EVER
since I have been scrutinizing political events, I have taken
a tremendous interest in propagandist activity. I saw that the
Socialist-Marxist organizations mastered and applied this instrument
with astounding skill. And I soon realized that the correct use
of propaganda is a true art which has remained practically unknown
to the bourgeois parties. Only the Christian-Social movement,
especially in Lueger's time, achieved a certain virtuosity on
this instrument, to which it owed many of its successes.
But it was not until the War that it became evident what immense
results could be obtained by a correct application of propaganda.
Here again, unfortunately, all our studying had to be done on
the enemy side, for the activity on our side was modest, to
say the least. The total miscarriage of the German 'enlightenment
' service stared every soldier in the face, and this spurred
me to take up the question of propaganda even more deeply than
before.
There was often more than enough time for thinking, and the
enemy offered practical instruction which, to our sorrow, was
only too good.
For what we failed to do, the enemy did, with amazing skill
and really brilliant calculation. I, myself, learned enormously
from this enemy war propaganda. But time passed and left no
trace in the minds of all those who should have benefited; partly
because they considered themselves too clever to from the enemy,
partly owing to lack of good will.
Did we have anything you could call propaganda?
I regret that I must answer in the negative. Everything that
actually was done in this field was so inadequate and wrong
from the very start that it certainly did no good and sometimes
did actual harm.
The form was inadequate, the substance was psychologically
wrong: a careful examination of German war propaganda ca: lead
to no other diagnosis.
There seems to have been no clarity on the very first question:
Is propaganda a means or an end?
It is a means and must therefore be judged with regard to its
end. It must consequently take a form calculated to support
the aim which it serves. It is also obvious that its aim can
vary in importance from the standpoint of general need, and
that the inner value of the propaganda will vary accordingly.
The aim for which we were fighting the War was the loftiest,
the most overpowering, that man can conceive: it was the freedom
and independence of our nation, the security of our future food
supply, and - our national honor; a thing which, despite all contrary
opinions prevailing today, nevertheless exists, or rather should
exist, since peoples without honor have sooner or later lost
their freedom and independence, which in turn is only the result
of a higher justice, since generations of rabble without honor
deserve no freedom. Any man who wants to be a cowardly slave
can have no honor) or honor itself would soon fall into general
contempt.
The German nation was engaged in a struggle for a human existence,
and the purpose of war propaganda should have been to support
this struggle; its aim to help bring about victory.
When the nations on this planet fight for existence - when the
question of destiny, 'to be or not to be,' cries out for a solution - then
all considerations of humanitarianism or aesthetics crumble
into nothingness; for all these concepts do not float about
in the ether, they arise from man's imagination and are bound
up with man. When he departs from this world, these concepts
are again dissolved into nothingness, for Nature does not know
them. And even among mankind, they belong only to a few nations
or rather races, and this in proportion as they emanate from
the feeling of the nation or race in question. Humanitarianism
and aesthetics would vanish even from a world inhabited by man
if this world were to lose the races that have created and upheld
these concepts.
But all such concepts become secondary when a nation is fighting
for its existence; in fact, they become totally irrelevant to
the forms of the struggle as soon as a situation arises where
they might paralyze a struggling nation's power of self-preservation.
And that has always been their only visible result.
As for humanitarianism, Moltke said years ago that in war it
lies in the brevity of the operation, and that means that the
most aggressive fighting technique is the most humane.
But when people try to approach these questions with drivel
about aesthetics, etc., really only one answer is possible:
where the destiny and existence of a people are at stake, all
obligation toward beauty ceases. The most unbeautiful thing
there can be in human life is and remains the yoke of slavery.
Or do these Schwabing decadents view the present lot of the
German people as 'aesthetic'? Certainly we don't have to discuss
these matters with the Jews, the most modern inventors of this
cultural perfume. Their whole existence is an embodied protest
against the aesthetics of the Lord's image.
And since these criteria of humanitarianism and beauty must
be eliminated from the struggle, they are also inapplicable
to propaganda.
Propaganda in the War was a means to an end, and the end was
the struggle for the existence of the German people; consequently,
propaganda could only be considered in accordance with the principles
that were valid for this struggle. In this case the most cruel
weapons were humane if they brought about a quicker victory;
and only those methods were beautiful which helped the nation
to safeguard the dignity of its freedom.
This was the only possible attitude toward war propaganda in
a life-and-death struggle like ours.
If the so-called responsible authorities had been clear on
this point, they would never have fallen into such uncertainty
over the form and application of this weapon: for even propaganda
is no more than a weapon, though a frightful one in the hand
of an expert.
The second really decisive question was this: To whom should
propaganda be addressed? To the scientifically trained intelligentsia
or to the less educated masses?
It must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses.
What the intelligentsia - or those who today unfortunately often
go by that name - what they need is not propaganda but scientific
instruction. The content of propaganda is not science any more
than the object represented in a poster is art. The art of the
poster lies in the designer's ability to attract the attention
of the crowd by form and color. A poster advertising an art
exhibit must direct the attention of the public to the art being
exhibited; the better it succeeds in this, the greater is the
art of the poster itself. The poster should give the masses
an idea of the significance of the exhibition, it should not
be a substitute for the art on display. Anyone who wants to
concern himself with the art itself must do more than study
the poster; and it will not be enough for him just to saunter
through the exhibition. We may expect him to examine and immerse
himself in the individual works, and thus little by little form
a fair opinion.
A similar situation prevails with what we today call propaganda.
The function of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training
of the individual, but in calling the masses' attention to certain
facts, processes, necessities, etc., whose significance is thus
for the first time placed within their field of vision.
The whole art consists in doing this so skillfully that everyone
will be convinced that the fact is real, the process necessary,
the necessity correct, etc. But since propaganda is not and
cannot be the necessity in itself, since its function, like
the poster, consists in attracting the attention of the crowd,
and not in educating those who are already educated or who are
striving after education and knowledge, its effect for the most
part must be aimed at the emotions and only to a very limited
degree at the so-called intellect.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must
be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it
is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended
to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have
to be. But if, as in propaganda for sticking out a war, the
aim is to influence a whole people, we must avoid excessive
intellectual demands on our public, and too much caution cannot
be exerted in this direction.
The more modest its intellectual ballast, the more exclusively
it takes into consideration the emotions of the masses, the
more effective it will be. And this is the best proof of the
soundness or unsoundness of a propaganda campaign, and not success
in pleasing a few scholars or young aesthetes.
The art of propaganda lies in understanding the emotional ideas
of the great masses and finding, through a psychologically correct
form, the way to the attention and thence to the heart of the
broad masses. The fact that our bright boys do not understand
this merely shows how mentally lazy and conceited they are.
Once we understand how necessary it is for propaganda to be
adjusted to the broad mass, the following rule results:
It is a mistake to make propaganda many-sided, like scientific
instruction, for instance.
The receptivity of the great masses is very limited, their
intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous.
In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must
be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans
until the last member of the public understands what you want
him to understand by your slogan. As soon as you sacrifice this
slogan and try to be many-sided, the effect will piddle away,
for the crowd can neither digest nor retain the material offered.
In this way the result is weakened and in the end entirely cancelled
out.
Thus we see that propaganda must follow a simple line and correspondingly
the basic tactics must be psychologically sound.
For instance, it was absolutely wrong to make the enemy ridiculous,
as the Austrian and German comic papers did. It was absolutely
wrong because actual contact with an enemy soldier was bound
to arouse an entirely different conviction, and the results
were devastating; for now the German soldier, under the direct
impression of the enemy's resistance, felt himself swindled
by his propaganda service. His desire to fight, or even to stand
film, was not strengthened, but the opposite occurred. His courage
flagged.
By contrast, the war propaganda of the English and Americans
was psychologically sound. By representing the Germans to their
own people as barbarians and Huns, they prepared the individual
soldier for the terrors of war, and thus helped to preserve
him from disappointments. After this, the most terrible weapon
that was used against him seemed only to confirm what his propagandists
had told him; it likewise reinforced his faith in the truth
of his government's assertions, while on the other hand it increased
his rage and hatred against the vile enemy For the cruel effects
of the weapon, whose use by the enemy he now came to know, gradually
came to confirm for him the 'Hunnish' brutality of the barbarous
enemy, which he had heard all about; and it never dawned on
him for a moment that his own weapons possibly, if not probably,
might be even more terrible in their effects.
And so the English soldier could never feel that he had been
misinformed by his own countrymen, as unhappily was so much
the case with the German soldier that in the end he rejected
everything coming from this source as 'swindles' and 'bunk.'
All this resulted from the idea that any old simpleton (or even
somebody who was intelligent ' in other things ') could be assigned
to propaganda work, and the failure to realize that the most
brilliant psychologists would have been none too good.
And so the German war propaganda offered an unparalleled example
of an 'enlightenment' service working in reverse, since any
correct psychology was totally lacking.
There was no end to what could be learned from the enemy by
a man who kept his eyes open, refused to let his perceptions
be ossified, and for four and a half years privately turned
the storm-flood of enemy propaganda over in his brain.
What our authorities least of all understood was the very first
axiom of all propagandist activity: to wit, the basically subjective
and one-sided attitude it must take toward every question it
deals with. In this connection, from the very beginning of the
War and from top to bottom, such sins were committed that we
were entitled to doubt whether so much absurdity could really
be attributed to pure stupidity alone.
What, for example, would we say about a poster that was supposed
to advertise a new soap and that described other soaps as 'good'?
We would only shake our heads.
Exactly the same applies to political advertising.
The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and
ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize
the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is
not to make an objective study of the truth, in so far as it
favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic
fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.
It was absolutely wrong to discuss war-guilt from the standpoint
that Germany alone could not be held responsible for the outbreak
of the catastrophe; it would have been correct to load every
bit of the blame on the shoulders of the enemy, even if this
had not really corresponded to the true facts, as it actually
did.
And what was the consequence of this half-heartedness?
The broad mass of a nation does not consist of diplomats, or
even professors of political law, or even individuals capable
of forming a rational opinion; it consists of plain mortals,
wavering and inclined to doubt and uncertainty. As soon as our
own propaganda admits so much as a glimmer of right on the other
side, the foundation for doubt in our own right has been laid.
The masses are then in no position to distinguish where foreign
injustice ends and our own begins. In such a case they become
uncertain and suspicious, especially if the enemy refrains from
going in for the same nonsense, but unloads every bit of blame
on his adversary. Isn't it perfectly understandable that the
whole country ends up by lending more credence to enemy propaganda,
which is more unified and coherent, than to its own? And particularly
a people that suffers from the mania of objectivity as much
as the Germans. For, after all this, everyone will take the
greatest pains to avoid doing the enemy any injustice, even
at the peril of seriously besmirching and even destroying his
own people and country.
Of course, this was not the intent of the responsible authorities,
but the people never realize that.
The people in their overwhelming majority are so feminine by
nature and attitude that sober reasoning determines their thoughts
and actions far less than emotion and feeling.
And this sentiment is not complicated, but very simple and
all of a piece. It does not have multiple shadings; it has a
positive and a negative; love or hate, right or wrong, truth
or lie never half this way and half that way, never partially,
or that kind of thing.
English propagandists understood all this most brilliantly - and
acted accordingly. They made no half statements that might have
given rise to doubts.
Their brilliant knowledge of the primitive sentiments of the
broad masses is shown by their atrocity propaganda, which was
adapted to this condition. As ruthless as it was brilliant,
it created the preconditions for moral steadfastness at the
front, even in the face of the greatest actual defeats, and
just as strikingly it pilloried the German enemy as the sole
guilty party for the outbreak of the War: the rabid, impudent
bias and persistence with which this lie was expressed took
into account the emotional, always extreme, attitude of the
great masses and for this reason was believed.
How effective this type of propaganda was is most strikingly
shown by the fact that after four years of war it not only enabled
the enemy to stick to its guns, but even began to nibble at
our own people.
It need not surprise us that our propaganda did not enjoy this
success. In its inner ambiguity alone, it bore the germ of ineffectualness.
And finally its content was such that it was very unlikely to
make the necessary impression on the masses. Only our feather-brained
'statesmen' could have dared to hope that this insipid pacifistic
bilge could fire men's spirits till they were willing to die.
As a result, their miserable stuff was useless, even harmful
in fact.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no
success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly
and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few
points and repeat them over and over. Here, as so often in this
world, persistence is the first and most important requirement
for success.
Particularly in the field of propaganda, we must never let
ourselves be led by aesthetes or people who have grown blasé:
not by the former, because the form and expression of our propaganda
would soon, instead of being suitable for the masses, have drawing
power only for literary teas; and of the second we must beware,
because, lacking in any fresh emotion of their own, they are
always on the lookout for new stimulation. These people are
quick to weary of everything; they want variety, and they are
never able to feel or understand the needs of their fellow men
who are not yet so callous. They are always the first to criticize
a propaganda campaign, or rather its content, which seems to
them too old-fashioned, too hackneyed, too out-of-date, etc.
They are always after novelty, in search of a change, and this
makes them mortal enemies of any effective political propaganda.
For as soon as the organization and the content of propaganda
begin to suit their tastes, it loses all cohesion and evaporates
completely.
The purpose of propaganda is not to provide interesting distraction
for blasé young gentlemen, but to convince, and what
I mean is to convince the masses. But the masses are slow-moving,
and they always require a certain time before they are ready
even to notice a thing, and only after the simplest ideas are
repeated thousands of times will the masses finally remember
them.
When there is a change, it must not alter the content of what
the propaganda is driving at, but in the end must always say
the same thing. For instance, a slogan must be presented from
different angles, but the end of all remarks must always and
immutably be the slogan itself. Only in this way can the propaganda
have a unified and complete effect.
This broadness of outline from which we must never depart,
in combination with steady, consistent emphasis, allows our
final success to mature. And then, to our amazement, we shall
see what tremendous results such perseverance leads to - to results
that are almost beyond our understanding.
All advertising, whether in the field of business or politics,
achieves success through the continuity and sustained uniformity
of its application.
Here, too, the example of enemy war propaganda was typical;
limited to a few points, devised exclusively for the masses,
carried on with indefatigable persistence. Once the basic ideas
and methods of execution were recognized as correct, they were
applied throughout the whole War without the slightest change.
At first the claims of the propaganda were so impudent that
people thought it insane; later, it got on people's nerves;
and in the end, it was believed. After four and a half years,
a revolution broke out in Germany; and its slogans originated
in the enemy's war propaganda.
And in England they understood one more thing: that this spiritual
weapon can succeed only if it is applied on a tremendous scale,
but that success amply covers all costs.
There, propaganda was regarded as a weapon of the first order,
while in our country it was the last resort of unemployed politicians
and a comfortable haven for slackers.
And, as was to be expected, its results all in all were zero.