It starts with a joke or a poster. Maybe a radio broadcast you hear while making coffee. Most people think of the propaganda of the Holocaust as just a series of angry speeches by a guy with a mustache, but it was way more subtle—and way more dangerous—than that. It was an entire ecosystem of lies designed to make the unthinkable seem like a boring administrative necessity.
Joseph Goebbels, the guy running the show, didn't just want people to hate; he wanted them to look away.
History isn't just a list of dates. It's about how neighbors suddenly decide their other neighbors are "problems" that need to be "solved." To understand how the Nazi party pulled this off, we have to look at the machinery they built. They didn't just invent hate out of thin air. They took existing fears—economic collapse, loss of national pride—and weaponized them using the latest technology of the 1930s.
The Big Lie and the Slow Burn
If you tell a big enough lie and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. That’s the "Big Lie" theory in a nutshell. But the propaganda of the Holocaust wasn't a single lie. It was a layering process.
Think about the film The Eternal Jew (Der ewige Jude). This wasn't just a bad movie; it was framed as a "documentary." It used footage of crowded ghettos—conditions the Nazis themselves created by forcing people into tiny spaces without sanitation—to "prove" that Jewish people were "unclean." It’s a classic gaslighting move. They create the misery, then point at the misery as evidence of a group's inherent nature.
It worked because it was constant.
Imagine walking down the street and seeing Der Stürmer on every corner. This tabloid, run by Julius Streicher, was basically the 1940s version of a toxic clickbait site. It didn't care about facts. It cared about visceral, disgusting imagery. It used caricatures that stripped people of their humanity.
Why does that matter?
Because it’s a lot easier to participate in—or ignore—state-sponsored violence if you don't think of the victims as actual people. You start thinking of them as "statistics" or "threats" or "biological hazards." That language was intentional. The Nazis used medical metaphors constantly. They talked about "cleansing" the body politic. They spoke about "disinfecting" Europe.
How They Managed the "Public Mood"
The SD (the intelligence service of the SS) actually ran secret reports to see if the propaganda was working. They were obsessed with data. They’d send agents into bars and markets to listen to what people were complaining about. If the public was getting bored with anti-Semitic tropes, the Ministry of Propaganda would pivot.
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They weren't just shouting into a void. They were A/B testing their hate.
During the war, the propaganda of the Holocaust shifted gears. When the tide started turning against Germany on the Eastern Front, the messaging became more desperate and more focused on "existential survival." The logic was simple: "If we don't destroy them, they will destroy you." It turned the perpetrators into the "victims" in their own minds. This is a common tactic in genocidal regimes.
The Art of the Euphemism
Language is a tool. In the Third Reich, it was a weapon.
You won’t find the word "murder" in most official documents regarding the "Final Solution." Instead, you see Sonderbehandlung (special treatment). You see Aussiedlung (resettlement).
The use of euphemisms served two purposes:
- It allowed the bureaucrats to process the paperwork of mass death without having to acknowledge what they were actually doing.
- It kept the general public in a state of "knowing but not knowing."
Most Germans knew something terrible was happening in the East. They saw the trains. They saw their neighbors disappear. But the official propaganda of the Holocaust gave them a polite vocabulary to describe it, which made it easier to stay silent. Honestly, the silence was the goal. Goebbels didn't need every German to be a raving fanatic; he just needed them to be passive.
Media Control and the "People’s Receiver"
The Volksempfänger was a cheap radio designed so every household could afford one. It had a limited range so people couldn't easily listen to foreign broadcasts like the BBC. This was the first time a government had a direct, 24/7 pipeline into the living rooms of its citizens.
Control the medium, control the message.
It wasn't all hate speech, though. That’s a common misconception. A lot of Nazi propaganda was just... entertainment. Swing music (the "approved" kind), radio plays, and coverage of the 1936 Olympics. They wanted people to feel like life was good, stable, and prosperous. They wanted to associate the Nazi party with "the good times." By the time the darker stuff became the focus, the population was already hooked on the brand.
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Schools and the Indoctrination of the Youth
You've probably heard of the Hitler Youth. But the propaganda of the Holocaust started even earlier, in the classroom. Math problems would ask students to calculate the cost of caring for a "hereditarily ill" person versus the cost of a worker’s housing.
This is terrifyingly effective.
It teaches children to view human life in terms of economic utility. If you spend your childhood solving math problems about who is a "burden" on society, you don't need a fiery speech to convince you of eugenics later on. You’ve already been primed to accept it as logic. Biology textbooks were rewritten to include "Racial Science." History was reframed as a constant struggle between "Aryans" and everyone else.
By 1938, a whole generation of kids had grown up in an information vacuum. They didn't have a "before" to compare it to.
Redefining the "Enemy"
The Nazis were obsessed with the idea of the "Internal Enemy." They argued that Germany didn't lose World War I on the battlefield, but because of a "stab in the back" by Jewish people and communists.
This was a total fabrication.
But it was a useful one. It gave people a scapegoat for their humilitation. When the Great Depression hit and people lost their savings, the propaganda of the Holocaust pointed the finger at "international financiers." When there was a threat of a communist uprising, the propaganda linked it to "Judeo-Bolshevism."
It was a Swiss Army Knife of blame.
The Theresienstadt Deception
One of the most cynical examples of propaganda of the Holocaust was the "model ghetto" at Theresienstadt (Terezín). In 1944, the Nazis allowed the International Red Cross to visit. They "beautified" the town, planted gardens, and forced the prisoners to put on performances.
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They even made a film called The Führer Gives the Jews a City.
It was a complete sham. Most of the people in that film were sent to Auschwitz shortly after the cameras stopped rolling. But the propaganda worked just enough to create doubt in the international community. It provided a thin layer of "plausible deniability" that delayed intervention.
Why Does This Still Matter Today?
We like to think we're too smart to fall for this stuff now. We have the internet. We have "fact-checkers." But the core tactics of the propaganda of the Holocaust—dehumanization, the use of euphemisms, the "Big Lie," and the exploitation of economic fear—haven't gone away. They just look different.
They look like memes. They look like "us vs. them" political rhetoric. They look like the algorithm feeding you stuff that makes you angry because anger keeps you engaged.
The Holocaust didn't start with gas chambers. It started with words.
Experts like Ian Kershaw and Deborah Lipstadt have pointed out that the erosion of objective truth is the first step toward state-sponsored violence. When a society can no longer agree on basic facts, whoever has the loudest megaphone wins.
Actionable Steps for Navigating Information Today
Understanding the history of propaganda isn't just an academic exercise. It's a survival skill. Here is how you can apply the lessons of the past to the modern day:
- Analyze the Vocabulary: If a group or government starts using "biological" or "infestation" language to describe people, that is a massive red flag. Always look for words that strip individuals of their humanity.
- Track the Scapegoat: Whenever a complex problem (like the economy or a pandemic) is blamed on a single "out-group," be extremely skeptical. Real problems usually have complex, boring causes.
- Verify the Source of "Documentaries": Just because something is filmed in a serious style doesn't mean it’s true. The Nazis pioneered the "fake documentary" format. Always check who funded the content and what their agenda might be.
- Diversify Your Information: The Volksempfänger worked because it was the only source. If you find yourself in an echo chamber where you only hear one side of an issue, you are vulnerable to the same psychological conditioning used in the 1930s.
- Recognize Euphemisms: Pay attention to when "collateral damage," "resettlement," or "neutralization" are used. Force yourself to use the plain English version of those words to see if the reality of the situation changes for you.
- Support Primary Source Research: Visit museum archives like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) or Yad Vashem online. Seeing the original posters and reading the actual diaries of people who lived through it is the best antidote to modern "revisionist" history.
Propaganda is most effective when the person consuming it thinks they are too "enlightened" to be fooled. Staying vigilant means acknowledging that we are all susceptible to the "slow burn" of manipulated information. By studying the propaganda of the Holocaust, we learn to recognize the patterns before they have a chance to repeat. History doesn't always repeat, but it definitely rhymes, and the melody of dehumanization is one we've heard before.