But appointing agitators was not sufficient. They had to do something. A 1980 report on a department store in Leipzig, for example, found that “the chosen agitators exist more or less only on paper, since they do not receive any guidance from the party leadership and therefore are not effective with their collectives.”39
Agitators were not always eager to attend meetings or buy the materials intended for them. In August 1961, just before the Berlin Wall was constructed, a propaganda conference in Brandenburg was criticized: “The greatest weakness of this conference was that, despite relatively good preparation, only 52 of the 192 invited propagandists came.”40 Active This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:40 UTC
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propagandists had many demands on their time and were not eager to add another long meeting to the week’s calendar.41 Nor did they always buy the proper books. A 1961 report noted that not enough propagandists had bought the recommended editions of Marx-Engels or Lenin.42 Many who did buy the books failed to read them. Those who were members of the party for pragmatic reasons understandably were not eager to spend more time on party duties than necessary. Hermann von Berg, who left the GDR, summarized the situation: “I know enough professors and party officials who admit with a smile that they have never read a single line in any of Marx’s books, but slid through all the examinations nonetheless. The ‘Classics of Marxism-Leninism’ are on the bookshelves of every functionary and in every library. They are as compulsory as the speeches of members of the Politburo (written by bureaucrats in the party machine) or Hitler’s Mein Kampf during the Nazi regime. But they are privately rejected—though of course praised all the more in public.”43
Keeping propagandists informed was a challenge, given the system’s tight control over information. A 1957 proposal from the SED’s Agitation Department stated: “As true confidants of the masses, they [party officials]
must know more about all areas of politics than the average newspaper reader. But it is still the case that the party secretary gets his information in most cases from the newspapers, just as any other citizen of the republic.”44 Proposals to provide confidential information to propagandists were never implemented. Throughout the GDR’s history, propagandists knew little more than their workmates who attended to the media. Publications intended for agitators had such wide circulations that they could not contain confidential information. The GDR’s constant concern with bad news leaking to West Germany kept even the more restricted local propaganda material from telling agitators anything they were not already likely to know. More than that, to allow even the propagandists to know that the party leadership was not in accord as to the truth would encourage dissent.
If they were not sure of what could be said, the masses would not get a consistent message.
Bureaucracy had its common effects. The various arms of the propaganda apparatus competed to demonstrate success, measured by such things as the number of meetings held and brochures distributed. As in any bureaucracy, counting was the easiest way to demonstrate success. A 1961
report, for example, found that the various organizations were more concerned about demonstrating their effectiveness to superiors by holding numerous meetings than in responding to the actual needs of the This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:40 UTC
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population.45 Similarly, a 1963 report based on conversations with the editors of county newspapers reported that the people’s correspondent movement (which attempted to get ordinary people writing for the press) was stagnating. Few of them actually wrote anything, but they were kept on the rolls because a high number, even if many did nothing, looked good in reports to superiors.46
Although the GDR never succeeded in winning the economic battle, it had won the battle of agitation organization by the 1960s. By then there were large numbers of trained propagandists and agitators. A 1976 estimate had 10–15 percent of the SED membership (then just over two million) holding appointments as agitators.47 A 1972 report claimed the SED
had well over 100,000 propagandists.48 Most were not full-time propagandists, however. Large numbers of people also made propaganda for the Free German Youth (FDJ), the Free German Trade Union (FDGB), and other mass organizations. A reasonable estimate is that 500,000 GDR citizens had appointments as propagandists or agitators in the 1980s, an estimate supported by the circulation of the agitators’ monthly, WAS und WIE, about 450,000 in 1980 and 530,000 in 1989.49 A quite direct relationship between the circulation of WAS und WIE and the agitator corps is suggested by a 1976 report from Kreis Weißenfels, which claimed 664 appointed agitators and 701 subscriptions to WAS und WIE. 50
A burst of material served the propagandists and agitators. In the beginning, the GDR turned to the Soviet Union, translating eleven pamphlets in a series titled “The Agitator’s Library.” A 1951 pamphlet in the series “The Fundamentals of Bolshevist Agitation” included fifty-eight pages of advice, for example, “Clarity, simplicity and ease of understanding are the leading characteristics of Bolshevist agitation.”51
At the same time, an Agitation Department series titled “Questions and Answers” provided material for agitators to use in daily discussions. One edition suggested ways to handle the lost German territories to the east. To answer the question of why Germans in the region were being removed to areas to the west and north, the answer was: “The German population was expelled from the former eastern territories because they to a great degree had joined Hitler’s war of conquest. The existence of German minorities in foreign states was always the occasion of National Socialist propaganda aimed at ‘freeing the brothers to the east.’ To end this once and for all, a radical, hard but consistent policy of removing all Germans from the eastern territories was carried out.”52
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Neuer Weg, the monthly for party officials, began publication in 1945. It often carried articles having to do with propaganda. Early issues were sometimes lively and helpful for propagandists. A 1949 issue warned propagandists against being too negative with those slow to learn:
“My dear comrade! Your question proves that you have not yet learned enough.” That was the answer a speaker in Chemnitz gave to a question that admittedly may not have been phrased in the best way.
In Augustusburg (Saxony), the then head of the Flöhau party organization dispatched a somewhat dense older comrade with the remark: “One can’t do anything about stupidity!”
Individual cases? Not at all! Many functionaries and speakers have the habit of responding in such ways. When a comrade has worked up the courage to ask a question in a party meeting, answers like those cited above are a cold shower that often lead to a silent membership. Can that be in the interest of the party?53
Such articles displayed both genuine interest in reaching the masses and confidence that they could in fact be reached by competent agitation.
Neuer Weg got duller as the years went on. In 1962 an internal party report noted: “The lower-level party groups receive too little practical advice and guidance from Neuer Weg about the ways and means of ideological work, or on the means and methods of agitation.”54 By the 1980s it was filled with articles in “Party Chinese,” of which one example should suffice:
The decisive area of the political-ideological work of the party is and remains the unity of economic and social policy, the cornerstone of our social strategy. Theoretically, but also concretely tied to the task of every branch of industry, factory and work collective, it is necessary to explain the nature of our social strategy in a way that each worker can see how it relates to his own workplace. It must be clear to each ind
ividual that in production, and only there, can we produce what is needed in the social and cultural arenas.
Therefore there is no alternative to a substantially higher level of effort through the use of the results of the scientific-technical revolution, though rationalization, through the careful use of material, through effective management.55
One sympathizes with average citizens who were asked to digest large amounts of such prose. It was hardly likely to inspire earnest commitment and diligent labor.
The periodical also contained specific information to be used in propaganda. A 1986 issue, for example, carried an article in the series “Answers This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:40 UTC
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to Current Questions” titled “State Terrorism—Why and How Is the USA Increasingly Practicing It?”56 The article pointed out that the United States was out to dominate the world, that it was suppressing struggles for national liberation, and that it faced increasing opposition. The reader learned nothing not otherwise available in the press, but the material was at least reasonably concise.
It took time to develop methods to inform agitators on the correct approach to current affairs. The Agitation Department began publishing the twice-monthly Notizbuch des Agitators in 1949.57 It usually had around seventy pages, with a mixture of theoretical and practical articles. A typical issue in July 1953 included a summary of the Central Committee’s recent meeting, supporting material on Soviet food shipments, details on GDR
wage and price policies and West German elections, a warning on the importance of watching out for enemy subversion, a discussion of agricultural policy, a report on an agitators’ conference, and recommended reading.
Nothing was confidential. However, the biweekly publication was unable to serve the large audience of agitators effectively, so the Agitation Department ceased publishing it in September 1955. The district offices were to publish their own versions, which in fact happened for several years, but by 1958 most of these had vanished as well.
The ultimate solution was a new national journal for agitators, WAS und WIE, which began in 1975. Each monthly issue had thirty-two pages of detailed information agitators could use. The April 1989 issue included articles on the upcoming GDR communal elections, the importance of education, the superiority of socialism to capitalism, GDR reparations to the Soviet Union, efforts to grow more vegetables, social misery in West Germany, the importance of increasing the GDR’s exports, financial problems of West German cities, Latin American social conflicts, and the policies of the Bush administration. None of the articles had anything confidential—a diligent newspaper reader would have found nothing surprising—but they did provide reasonably clear arguments and helpful data. WAS und WIE appeared until the GDR’s collapse. Unfortunately, the rigidities of the system kept it from giving direct answers to many reasonable questions. The final issue in December 1989 apologized to readers for the failures of the past, noting that it had ignored important issues and published some material that was simply false.58
There were also regular publications, newsletters, and pamphlets from the Agitation Commission, the district offices, the mass organizations, and so forth. The military was also active, producing a 1988 Handbook for This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:40 UTC
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Political Work in Military Groups and Units, a 500-page guide, and RADAR, the monthly for military agitators.59 The Agitation and Propaganda Departments in Berlin produced many slide shows, film strips, and taped lectures that could be used by propagandists. The total amount of such material is enormous, as anyone working through the SED archives learns.
Although the SED tried to persuade those who already enjoyed the respect of their colleagues to become agitators, the position placed people in a difficult situation. Since they knew little more than their workmates and had to explain away many problems rather than resolve them, their credibility was not always high. As one agitator said in 1961, the farmers he talked with were complaining: “You said things would get better, but we do not notice any improvement.”60 A frustrated agitator wrote to Erich Honecker in 1980, lamenting the difficulties she herself had buying daily necessities and noting the challenge it gave her in agitating with her workmates: “I ask you, how can I in my own desperate situation find the right answers to all these questions when I try to win young colleagues as candidates for the party? And how shall I raise my son, who is daily confronted with these problems?”61 A twenty-three-page letter from an agitator in 1962 complained: “It is hardly possible to list all the problems we face in our work.”62 He gave it a good try, mentioning lack of money, lazy colleagues, and hindrances from the city. A 1982 report observed that posters often arrived late, even for recurring annual events, and that although taped material was being provided, equipment to play it was lack-ing and the sound quality was often miserable.63 Party files have many similar complaints.
Agitators had hard going, particularly in the early years. For instance, one suggested way of getting a conversation started in a household was to discuss the family’s problems. But hearing the problems was one thing, doing something about them another. The average household could readily provide a long list of difficulties. What was the agitator to do? As the representative of the party, he or she could either say that these problems would eventually vanish as socialism developed, not a satisfying answer to a frustrated conversational partner, or attempt to do something to resolve the problems. That meant giving up scant free time to wander from office to office with little prospect of solving large numbers of the citizenry’s difficulties. In either case, household agitation was unlikely to be persuasive.
As Ernst Richert noted in 1958, the party press provided few examples of exemplary household agitation, a sign that such examples were scarce.64
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Then there was the one-way flow of information. Agitation conferences regularly noted that feedback did not function well, that information went from the top down but not from the bottom up.65 Those at the bottom were often buried in a flood of directives and orders from their superiors.
Fred Oelßner noted at a party conference in 1954: “[W]e carry on too many different campaigns at the same time, or shortly after each other, so that the poor agitators down below often do not know what they should do first.”66 Those at the bottom were expected to master not only thick volumes of party decisions and programmatic speeches by party leaders but also regular urgent instructions to do this or that. One harassed official kept count in 1961: “Between 1 January and 3 March 1961, the district and county offices received 31 decisions of the Central Committee. 15 documents with a total of 90 pages went to the counties, the other 16 (87
pages) to the district offices. The Agitation Commission [of the SED] sent 15 teletypes during January and February with a total length of 47 meters.”67 It is painful to imagine what would have happened if the GDR had survived long enough to implement E-mail.
Summary
Both National Socialism and the GDR depended on ordinary citizens to conduct propaganda. Each system faced similar problems. They had to recruit and train large numbers of propagandists, keep up their morale, and supply them with information and arguments, without revealing anything to them at all confidential or giving them real power.
Involving vast numbers of ordinary citizens in agitation not only got the work done and gave a face to the larger organization, it also implicated ordinary citizens in the system. Unless they wanted to admit hypocrisy to themselves, something most people are reluctant to do, participating in the system made them its accomplices. Participation stre
ngthened their attitudes and forced them to put on at least an outward show of enthusiasm to their fellow citizens.
The two systems put their efforts in different directions. The NSDAP focused on reaching people in groups. The primary way the party used its members to reach the masses was through public meetings, though party members were expected to conduct face-to-face propaganda and there was a well-developed system of block wardens. Film, theater, and the media were also used. When the NSDAP wanted to reach the masses, however, it This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:40 UTC
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sent out speakers and depended on its multitude of propagandists to organize and promote public meetings.
The GDR depended less on public speakers. The SED did not ignore the spoken word. It held large numbers of meetings but had nothing like the elaborately organized Nazi speaker system. Instead, it depended most heavily on person-to-person and small group agitation. The goal was to have agitators in every work unit and neighborhood who could, on a one-to-one basis, reach the masses with the SED’s message. The result was a more labor intensive system. The circulation of Unser Wille und Weg was about 120,000 monthly, and this for a population of about 80 million. WAS
und WIE’s circulation was over four times greater for a population less than a quarter as large. The circulation densities varied by a factor of about twenty.
The disparate numbers of lower-level propagandists led to different styles of propaganda. The Nazi mass meeting was an arena of passion, of whipping up mass enthusiasm. Nazism did not avoid rational argument, but the public meeting was not an appropriate occasion for careful reason-ing. The GDR’s emphasis on personal agitation resulted in discussions more than orations. Agitators needed to adjust their responses to the particular person or small group to whom they were speaking. They were hindered, of course, by the necessity of following a carefully established party line that made offering convincing answers to many questions difficult.
The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic Page 12
