Deceiving the Public

"Common sense could not understand that it was possible to exterminate tens and hundreds of thousands of Jews," Yitzhak Zuckerman, a leader of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw, observed.

Propaganda served as an important tool to win over the majority of the German public who had not supported Hitler and to push forward the Nazis' radical program, which required the acquiescence, support, or participation of broad sectors of the population. Combined with the use of terror to intimidate those who did not comply, a new state propaganda apparatus headed by Joseph Goebbels sought to manipulate and deceive the German population and the outside world. At each step of the way, propagandists preached an appealing message of national unity and a utopian future that resonated with millions of Germans and, simultaneously, waged campaigns that facilitated the persecution of Jews and others excluded from the Nazi vision of the "National Community."

The Propaganda of Deception

Wartime propagandists universally seek to justify the use of military violence by portraying it as morally defensible and necessary. To do otherwise would jeopardize public morale and faith in the government and armed forces. Throughout World War II, Nazi propagandists disguised military aggression aimed at territorial conquest as righteous and necessary self-defense. They cast Germany as a victim or potential victim of foreign aggressors, a peace-loving nation forced to protect its populace or defend European civilization against Communism. War aims professed at each stage of hostilities almost always disguised goals of territorial expansion and racial warfare. This was propaganda of deception, designed to fool or misdirect the populations in Germany, German-occupied lands, and neutral countries.

Nazi Propaganda About the Ghettos

A recurrent theme in Nazi antisemitism propaganda was that Jews spread diseases. To prevent non-Jews from attempting to enter the ghettos and from seeing the condition of daily life there for themselves, German authorities posted quarantine signs at the entrances, warning of the danger of contagious disease. Since inadequate sanitation and water supplies coupled with starvation rations quickly undermined the health of the Jews in the ghettos, these warnings became a self-fulfilling prophecy, as typhus and other infectious diseases ravaged ghetto populations. Subsequent Nazi propaganda utilized these man-made epidemics to justify isolating the "filthy" Jews from the larger population.

Theresienstadt: A Propaganda Hoax

One of the most notorious Nazi efforts at deception was the establishment in November 1941 of a camp-ghetto for Jews in Terezín, in the Czech province of Bohemia. Known by its German name Theresienstadt, this facility functioned both as a ghetto for elderly and prominent Jews from Germany, Austria, and the Czech lands, and as a transit camp for the Czech Jews residing in the German-controlled Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia.

Propaganda to the Bitter End

The Soviet victory in defense of Moscow on December 6, 1941, and the German declaration of war against the United States five days later, on December 11, ensured a protracted military conflict. After the catastrophic German defeat at Stalingrad in February 1943, the challenge of maintaining popular support for the war became even more daunting for Nazi propagandists. Germans increasingly could not reconcile official news stories with reality, and many turned to foreign radio broadcasts for accurate information. With moviegoers beginning to reject the newsreels as blatant propaganda, Goebbels even ordered theaters to lock their doors before projecting the weekly episode, forcing viewers to watch it if they wanted to see the feature film.