| Description |
ix, 348 pages ; 23 cm |
| Summary |
A radical reappraisal of how Hitler and the Nazis conceived of themselves from the outset as a propagandistic state, rather than propaganda being merely an accessory to power. Hitler was one of the few politicians who understood that persuasion was everything, deployed to anchor an entire regime in the confections of imagery, rhetoric and dramaturgy. The Nazis pursued propaganda not just as a tool, an instrument of government, but also as the totality, the raison dêtre, the medium through which power itself was exercised. Moreover, Nicholas OShaughnessy argues, Hitler, not Goebbels, was the prime mover in the propaganda regime of the Third Reich--its editor and first author. Under the Reich everything was a propaganda medium, a building-block of public consciousness, from typography to communiqués, to architecture, to weapons design. There were groups to initiate rumours and groups to spread graffiti. Everything could be interrogated for its propaganda potential, every surface inscribed with polemical meaning, whether an enemy citys name, an historical epic or the poster on a neighbourhood wall. But Hitler was in no sense an innovator--his ideas were always second-hand. Rather his expertise was as a packager, fashioning from the accumulated mass of icons and ideas, the historic debris, the labyrinths and byways of the German mind, a modern and brilliant political show articulated through deftly managed symbols and rituals. The Reich would have been unthinkable without propaganda-- it would not have been the Reich.-- Publisher website. |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 287-322) and index. |
| Contents |
Introduction -- Part One: Narratives and theories -- A narrative of Third Reich propaganda (1920-39): Imagining the Reich -- A narrative of Third Reich propaganda (1939-45): Ersatz Valhalla -- Towards a Nazi theory of persuasion: The primal scream of fascism -- Part Two: A propaganda trinity -- Mythologies: Inventing the Third Reich -- Symbolism: A language that lies deeper than language -- Rhetoric: Words that think for you -- Conclusions: Propaganda, the light of perverted science. |
| Subject |
Hitler, Adolf, 1889-1945.
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Nazi propaganda -- Germany -- History.
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Mass media and propaganda -- Germany.
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Nazi propaganda -- History.
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National socialism.
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World War, 1939-1945 -- Propaganda.
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Germany -- Politics and government -- 1933-1945.
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Germany -- Politics and government -- 1918-1933.
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| ISBN |
9781849043526 (hardback) |
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1849043523 (hardback) |
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