NAZI PROPAGANDA AND THE DEHUMANIZATION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY
Once Hitler concretized his hatred of Jews into a racial ideology, his next step was to convince both, his administration and the German people of the need to get rid of Jews by any means necessary. As soon as he seized power in 1933, he established the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda and appointed a rabid anti-semite, Joseph Goebbels as its chief. Goebbels packaged Hitler’s ideology into a propaganda campaign about Germany’s two main “Jewish problems.”
First, the conspiracy of world Jewry which meant the power of Jewish-led international finance to do Germany harm as Jews had joined the forces of the world against Hitler. “They had created the Diktat of Versailles, excluded Germany between the wars from her natural markets, and created an unholy alliance with Bolshevism, cheating Germany of its lawful territorial claims.” Secondly, there was a “sub-human Jewry,” the proletarian Jewish masses, spreading westwards from the reservoirs of Eastern Europe, which had contaminated German blood and would still do so, unless checked. Goebbels began to spread such libels against the Jews through newspapers, films, music, theatre, radio, books, speeches, radio, educational materials and the press targeting all sectors of society, including children’s schools.