Nazi And British Propaganda During Wwii

Nazi and British Propaganda during WWII

In this paper I will discuss the use of propaganda before and during the World War II and how it affected British and German society.   I will first note that differences in the countries' war aims had a great effect upon the success and content of propaganda. Then I will examine how propaganda affected morale. I will describe how hatred and violence were successful parts of the German, but not British, propaganda campaign. I will then examine how propaganda saturated every aspect of civilian life. Throughout this paper I will prove that British propaganda was more successful towards the war effort than German propaganda.
It is important to note that Britain and Germany had different aims and ambitions in mass persuasion. The Nazis talked of "fighting on the battlefields of the mind," but this idea never took hold in Britain because Britain was not suggesting major changes in society as Germany was (Briggs 6). German propaganda:

"had set itself the task of educating the German people for a new society based upon a dramatically restructured value system. The ‘revolutionary' task of German propaganda contrasts starkly with the ‘conservative' basis of British propaganda aims" (Kershaw 182).

The Nazi's main propaganda aim was to keep the keep the people of Germany from seeing or reading anything that was damaging to the Nazi Party and to present the Nazi ideals to the public in the most persuasive way possible.   One effect of this exclusive method of mass persuasion was that stifled and prosecuted people such as artists and intellectuals fled to other countries (Propaganda in Nazi Germany -WEB). British propaganda has no such exclusivity. It focused on the total involvement of society in the war effort and giving people a sense of unity and enthusiasm. "In German home propaganda, the Nazi's found it difficult at critical moments to strike the same motes as the British had been able to strike with little fuss in 1940"....