nazi party. Widespread and extremely effective, Nazi propaganda manipulated the entire German state by appealing to three basic biases: social and attribution bias, memory bias, and decision-making bias.
While the breadth and scope of Nazi propaganda was inexhaustible, this essay will focus on the Nazi’s use of posters in achieving their luscious intents. Nazi propaganda can be grouped into three main categories: those that appealed to the deification of Hitler, those that defined the “undesirables”, and those that served to rally the general German populace. All usually depicted an oversimplified Good vs.. Evil showdown Juxtaposed over an implied, or in some cases explicit, Us vs.. Them scenarios.
They strove for simplicity and ease of understanding, using simple themes and few words to mold the public mama’s opinion. By exploiting existing stereotypes and the underlying sentiments of the German people, Nazi propaganda ought to target those whom it considered either an enemy or unworthy of being a citizen. Given the political and economic climate in Germany at the time, the German population was ripe for such propaganda and readily embraced its every message. One of the earliest themes of the Nazi was the deification of Hitler by portraying him a messianic figure.
In many of these posters, Hitler was shown engulfed in white light and portrayed with an authoritative stance, hawking to the Halo effect, a social bias where the perceived qualities of the portrayed individual spill over into other areas of their personality, in this case the angelic characterization of Hitler, and the Authority Bias, wherein a favorable response is elicited to authoritative appearing figures. In addition, posters often also sought to trigger the Bandwagon Effect, a bias where people tend to do or believe things that many other people do.
By showing Hitler surrounded by legions of devoted followers, these types of posters placed a subliminal emphasis on conformity, and alluded to Hitter’s dominant position among Germany’s social and political circles. In comparison to their characterization of Hitler, the Nazi party’s portrayal of the undesirables was considerably more explicit and blunt. Jews were either illustrated as either seedy, degenerate, ugly, masses associated with vermin, or they were portrayed as greedy, fat, and unpleasant elements who sided with the enemy.
By taking advantage of the Negativity Bias inherent human nature, the fact that pay more attention to negative images, the Nazis succeeded in associating Jews with those unpleasant mental images. This in turn created a Clustering Illusion, where people were conditioned to see unpleasantness in the Jewish population when there was none present. Eventually, tens culminate In creating a superiorly Blabs amongst the German people, a state where all responsibility for the success of Nazi Germany was claimed by the Germans and the blame for all failures was laid on the Jewish people.
The frequent association of the Jews with the Bolsheviks or the US only heightened a sense of Us. vs.. Them, and further alienated the Jewish population within the minds of the German populace. No matter what propaganda technique seed, all were eventually aimed at separating the German people from the “others”, people who were portrayed as the inferior enemy or agents thereof. The last category of Nazi propaganda, those that served to rally the general German populace to Nazi ideals, was achieved with relative ease.
Given the unfairness of the treaty of Versailles and the tumultuous economic times, along with the basis laid down in defining the “undesirables”, the Nazi’s propaganda machine found a surfeit of listening ears. Their portrayal of the hard working “Aryan” German Emily, punished unfairly by the cost of reparations from World War l, succeeded in propagating the Ingrown Bias, the tendency for people to give preferential treatment to other people they perceive as being members of their own group.
Many common German citizens, their livelihoods strained and shattered by the incompetence of the Whimper Republic, could relate to the message broadcasted by the Nazi party and found refuge in their sharply patriotic ideals. When the Nazi party starting gaining more and more followers, the Ingrown Bias helped lead to the creation of an overwhelming Bandwagon effect, in which those who felt differently about Hitter’s policies stayed silent and adopted the behaviors of the majority in order to protect their safety.
This, in turn, created a Projection Bias, where people subconsciously assumed that all others shared similar values and positions as themselves, further reducing opposition to Nazi beliefs. This vicious cycle effectively led to a totalitarian state where Nazi ideals reigned supreme with little to no opposition, and certainly no dissonance. It is through this effective use of these propaganda techniques the Nazi party reared an alluring illusion of great patriotism that blinded the German people and effectively brought their ideals in line with Nazi’s.