Nazi Propaganda

In the past, people’s hatred toward other people has shown its effect in many different ways. For instance the Rwanda Genocide,. dDuring April 7, 1994 - July 1994, 800,000, Tutsi ethnic minority was killed by the Hutu ethnic majority. Hutu extremists made anti-Tutsi propaganda implying that marrying, doing business, or being friends with the Tutsi people was considered treason. The FPR (Rwandan Patriotic Front) a Tutsi political party in Rwanda utilized guerrilla warfare tactics against the Interahamwe which was a paramilitary organization that backed the Hutu led government. The FPR’s attempts to take back Rwanda failed and after two years of fighting. The French, American, and the Organization of African Unity helped the country organize
a ceasefire between the two. Even though the country had a ceasefire in place there were still tensions between the two ethnic groups and then the Hutu attacked. The FPR was able to rescue some of the Tutsi people while the U.N’ set up humanitarian centers. Despite their efforts, about 800,000 Tutsi people were murdered. The FPR then cut off the Hutu militia supplies and circled the city Kigali, the capital Rwanda. Shortly after the FPR seized power, the UN sent in forces and the FPR set up a coalition government which still remains in power today. The statistics for the Rwandan genocide are horrifying. There were six deaths every minute. The killing continued for 100 days, about 75,000 children were orphaned, and about 800,000 Tutsi people were killed.
Furthermore, propaganda generated hate within the Hutu population which led to the fear of the Tutsi people because only socializing with them was considered treason. Then anger aimed toward the Tutsi led to the Rwandan genocide. The classification of the Tutsi and the Hutu can be seen when they first arrived at what is now Rwanda.
Arguably, propaganda can be seen as a very manipulative manner of convincing people to turn on each other while portraying consequences if they didn’t. Propaganda turned a silent majority of the Hutu population in Rwanda to unite and fight against a common their enemy, the Tutsi people. Of course, this type of propaganda is wrong and misleading but is very effective in the minds of the people who commit the act of manipulation.
In fact, Yoda from Star Wars episode I The Phantom Menace, a famous Hollywood movie icon once said “Fear is the path to the dark side. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.” The quote explains that if you start to fear, a certain group of people will begin to feel anger against a particular group of people, which turns into hate, and the final step is the suffering of that discriminated group.
In addition, another quote would be by Howard Zinn which said, “Historically, the most terrible things - war, genocide, and slavery - have not result from disobedience but from obedience.” - Howard Zinn. The quote states that those who do not fight back against what is wrong, evil will be able to prevail against all else.
When the Nazis and Hitler used hate and fear, through the use of propaganda, this made it possible to unite and convince the Germans to support their ideology in interning and killing the Jews.
Adolf Hitler was able to so easily convince the German people to blame the Jews of Europe because the German people were desperate for a change. Germany was at the time, going through an economic crisis and the German people were depressed. Overinflation made reichsmarks useless and they were looking for someone who would make changes for them. Hitler was their symbol and hope for change.
In addition, Hitler was a charismatic speaker. He was looking for a scapegoat to start another war and to build up the Third Reich. His ideas were written in his book Mein Kampf (My Struggle). Hitler wrote about his youth, political ideas, and ethnic ideas. Hitler’s beliefs seemed to be a driving motive for him, he had once said that the Jews conspired against the Aryans (German people) to rule the world for themselves. He also believed that Communism was a threat to the Aryans and was bent on their destruction as well.
Moreover, the Nazi party officials were very skillful with their propaganda usage and who they targeted.
Nazi propaganda included the portrayal of the Jews as the provokers of war within the Aallied Ppowers, genetically inferior, harmful to national health, and an alien race that fed off and used Germany. This convinced the German people to support the Nazi party, putting Hitler into power and situating his plans into action. “Propaganda was as an important tool to win over the majority of the German public who had not supported Adolf Hitler. It served to push forward the Nazis' radical program, which required the acquiescence, support, and participation of broad sectors of the population. Combined with terror to intimidate those who did not comply, a new state propaganda apparatus headed by Joseph Goebbels manipulated and deceived the German population and the outside world. Propagandists preached an appealing message of national unity and a utopian future that resonated with millions of Germans. They also waged campaigns that facilitated the persecution of Jews and others excluded from the Nazi vision of the “National Community.”-
(USHMM)
Moving on, Hitler had a plan for all the Jews in Europe called the Final Ssolution. First, the Nazis were to round up all the Jews in Europe and place them into Ghettos. Then, he ordered the Nazis to build a concentration camp in Birkenau called Auschwitz. Also, he wanted the Jews to work for the Nazi war machine. The final step was the extermination of all Jews. The Jews were sent to gas chambers, lined up for firing squads, starved, but most notably hunted down by the Einsatzgruppen (special action squads), which deliberately killed countless numbers of Jews in Soviet Russia right on the heels advancing German army.

On that thought, in order for a major plan involving a country to follow through Hitler neededyou need the support of a country, which is what the Nazis needed from the ordinary German citizen.
The German people were blindsided and afraid to speak up against Hitler, so they decided to follow along with Hitler’s plans. Hitler made the German people feel as if they were the silent majority making it acceptable to discriminate Jewish people only because of what they were manipulated into believing.
In the same way, Jewish obedience to the Nazi power in Germany seemed absurd, but there are quite a few reasons for this. First of all, the Jewish people in Germany didn’t believe that they were going to be murdered, after all many of them did service to Germany. Second of all, they were obedient citizens that always followed the laws their country has put forth no matter what. Finally, they were afraid of fighting back. Their main fear seemed to be that by fighting back there chances for survival would be much lower. The Jews felt okay with what the Nazi’s were doing because many of them didn’t know what was to become of them. “Common sense could not understand that it was possible to exterminate tens and hundreds of thousands of Jews,” —Yitzhak Zuckerman, a leader of the Jewish resistance in Warsaw” “These sights, like the truck full of bodies, are not beyond belief—we know that they were true—but they are, in some sense, beyond imagination.” -The New
Yorker
Even more, greed and hatred are some of the principal factors to genocide. During the Holocaust the Jewish people were told to bring only their valuables. The Nazi soldiers told the Jews that food would be ready for them once they arrived to their “new living space.” Then once the Jews arrived, they were told to give their valuables to the Nazi soldiers. They even had their golden teeth removed by a dentist in the camp, and anything of value that they wore was to be removed and handed to the soldiers. In fact, discrimination is also a leading factor in genocide. Discrimination makes ordinary people into threatening “aliens” making “them” different from us. The classification and dehumanization of ordinary people are some of the first steps to genocide. Actually, the discrimination of ordinary people happens everywhere in our everyday lives. “The first discriminatory act against the Jews was forcing the Jewish people to sew a yellow star of David on any part of their clothing. Next was the passing of the "Nuremberg Laws" by the Germans right before the start of World War II. These rules banned marriages between Jews and Germans, barred Jews from voting or holding office, made Jews with German-sounding names to adopt Jewish names, prevented the Jews to work as: civil servants, journalist, farmers, teachers, and actors, and rebuked the Jews' right to operate a business.”-Johnsapclass