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Overview
Each leader used all the tools at his disposal to present his own distinctive vision of the global drama that was the Second World War. Each area of the media was fully exploited. Brilliantly conceived oratory was applied to underscore each vision. Impression management, the art of political spin, was employed to drive the message home with the careful use of black and white propaganda. Each side employed uniforms, meticulously staged events, and broadcast their messages via all media available—motion pictures, radio broadcasts, songs, posters, leaflets, and beyond. Their ambitions were similar, but each leader had his own distinct methods, his own carefully created script for elaborately produced and often wildly successful acts and campaigns of deception to win hearts and minds on the frontlines and the home front.
The result of this investigation is a wholly distinctive and often surprising work of history, a book that manages to cast a fresh light on the most obsessively studied conflict in human history.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781510715868 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Skyhorse |
| Publication date: | 03/21/2017 |
| Edition description: | New Edition |
| Pages: | 312 |
| Sales rank: | 734,646 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.10(w) x 8.90(h) x 1.30(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
Introducing the Führer, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler
* * *
Hitler, in his role as an actor, not only performed, but also personified an exorcism of a shameful past. He sought audience empathy and response, playing "Deutschland, Deutschland über alles" in specially constructed stadiums and halls, theaters, and open-air amphitheaters all over Germany. The stirring German national anthem, composed by Joseph Hayden, with lyrics by August von Fallersleben, contributed to the pageantry.
Within a theatrical framework that focused on his own destiny, Hitler was a proficient organizer and was brilliant in his application of impression management. He created a character that went well beyond the publication of Mein Kampf, and, in so doing, he assumed the role of director, casting himself as führer. Everything, from his personally designed uniform through an affected walk, usually with his hands folded behind his back, to well-staged photo opportunities with children documenting a kind and compassionate leader, and the outstretched arm giving a salute from his open-air Mercedes, became part of his persona.
Directing his struggle, he showed remarkable shrewdness in keying his message to the distress, the fears, and the hopes of other Germans. It was Hitler's skill as an orator that helped him first to become recognized within the party and then to become its most influential member. Indeed, his oratorical skills enabled him to make his mark quickly, as within only a few months he became a featured speaker of the infant National Socialist German Workers Party. One reason why his speeches were so effective at drawing crowds was that he spent a great amount of time before a mirror, perfecting his image and his movements while being photographed by the Nazi Party's official photographer, Heinrich Hoffman, and his assistant, Leni Riefenstahl, who was to become the legendary director of Triumph of the Will.
Hitler took his craft seriously. He knew that to hold an audience he must be persuasive, using techniques long perfected by classical actors. Drawing upon emotions and memory, appearing offstage as he did on, Hitler took as his inspiration Constantin Stanislavski, a Russian actor and theater director who styled the Stanislavski method that inspired numerous acting teachers in Europe. He treated theater-making as a serious endeavor requiring dedication and discipline. Collaborating with actors and with the great playwright Anton Chekhov, he perfected performance at the Moscow Art Theater, which supposed that the life of a character should be an unbroken line of events and emotions creating a convincing role: "The artist of the stage must be the master of his own inspiration, and must know how to call it forth at the hour announced on the posters of the theater. This is the chief secret of our art."
"I will become the greatest leader in Germany history," said Hitler. He willed it. He imagined it. He created it. He staged it. He rehearsed, as any actor would, each expression, each action, each movement carrying an effect to charm and to disarm. He would have no match, honing his performance for hours, turning, pausing, dancing through each expression, finding his own voice until he became master of his own style, ready to perform stunning oratory for a receptive audience. It would not happen by chance, but by will, by the mastery of circumstance and conditions.
His dress was carefully crafted: a brown shirt, a red and black swastika on its arm, not to be too elaborate, but instead unpretentious, appealing to the common volk. The swastika had a long, not ignoble history in Europe, reaching back to antiquity, and the Sanskrit symbol, with its meaning "it is good," was adopted as an emblem of the Nazi Party of Germany, an emblem of the Aryan race.
His appearance was immaculate, his gestures and salutes impressive, his walk confident. He always ensured that lighting was effective and every sound system perfect.
A setting was masterfully, meticulously created to project his message, a message carefully built in terms of tone and effectiveness, beginning with a soft overture and building in loud, pounding intensity. A hundred searchlights around a staging area, with elevated platforms, created what famed correspondent William Shirer characterized as a "cathedral of light."
His presentation finished as any great symphony would, climaxing in a flourish, reaching peak orchestral performance as you would find in a great musical composition. With this painstaking preparation, he would be ready to convince and inspire children, generals, and all who sat before him in this "cathedral of light." Germany was waiting, and onstage he would live in the hearts and minds of all Germans — he would never be outperformed by anyone.
Addressing enormous crowds, he was charismatic, and with diplomats, in one-on-one meetings, he engaged them with "the deepest and clearest blue eyes they had ever seen." Strange, almost mystical, he could enchant. It was a certain unexplainable attraction that actors carry both on stage and screen, an aura, a connection, a certain charisma.
He believed, as Goebbels did: make the lie big. He did this by building upon exaggerated economic conditions, Jewish inferiority, Nordic superiority; an over-scored legacy for a new Germany. Make it simple, keep saying it, and eventually "they" will believe it. Having rehearsed his style in Munich's beer halls, Hitler now modulated the tone and timbre of his voice to suit the acoustics of each occasion and place, timing his entrances until a kind of electric expectancy suffused his audience.
As a graphic artist in his early years, Hitler surely visualized the character he intended to portray in the unfolding drama: a Teutonic knight who had been sent to rescue his people. In outdoor theaters called Thingplätze, often constructed on sacred ground, an actor playing Hitler would descend as a deus ex machina, a device in Greek drama that allowed an actor to be lowered to the stage from the heavens or appear from the wings as a god. He speculated as to how future generations would portray his crucial role in the coming thousand-year Reich.
Hitler's dramaturge, Joseph Goebbels, edited the führer's script and co-directed the production. Goebbels was called the greatest press agent the twentieth century had yet seen; years before, anticipating his role in the Nazi play, he gave the führer a passage that he had written in his diary: "My department will be something immense, something the world has never seen before, a Ministry of Public Upbringing and Education in all fields of radio, film, news and photo services, art, culture, and propaganda."
The appointed minister assured Hitler that, under his direction, the ministry would create a comprehensive staged reality, and all Germans would regard it as the only real world.
Goebbels wanted his ministry to have complete and unified control over propaganda and related activities within the Reich. A wave of the hand from Hitler was at once an assurance and a dismissal. Hitler excluded particular propaganda functions from Goebbels's control. The revitalized Wehrmacht would supervise information given to the troops through a separate Propaganda Branch and security police; Hitler appointed Heinrich Himmler to lead the ruthlessly violent Gestapo.
With another player taking to the stage in a supporting role, Himmler became one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany and as Reichsführer-SS, a special rank and title, he oversaw all police and security forces. Initially, Himmler was involved in the Beer Hall Putsch — the unsuccessful attempt by Hitler and the National Socialist Party to seize power in Munich. This event would set Himmler on a life of politics. In the intervening years until he came to power, Himmler searched for a worldview, came to abandon his Catholicism and focused instead on the occult and on anti-Semitism. Known for his organizational skills, he was the overseer of the concentration camps, the extermination camps, and the killing squads of the Einsatzgruppen. Himmler coordinated the killing of millions of Jews, three to four million Poles, communists, and other groups whom the Nazis deemed unworthy to live or were simply "in the way."
So Himmler took the part of Reichsführer of the Schutzstaffel (the famed black-uniformed SS Guards whose primary function was initially to protect the führer but who soon evolved into a terror organization), and inspector of the notorious Geheime Staatspolizei, the Gestapo, the State Secret Police. His primary function in Naziland was never to be seen onstage but, rather, to be felt offstage. The discontented merchant, the dissident party member, the persecuted Jew, the defiant churchman, and the too-independent army officer all with good reason dreaded his heavy hand and often landed in one of Herr Himmler's concentration camps.
Under Himmler, Germany soon became the most policed country in the world. He purged, sacked, centralized, and reorganized the regular German police. The working SS troops were not only entrusted with keeping German order, but also with producing a great race of supermen. SS marriages were arranged and the bride's physical qualifications and racial background were thoroughly investigated. SS colonies for young married couples were made attractive breeding grounds. Himmler made his police force not only a service but also an essential part of the drama, adding the elements to a script that create suspense and conflict.
With Himmler joining the cast, Goebbels labeled events and people with a distinctive new vocabulary that reflected both the policies and the rhetorical emphases of the new regime.
There was, for instance, the Volksgerichtshof ("People's Court"), a tribunal which condemned people accused of crimes against the state; verdicts were sometimes directed by Hitler.
The Volkshalle ("People's Hall") was a proposed gigantic domed building to be constructed in Berlin as the world capital of Germania, part of Adolf Hitler's vision for the future after the planned victory. It was designed by Albert Speer, the favored architect of the Third Reich.
Volkswagen, inspired by Joseph Ganz, a Jewish engineer, was the "people's car." The beetle-like automobile caught Hitler's attention in prewar Germany, and it is one of the most durable and popular legacies of the Nazi era.
The Abwehr was a German military intelligence organization and an espionage group within the defense ministry that gathered domestic and foreign information, most of it in the form of human intelligence.
Aktion 1005 was the secret Nazi operation for concealing evidence about mass-killings.
Goebbels manufactured counter-conspiracies against anyone who might conspire against the nation, and the newly conscripted traitors were handed over to his co-director, Himmler. Chief among these were Jews, who were largely blamed for the country's perceived moral and financial decline. During a secret meeting with top SS officials, Himmler referred explicitly to the Ausrottung, the "extermination" of the Jewish people: "I also want to refer here very frankly to a very difficult matter. We can now very openly talk about this among ourselves, and yet we will never discuss this publicly. ... I am now referring to the evacuation of the Jews, to the extermination of the Jewish People. ... Because we know how difficult it would be for us if we still had Jews as secret saboteurs, agitators and rabble-rousers in every city, what with the bombings, with the burden and with the hardships of the war."
* * *
News policy was considered a weapon of war. Hitler insisted that one mistake of World War I was that newspapers under the control of Jewish capitalists misinformed the world (in fact Jewish editors had reported the news objectively and accurately). He would not take any such chance this time. Now news would cut a swathe for the Third Reich in a second and extended engagement, and propaganda became an engine of national expansion. Propaganda "is not a pejorative term for the German people. Indeed it inspires and electrifies them," Hitler wrote. Of course, some might dislike the term. "If need be, I will call propaganda by something other than its name; I'll call it Menschenführung, the guidance of men." Thinking the Nazi revolution could be accomplished in different ways, Goebbels, too, reasoned he would transform the nation by a mental revolution and win over the opposition instead of killing them.
But when necessary, Hitler certainly resorted to violent means — supplemented by a proper narrative — to deal with possible threats, both external and internal. One particular danger was ambitious party members like Ernst Röhm, an army officer from Bavaria who had been helpful to Hitler. He played the antagonist in Hitler's play, until Röhm's brown-shirted Sturmabteilung outlived their usefulness. In any drama, surprise, suspense, and conflict drive plot. A drama called "The Night of the Long Knives" was no exception.
Röhm became a threat to Hitler's leadership, undermining him offstage.
Hitler had already begun preparing for the conflict. In January 1934 he ordered the secret police to gather incriminating evidence against Röhm and planned to reduce the SA by two thirds, leaving them with only a few minor military functions. Röhm responded with further complaints about Hitler and began expanding the armed elements of the SA. To many it appeared as though the SA was planning a rebellion.
Although determined to curb its power, Hitler put off doing away with his longtime comrade until the very end. His confidant and general, Hermann Göring, whom Hitler designated commander of the Luftwaffe, used Röhm's published anti-Hitler rhetoric to support a claim that the SA was plotting to overthrow the führer. By late June, this story had been officially recognized and Himmler was giving protective orders to the SS. With scant evidence, Himmler and his colleagues actually convinced Hitler to think the plot was real.
Meanwhile, Röhm and several of his companions went away on holiday to a resort in Bad Wiessee, a beautiful spa on one of the loveliest lakes in Germany. On June 28, Hitler phoned Röhm and asked him to gather all the SA leaders at Bad Wiessee on June 30 for a conference. Röhm agreed, apparently suspecting nothing.
That day and night, June 30, marked "the Night of the Long Knives" when the entire leadership of the SA was purged, along with any other political adversaries of the Nazis. At dawn that morning, Hitler flew to Munich, and then drove to Bad Wiessee, where he personally arrested Röhm and the other SA leaders. All were imprisoned at Stadelheim Prison in Munich. Hitler was uneasy authorizing Röhm's execution and gave him an opportunity to commit suicide. SS-Hauptsturmführer Michael Lippert, who laid a pistol on the table, told Röhm he had ten minutes to use it and left. Röhm refused. When Lippert and Obergruppenführer Theodor Eicke returned, he stood in the middle of the cell with his shirt open, theatrically baring his chest as they shot him. Röhm was buried in the Westfriedhof in Munich.
An article from The History Place provides a more detailed account about the drama that took place: "Saturday morning about 10 a.m. a phone call was placed from Hitler in Munich to Göring in Berlin with the prearranged code word 'Kolibri' (hummingbird) that unleashed a wave of murderous violence in Berlin and over 20 other cities. SS execution squads along with Göring's private police force roared through the streets hunting down SA leaders and anyone on the prepared list of political enemies (known as the Reich List of Unwanted Persons)."
That evening, Hitler flew back to Berlin and immediately immersed himself in the drama: "On his way to the fleet of cars, which stood several hundred yards away, Hitler stopped to converse with Göring and Himmler. Apparently he could not wait a few minutes until he reached the Chancellery. ... From one of his pockets Himmler took out a long, tattered list. Hitler read it through, while Göring and Himmler whispered incessantly into his ear. We could see Hitler's finger moving slowly down the sheet of paper. Now and then it paused for a moment at one of the names. At such times the two conspirators whispered even more excitedly. Suddenly Hitler tossed his head. There was so much violent emotion, so much anger in the gesture, that everybody noticed it." It was not only the general masses who were the audience for the performances.
The purge of the SA was officially declared legal the next day with a one-paragraph decree, the Law Regarding Measures of State Self-Defense. In an attempt to erase Röhm from German history, all known copies of the 1933 propaganda film Der Sieg des Glaubens [Victory of Faith], in which Röhm appeared, were ordered to be destroyed.
After this necessary diversion and preview of coming attractions, Hitler got down to redrafting the play at hand. There was more to do after the distraction of purging a renegade movement. He was confronted with a bigger revolution, a larger stage. Germany would not feel compelled to rationally justify the advantages and disadvantages of National Socialism in the coming war. Its people would be emotionally overwhelmed by the spectacles and extravaganzas — created with close attention to theater — and newsreels, without interference from the press. The people would become overwhelmed by oratory. A crucial part of this process would involve casting the Jews as villains in the unfolding performances according to a propaganda plan.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "Spinning History"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Nathaniel Lande.
Excerpted by permission of Skyhorse Publishing.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Prologue vii
Act I Behind the Scenes in a Sundered Country: The Nazis Set the Stage in the European Theater 1
1 Introducing the Führer, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler 15
2 The Road to the Third Reich 27
3 From Choric Theater to Party Rally 33
4 From Party Rally to German Cinema 39
5 Theater of the Absurd 49
Entr'acte 59
Act II Curtain Going Up: The Lion Roars 73
6 The Home Front: To the Airwaves 79
7 A Counter-Message Gets Through 105
8 The British Rewrite the German Script 109
9 Two British Radio Stations 117
Act III Point/Counterpoint: Dramatic Conflict 127
10 Roosevelt and the Isolationists 129
11 Churchill and Roosevelt Write the Script Backstage 135
12 The Nazi Counter-Message to America 145
13 FDR and a Platoon of Poets 147
14 The American "Patriotic" Press Responds! 157
15 War Comes to Americas Movie Theaters 161
16 On the Road with Wild Bill Donovan 177
Act IV Before the Final Curtain 179
17 The Allies Launch a Crusade 181
18 Stalingrad Compels a Revision of the Nazi Script 185
Behind the Scenes 189
19 The Tehran Conference 193
20 A D-Day Production 197
21 Miscues and Misinterpretations of the Allied Script 209
22 Operation Joker 217
23 The Beginning of the End 223
24 The End of the Beginning 239
Invaluable Sources 247
Bibliography 251
Acknowledgments 269
Index 271
Other Books Nathaniel Lande 277