What did the newspaper read like in Germany 1936-1945?

Was doing a search and my google skills may be lacking or much of it may not be on the net. But I'm real curious what the news looked like INSIDE Germany. Not the dramatic propaganda films we get shown here in the US. But the everyday news. They had newspapers. Did the papers depict life as normal? Were there letters to the editor? Was there any appearance of debate? Was there a metro section? Did they report on the local herd of escaped goats and other inane public interest stories? How did their papers compare with the US papers of the same time?

I have several assumptions about the parallels between them then, and us now...but would like to see some real examples if they are out there.

Anyone got some?

I was wondering about that myself recently. Hope someone has something on this.

They had letters to the editor as long as it was pro Hitler. No debate unless you wanted to end up somewhere bad. Metro? I guess where to find the best posters of Hitler. Goats escaping? No, maybe pigs no different now than then. Papers now can critize Bush, if papers critized Hitler the owners ended up dead.

there may very well have been the illusion of dissent - approved dissent- especially earlier on before the major wars were underway, surely there were lots of distractions and public interest sorts of stories - propaganda- going on.

I think this is a very good question and deserved a lot better answer.

Have several German friends older than me. I have asked this same question to them and have received the same answers. The newspapers back than toed the party line. Anything else was suicide. I'm sorry to inform you that we are not living in the worst of times, at least yet.

and even though it's bad, living ni the US is obv not quite Nazi Germany - but you're wrong about the absolutely no dissent part - during the actual war you pretty much wouldn't find much dissent within the major media but then again you found bugger all dissent in UK papers at the time too. Pre war Nazi Germany did have the same sort of "dissent" as we do now - Chomsky describes it as neccesary illusions. People/organisations who repeatedly went over the line would have simply had their paper closed down in the earlier years.

There's no need in America in 2004 to get at all heavy with the major media - they utterly neutered themselves a long time ago. If the media in America suddenly grew some balls and remembered what journalists do then who knows what we'll see as the attempt to stifle them

over there and watched her teenaged brothers hauled off to serve in Hitler's youth army and watched Hitler and a parade of Nazis march down their mainstreet in Bavaria and she had to do the asshole salute with the rest of the townspeople. Her mom had a picture of Jesus on the wall in their dining room that she flipped over to have Hitler showing whenever they knew in advance the Hitler gestapo was in town and conducting searches. They were Lutherans.

pure government line, and any features had to be fluffy and "harmless."

Thanks to the Kempeitai (secret police), there was no organized opposition, and information was controlled with both the carrot and the stick: 1) Censorship of all publications (with jail time for really uppity writers), 2) Writers paid extremely well to write what the government wanted people to read.

In reference to the China front, for example, newspaper articles told of proud soldiers marching into cities festooned with Japanese flags and streets lined with cheering Chinese.

Did people believe it? Probably. Very few Japanese had ever traveled abroad, and while the country had had compulsory education since 1870, the vast majority of the population went to school only through sixth grade, and what little schooling they got included a heavy dose of "die for the Emperor" jingoism.

Freedom of the press was the first thing removed, all national publications came from Goebbel's propaganda ministry.


So the newspapers first looked like this:


("The publication of our newspaper is forbidden until Thursday, march 2nd. The Publisher")

And then like this:










The Nazis created newspapers from highbrow to lowbrow; at least until open war broke out, the newspapers did convey "business as usual"; the usual sections like "letters of the editor" were part of the newspapers to the bitter end.

Who would they say is "our bad luck" nowadays? The gays I suppose? You have to start somewhere!

I LOVE your tree... :loveya:

I did see some German newspapers and had them explained to me by a German who lived through that time, but it was a long time ago so I am going on sketchy memory. I think that they were not too different than they are here now. It is only on the major political issues that the party line needs to be adhered to for propaganda to succeed. The Nazis always had their own papers, but the influence over the rest of the press was gradual as Nazis infiltrated the media and harassed dissenting writers and papers. Slowly but surely, independent sources of news were eliminated, contact with foreign press was severed, and control over the information flow was centralized and manipulated. I don't see it as much different than what we have now here. Unlike in the Soviet Union where the press was nationalized and totally controlled, the Nazis used a similar method to what we are up against here - gradual control over information by a variety of techniques and methods.

It is a great question, and I hope that someone more knowledgeable can contribute to this thread.

micromanaged everything that was printed. His book "Mein Kampf" was expected to be in every home, every classroom, every church and every public building. Copies of "Mein Kampf" were even given as wedding and birthday presents.

Since Shirer was a foreign correspondent, he was able to obtain a few newspapers in Berlin that were from England and France, that were allowed in hotels and train stations for foreign visitors to read. Otherwise, Germans had no idea of what the truth was either in or out of Germany.

under Stalin that intelligent and dissent-minded people who were too frightened to do anything (understandably) became skilled at telling what was going on not from what was in the paper but from what was NOT in it.

from what I've gleaned in many conversations with former Soviets. They raised "reading between the lines" to Haute Verstandnis/Bewußtsein. The difference between them and the current crop of Amis is they KNEW what was being fed to them in print was TOTAL ELEPHANT DUNG. Lipstick on a diseased pig that done ate a WHOLE LOAD OF IT. Dalloy Karmuschki!

And BTW, Taxloss, I appreciated your very astute post about freep PR. It has become an issue with Dorf folks who see these vile, bile-spewing idjits invading Guardian chatroom and such. The comments of those who come into regular contact with Expats are more understanding and sad than outraged, having grokked the "been there and done that. IT SUCKS." Welcome to DU! :hi:

I think I huge blind spot for Freepers is assuming that ALL Europeans hate them, when we're really not as polarised as that and the whole continent has huge reservoirs of pro-American sentiment. Reservoirs that are slowly being drained by Freeptards.

I don't think that America today is like Germany of 1941+ But I am thinking we are seeing a lot that other cultures have seen during the early years of their propaganda efforts.

Getting solid examples does seem to be the problem...though I guess it's a twofold effort...finding actually archived german newspapers...then having them accurately translated. (or soviet or italian etc...)

A catastrophe has broken over Europe like a sudden hurricane. Even those not directly involved in the struggle are shocked by its elemental rage. We Germans were not as surprised, since we had long understood the enemy's policies and had assumed the day might come when he would carry out his plans and intentions.

Why are we fighting?

Because we were forced into it by England and its Polish friends. If the enemy had not begun the fight now, they would have within two or three years. England and France began the war in 1939 because they feared that in two or three years Germany would be militarily stronger and harder to defeat.

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/wehr02.htm

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/sk02.htm

Front soldier X was wounded at Stalingrad and was airlifted back home. During his long months of recovery, his thoughts turned often to his dead and missing comrades and their families. He knew how relieved his family was at his return, and how great a burden the less fortunate had to bear. He used his short leave to visit the families of those who were closest to him. He was the last to see them, and it was his duty to pass on the last handshake from sons and husbands to their mothers and wives. It was a hard duty made easier by the fact that they had nearly all been men who did their duty. But it gave him occasion to reflect.

He visited a family of acquaintances. They spoke of this and that. The conversation turned to an old woman. One preferred to avoid Frau So-and-So. She was a nice enough woman, to be sure, but she said the oddest things. Recently, she said it was stupid that our soldiers had to undergo such dangers, and similar things. She caused a lot of bother and annoyance, and probably is not quite right in the head. One really cannot take her seriously.

One didn't report her to the police, our reader asked? No, one could not do that. One could hardly send her to prison or even the gallows. She was such a nice woman!

And these were fine loyal Germans, old and honest National Socialists...

The story got our front soldier thinking. He did not overestimate the matter; he knew that the hysterical old thing talked such nonsense and slandered German soldiers to get attention, and that she belongs to that irreducible one percent of fools and criminals that every nation has, even Germany. He had been near to death too often not to understand life. He was not surprised that there are such people. Rather, he was surprised that there are people who underestimate the dangers of such behavior, and that some are considerate toward such people from misplaced bourgeois sentimentality.

oder? x(

..... and all but one of them never return for a visit cuz they couldn't afford it. I recall my great uncle (grandfather's brother - the one who did return) talking about having ongoing contact with family members back in Italy during the build-up to the war. I'm sketchy on what he said, mainly because it has at least 40 years since this was discussed and he is long gone.

My recollection (albeit very sketchy) is that it was pretty much business as usual. Drumbeats of war, but no real change until very close to the political lockdown. I suspect Italian Facista were less organized than German Nazis.

I was told this summer at a benefit used book sales that 41% of Murkans are functionally illiterate. That explains a lot of things, I think...

But back in WWII, there was radio, no Teee-Veee. And if you were in an occupied territory, you surrendered your radios or the Gestapo took you.

Telefunken sold radios to the German people that had fixed tuning. some had a single channel, others had maybe 3 or 4. You could hear only what was on ONE frequency, most likely some off-shoot of Radio Berlin. Being caught with a tunable radio or a short-wave set would land you in the loving arms of the Gestapo, too.

I'm worried about this Broadband over Power Line technology that Mikey Powell has approved. Not only is it a "solution looking for a problem", it has the added benefit to the BFEE and PNAC of causing my reception of international Shortwave and Medium-Wave radio from Canada to be effectively jammed by my neighbour's new "cheap" ISP...Just like Cuba does today with R. Marti, and the Bulgarians did to RFE and R. Libertad during the cold war. How about that, the governemnt approves a jamming system that can be marketed to the public.

So that leaves us with CNN, FAUX, BS-RNC and whatever RW AM hate-radio "blowtorch" can come over the noise level...

Sorry to drift off-topic, but I really think the Press has minimal impact on American's opinions today. Germans read (and still read) the Papers. Murkans watch the jiggle-fest on "FAUX and Friends" for their "Nooz"....

*ponders taking old newspapers stuffed in the foundation for insulation*

My house is loaded with early/mid 40's newspapers used to insulate cracks and crevices. Might be time to finally take them out and have a look at them.