Pursuing all political events with interest like I did made me very interested in propaganda. In it, I saw a tool that the Socialist-Marxist organization understood well and used with masterful skill. I realized early that the proper use of propaganda is a true art and one that remained practically unknown to the privileged-class parties.
Only the Christian-Socialist movement achieved a certain skill with this tool and its success was owed to Lueger’s contributions in his day. Not until the war was there a chance to see the enormous results that focused propaganda can produce. Here again, unfortunately, the other side was the sole subject of study because our side’s understanding and use of propaganda was insignificant. This negligence was obvious to every German soldier. It was an absolute failure of the entire German information system. This now led me to investigate more thoroughly the use of propaganda.
Often there was more than enough time for consideration and reflection, but, unfortunately, it was the enemy who gave us this great practical lessons.
What we failed to do, our adversaries did with extraordinary skill and calculation amounting to genius. Even I learned an infinite amount from the enemy’s war propaganda. But of course, time passed without a trace of understanding raining on the politicians’ heads. Some of them thought they were too clever to take lessons from the enemy, and the rest were unwilling to learn. Did we have any propaganda at all? Unfortunately, no. Everything that was tried in this area was so inadequate or wrong from the start that, at best, it did no good and was often actually harmful. After a careful review of German war propaganda, it was inadequate in form, and it was psychologically wrong in fundamentals. Anyone could see this was true, even with a cursory inspection. Officials were not even clear in their own minds about whether propaganda is a means or an end.
It is without question a means and has to be judged based on how it accomplishes the ends. Its form has to be adapted to accomplish the desired result. It is also obvious that the importance of the end may vary. The ends may even stray from the general needs of the public. The propaganda must also adjust to match the value of the ends desired. The end that we struggled for during the war was the most glorious and tremendous that a man could imagine: the freedom and independence of our people, security of income for the future, and the nation’s honor which is something that does exist despite those with contrary opinions. It must exist because people without honor lose their freedom and independence sooner or later. This, in turn, agrees with a higher justice because generations of scoundrels without honor deserve no freedom. No one who is willing to be a cowardly slave can or should possess any honor because that kind of honor would quickly become an object of universal hatred.
The German people were fighting for their very existence, and the purpose of propaganda in the war should have been its goal to back up the fight and victory.
When people are fighting for their existence on this planet and are faced with the fatal question, “to be or not to be”, all considerations of humaneness or appearances crumble into nothing. These concepts are not floating in the air, but are born in man’s imagination where they will cease to exist when he ceases to exist. Man’s departure from this world dissolves those concepts into nothing because Nature does not know them. They are limited to the men in a handful of countries or rather a few races, and their value is only to the degree they unfold from these men’s feelings. Humaneness and showyidealism for the sake of appearances would disappear from the inhabited world if the races that created and upheld these concepts were lost.
In a peoples’ struggle for its existence in the world, these concepts are of only minor importance. They are not important in determining the form of the struggle. If the time comes when they might cripple the drive for self-preservation in a struggling people, they must be discarded.
As far as the question of humaneness is concerned, even Moltke (known as Moltke the
Elder, Helmuth Karl Bernhard von Moltke was a Prussian soldier, Chief of General Staff in 1858 and responsible for the French defeat in 1870) pointed out that in war it is essential to
make a decision as quickly as possible, and that the most ruthless methods of fighting are at the same time the most humane.
If anyone should try to improve us with nonsense about putting on airs of moral superiority for appearance’s sake or showy-idealism because it is what they think other people believe we should do, there can only be one answer: Any question of destiny that is as important as a people’s struggle to survive immediately disposes of any duty to demonstrate “proper” appearances or to be concerned in any way with how we appear to outsiders. The least beautiful thing that can exist in human life is the yoke of slavery. Or do these touchy-feely people find the present lot of the German nation only an appearance to be viewed by others? We have no need to discuss the matter with the Jews. They are the inventors of this perfume of civilization which makes people more concerned with appearances than with survival. Their whole existence is a denial of the beauty of God’s creation.
Since these ideas of what is humane and showy-morality for the benefit of others have no place in warfare, they are not to be used as standards for war propaganda.
Propaganda in the war was a means to an end. The end was the German people’s successful struggle for existence. Therefore, the propaganda should have only been considered based on how it achieved that goal. The cruelest weapons were humane if they brought quicker victory, and the only showy-morality to be used was that which helped assure the dignity of
freedom for the nation. This was the only attitude possible when facing the question of war propaganda in such a lifeand-death struggle.
If the so-called competent authorities had understood this, the form and use of propaganda as a weapon would never have been a matter of confusion. Propaganda is merely another weapon, a very frightening one, in the hands of an expert.
The second question of absolutely central importance was this: Where should propaganda be directed? At the educated intellectuals or at the lesseducated masses? It must be aimed continuously at the masses alone! For the intellects, or those today who think they are intellectuals, we do not offer propaganda, but scientific teaching. Judging by its substance, propaganda is no more science than an advertising poster drawing is art. The art of the poster is in the designer’s ability to attract the attention of the crowd with form and color. A poster advertising an art exhibition only has to draw attention to the art in the exhibition. The better it succeeds, the greater is the art of the poster itself. In addition, the poster should show the masses the importance of the exhibition, but it should never be a substitute for the art there on display. Anyone who wants to involve himself with actual art must study more than just the poster. In fact, for him, a simple walk through the exhibition is not enough. Only after a detailed study of the exhibits can he be expected to give a thoughtful examination to the individual works, and then slowly form a sound opinion. The situation is the same today with what we call propaganda. Propaganda’s purpose is not scientific training of the individual, not to give details or to act as a course of instruction, but directing the masses’ attention to particular facts, occurrences, and necessities. The importance of these facts can only be brought in their view by the means of propaganda. The art of propaganda consists in putting a matter so clearly and forcibly before the minds of the people that it creates a strong conviction in everyone.
It is essential to success that propaganda reinforces the reality of the facts that are promoted, the necessity of what is being promoted, and the just or rightness of its character.
This art is not an end in itself. Its purpose must be identical to the advertisement poster—to attract the attention of the masses and not to distribute instructions to those who already have an educated opinion on things or who prefer to form their opinions based on objective study. That is not the purpose of propaganda. It must appeal to the feelings of the public rather than to their reasoning ability.
All propaganda must appeal to the common people in tone and in form and must keep its intellectual level to the capacity of the least intelligent person at whom it is directed. In other words, the intellectual level must be lowered as the mass of people it is intended to reach grows. If it is necessary to reach a lot of people, as in the case of national propaganda
for the continuation of a war, you can never be too careful about controlling the intellectual level of the propaganda.
The less science is involved and the more emotions are involved, the more complete the success will be. Success is the best proof of the effectiveness of propaganda, and not the fact that it satisfies a few scholars or “image-conscious, sickly apes” who are concerned more with appearances and feelings.
Understanding the emotional patterns of the great masses and using proper psychology to get their attention and touch their hearts is the true art of propaganda. The fact that those who supposedly have their intellect and wits enhanced by education fail to understand this proves their mental laziness or their conceit.
Once we understand the importance of targeting the art of propaganda advertising to the broad masses, we have the following consequence: It is a mistake to try to create propaganda in the same way you would create a document for scientific instruction. The great masses’capacity to absorb information is very limited; they have little understanding and they are very forgetful. For these reasons, any effective propaganda must be confined to a very few points, and these must be expressed in simple stereotyped formulas. They must be used repeatedly until the very last man cannot help but know the meaning instantly. The moment we forget this principle, and try to vary the approach, try to be general or abstract, we minimize the effect. The crowd cannot understand what is being offered. Therefore, the greater the scope of the message, the more necessary it is for the propaganda to follow a simple plan of action, which is also the most effective and targeted psychologically.
For instance, it was a fundamental error to make the enemy look ridiculous as was done in Austrian and German comic book propaganda. It was a fundamental error because when soldiers came face to face with the enemy, he saw something different. The result was terrible because now under the direct pressure of his enemy’s resistance, the German soldier felt like he had been deceived by the ones who were supposed to have enlightened him.
Instead of his war spirit or his commitment being strengthened, the opposite happened. The soldier lost his will to fight.
The war propaganda of the British and Americans, on the other hand, was psychologically on target. By portraying the Germans to their people as brutal and destructive barbarians, they prepared the individual soldier for the horrors of war and helped protect him from illusions. Even the most terrible weapons used against him only confirmed what he had already learned. This strengthened his belief in the truthfulness of his own government and stirred up his anger and hatred against the evil enemy. The effect of the enemy weapons, which he now discovered through first-hand experience, gradually proved the barbaric and
already familiar brutality of the “Huns” was real. He was never led to believe that his own weapons might be more dreaded.
Consequently, the English soldier never felt he was being lied to at home.
This was not the case with the German soldier. Eventually, German soldiers refused any information from home because they saw it as deceitful and a fraud. This happened because officials thought they could assign any convenient jackass to propaganda duty. They failed to understand that propaganda demands the most skilled minds that can be found. German war propaganda was a unique research project whose desired effects were reversed because of a complete lack of any understanding of psychology.
The enemy, however, had a tremendous lesson to teach anyone who was willing to open their eyes and learn. There was plenty of opportunity when we sat through a four-and-a-half year tidal wave of enemy propaganda.
What the people never understood was the first requirement for any propaganda activity: an intentionally biased and one-sided attitude toward every question discussed. The failure in this area, from the very beginning of the war, and from the top down, was so bad that it made me question whether this much failure could all be credited to pure stupidity. For instance, what would people say about a poster which advertised a new brand of soap, but which at length described the good qualities of other soap brands? The viewer would simply shake their heads in disbelief.
The same is true of political advertising. It is the responsibility of propaganda to emphasize exclusively the one cause it represents and not to evaluate other causes. It must not objectively explore any truth that favors the other side or fairly weigh the options, and then present the masses with a strict doctrine. It must not argue matters based on theoretical rules of justice. Propaganda must constantly endeavor to present only the aspect of the truth that is favorable to its own side.
It was a fundamental error to discuss who was responsible for starting the First World War and then declare that Germany was not totally responsible.
The right way would have been to pile the guilt totally on the enemy, even if this wasn’t true, but in this case, it was.
What was the result of this half-and-half propaganda? The great masses of people are not made up of diplomats, professors of law, or even people capable of making a judgment based on reason and logic. They are human beings—indecisive and subject to doubt and uncertainty. The moment our own propaganda admits even the faintest glimmer of justice is due to the other side, the seeds of doubt have been planted and they will begin to question whether our own side is just. The masses cannot tell where the enemy’s wrongs end and their own begin. In these cases, they become uncertain and suspicious. This is especially
true when the enemy does not commit the same foolishness, but puts the guilt, lock, stock and barrel, on his adversary.
It was natural for our own people to believe the more intense and focused hostile propaganda of our enemy instead of their own people’s words. This is easily seen in those who have a mania that craves objectivity, like the Germans! Everyone preferred to be fair to the enemy rather than to risk injustice.
Even willing to destroy his own people and State in the process.
The masses never realized that this outcome was not the leaders’ intention but it was their failure to understand which was the cause. The overwhelming majority of the people tend to be so feminine in their leanings and beliefs that emotion and feelings rather than serious logical reasoning determine thought and action. This feeling is not complicated. It is simple and firm. There is no gray area. There are not many different shadings, but a positive or a negative, love or hate, right or wrong, truth or lie, but never half-and-half, never part of one and part of the other.
These are all things English propaganda did in an excellent manner. They never allowed two sided arguments which might have raised doubts. They realized the broad masses’ emotional state was primitive. They proved this by publishing horror story propaganda that met the masses on their level.
They ruthlessly and brilliantly reinforced their moral position, which strengthened endurance at the front despite great defeats. They were equally vivid in their “festival” nailing-down of the German foe, portraying him as the sole guilty party for the outbreak of the War. This was a lie, which because of the complete and one-sided colossal boldness of its presentation, appealed to the emotional and extreme attitude of the common people, and therefore it was totally believed.
The effectiveness of this sort of propaganda was most noticeably shown by the fact that after four years, it was still holding the enemy to his guns and had started to eat away at our own people.
It was really no surprise that our propaganda was unsuccessful. It carried the seed of ineffectiveness in its deep ambiguity. Its content alone made it highly unlikely that it would create the impression on the masses that was necessary for success. Only our irresponsible “statesmen” could have hoped to generate enthusiasm in men to the point of dying for their country with this stale, watered down pacifist tea.
This sorry product was not just useless, but harmful. All the brilliant presentations in the world will not lead to the success of propaganda unless one fundamental principle is always kept clearly in view. Propaganda must limit itself to saying a very little, but saying it a lot. First and foremost, that is the absolute important prerequisite for success.
In the field of propaganda, we must never be guided by the beauty of propaganda itself because the expression and form of what was said would soon only attract literary tea- parties of intellectuals instead of being suited to the masses. Neither must it be guided in a carefree manner because the lack of emotional freshness makes it weak and people are constantly seeking new stimulants. Intellectuals quickly become bored with everything. They cannot imagine themselves in the same place as their fellow man or even understand