The Role Of Propaganda In The Holocaust

One view is that the Holocaust couldn’t have been carried out without the support from ordinary German people. Therefore, a crucial area that the Nazi’s concentrated on was propaganda. The minister for propaganda was Josef Goebbels from 1933 to 1945 after his popularity rose within the public. Goebbels main task was to convince the German public that the Aryan race was the most superior race. The Jewish people suffered and were on the receiving end of racism due to the Nazi’s: "As anti-Semitism grew within the population, the things done to the Jews by Hitler and his army began to be widely seen as acceptable. Herding Jews into slums, burning and taking their businesses and finally sending them to camps all became common". According to Hitler

As Goebbels worked hard on the propaganda campaign, the Jews found themselves facing a huge surge of hated towards them by the public. Hitler can be held responsible for the burning of Jewish businesses, creating Jewish ghettos and distributed ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ a book which claimed that the Jews were trying to takeover the world. Propaganda at the hands of the Nazi’s can be said to have played a huge role in the responsibility for the Holocaust. The promotion of anti-Semitic beliefs which got the majority of the public on the Nazi’s side meant that ordinary people were seeing that the extermination of the Jews was taking place and either didn’t do anything about it or helped play a role. This can be because of fear, of what would happen to them if they either rebelled or didn’t contribute. It can be because of their greed for their own personal gain, ordinary individuals acquired the material possessions after the owners ‘disappeared’, they would also be able to benefit in employment as more jobs freed

The ‘Eternal Jew’ also frequently known as the phrase The Wandering Jew is a phrase commonly in Christian mythology. Even though the title of the film is ‘The Eternal Jew’, the film is not about the mythology itself, it’s a documentary about how the Jews are a terrible race. The mythology of The Eternal Jew creates a platform for the anti-Semitic message that is portrayed throughout the film. A quote taken from the film states “This time we recognise that there’s a plague here: a plague that threatens the health of the Aryan people. Richard Wagner once said ‘the Jew is the demon behind the corruption of mankind’”. This portrays the view that was supported by many Nazi leaders and followers that the Jews as a race placed a threat to the ‘Aryan’ people and that they shouldn’t come into contact with him, hence the introduction of certain laws which prohibited this. Another quote taken from the film states “Parallel to these Jewish wanderings throughout the world is the migration of… a similarly restless animal: the rat.”. in the film the Jews as a race are compared to the species of rats for several reasons. One is because they live in ‘bug-ridden dwellings’ and also because the wander across different continents in hoards looking for a place to migrate to. Overall, the views that are shown throughout this view do their