The propaganda of the Nazi regime that governed Germany from 1933 to 1945 promoted Nazi ideology by demonizing the enemies of the Nazi Party, notably Jews and communists, but also capitalists and intellectuals. It promoted the values asserted by the Nazis, including Heldentod (heroic death), Führerprinzip (leader principle), Volksgemeinschaft (people's community), Blut und Boden (blood and soil) and pride in the Germanic Herrenvolk (master race). Propaganda was also used to maintain the cult of personality around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and to promote campaigns for eugenics and the annexation of German-speaking areas. After the outbreak of World War II, Nazi propaganda vilified Germany's enemies, notably the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, and in 1943 exhorted the population to total war.

Enemies Jews

Antisemitic propaganda was a common theme in Nazi propaganda. However, it was occasionally reduced for tactical reasons, such as for the 1936 Olympic Games. It was a recurring topic in Hitler's book Mein Kampf (1925–26), which was a key component of Nazi ideology.

Early in his membership in the Nazi Party, Hitler presented the Jews as behind all of Germany's moral and economic problems, as featuring in both communism and international capitalism. He blamed "money-grubbing Jews" for all of Weimar Germany's economic problems. He also drew upon the antisemitic elements of the stab-in-the-back myth to explain the defeat in World War I and to justify Nazi views as self-defense. In one speech, when Hitler asked who was behind Germany's failed war efforts, the audience erupted with "The Jews".

After the failure of the Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923, he moderated his tone for the trial, centering his defense on his selfless devotion to the good of the Volk and the need for bold action to save them; though his references to the Jews were not eliminated (speaking, for instance, of "racial tuberculosis" in "German lungs"), they were decreased to win support. Some Nazis feared their movement lost its antisemitic edge, and Hitler privately assured them that he regarded his previous views as mild. Hitler in Mein Kampf describes Jews as "a dangerous bacillus".

Afterwards, Hitler publicly muted his antisemitism; speeches would contain references to Jews, but ceased to be purely antisemitic fulminations, unless such language would appeal to the audience. Some speeches contained no references to Jews at all, leading many to believe that his antisemitism had been an earlier stage.

Still, the antisemitic planks remained in the Nazi Party platform. Even before they ascended to power, Nazi essays and slogans would call for boycotts of Jews."Germans, Buy only from the Jew!" Jews were associated with money-lenders, usury and banks, and were portrayed as the enemy of small shopkeepers, small farmers and artisans.Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p 15, Jews were blamed for the League of Nations, for pacifism, for Marxism, for international capitalism, for homosexuality, for prostitution, and for the cultural changes of the 1920s.Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, p 16-17,

In 1933, Hitler's speeches spoke of serving Germany and defending it from its foes: hostile countries, Communism, liberals, and culture decay, but not Jews. Seizure of power after the Reichstag fire inaugurated April 1 as the day for a boycott of Jewish stores and Hitler, on the radio and in newspapers, fervently called for it. A propaganda poster supporting the boycott declared that "in Paris, London, and New York German businesses were destroyed by the Jews, German men and women were attacked in the streets and beaten, German children were tortured and defiled by Jewish sadists", and called on Germans to "do to the Jews in Germany what they are doing to Germans abroad.""Down with Judah!" Nazi poster from Münster that dates from shortly before the 1 April 1933 boycott of the Jews Archive of Antisemitic Publications from 1930–1945, Calvin College The actual effect, of apathy outside Nazi strongholds, caused Nazis to turn to more incremental and subtle effects.

In 1935 the first set of antisemitic laws went into effect in Nazi Germany; the Nuremberg Laws forbid the Jews and political opponents from civil service. They classified people with four German grandparents as "German or kindred blood", while people were classified as Jews if they descended from three or four Jewish grandparents. A person with one or two Jewish grandparents was a Mischling, a crossbreed, of "mixed blood".In many cases a person with exactly two Jewish grandparents was deemed a "Jew". There were a number of legal tests used, to determine if such a person—with precisely two Jewish grandparents—was to be classified as a "Jew" or a "Mischling". See Mischling Test. These laws deprived Jews of German citizenship and prohibited sexual relations and marriages between Jews and other Germans.Hunt, L. (2009). The Making of the West: Peoples and Cultures, Vol. C: Since 1740. Bedford/St. Martin's. A further decree of the laws in November 1935 extended those prohibitions to "Gypsies, Negroes, and their bastard offspring" as well.

The Aryan Paragraph, which excluded Jews and other "non-Aryans" from many jobs and public offices, was officially justified with overt antisemitism, depicting Jews as have undue representation in the professions."Why the Aryan Law?: A Contribution to the Jewish Question" Anti-Jewish measures were presented as defensive."The Jewish Problem" Nazi speakers were instructed to say that Jews were being treated gently."Our Battle against Judah" Stock answers to counter-arguments were provided for them."Ten Responses to Jewish Lackeys" Jews were attacked as the embodiment of capitalism.Richard Grunberger, The 12-Year Reich, pp 44–5, After six issues devoted to ethnic pride, Neues Volk featured an article on the types of the "Criminal Jew"; in later issues, it urged no sympathy for victims of the Nuremberg laws, while arguing that its reader could see Jewish life going on about them, unpersecuted. Goebbels defended Nazi racial policies, even claiming that the bad publicity was a mistake for Jews, because it brought forward the topic for discussion."Goebbels Speech at the 1933 Nuremberg Rally"

At the 1935 Nazi party congress rally at Nuremberg, Goebbels declared that "Bolshevism is the declaration of war by Jewish-led international subhumans against culture itself."Goebbels speech at the 1935 Nuremberg Rally

The Nazis described the Jews as Untermenschen (subhumans); this term was utilized repeatedly in writings and speeches directed against them, the most notorious example being a 1942 SS publication with the title "Der Untermensch" which contains an antisemitic tirade. In the pamphlet "The SS as an Anti-bolshevist Fighting Organization", Himmler wrote in 1936: "We shall take care that never again in Germany, the heart of Europe, will the Jewish-Bolshevistic revolution of subhumans be able to be kindled either from within or through emissaries from without."

By the mid-1930s, textbooks with more antisemitic content were used in the class room. (This sometimes backfired, with antisemitic caricatures being so crude that the children were unable to recognize their Jewish classmates in them.) "The Jewish Question in Education" assured teachers that children were not only capable of understanding it, but that their sound racial instincts were better than their parents', as witness that the children would run and hide when a Jewish cattle dealer came to deal with their parents.

Biology classes were to emphasize the division of species in nature, to lead children to the analogy:

With this, teachers were informed, the logic of the Nuremberg Laws will be easy to explain.

This time also saw a vast increase in antisemitic popular culture; not bearing the overt stamp of Nazi approval, it was regarded as more objective than Ministry of Propaganda information. Even children's books such as Der Giftpilz promoted antisemitism."Der Giftpilz" Academics, in view of increasing Nazi pressure, produced reams of "racial science" to demonstrate the differences between Jews and Germans, frequently ignoring all other races. In books, the measures were presented as reasonable and even self-defense. Das Schwarze Korps increased the harshness of its tone toward Jews, in order to prepare the SS for racial war. This element could also appear in other propaganda in which it was not the centerpiece. The villains of Hans Westmar were not only Communists but Jews as well.

This, however, did not reach the pitch of later propaganda, after the war. Goebbels, despite his personal racism, approved only two comedies and one historical drama with overt antisemitism. Newsreels contained no references to Jews. Propaganda aimed at women as bulwarks against racial degeneration lay heavy emphasis on their role in protecting racial purity without indulging in the antisemitism of Mein Kampf or Der Stürmer.Leila J. Rupp, Mobilizing Women for War, p 36, , Gerhard Wagner, at the 1936 Nuremberg Rally, discussed the racial law more in terms of the pure and growing race than the evil of the Jews. A 1938 pamphlet urging support for Hitler in the referendum detailed Nazi accomplishments with no mention of antisemitism."We Owe it to the Führer" This reflected a desire to subtly present their racial doctrines, as apparently objective science. The ground was laid for later antisemitic works by heavy emphasis on the ethnic chauvinism. Hitler made only three overtly antisemitic speeches between seizing power and the war, but included various cryptic comments about Jews that the hardcode Nazis knew meant he had not abandoned the beliefs. Antisemitic propaganda was in particularly suppressed during the Olympics, when Der Stürmer was not allowed to be sold on the streets.Anthony Rhodes, Propaganda: The art of persuasion: World War II, p20 1976, Chelsea House Publishers, New York

Hitler gave a speech on January 30 1939 which opened with praise for the flowering of the German people, but went on to declare his prophecy, “If international finance Jewry inside and outside Europe should succeed in plunging the nations once more into a world war, the result will be not the Bolshevization of the earth and thereby the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.” In 1942, newspapers quoted Hitler as saying that his "prediction" was being realized.

The Holocaust

In 1941, when Jews were forced to wear the Star of David, Nazi pamphlets instructed people to remember antisemitic arguments at the sight of it, particularly Kaufman's Germany Must Perish!."When you see this symbol..." This book was also heavily relied on for the pamphlet "The War Goal of World Plutocracy"."War Aims of World Plutocracy"