The ideology and purpose of the Third Reich’s
propaganda campaign was to establish and promote an anti-Jewish racist ideology
that scapegoated all European Jews in an effort to rally the German people
against a common enemy and take the focus from Germany and its involvement in
World War I as a leading cause of the collapse of the German economy and social
stability. The shifting of blame and an allying of the Nazi military and German
public against a social enemy both internal and external led to a
re-contextualization of social focus within a nation reeling from military
defeat and faced with continued economic collapse. The Reich Ministry of
Propaganda but, more broadly speaking, the entire German government used
anti-Jewish propaganda that was spread throughout all levels of German society,
touching all aspects of the Reich. While the use of propaganda undoubtedly
involves a smattering of communication strategies in order to be successful,
the Third Reich’s construction and utilization of propaganda embodies what
would come to be known to communication theorists as agenda-setting, social
judgement cultivation, and cultivation theories. An analysis in hindsight demonstrates
the German government’s control over the public conversation and the German
people’s need to exist within an effective and meaningful stratum of society.
What ultimately became a self-reinforcing loop of propaganda dispersion and
positive social response created an atmosphere that allowed for the unchecked
expansion of anti-Jewish plans. There was little to no outside
counterpropaganda in play; the Allies either did not know about, did not
believe in, and/or did not prioritize the Holocaust and anti-Jewish sentiments
compared to the overall war effort in Europe’s focus. Modern communication
theory shows why the German people and the Nazi military accepted the
propaganda outright or did little to argue against it which led to its nearly
universal adoption in Germany and precipitated the Holocaust and other
atrocities.
