The Propagandas of Nazi Germany and the German Democratic Republic
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The system was not producing, and citizens were bitter. Shops lacked even essential goods, and there was little prospect of improvement. As a typical late May 1961 party report on morale from the Dresden area stated: “One cannot speak of an optimistic mood at all. The mood is depressed—pessimistic. The primary cause is that the population cannot understand why most basic of life’s needs are unavailable. The attitudes range from disbelief, incomprehension and dissatisfaction to irony, hostile statements and even a few instances of strike threats. Even factually correct arguments are no longer believed. . . . The members of our party are confused. The comrades can find no way to persuasively explain the major shortages.”53 Party morale was low. A report at the end of July found that 24 percent of party units had failed to hold the obligatory monthly membership meeting in June.54 Members did not know what to do or say. Their everyday experiences were in too great a conflict with what their worldview promised.
In the weeks leading up to the construction of the Wall, the media were focused on a coordinated campaign to persuade GDR citizens that West Germany was attempting to lure them west by nefarious means. Typical headlines from Neues Deutschland suggest the propaganda line:
• Workers Chase GDR Enemies: Fascist Elements Driven across the Border
[5 August]
• Border-Crossers Produce War Material (a GDR citizen who worked in the West is tried for his activities) [5 August]
• Arrest Warrant for Baby Kidnapper (from the West) [11 August]
• Workers Demands to the GDR Volkskammer: Take Effective Measures to Protect the Population [11 August]
The rest of the press mirrored the line.
The SED Agitation Department for the Halle area outlined arguments to be used by agitators at the end of July. It claimed that many had been lured This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:42 UTC
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from East Germany by the same capitalists who used Jews and SS prisoners as slave labor in their factories during World War II. Their wretched victims faced a dreadful fate:
Those traitors to their socialist homeland who were crazy enough to believe that life would be a bed of roses in the Bonn military state are now the victims of recruiters for the Foreign Legion and the pimps. That is proven by the fact that a large number of the youth who have left the GDR, thereby betraying it, have found themselves in the Foreign Legion, there to bleed for the interests of the French and West German monopolists in Algeria. Other youth are forced into the Bonn North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) army, where they are trained to shoot at their parents, brothers and sisters in the GDR.
Many young girls who had solid job training on which to base their futures in the GDR fell victims to terrible slave traders after they had betrayed their homeland.
Now they inhabit West German brothels, wasting their lives to amuse and satisfy the Ami [American] occupiers, or they must expose their bodies to the greedy gaze of overstuffed capitalists and playboys. That is the much-praised “Free World,” which uses gangster methods to mislead people or forces them with criminal means to betray their homeland and fall into misery. Many have already regretted their foolish actions and returned from the Western world, healed but shameful. Others cannot make the decision, and sink deeper and deeper into the swamp of the Western world.55
A great deal of such material was published, broadcast, or spread by agitators.
The GDR leadership realized that something had to be done, but the convoluted legal status of Berlin made independent action impossible.
Even though the GDR had proposed building a wall as early as 1952 (a proposal vetoed by the Soviets), Walter Ulbricht answered a question at an international press conference on 15 June 1961 by asserting that no one had the intention of building a wall around Berlin.56 He was lying, since he had proposed closing the border at a Warsaw Pact meeting in March 1961, but his proposal was at first declined. He won approval five months later at a meeting of Communist Party leaders in Moscow on 5 August.
The building of the Wall in 1961 and its collapse in 1989 caught everyone by surprise. Once it was there, it had to be justified. The obvious conclusion was that the GDR was not sufficiently attractive to hold its citizens.
Such a conclusion was unacceptable. The GDR media began a coordinated campaign to persuade the citizenry that the Wall was a great victory.
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Maps of Reality
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Neues Deutschland set the tone on 14 August 1961. Order and clarity now prevailed. Children were protected from kidnappers, families from those trying to lure their members away, factories from headhunters from the West. The enemy was caught by surprise, the citizens of the GDR were delighted. Numerous statements from GDR citizens claimed satisfaction that the GDR was finally secure.57
The media tailored the message for various audiences. Junge Generation, aimed at FDJ leaders, wrote: “A major blow has been struck. 13 August 1961 will go down in history as an historic date in the history of the German labor movement. Our victory on 13 August 1961 clearly demonstrated the superiority of socialism in Germany and the world to every young person. The self-inflated Brandt and his oppressive front line city thugs got a painful blow to their dirty paws from the fists and weapons of the workers.”58
The Trommel, a magazine for children, carried a picture of happy boys and girls watching tanks in its first issue after the Wall. The accompanying article stated: “On 13 August they left their workbench and drafting table to stand guard for peace along the Western sector of Berlin. These young soldiers, sons of workers and farmers, came to Berlin with their tanks to show the warmongers and troublemakers the iron fist of our peace-loving state.
The den of spies in West Berlin is sealed off, without a shot being fired. We thank you, comrades, for this deed. You have won a great victory.”
Frau von Heute, a women’s magazine, quoted a physician: “I think our government’s actions are wonderful. The provocations from West Berlin have stopped, and life is normal again. Our doctors and nurses are optimistic and happy that our state has finally put an end to the trade in human beings and the kidnapping of children. Attempts to lure away the doctors and nurses that we desperately need have stopped. Life has become easier, particularly for us women. . . . The actions of our government are a contribution to peace.”59
Eulenspiegel, the weekly humor and satire publication, took a biting tone. The first issue after the Wall carried an article titled: “A Very Open Word to One Standing Next to His Packed Suitcase.” The advice was simple: unpack. The “freedom” of the West was a chimera.
That freedom was the freedom to call Anita the call-girl on the table telephone at the Palais de Paris dance hall on Augsburg Street when she had finished her “erotic shadow play.” That freedom was your ability to make a little something as a currency crook at the money changers. That freedom was the ability to read trashy newspapers with miserable content and the This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:42 UTC
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horoscope that could not tell you that 13 August was coming. You were surprised like a stupid ox. That freedom was the wild west movies, where you lost bit by bit the last vestiges of humanity. That freedom was the pitiable freedom of being a swine among swine.
Now you have to stop being a swine and become once again a decent human being. You will have to earn your money honestly and spend it rationally. Is that really so bad?
Well, unpack that suitcase. You are needed here and have the freedom that makes it worthwhile to live and work, because through it we all live and prosper.60
Every major newspaper or magazine, in a way appropriate to its audience, pres
ented the Wall as a step to safeguard peace that was welcomed by the vast majority of the population. Named “The Anti-Fascist Protective Wall,”
it was portrayed as a victory, not a defeat.
Stalingrad faded relatively quickly from the German media, but the Wall was a looming presence that could not be ignored. Throughout the remaining history of the GDR, the media presented the Wall as a major accomplishment. On its first anniversary, somewhat overshadowed by a Soviet space flight, Neues Deutschland wrote: “A year later, we can conclude: The protective wall we built against the aggressors has proved secure and preserved peace. . . . Our state is stable, strong, unassailable, and the Revi-sionists in Bonn will not find even among their NATO partners anyone willing to support them in desperate actions.”61 The same basic line was followed until 1989, when Erich Honecker made his famous statement that the Wall might still be there in fifty or a hundred years.
Summary
What Michael Balfour wrote of the Nazi press is equally true of the GDR
press and of the media of both systems in general: “[T]he Party obtained the worst of both worlds. They did not get the press they wanted and they did not like the press they got.”62 Goebbels noted in 1943: “Any decent journalist with any feeling of honor in his bones simply cannot stand for the way he is handled by the press department of the Reich government.
Journalists are sat on as though they were still in grade school. Naturally this will have very serious consequences for the future of journalism. Any man who still has a residue of honor will be very careful not to become a journalist.”63 Joachim Herrmann, the SED’s Politburo member in charge of the press after 1978, told subordinates in 1987: “We have to get rid of the This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:42 UTC
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uniformity of the media. It should not look as if everything is centrally controlled. Or at least no one should be able to notice.”64 It is difficult for citizens not to notice a uniform news system. After 1989, a GDR journalist described the resulting rather low self-image of the profession: “We had no status either with the population or in the party apparatus. . . . We were seen by the entire party apparatus as ink lackeys, as people to whom one gave orders. We were not taken seriously. People said we were the court fools of the nation.”65
Despite regular complaints even within the systems, nothing could be done about the situation. Since both systems began with the presumption that the leadership had truth and since both feared that their truths stood on uncertain foundations, journalists could not be allowed to carry out many of their customary functions. They were restricted to finding creative ways to say what they were told to say.
Both systems established remarkably similar media systems. There were differences in outward structure. The Nazi media were supervised primarily by the state, the GDR media by the party. The Nazi system was more convoluted than the SED’s. The ideologies underlying the systems claimed vastly different goals, but the results were largely similar.
Both systems made explicit demands on journalists to support the state’s worldview under all circumstances. To guarantee adherence to the respective party line, they established daily conferences for leading journalists.
They then prohibited taking written notes at them, displaying a peculiar obsession to conceal the means of control in a way that made the journalist’s job harder than it already was. In both systems, the importance of what was said led some journalists to violate the injunction and take notes.
Journalists quickly learned that even a minor failing could result in difficulty, even the loss of their jobs. They did not have to be told this daily by the state. Journalists’ memoirs from both eras make it clear that stories that might have been publishable were held back on the advice of colleagues who gently reminded them of the risk. The similarities to the past were obvious to the GDR’s journalists, who called Heinz Geggel, the SED Agitation Department official in charge of the press, “Dr. Geggels” (an unmistakable comparison to Goebbels) behind his back.
Both systems worked hard to establish a new journalistic ethos. The very word “journalist” was suspect. A 1938 article in the SS weekly spoke of “the type we fought and also defeated, the scribbler of a past era who called himself a journalist.” There followed an unflattering portrait: “The journalist is a creature for sale. One can throw him out the front door only This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:42 UTC
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to have him creep back in through the back door. The journalist is the scum who says one thing today and other tomorrow. He depends on sensation and indiscretion, swindle, lies, lack of conscience and hollow phrases.”66 The preferred Nazi term for a journalist was Schriftleiter, suggesting that a newspaper reporter was leading public opinion from a National Socialist perspective rather than pretending to write from an objective stance. The GDR kept the term “journalist” but with qualifications. In 1969 Harry Tisch, head of the GDR labor organization, complained in a letter of a newspaper reporter who thought he had some independence: “Comrade Fötsch believes that he can go beyond his duty as a factory newspaper editor to act as what you might call an ‘independent journalist’ who is not obliged to his party secretary or the county leadership. He thinks himself to be a ‘journalist,’ not a party worker.”67 The journalist in both systems was to be a conscious agent of the ruling ideology—an evangelist.
The dangers of error made official press censorship unnecessary. Neither the Nazis nor the GDR had press censors (though during World War II the military censored reports). They did not need them. The complex system of press directives, careful selection of journalists, party involvement, and the threat of sanctions provided multiple ways to keep the media in line. The vast majority of journalists in both systems made the understandable decision to go along to get along.
One might think that the result was an entirely unbelievable press. It is true that there is abundant evidence that the citizens of both systems failed to trust the press. SD reports regularly note public suspicion of the media.
The GDR population attended to West German electronic media. Yet the news media still had considerable persuasive power. Newspaper readership was high under the Nazis. When at the very end of the Third Reich paper shortages forced a decrease in newspaper size, someone proposed publishing newspapers every other day. Realizing the desperate need for information and the danger of rumors, the suggestion was rejected, and newspapers were published daily to the very end.68 In the GDR, despite the remarkable dullness of much newspaper content, circulations were high. By 1989 there were thirty-nine daily newspapers with a total circulation of nine million. Given a population of under seventeen million, the average household received two newspapers. People still needed information and confirmation of what they believed (however faintly).
Jacques Ellul makes the interesting claim that modern propaganda exists under conditions that render the educated more susceptible to its This content downloaded from 198.91.37.2 on Sun, 05 Jun 2016 03:34:42 UTC
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claims than the uneducated. The educated expect to be informed on events but cannot secure that information directly. They rely of necessity on secondhand opinion, what they receive from the media. The mass of such material is so great that even those who claim to be critical readers have little option but to accept most of what they read. They may be suspicious, but it is difficult to confirm their suspicions.69 Few are able to doubt everything. Citizens of both systems faced a comprehensive media system that was difficult to disagree with. There was either no competing information in the case of National Socialist Germany or limited information in the case of the GDR (electronic media from West Germany). It simply was not
feasible for citizens to analyze in detail the flood of information they received.
The news media of both systems played a critical role in maintaining stability. They presented outlooks on the world that people did not wholly believe, but their inescapable ubiquity, their totality, nonetheless guided people’s attention and attitudes. The maps of reality they provided were deficient, but a poor map was better than no map at all. At least newspaper readers had some information, some way to make sense of the world.
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6
Arts and Entertainment
M M M M
People may attend to the news, no matter how influenced it is by propaganda, from an understandable desire to make sense of the world around them. The popular arts are different. Their popularity is influenced by matters of taste, style, and personal preference. Moreover, there are other options for leisure than popular arts. The Third Reich and the GDR
learned that heavy propaganda made unpopular radio, film, television, and literature. Both systems therefore sought to use the arts in ways that served propaganda without alienating the audience.
Hitler’s Arts
“No people lives longer than the evidence of its culture,” Hitler proclaimed at the 1935 Nuremberg rally.1 Whether in the fine arts or architecture, film or radio, literature or music, the Nazis had ideas, if not always clear ones, on what art should be.2 As the Völkischer Beobachter wrote in 1935: “The only possible criterion of judgment for a work of art in a National Socialist State is the National Socialist conception of culture. Only the party and the state have the right to define standards in accord with the National Socialist conception of culture.”3