German propaganda during the World War II

Abstract

Propaganda is a deliberate action aimed at shaping attitudes and behavior in certain individu-als or communities through the imposition of specific content and the interpretation of them.

Propaganda often uses false arguments and refers to the emotions rather than reason. Propaganda uses film, print, photography, radio, television and now even the Internet. Its development coincided with the nineteenth century and was related to the formation of mass political movements, the development of parliamentary democracy and the necessity to struggle for election. Propaganda played unusually large role in totalitarian (the USSR and the Third Reich) and fascist (Italy and Spain) states. At the end of the twentieth century, with the spread of mass media (radio, television), propaganda took the form of advertising, linking up with mass culture. In everyday language propaganda is synonymous to lies and manipulation. The term’s negative connotations are also due to phenomena such as Goebbels’ propaganda, which dealt mainly with promoting the ideology of the Third Reich, and above all, racism, the theory of it being necessary to expand the lebensraum.