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The Weimar Republic

During the Weimar Republic, the state often used the right to limit the press freedom by introducing new law. Even worse than this state control was the inner “cleaning” by industrials who sponsored newspapers and agencys. One of them was Hugenberg who published nationalistic parols and ideas. It is generally acknowledged that Hitler might not have been as popular without Hugenberg introducing national propaganda to the Germans (Meyn, 1990). Further, the Weimar Republic, which was the first German democracy, was despised by many people, which made them susceptible to Fascism. In this time until he got into power 1933, Hitler gathered supporters against the inner enemy with the help of demagogy and propaganda (Klaeser, 1998).

The rise of Propaganda: 1933

With the establishment of the Ministry for Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda on March 12, 1933 Joseph Goebbels got “wholesale control of the massmedia” (Welch, 1995, page 24). It was seperated into seven different departments, during the war in even 14, and staffed by young and enthusiastic National Socialists (Welch, 1995). In a speech 1928 Goebbels said: “If we have an army of such propagandists,... the day will come which our worldview takes over the state, when our organization seizes the reins of power” (Goebbels, 1928).

Radio:

Radio was state-regulated since 1925 and financed by licence fees. Fifty-one per cent of the capital was owned by the Ministry of Post who appointed a Radio Commissioner, forty-nine per cent by the regional broadcasting companies who were responsible for the output. Goebbels saw radio as an instrument to guide public opinion towards the National Socialist´s concept of a national community. His main problem was to break down the federal structure: It took Goebbels several months to establish his new system in which nine regional stations became merely branches controlled by the Ministry for Propaganda under the name of Reich Radio Company. Everyone connected to radio had to be member of the Company which enabled the

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state a total unity in radio output. The success in the campaign to bring Saarland back to Germany showed the possibilties of radio as a propaganda tool. It was from then on marketed as the public´s media and the state produced cheap radios (Volksempfaenger), which were unable to receive most of the foreign stations but enabled everyone to listen to German propaganda. Alone in 1933 fifty speeches by Hitler were transmitted, community listening was introduced and “radio soon came to be regarded as the Nazi´s regime´s principal propaganda medium for the dissemination of National Socialist ideas and in the creation of a single public opinion” (Welch, 1995, page 33). The National Socialist´s biggest success was to create a mass listening public. Only during the war when the large amount of political broadcasting was counter-productive some problems became obvious and Goebbels started devoting nearly 70 per cent to light music (Balfour, 1979).

Press:

The press proved to be more difficult as they were associated with parties, pressure groups, religious bodies and private companies. The newspaper landscape in Germany flourished and more publications existed than in Italy, France and Britain together. Goebbels made a three-pronged approach: Firstly, he wanted to control everyone involved in the press industry, secondly the Party´s publisher house Eher Verlag gradually achieved direct or indirect ownership of the German Press majority and lastly the content was controlled with the help of the state-controlled press agency, the Deutsches Nachrichtenbuero, daily directives and press briefings. The membership in the German Newspaper Publisher´s Association was compulsory and every member was screened for racial and political reliability. The press´new role was no longer only to inform but also to instruct. The emergency decree after the Reichstag Fire in February 28, 1933 allowed the regime to suspend publication. It was the pretext for the suppression of Communist and Social Democratic Press (Welch, 1995). Newspapers were taken over and only some liberal papers like the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Berliner Tageblatt were permitted to continue publishing with changing amount of critic against the state (Meyn, 1990). At the beginning of 1933, the state owned only 55 daily newspapers, but at the end of the year 27 more and the circulation increased by 2.4 million copies a day. By 1939 the

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Eher Verlag controlled two-third of the press, but the papers kept their old name so that people were not made aware of the change. It was controlled by the Reich Press Chamber of which the Reich Association of the German Press became a corporate member. It kepts registers of racially pure editors and journalists and regulated the competition. The Press Chamber inbued a strong national Socialist bias and tried to educate a new generation of journalists along strict party lines. After the entry to the profession and flow of means from its source was controlled, the problem of editorial policy and content was solved. The press department of the RMVP took over the daily press conferences, directives over content were given and even the lenght and place of articles were regulated. The Editor´s Law of October 4, 1933 made editors responsible for any infringement of Government directives, editorial independence was ruled out as well as everything which might weaken the Reich. The editor was thereby turned into the regime´s censor. Goebbels, himself a journalist, soon became aware that the uniformity will bore the public and special Nazi campaigns suited for the press were established (Welch, 1995 and Balfour, 1979).

Nearly every Party organisation had a destinated newspaper with such names as the SA-Mann and the deusche Arbeiterfront (HARecih). In 1944, 82 per cent of 977 newspapers were under Party control and between 1933 and 1938, 10000 periodicals were reduced to 5000 (Welch, 1995). As Goebbels said: “No decent journalist with any feeling of honour in his bones can stand the way he is handled by the press department of the Reich Government. Any man who still has a residue of honour will be very careful not to become a journalist” (Welch, 1995, page 39).

The Press Agency:

“The elimination of many non-party newspapers was followed by the fusion of Germany´s two pricipal news agencies. Wolff´s Telegraphisches Buero (WTB) and Hugenberg´s Telegraphen Union” (Welch, 1995, page 36) into the Deutsches Nachrichtenbuero, which provided more than the half of all material used in the press. The WTB was founded in 1849 and part of the press agency cartel. It was merged with the Telegraphen Union in 1933 and was put under state control (Wilke, 1991).