People's Perception Holocaust

People’s Perception: Reich or Regime?
Hitler’s effective use of propaganda put a shield over the general population in terms of what they did and did not know. Unfortunately, the number of people who were aware of these atrocities and actually did something to help, was small. The Holocaust lasted twelve years until Hitler was stopped and the concentration camps were liberated. Some important questions to raise are: to what extent were the people actions and mindsets influenced by Hitler’s beliefs? How much did the public actually know about the Holocaust at the time? It can be easily inferred that through the promise of a new Germany, Hitler was able to appear as their savior and at a time of despair, the people turned to him to guide them.
In some cases, the German population was helped by these heinous crimes, so they chose to standby and reap the benefits rather than helping those persecuted. Most of the time, people were too afraid to oppose Hitler’s ideas because it would result in alienation or even worse, death. Regardless of his beliefs, Hitler was a powerful speaker and he could say whatever he wanted and people would still listen to him. Hitler enforced his ideas and controlled the extent of the public’s knowledge about the Holocaust by using propaganda appealing to pathos, logos, and ethos, and this had an impact on what people really knew about what was going on during the Holocaust.
First of all, Hitler took advantage of the German people’s emotions by attaching positive and negative connotations to ideas that followed his views.
In his speeches, he regarded himself, the Reich, and Germany in a positive light. In 1941, he gave a speech in Munich talking about “the Movement's amazing march to victory, which bore it to the helm of the Reich, to leadership of the nation and its destiny. [It was] a heroic struggle, opposed at its inception by nearly all”. He motivated his followers by focusing on their triumphs and how they were able to overcome obstacles. It made his audience feel like they could accomplish anything, which was to his advantage because it gave him more control and the ability to influence his followers into doing what he wanted. On the other hand, he talked about things such as communism, the Jewish people, and his other racial enemies, in a negative attitude to reflect his hatred towards them. This is shown in his proclamation to the German nation in 1933, “The misery of our people is horrible to behold! Millions of the industrial proletariat are unemployed and starving; the whole of the middle class and the small artisans have been impoverished. When this collapse finally reaches the German peasants, we will be faced with an immeasurable disaster” It is important to note that during 1933, the Communist party was at a steep decline and Hitler despised all of their objectives; at the time of this speech, the party was not officially banned. Here, he emphasised the negative effects of communism and how it was detrimental to the German people. By doing so, he persuaded his audience away from communist ideas because he showed how the party negatively impacted their
country.
In fact, pathos was used in conjunction with propaganda and proved to be effective on the general public. A lot of the propaganda that was released focused on the physical impact and how harmful the Jewish people were to the German population. This was shown in a propaganda leaflet published in a German publication in 1935, “ Fellow Germans, do you know that the Jew ravishes your child, defiles your wife, murders your parents, insults your honor, ridicules your customs, corrupts your culture, contaminates your race... that the Jew slanders you, cheats you, robs you, regards you as cattle… THE JEW LIVES ON LIES AND DIES OF THE TRUTH” In this source the author draws upon Hitler’s use of pathos to exaggerate propaganda, that in reality, had no factual basis. The purpose of this method was to further ostracize the Jews from the rest of society. This shows the level at which some Germans stooped to just to harass and condescend their enemies and how they used pathos to their advantage.
Additionally, Hitler used logos to influence his audience’s rationale; his choice of words often played on people’s ability to comprehend what he was saying. First, he called upon German nationalism to emphasis the strong ties their cultures had with racial pride. For example, in his Speech in Berlin, at the Sportpalast in 1933, he began by saying, “I can say with pride, comrades of the SA and SS, that if the whole German people now was possessed of the spirit which is in us and in you, then Germany would be indestructible”. Here, he exploited the Germans as a proud race that cognitively believed that they were the best. By calling Germany indestructible, he associated the nation’s strong sense of pride, to their ability to withstand any struggle. Through using logic, Hitler was able to make it appear that it was the German population’s moral obligation to stay loyal to their country by following his ideology. Similarly, Hitler used logos in connection to the Jewish people when he talked about his extreme distaste for people of that race. In a speech he made in Berlin in 1941, he talked about how the “Jew-ridden democracies, which can think only in terms of capitalism…” are inherently the enemies of the Reich. He effectively used logos by leading the audience into believing that they were justified in attacking the Jews since they were their evil enemies. By characterising Jewish people as destructive, he wrongfully promoted violence by pinning two groups of people against each other. These are just a few examples of the ways that he manipulated the Germans into carrying out his actions.