The Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (; RMVP), also known simply as the Ministry of Propaganda (), controlled the content of the press, literature, visual arts, film, theater, music and radio in
Nazi Germany
Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...
.
The ministry was created as the central institution of Nazi propaganda shortly after the party's national seizure of power in January 1933. In the
Hitler cabinet, it was headed by Propaganda Minister
Joseph Goebbels, who exercised control over all German mass media and creative artists through his ministry and the
Reich Chamber of Culture
The Reich Chamber of Culture (''Reichskulturkammer'') was a government agency in Nazi Germany. It was established by law on 22 September 1933 in the course of the ''Gleichschaltung'' process at the instigation of Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels a ...
(), which was established in the fall of 1933.
Establishment and functions
Shortly after the
March 1933 Reichstag elections,
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...
presented his cabinet with a draft resolution to establish the ministry. Despite the skepticism of some non-National Socialist ministers, Hitler pushed the resolution through.
On 13 March 1933,
Reich President
''Reich'' (; ) is a German noun whose meaning is analogous to the meaning of the English word " realm"; this is not to be confused with the German adjective "reich" which means "rich". The terms ' (literally the "realm of an emperor") and ' (li ...
Paul von Hindenburg
Paul Ludwig Hans Anton von Beneckendorff und von Hindenburg (; abbreviated ; 2 October 1847 – 2 August 1934) was a German field marshal and statesman who led the Imperial German Army during World War I and later became President of Germany fr ...
issued a decree ordering the establishment of a Reich Ministry for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (; RMVP). At the time the German word ‘Propaganda’ was value neutral. In today's terms, the ministry could be understood to have had a name that meant roughly ‘ministry for culture, media and public relations’.
The ministry moved into the 18th-century
Ordenspalais
The Ordenspalais ("Palace of the Order f Saint John) was a building on the northern corner of Wilhelmplatz with Wilhelmstraße in Berlin (now in Berlin-Mitte).
Erection of the building at Wilhelmplatz No. 7/8 began in 1737 as the residence o ...
building across from the
Reich Chancellery
The Reich Chancellery (german: Reichskanzlei) was the traditional name of the office of the Chancellor of Germany (then called ''Reichskanzler'') in the period of the German Reich from 1878 to 1945. The Chancellery's seat, selected and prepared ...
in Berlin, then used by the United Press Department of the Reich Government (). It had been responsible for coordinating the
Weimar Republic's official press releases but by then had been incorporated into the Nazi state. On 25 March 1933 Goebbels explained the future function of the Ministry of Propaganda to broadcasting company directors:
"The Ministry has the task of carrying out an intellectual mobilization in Germany. In the field of the spirit it is thus the same as the Ministry of Defense in the field of security. ..Spiritual mobilization sjust as necessary, perhaps even more necessary, than making the people materially able to defend themselves."
The ministry was tailored for
Joseph Goebbels, who had been the Reich propaganda leader of the
Nazi Party
The Nazi Party, officially the National Socialist German Workers' Party (german: Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei or NSDAP), was a far-right political party in Germany active between 1920 and 1945 that created and supported t ...
since April 1930. By a decree of 30 June 1933, numerous functions of other ministries were transferred under the responsibility of the new ministry. The role of the new ministry was to centralise Nazi control of all aspects of German cultural, mass media and intellectual life for the country.
Structure
The RMVP grew steadily. It began in 1933 with five departments and 350 employees. A first plan for the distribution of responsibilities dated 1 October 1933 listed seven departments: Administration and Law (I), Propaganda (II), Broadcasting (III), Press (IV), Film (V), Theater, Music and Art (VI) and Security (VII, subtitled "security against lies at home and abroad").
By 1939, 2,000 employees worked in 17 departments. From 1933 to 1941 the RMVP's budget increased from 14 to 187 million Reichsmarks. Reich Minister Goebbels was ultimately in charge of three state secretaries and the departments they headed:
* State Secretary I –
Walther Funk
Walther Funk (18 August 1890 – 31 May 1960) was a German economist and Nazi official who served as Reich Minister for Economic Affairs (1938–1945) and president of Reichsbank (1939–1945). During his incumbency, he oversaw the mobi ...
(1933–1937),
Otto Dietrich (1937–1945): German press, foreign press, periodical press.
* State Secretary II –
Karl Hanke
Karl August Hanke (24 August 1903 – 8 June 1945) was an official of the Nazi Party (NSDAP) during its rule over Germany and served as the fifth and last '' Reichsführer'' of the ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS). He also served as ''Gauleiter'' of ...
(1937–1940), Leopold Gutterer (1940–1944),
Werner Naumann
Werner Naumann (16 June 1909 – 25 October 1982) was a German civil servant and politician. He was State Secretary in Joseph Goebbels' Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda during the Nazi Germany era. He was appointed head of th ...
(1944–1945): Budget, Law, Propaganda, Broadcasting, Film, Personnel, National Defense, Foreign Affairs, Theater, Music, Literature, Visual Arts
* State Secretary III –
Hermann Esser
Hermann Esser (29 July 1900 – 7 February 1981) was an early member of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). A journalist, Esser was the editor of the Nazi paper, ''Völkischer Beobachter'', a Propaganda Leader, and a Vice President of the Reichstag. In the ...
(1935–1945): Tourism
Film department
![Deutsches Museum - Plakat der ewige Jude, 1937](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/69/Deutsches_Museum_-_Plakat_der_ewige_Jude%2C_1937.jpg)
With the establishment of Department V (Film), the Propaganda Ministry became the most important body for the German film industry alongside the
Reich Chamber of Culture
The Reich Chamber of Culture (''Reichskulturkammer'') was a government agency in Nazi Germany. It was established by law on 22 September 1933 in the course of the ''Gleichschaltung'' process at the instigation of Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels a ...
and the
Reich Film Chamber. Initially little changed in the formal structure of German film censorship after the founding of the RMVP. The inspection and review offices that had existed since 1920 (notably the central film inspection office) were incorporated into the RMVP's Film Department, which was headed by state secretary () Ernst Seeger, who had headed the Weimar Republic's
Reich Film Office in the Ministry of the Interior since 1919.
Fritz Hippler
Fritz Hippler (17 August 1909 – 22 May 2002) was a German filmmaker who ran the film department in the Propaganda Ministry of Nazi Germany, under Joseph Goebbels. He is best known as the director of the propaganda film '' Der Ewige Jude (The ...
, director of the 1940 film ''
The Eternal Jew'', followed him in 1939 and then Hans Hinkel in April 1944.
The department had five divisions: film and cinema law, film industry, film abroad, film newsreels, and film dramaturgy. In 1938 the German Film Academy at
Babelsberg
Babelsberg () is the largest quarter ('' Stadtteil'') of Potsdam, the capital city of the German state of Brandenburg. The affluent neighbourhood named after a small hill on the Havel river is famous for Babelsberg Palace and Park, part of the Pala ...
, the first state-run German training center for film artists, was added as an additional department.
The head of the film department also assumed responsibility for the production of certain feature-length documentaries and was in charge of the newsreel ‘'
Deutsche Wochenschau'’ (''German Weekly Review''). He supervised the completion of the newsreels and saw to it that they were favorably placed in cinema programs.
Influence on the press, film and broadcasting
Reich press conferences
The main instrument of press control was the Reich press conference. One was held daily at the RMVP beginning 1 July 1933; the press releases issued between 1933 and 1945 number between 80,000 and 100,000. Selected press representatives often received very detailed instructions as to which reports were to be published and in what form. The instructions affected all parts of reporting and sometimes dealt with quite banal events. Bans and explicit language regulations were at first rarely issued in order to avoid complete uniformity in the daily press's content. The RMVP's control of the press was based instead on a principle of indirect pre-censorship and direct post-publication censorship. After reviewing the relevant articles, the ministry followed up with either praise or censure.
The participants in the Reich press conference were obligated to destroy the instructions issued to them after they had been implemented. Newspapers that did not have correspondents in Berlin received the instructions in writing as "Confidential Information". The ''
Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung
''Deutsche Allgemeine Zeitung'' (often abbreviated to DAZ) was a German newspaper that appeared between 1861 and 1945.
Until 1918 the title of the paper was ''Norddeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung''. Although Wilhelm Liebknecht, one of the founders ...
'', the ''
Berliner Tageblatt
The ''Berliner Tageblatt'' or ''BT'' was a German language newspaper published in Berlin from 1872 to 1939. Along with the ''Frankfurter Zeitung'', it became one of the most important liberal German newspapers of its time.
History
The ''Berline ...
'' and the ''
Frankfurter Zeitung'' were responsible for the highest number of violations of the RMVP's dictates. The journalist Walter Schwerdtfeger was imprisoned for treason until 1945 because he passed the RMVP's instructions on to the foreign press. Employees of the and the national daily newspaper offices nevertheless resisted the order and hid their notes. Some are still extant in the German Federal Archives.
There were additional press conferences on other topics such as culture and business. Press conference for correspondents of the foreign press were held twice daily after March 1938 by the RMVP and once per day by the Foreign Office.
Film censorship
On 9 February 1934, in a speech to the Reich Professional Group Film (), Goebbels described film as "one of the most modern and far-reaching means of influencing the masses".
The head of the film department, like Goebbels himself, could suggest ideas and themes, commission scripts and with all the means at his disposal support films that for example served military or foreign policy interests. He and Goebbels were also entitled to clean up “mistakes of taste" and "artistic errors" and to stop unpopular film projects altogether. After the revision of the Reich Film Law in 1934, the “violation of National Socialist, moral or artistic sensibilities" was included as a reason for prohibition. Every film project had to be approved before filming began, after the
Reich film dramaturge had checked the script.
''Die Deutsche Wochenschau''
The RMVP's Film Department was also responsible for the ''
Deutsche Wochenschau'' (''German Weekly Review''), which by 1940 had begun to surpass the press in its influence on public awareness. More than 300 film reporters, some of them part of so-called propaganda companies, were deployed on behalf of the
High Command of the Wehrmacht in the army, navy and air force as well as the
Waffen-SS
The (, "Armed SS") was the combat branch of the Nazi Party's ''Schutzstaffel'' (SS) organisation. Its formations included men from Nazi Germany, along with Waffen-SS foreign volunteers and conscripts, volunteers and conscripts from both occup ...
. Their material was centrally edited and set to music by the RMVP. In addition to reporting on the war, the Wochenschau presented current political and cultural events in a propagandistic manner.
The carefully staged film reports were well received by cinema audiences and had a considerable propaganda effect. In 1942 the Wochenschau was shown in almost all German cinemas as a 20-minute compilation of various film reports before the main film and reached 20 million moviegoers per week.
Radio
By a decree of 30 June 1933, the regional broadcasting corporations were forcibly coordinated and incorporated into the
Reich Broadcasting Corporation, which was subordinate to the RMVP. At Goebbels’ instigation, it was renamed Greater German Broadcasting () on 1 January 1939. It broadcast a unified program for the Reich starting in June 1940.
Overlapping areas of responsibility
![Leni Riefenstahl, 1940](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fa/Leni_Riefenstahl%2C_1940.jpg)
Numerous tasks of the Propaganda Ministry overlapped with the jurisdictions of other organizations which were interconnected by a complex network of personnel and that were also partly under Goebbels’ direction. As a professional organization, the Reich Chamber of Culture controlled and supervised creative artists in theater, radio, film and the press. At the Nazi Party level, there were three Reich leaders with media jurisdiction whose areas of responsibility overlapped: the Reich propaganda leader Joseph Goebbels, the Reich leader for the press
Max Amann, and the Reich press chief
Otto Dietrich. The latter, as vice president of the Reich Press Chamber, was in turn Goebbels’ subordinate in his role as president of the Reich Chamber of Culture. Due to power struggles, personal enmities and mutual dependencies, contradictory directives were sometimes issued by the various offices. For the
1936 Summer Olympics, direct responsibility lay with the Reich Ministry of the Interior, which was responsible for sports. However, since Goebbels had met with the president of the organizing committee
Theodor Lewald
Theodor Lewald (18 August 1860 – 15 April 1947) was a civil servant in the German Reich and an executive of the International Olympic Committee. He was the President of the Olympic organising committee for the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berli ...
three days after taking office and had reached far-reaching agreements with him, he was able to involve himself at all levels. In the film ''
Olympia'' by
Leni Riefenstahl
Helene Bertha Amalie "Leni" Riefenstahl (; 22 August 1902 – 8 September 2003) was a German film director, photographer and actress known for her role in producing Nazi propaganda.
A talented swimmer and an artist, Riefenstahl also became in ...
, the power of the propaganda can still be seen.
Heated disputes arose over the responsibility for foreign propaganda, for which the Reich Foreign Ministry claimed general competence.
The influence on internal Italian reporting, for example, remained entirely in the hands of the Foreign Office since diplomatic tact was called for in dealing with Germany's Axis partner. Since regulations and prohibitions were not appropriate when directed at a sovereign state, the Foreign Office instead flooded the Italian Propaganda Ministry with finished news pieces from all over the world – news that was more detailed and up-to-date than the Italian correspondents’ material and was therefore frequently taken up by newspapers and radio.
Although Hitler's directive of 8 September 1939 clearly established the leading role of the Foreign Office in foreign propaganda,
Goebbels and his Ministry continued to interfere in the area until the end of the war.
See also
*
Propaganda in Nazi Germany
The propaganda used by the German Nazi Party in the years leading up to and during Adolf Hitler's dictatorship of Germany from 1933 to 1945 was a crucial instrument for acquiring and maintaining power, and for the implementation of Nazi policie ...
**
Children's propaganda in Nazi Germany The Nazi Party (NSDAP) directed propaganda at children in Nazi Germany between the 1920s and 1945 to influence the values and beliefs of the future generation of German citizens according to their political agenda and ideology. The Nazi Party target ...
*
Reich Chamber of Culture
The Reich Chamber of Culture (''Reichskulturkammer'') was a government agency in Nazi Germany. It was established by law on 22 September 1933 in the course of the ''Gleichschaltung'' process at the instigation of Reich Minister Joseph Goebbels a ...
**
Reich Chamber of Music
*
Ministry of Popular Culture
The Ministry of Popular Culture ( it, Ministero della Cultura Popolare, commonly abbreviated to MinCulPop) was a ministry of the Italian government from 1937 to 1944.
History
It was established by the Fascist government in 1922 as the ''Press ...
*
Disinformation Governance Board
The Disinformation Governance Board (DGB) was an advisory board of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS), announced on April 27, 2022. The board's stated function is to protect national security by disseminating guidance to DHS ...
References
Further reading
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Ministry Of Public Enlightenment And Propaganda
Public Enlightenment and Propaganda
Nazi propaganda organizations
Ministries established in 1933
History of telecommunications in Germany
Germany Nazi
Censorship in Germany
Joseph Goebbels
News agencies based in Germany
Nazi-looted art