Vanguard News Network
VNN Media
VNN Digital Library
VNN Reader Mail
VNN Broadcasts

Old September 28th, 2014 #1
Joe_Smith
Senior Member
 
Joe_Smith's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 3,778
Default #1 Joseph Goebbels Thread

http://research.calvin.edu/german-pr...ive/goeb60.htm

More Morality, Less Moralism!

Every revolution has its mistakes, ours too. That is not in itself bad, since they mostly disappear on their own or with time. The important thing is that those in charge keep their eyes open, and do not remain silent when they ought to speak out of fear of the public. Obviously, an historic revolution of vast extent brings a mass of nonsense to light along with its enormous benefits.

It becomes dangerous only when the nonsense is left to grow, thus hemming in and strangling the healthy, organic development of the revolution.

It is time today to expose some of this nonsense that has accompanied the National Socialist revolution to the full light of day, to examine it without pity.

That is even more necessary, since otherwise some of this nonsense over time may gradually corrupt the style and nature of our revolution, leaving to posterity an image of our nature and goals that in no way corresponds to National Socialist convictions and views.

Certainly there is need for public regulation of the great moral foundations of our national life. However, some nonsense is also spreading that attempts to reach beyond that to establish a code for the purely personal conduct of individuals.

That leads eventually to a moralism that is everything other than National Socialist.

Peculiar people whose life is either behind them, or have no right to have one ahead of them, preach moralism in the name of our revolution. This moralism often has nothing in common with true morality. They proclaim ethical laws that might be appropriate for a nunnery, but are entirely out of place in a modern cultural state.

An example. In a major central German city an advertising poster for a soap company showed a fresh, attractive girl holding the soap package in her hands. A moral knight who unfortunately had the right to determine the fate of this poster forbade its distribution on the ground that it offended the moral sensibilities of the population, since the woman in the poster was holding the soap in a place “that for moral reasons cannot be described more precisely.” Neurotic moralism =/= morality. Protestants more than anyone are guilty of this kind of irrational paranoia of reading too much into things, which undermines the cause of safeguarding real morality.

What is moral about this? The person announcing the ban, who presumes that other people share his dirty fantasies, or the German people and the National Socialist movement, that are rightly upset and in opposition to such a ridiculous action?

Investigating the matter, we find that this wonderful citizen discovered his attraction for National Socialism three months after we took power, which however did not stop him from issuing the ban in the name of National Socialism.

Things have gone so far that this company of moralists does not stop at the borders of private life. They would love to establish purity committees in cities and the countryside that would keep on eye on Müller’s and Schulze’s love and marriage life. It is true that they do not want to go so far as to ban kissing altogehter, as in the familiar operetta, since it is too popular a pastime. If it were up to them, however, they would turn National Socialist Germany into a wasteland of muttering and complaining, a place where denunciation, spying, and extortion were the order of the day. Busy bodies with nothing better.

These same moralists often turn to government offices with the request to ban films, plays, operas, and operettas, since the dancers, stars, etc., apparently represent a grave danger to public decency. If we gave in to their demands, we should soon see only old ladies and men on the screen or the stage. The theaters would be empty, since the public generally does not attend them to see the same people they see in church or old people’s homes.

Save us from these hypocritical creatures who have no genuine strong conception of life, and who in reality preach no honest morality. They generally are life’s losers, protesting life itself. Eternal life and its laws will hardly make way for them; at most, they will hide behind a screen of contemptible hypocrisy and dishonest prudery.

They think that the German woman should not go out alone, she should not sit alone in a restaurant, she should not go out with a boy or even an S.A. man without a chaperone for a Sunday afternoon excursion, she should not smoke, she should not drink, she should not wash up and make herself pretty, in short she should do everything to keep the evil interest of a man away from her. That is, at least, is how these midget moralists think a German woman should behave. And woe to the poor womanly creature who has the misfortune to transgress against one of these laws. Of course, no German woman will have bobbed hair, since only Jewesses and other contemptible creatures do that.

Have these moral trumpeters any idea how they slander and demoralize millions of German women with their preaching, women who bravely and honestly do their duty in life and on the job, who are good comrades to their men and sacrificing mothers for their children?

don’t they realize that they embarrass National Socialism throughout the world, that they are thirty years too late, or that one must take them to task because they are beginning to be annoying? There are good and bad women, decent and less decent women, some with bobbed hair, some without. Whether or not they powder their noses is not a sign of their inner worth, and if they occasionally smoke a cigarette at home or in society, they do not need to feel rejected or cast out. When you sweat the small stuff, you lose sight of the big picture. A woman who smokes can still be a great wife and mother. In my experience, a woman who will have a smoke or a drink is also a much more interesting companion to a man, as long as she retains her femininity

In any event, these moralists should not sit in judgment over women, whether they are enemies or even if like all real men they wish women happiness, relaxation, and domestic peace, though their stuffy superiority would keep women from it.

They think it is not National Socialist to enjoy life; but rather one should only look at the dark side of human existence. Pessimism and suspicion are the best teachers in our earthly vale of sorrows. A true National Socialist has no cause to protect these miserable creatures. Primitiveness and absolute rejection of pleasure are the only character values to these people. If one has a clean and a dirty collar, one puts the dirty one on to give evidence of his hatred of bourgeois values. A man with a good and a bad suit wears the bad one, particularly for festive occasions, for it shows the astonished world how revolutionary his outlook is. He dislikes joy and laughter; people should have nothing to laugh about. Moralism is quintessentially bourgeois, according to Goebbels. Obsession with the appearance of things, rather than actual substance and realness, is a recipe for unhappiness, and ironically, real immorality. Spit on those who are more concerned with how they look rather than how they truly are.

Are we living in a pietistic state, or in the age of life-affirming National Socialism?

No one can suspect us of wanting to live lives of ostentation or luxury. The Führer and many of his close comrades neither smoke nor drink nor enjoy sumptuous living. Those, however, who want to rob a nation of sixty million of every pleasure and all traces of optimism are contemptible, entirely aside from the fact that their foolish desires would drive countless people into poverty and misery. Some material comforts are good. It's materialism, IE material comfort as the sole purpose of life, that is bad.

Every banned activity makes more people unemployed; if no one can drive a car, the automobile factories will shut down, if no one wears a new suit, the looms and tailors will have nothing more to do; if people no longer attend movies or the theater, hundreds of thousands of stage and film employees will depend on public assistance.

To take joy and pleasure from a people means to make it unfit for its struggle for its daily bread.

He who does that sins against our reconstruction efforts and embarrasses the National Socialist state before the whole world.

The result would be a dreary impoverishment of our public life. That we will not accept.

We do not want to abolish pleasure, but rather to let as many as possible share in it. That is why we encourage people to attend the theater, that is why we give workers the opportunity to dress well for festive occasions. That is the reason behind Kraft durch Freude. That is why we shake off the agents of a prudish hypocrisy, why we do not allow decent, hard-working people who have every reason to need relief from their hard daily labors, who need to reaffirm life, to recover from the weariness, cares, and burdens of every day, to have their necessary pleasures ruined by the eternal chicanery of these pedants.

We need more affirmation of life and less complaining! More morality, but less moralism!
__________________
"The favorite slogan of the reds is: 'No Pasarán!: Yes we have passed! And we tell them...and we tell them, we will pass again!'"
― Benito Mussolini after the Communist capitulation in Barcelona
 
Old September 28th, 2014 #2
Joe_Smith
Senior Member
 
Joe_Smith's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 3,778
Default

Anglo nations perceive the world and society from the hypocritical and convenient morality of the millionaire, in contrast with populist and social German culture. The rich man, chauffeured in his limousine, can afford to pass exaggerated judgment on the struggling man who may be forced to board the train without a ticket to get to work, yet never does the former provide any constructive advice or push for policies to reduce the need for this behavior.

This is the pretentious mindset that Anglo countries employed-while living high off the hog with their infinite colonies and often plundered wealth- when dealing diplomatically with other nations in the world, especially a developing and emerging Germany during the 30's and 40's.


The Morals of the Rich


by Joseph Goebbels


It easier for the rich to be moral than it is for the poor. Wealth protects the wealthy, but encourages the poor to take action.

A rich man, for example, would never think of stealing bread. Only someone who is hungry but has no money steals bread. When the rich man is hungry, he has more than enough bread and everything else besides to quell his hunger.

Likewise, a rich man with a car will never travel without a ticket on the subway. Aside from the fact that he could easily buy a ticket, he has a fancy car waiting in front of his fancy house.

The rules of social conduct are also stricter when one is poor. The poor are crammed together in huge apartment buildings, while the rich live in large houses with enough rooms so that everyone can find a place away from everyone else in the family when necessary. In an apartment building, on the other hand, where people live on top of each other, one has to turn off the radio by a certain hour, since the neighbor wants to get to sleep, sleep he needs if he is to get up and go to work tomorrow. In a big house one can let the radio blare all night, since the nearest house is 30, 40, or 100 meters away.

The poor live a more disciplined life than the rich, otherwise they could not get along with each other.

It is absurd for the rich to complain that certain rules apply to the poor that are not at all necessary for the rich.

As far as morals go, the most moral people are those who have had an exciting life already. As the proverb has it, the old whore prays the loudest. Nature makes morality easy at that point, and it easy to understand why at an advanced age one might attempt to atone for a wild life. They want to forget a notorious past, and therefore love to preach morality to those who are still in the middle of life, or have not even yet begun to live. Everything is suddenly turned around. The old demand morality of the youth, especially when they used their own youth to the fullest.

This is true not only of individuals, but also of peoples. This is the real reason why we are not at the moment able to agree with the democracies, England above all.

The English talk a lot about political morality. They have everything they need. They established a world empire at a time when politics was not all that concerned about morality. Now they are defending their empire with moral platitudes.

They do not even think about stealing food, since they are not hungry. They have enough food whenever they want it. They can joke about our Four Year Plan, since they have at their disposal the enormous wealth of their empire. The boundaries of their national life can be very lax, not to say democratic, since they face no threat to their national existence.

It is not so easy for us Germans. We have been a fully unified nation only for the last six years. We are still young and bear the scars of our former discords. We have to be cautious, sometimes even strict, lest the old wounds reopen.

The English can afford the luxury of so-called freedom of opinion. It costs them nothing. The unity of the empire is in no danger. The whole English people is united in a single nation. They need no startling actions or “fait accomplis,” since they have everything the need, or even could wish for.

It would never occur to the English to add to their nation, since the English people have been united for centuries.

We, however, were forced to such things. We had no choice. We do it not because we feel superior, but because we must in order to survive. That has nothing to do with morality from either the English or the German side. One should be wary of using terms that have an entirely different meaning in political life than they do in private life.

Leading officials in England recently have been saying that while it is true that England has protectorates, English protectorates exist only to guard the freedom and culture of the peoples who live there.

Europe grinned as this profound wisdom was revealed. The English have the ability to conceal the truth with moralistic phrases, sometimes concealing rather dubious situations that otherwise would provoke some excitement.

They are such moralists today because they have their sheep safely in the barn, and would like to forget their past. They find nothing wrong with the fact that Europe is divided into haves and have-nots. They have no idea that the have-nots may not be happy with the situation. They would never even think of changing the way things are. The world is the way God wants it. He ordained that the English have everything, and the other peoples of the world are poor, and therefore dependent on the English.

London has a newspaper that is prototypicallly English. It is called the “Times.” It is mostly very refined and serious, and only rarely throws insults. It is extraordinarily moralistic, and thinks that its God-given task is to deliver political rebukes to the rest of the world. It thinks itself called to comment on everything that goes on in the world, and embodies the typical English notion of how things ought to be. The remarkable thing is that sometimes the English actually believe what they say. They know how to be so insolent and blatantly deceptive that one does not know what to say. They hold to their lies so strongly, even when they are proven false, that one who does not understand the mentality might easily believe that they had fallen for their own lies. That is not the case. It is only proof of the remarkable national discipline that the English press maintains, despite all the talk about the freedom of opinion. Interesting the synergy between Jewish and Anglo culture, which is not surprising seeing as the pinnacle of historical Jewish power is manifested in the United States and Britain. These society's pride themselves on claiming to have freedom of opinion, yet all of the newspapers tow the exact same line!

At the moment, however, the English press really has gone too far. No one else believes it any longer. Everywhere in Europe, people wink when the English begin to speak on difficult political matters. They invite people to morning and evening prayers, where they hope to do a little political business or cattle trading.

Were they battling for their national existence, they would doubtlessly use every means at their disposal. However, they have always thought it better to fight to the last Frenchman, Russian, or American.

An example of the depth of London’s lies is the recent story about an alleged German ultimatum to Rumania. London invented the whole thing to rouse the world public against the Reich. Both Berlin and Bucharest immediately denied it in the strongest terms. But the English certainly did not look like sinners who had been found out. To the contrary, despite the forceful denials they continued to speak about the matter as if they were not sure whether it were true or not.

That is how the English are now, always were, and presumably always will be. They have no right to tell us what to do.

How did we ever reach the point where we listened to their moral advice? When the discussion turns to political morality, the best thing the English press could do is to stay out of the discussion.

For the past few weeks, the English have been broadcasting the news in German. They do it cleverly, giving the impression of loving the truth and of having almost scientific objectivity. They are doing that in the hopes of winning listeners in Germany that they will be able to use when things get tough. Then they will not be as objective as they now seem to be. They will revive the old atrocity stories that they used to rouse the whole world against Germany during the World War.

Now they seem surprised that German radio has begun to broadcast news in English. Soon they will start to complain. They cannot imagine that any other nation in Europe has the same rights that they have.

Their moral trumpeting in the past weeks as German troops marched into Bohemia and Moravia is a classic example of the English mentality, but with one exception: the moral trumpeting does not seem to work any longer.

All of Europe at present is revolted by England acting as its moral aunt, sitting on the sofa of its empire, secure in its own wealth, complaining about others. Europe has changed since the war. The poor nations are also the young nations. They want to live. They will live. The Archbishop of Canterbury will not stop them. They have seen through the rich. England can no longer dismiss the demands of the have-nots with pious phrases. Their mimicry will not work any longer.

John Bull should be advised to remove the mask so that Europe will be able to see what is behind the fog of phrases England is using to confuse world opinion. Their empire was built through war, oppression, concentration camps, starvation and blood.

We Germans are glad to listen to moral advice, but only from those who have the right to give it. England does not. When people are talking about political morality, the Empire had best remain silent. We have some friendly advice for London. Do not shout so loudly. You are not alone. The whole world is laughing itself to death at pious talk of morality coming from those who reek of blood.
__________________
"The favorite slogan of the reds is: 'No Pasarán!: Yes we have passed! And we tell them...and we tell them, we will pass again!'"
― Benito Mussolini after the Communist capitulation in Barcelona
 
Old September 28th, 2014 #3
Joe_Smith
Senior Member
 
Joe_Smith's Avatar
 
Join Date: Aug 2012
Posts: 3,778
Default

Reading this amazing analysis of the United States in 1942, was America really that different back then than it is now? That is why a future WN or NS group should find a piece of America and create a brand new nation out of it from scratch. There's nothing to work with that is compatible with racialism in a large part of the history and culture of the United States.

http://research.calvin.edu/german-pr...hive/goeb5.htm

God’s Country


by Joseph Goebbels


One is never sure which of two characteristics is more prominent in the American national character and therefore of the greater significance: naivete or a superiority complex. When for example they say things about our region, our surprise at their ignorance is surpassed only by annoyance at their stupid insolence. The less they know about a matter, the more confidently they speak. They really believe that Europeans are eagerly waiting to hear from them and follow their advice. They took our strategic decision not to discuss their shallow culture before the war as a sign of admiration. Their greatest technical accomplishments are refrigerators and radios. They cannot believe that there are cultural values that are the result of centuries of historical development, which cannot simply be bought. It was no bad joke when, after the war, they bought the ruins of German castles and moved them stone by stone to the U.S.A. They really thought that they had purchased a piece of national history embodied in stone, and were naive enough to think that mocking laughter from Europe was respect for the wealth that enabled them to buy what their own tradition and culture lacked. Just like money can't buy you love, it can't buy you culture. Good lesson for American WN recovering conservatives who confuse the great wealth America produced or produces with objective value.

A book by Scottish author Eric Linklater titled “Juan in America” has just appeared in German translation. With few words but deadly irony, it holds the mirror up to the Yankees. One must read this book, which takes place in the postwar period, to rightly understand the Americans. Recently the American press claimed that Americans were of the opinion that General Rommel learned his military techniques, admired throughout the world, from the Americans. General Lee used his cavalry in the same way Rommel used his tanks. One does not know whether to be astonished or contemptuous at this naive and stupid idea. In any event, it is genuinely American, and one can give odds of 10:1 that most Americans are firmly convinced that it is so.

Only in the U.S.A. could the wife of the president receive a thousand dollar honorarium at a charity gathering, and take the money without bothering to see if the gathering for the benefit of those injured in the war would thereby run a deficit. The New York newspapers recently reported this. Mrs. Roosevelt even appears for a healthy fee as a fashion model, showing the latest furs to an admiring public. She writes a column for a large number of U.S.A. newspapers titled “My Day,” in which she tells how she spent the previous day, what she wore, which cocktail parties she attended, whom she met, and what she plans to do the next day. Narcissism and boundless self-interest are not only tolerated, but celebrated in American culture. Even before the complete Jewish takeover. This is a big reason why authentic racialism is difficult to organize politically in the United States, such a cause requires a struggle everyone involved to behave in the polar opposite fashion that they were raised, unlike equally Jew'd but more fundamentally civic Europeans and other whites.

We really have the wrong image of America. Hollywood films are mostly to blame, since they present the life style of the upper ten thousand, which most Americans themselves experience though films. Vicarious living is the hallmark of American mass culture. American observers waver between unlimited admiration and deep contempt. Superficial observers admire it, real experts always hold it in contempt. There is certainly much that is at first glance impressive in this new part of the world still in its adolescence. The height of the skyscrapers is, however, no measure of the level of culture. This land that wants to protect intellectual freedom in the ancient cultures of Europe and Asia itself has no permanent theater or opera. A private concern like New York’s Metropolitan Opera survives in peacetime only on German and Italian operas, and had to close its doors for financial reasons once the war began. Yet real culture is imported and underappreciated, or virtually non-existent

The U.S.A. has no poets, no painters, no architects or composers of world stature. Whatever culture it has is borrowed from Europe. The land lacks its own language, culture, and civilization. It has borrowed everything, generally debasing it by Americanizing it, never improving it. Americanization is a kind of kitschification that gives every cultural value an American stamp, turning a mature language into slang, the waltz into jazz, a work of literature into a crime story. Keynotes of Americana are simplifications of real culture for the purpose of crass consumerism and base immediate gratification (since that is what yields the greatest profits). A Waltz club can be profitable and profoundly cultural, but if you need to fill your nightclub in a pinch the chaotic, stupifying, short term ecstasy and novelty of swing dancing will always be a better bet. Jews love this, they call it "progress".

If the Americans lacked money, they would probably be the most despised people in the world. Superiority is nowhere as annoying as with them. They naturally build the best airplanes and tanks, and by the hundreds of thousands. They have the best generals and soldiers, and their defeats are only proof of their intelligence in destroying the bravery of their enemies. Their president is a demigod, though he led the nation into an economic catastrophe from which he saw no way out other than war. They promised Europe a savior in 1917 and sent them a Wilson in 1919. They will repeat this great betrayal today if we do not prevent it. In short, it is a nation still a long way from being a nation, and a people that lacks the most important prerequisite for being a people, a clear style of life.

According to official American statistics, there are 190 Protestant and 430 Catholic churches in New York, but 1000 synagogues. What else should one expect of a city with a Jewish mayor who recently attempted at a reception for foreign journalists to explain European problems in the jargon of the gangsters! The Jews have given their stamp not only to this city, but the whole of public life. The president is surrounded by Jewish advisors and his wife clears the way for her Jewish friends to enter the administration and war office. America from the start was fertile soil for Jewish takeover One feels the need to wash one’s hands after reading American newspapers. They are filled with intellectual filth, daily printing such stories as an announcement that a number of prisoners have formed “Fighters, Inc.,” and offered their services to the president. They were ready to fight in the ranks of the Allies against aggression. Mr. Roosevelt happily accepted their offer. The only other army that recruited convicted rapists and murderers to be put in charge of Europe's conquered women and children was Stalin's Russia.

Can anyone name a single country in Europe where the public would accept such a thing? There was not a word of protest in the U.S.A. The same president recently told a press conference that a surprisingly large number of young people were unsuited for service in the army and the marines because they could not read or write. Is it any surprise that a cunning and demagogic leadership can do what it wants with a nation of such an educational level? At a time when U.S. forces experience one defeat after another and its ships sail the world’s oceans only at the risk of death, they naively announce that they are producing a million victory medals for American soldiers to wear as a sign of their worth when they occupy Germany. American officers are studying at Southern University such matters as civil administration, the laws of war, and related matters. Their task is to return to good order the territories now occupied by the Axis powers.

So far, not a single U.S.A. soldier has set foot on foreign soil, but many have been chased back to U.S. soil in disgrace. After a siege of two or three weeks, an army of 60,000 men with munitions and food sufficient for six months gave up, leaving all of 600 dead behind. That does not bother its brilliant leadership in the least. Of course, it does not have a citizenry able to defend itself against such silly illusions. Everything is junk and make-believe. Everything is sensational. Public opinion can be kneaded like dough. It is a paradise for cunning Jews and businessmen who terrorize the people while flying the flag of democracy and citing Roosevelt’s Four Freedoms. Only in the U.S.A. is it possible for criminals to become world famous gangsters, the guests of mayors and police chiefs, who give interviews for journalists from newspapers with circulations in the millions in which they give their opinions on the questions of the day. American plutocratic mentality: As long as you've got money, you are an example to follow. What's it matter if you're a filthy Jew, vulture capitalist, or Al Capone?

We would not say anything if the U.S.A. were aware of its intellectual and moral defects and was trying to grow up. But it is too much when it behaves in an impudent manner toward a part of the earth with a few thousands years of glorious history behind it, attempting to teach it moral and intellectual lessons, whether out of innocence or a complete lack of genuine culture and learning. We can forgive the mistakes of youth, but this degree of arrogance gets on one’s nerves.

We therefore have no appreciation for the Americanism that can be found in certain of our circles. We fail to see why we as the leading musical nation in the world should borrow even a single note from the U.S.A. We have a level of culture and civilization that is denied to most Americans. One who understands this can hardly have much sympathy for what they understand as culture and civilization. Although we affirm the technical achievements of our age, we see behind them an intellectual strength that grows from the roots of our people. Machines are a means to an end, not an end in themselves. As much as we appreciate the achievements of modern civilization and use them to improve life, we know that they are not the sole meaning of life. There are national values that are the result of centuries of history and tradition. They cannot be purchased, only built by the labor of generations. Raw ingenuity without direction is practically useless. America's large population and attraction of Europe's greatest minds have led to it creating some great inventions, but what is their purpose in a nation with no substantial culture other than to make a few people rich? Enter: Jews. There was no deliberation in how they were going to use the advent of the television.

In any event, we prefer not to be buried in America. In the midst of the confusions of the day, we still have the ability to distinguish truth from falsehood and gold from floss. We are not impressed by American big talk and orgies of numbers. We know well enough that the trees do not grow as high as heaven on the other side of the Atlantic either. As far as God’s country goes, Europeans discovered it and give it life even today. Were it left to its own resources, it would soon return once more to desert and prairie, as wide and as empty as the souls of its people.
__________________
"The favorite slogan of the reds is: 'No Pasarán!: Yes we have passed! And we tell them...and we tell them, we will pass again!'"
― Benito Mussolini after the Communist capitulation in Barcelona
 
Old September 28th, 2014 #4
Vance Stubbs
Hatespeaker
 
Vance Stubbs's Avatar
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Posts: 1,281
Default

Quote:
They think it is not National Socialist to enjoy life; but rather one should only look at the dark side of human existence. Pessimism and suspicion are the best teachers in our earthly vale of sorrows. A true National Socialist has no cause to protect these miserable creatures. Primitiveness and absolute rejection of pleasure are the only character values to these people. If one has a clean and a dirty collar, one puts the dirty one on to give evidence of his hatred of bourgeois values. A man with a good and a bad suit wears the bad one, particularly for festive occasions, for it shows the astonished world how revolutionary his outlook is.
Looks like he predicted pre-ripped jeans back in the 30s. Brilliant.
__________________
"Surely people differ in their biologically determined qualities. But discovery of a correlation between some of these qualities is of no scientific interest and of no social significance, except to racists, sexists and the like."
 
Old October 5th, 2014 #5
Robbie Key
Senior Member
 
Robbie Key's Avatar
 
Join Date: Jul 2014
Posts: 4,399
Blog Entries: 8
Default

Nazi Propaganda by Joseph Goebbels

1933-1945



http://research.calvin.edu/german-pr...e/goebmain.htm

Last edited by Robbie Key; October 6th, 2014 at 01:19 PM.
 
Old October 5th, 2014 #6
andy
Senior Member
 
Join Date: Apr 2008
Location: london
Posts: 12,865
Default

That opening post should be compulsory reading for Bev at VNNUK. Goebbels had a much better grasp on what was a good or a bad influence via popular culture on normal Aryan's.
__________________
The above post is as always my opinion

Chase them into the swamps
 
Old December 24th, 2019 #8
alex revision
Senior Member
 
alex revision's Avatar
 
Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 27,577
Default

Dr. Goebbels and the “Big Lie” Legend

Contrary to popular belief, Goebbels was successful as a propagandist not because he was a master of the "Big Lie," but rather as a result of his fidelity to facts and truth.

As biographer Heiber notes: “Goebbels was accordingly able to celebrate his information policy as being not only superior to the enemy’s in its monolithic character, but also of a ‘seriousness and credibility’ which ‘simply cannot be surpassed.’

The boast could be made with some justification: "Seen in the long view, Goebbels preached, the best propaganda is that which does no more than serve the truth."

Goebbels' frankness and even courage won him a measure of popular admiration. Writes Heiber: He understood the value of admitting reverses and even, now and then, errors; his readiness to be thus "candid" was a kind of knowledgeable wink at his audience -- "Look, I take you seriously. Let's be frank with one another" -- and enabled him to ensnare them all the more. The result was that later on, after 1943, after he had borrowed ... the "blood, sweat and tears" theme of Churchill, people were ready to believe in the ray of hope which he astutely let shine through the somber coloring of his speeches. [p. 134]

"As other influential Nazis began to creep into their shells," comments Heiber, "Goebbels could dare to appear before a mob and not only gain a hearing, but even arouse faith and hope ..." [p. 134]

As the war dragged on, Goebbels' front-page editorial essays in the weekly paper Das Reich played an increasingly important role in sustaining public morale. They were widely reprinted and routinely read over the radio. "His articles in Das Reich," acknowledges Heiber, "were indeed excellent, brilliantly written, and full of bright ideas ..." [p. 235]

Heiber also notes:

Goebbels' articles were carefully worked out more than a week before they were to appear, written in excellent, polished German, stylistically enjoyable and relatively discriminating in content; often they seemed illumined by the lofty wisdom of a great thinker. Their very titles were reminiscent of philosophical treatises: "On the Meaning of War," "The Essential Nature of the Crisis," "On the Work of the Spirit," "On Speaking and Being Silent," "The Indispensability of Freedom," "About National Duty in War." ...It is all very well turned and very solid. These articles made an impression, and Goebbels knew it. [ p. 252 ]

Regrettably, little of what Goebbels wrote and said during the latter war years -- when he was at the peak of his powers -- has been translated into English.

One of Goebbels' greatest wartime propaganda achievements was his exploitation of the Katyn massacre story. In April 1943, the Germans discovered at Katyn, near Smolensk in occupied Russia, a mass grave of thousands of Polish officers who had been taken prisoner by the Soviets in 1939, and shot by Soviet secret police in April 1940. On Goebbels' orders, German newspapers and magazines devoted great attention to the story, giving it weeks of detailed, often front-page coverage. His astute treatment of the story contributed significantly to a major Allied political defeat -- a break in relations between the Soviet government and the Polish government-in-exile. (Meanwhile, American and British officials and newspapers backed the Soviet lie that Germans were responsible for the atrocity.)

In addition to his work as the nation's chief propagandist, during the war Goebbels took on ever greater organizational and policy-making responsibilities, playing an increasingly important role in keeping the nation's industrial and social machinery functioning. In February 1942 Hitler entrusted him with special authority to oversee assistance to people ravaged in Allied air attacks -- a post that was to assume ever greater importance as the aerial bombardment of Germany steadily escalated.

In the summer of 1944 Hitler named him "Reich Plenipotentiary for the Total War Mobilization." Thus, during the final catastrophic months of the war Goebbels -- along with Armaments Minister Albert Speer -- directed Germany's human and material resources for maximum war production, while simultaneously continuing somehow to operate the nation's electric power and water plants, transportation and telephone systems, food and fuel supply networks, public schools, radio broadcasting and daily newspaper publishing. This organizational feat of keeping essential social and community services functioning, while at the same time maintaining and even sharply increasing armaments production -- in spite of devastating aerial bombardment and an ever worsening military situation -- is an achievement without historical parallel.

"We have become a people on the defensive," Goebbels wrote in Das Reich of Feb. 11, 1945 -- eleven weeks before the end. "We work and we fight, we wander, we leave our homes, we suffer and endure, and we do all this with a silent dignity which, in the end, will arouse the admiration of the entire world. Europe may well be happy that it still possesses such a people. Today this people is the salvation of Europe. Tomorrow, therefore, it will be Europe's pride."

His final radio address, broadcast over what remained of a tattered network, was delivered on April 19, 1945. As he had done every year since 1933, he spoke on the eve of Hitler's birthday. Even on this occasion, when the terrible end was glaringly obvious to all, Goebbels still spoke with eloquent, controlled passion, frankly acknowledging the supreme gravity of the situation while inspiring hope. He had not lost his ability to rouse his countrymen with fervor as well as a certain seeming nobility.

"Do not let yourself be disconcerted by the worldwide clamor that will now begin," he urged in a letter written to his stepson just days before his death. "There will come a day, when all the lies will collapse under their own weight, and truth will again triumph." In his final testament written just hours before he took his life, Hitler named Goebbels as his successor as Chancellor -- a tribute to steadfast loyalty even to the bitter end. But Goebbels held this empty position for just a few hours. After he and his wife had their six children put to death, and with Soviet troops just a few hundred yards away, on the evening of May 1, 1945, Joseph and Magda Goebbels ended their lives in the courtyard outside the Führerbunker.

Contrary to popular belief, Goebbels was successful as a propagandist not because he was a master of the "Big Lie," but rather as a result of his fidelity to facts and truth. As biographer Heiber notes:

Goebbels was accordingly able to celebrate his information policy as being not only superior to the enemy's in its monolithic character, but also of a "seriousness and credibility" which "simply cannot be surpassed." The boast could be made with some justification: Seen in the long view, Goebbels preached, the best propaganda is that which does no more than serve the truth." [p. 254]

"Goebbels' real lies, his conscious lies, always pertained to mere detail ...," writes Heiber. "Goebbels' lies were more in the nature of those equivocations and evasions by which government spokesmen everywhere seek to 'protect' the 'national interest'." [pp. 134, 135]

It is also common to imagine that, however skilled, Goebbels was little more than a clever ranter who won support from his countrymen by appealing to base feelings of envy, revenge, conceit and arrogant pride. This view, which implicitly demeans Germans as a nation of emotional and mental cripples, is especially widespread in the United States. If he thinks about it at all, the typical American imagines that if he had been living in Third Reich Germany, he would not have "fallen" for Goebbels' "obvious" lies.

Such a self-flattering view is based on ignorance. In his classic study, Propaganda (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1968; Vintage, 1973 [p. 54]), French scholar Jacques Ellul pointed out that Goebbels' postwar image is itself a propaganda distortion:

There remains the problem of Goebbels' reputation. He wore the title of Big Liar (bestowed by Anglo-Saxon propaganda) and yet he never stopped battling for propaganda to be as accurate as possible. He preferred being cynical and brutal to being caught in a lie. He used to say: "Everybody must know what the situation is." He was always the first to announce disastrous events or difficult situations, without hiding anything. The result was a general belief between 1939 and 1942 that German communiqués not only were more concise, clearer and less cluttered, but were more truthful than Allied communiqués (American and neutral opinion) -- and, furthermore, that the Germans published all the news two or three days before the Allies. All this is so true that pinning the title of Big Liar on Goebbels must be considered quite a propaganda success.

From The Journal of Historical Review, January-February 1995 (Vol. 15, No. 1), pages 19-21.

https://dailyarchives.org/index.php/...big-lie-legend
 
Reply

Share


Thread
Display Modes


All times are GMT -5. The time now is 09:27 AM.
Page generated in 0.13593 seconds.