The National Holocaust Museum, Washington D.C.

June 19, 2010

National Holocaust Museum

Propaganda was the most powerful tool that Hitler and the Nazi party used to manipulate not only the minds of Germans, but people world-wide.  How do you prophesize and convince millions of people that if a second world war was to break out, the Jews would be held responsible?  Hitler managed to coerce a generation, mostly the younger population, especially students, that the Jews were the enemy and that trusting in the Nazi party would propel them and their superior Aryan Germany into powerful world leaders.

Hitler provided government funded numerous programs that provided not only necessities, but sports and leisure activities beneficial to Nazi followers.  Promoting health and Nazi education, the Nazi party was able to strengthen their forces and move forward with Hitler’s plan to exterminate the “evil and dangerous” Jewish people.  Crowds of thousands gathered to hear Hitler speak and his power grew with the help of propaganda and political manipulation.  Jews were depicted as tyrants and it was much easier to accept that they were the cause of another world war as German wounds from the lash of punishment over World War I were still bleeding.  The Nazi party produced posters and films, gave speeches and lectures, and created an anti-somatic state that encouraged and pursued genocide.

The National Holocaust Museum highlights in one exhibit the influences of propaganda and how this particular historical aspect of Jewish persecution took hold in Europe from the years between 1939 and 1945.  Hitler was a master manipulator.  His and the Nazi party tactics succeeded in destroying the lives of thousands of European Jews through imprisonment in concentration camps, torture, and insurmountable death.  The fate of so many Jewish men, women, and children succumbed to the evils of the Nazi’s, led by the real tyrant, Hitler.  His propaganda against the Jews hid the truth and attempted to deceive an entire world.  Thousands were tortured, starved, and died before the horrific truth exposed Hitler and the Nazi’s as the monsters.  History reveals the propaganda tactics, but nothing can reverse the atrocities or recover the losses.