Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Professor Gilfillan
SLC 494
1 May 2008
The use of written newspapers, pamphlets, posters, and other forms of media were
effective tools used by the National Socialist government to spread an agenda aimed at blaming
Jews for Germany’s economic decay. Hitler recognized the power of artistic and literary forms
of communication and wasted no time in setting up his anti-Semitic laws and practices,
beginning by banning any and all books written by Jewish authors. Most of these were then
subsequently burned during the widespread public book burnings in 1933. The German tradition
of myth and folklore played an integral role in the National-Socialist Party’s agenda to mold
public opinion. Christa Kamenetsky writes of a “conscious revival of national folklore” enacted
by the Nazi Party which “sponsored numerous editions of Grimm’s Household Stories (Kinder-
und Hausmarchen) along with collections of regional folktales, German and Nordic legends,
folksongs, and medieval German ‘folk books’” (Kamenetsky 169). The fairy tale genre has long
held an integral place in Germany’s cultural history, and this genre was mimicked and exploited
by the Nazis to propagate their agenda of hate. Education also played a vital role in the National
Socialist government’s aims to cultivate a loyal following, and the ubiquitous use of anti-Semitic
propaganda and indoctrination was critical in creating a generation that would largely stand by as
Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm’s fairy tales are known and beloved by children and adults
alike all over the world, and Germans especially have long taken pride in this literary history. “In
1935, the main speaker at the National Book Week Congress in Berlin, touched upon sentiments
when reappraising the Kinder-und Hausmarchen as the “new Bible” of the German folk
program… What had united them in their love of Grimm’s folktales, said the speaker, was the
very spirit of their forefathers” (Kamenetsky 170). One of the Grimm Brothers’ lesser known
fairytales entitled A Jew Among Thorns carries unmistakable overtones of anti-Semitism. It tells
the story of a hard working servant who finally gets three years' wages and subsequently
embarks on a journey. He meets an old man, whom he pities and gives his wages. The old man
turns out to have the ability to grant three wishes to the servant, who wishes for a gun that will
hit any aim, a fiddle that can make anyone dance, and that any favor he asks of anyone will be
granted. He soon encounters a Jew listening to a bird in a tree and exclaiming that he wished it
were his. The servant shoots the bird with his magic gun, and the bird lands in a thorny bush. The
Jew jumps into the bush after it and the servant decides to try his fiddle. This forces the Jew to
dance right in the midst of the thorns, which tear his clothes and flesh. Finally, the Jew agrees to
give the servant all his gold if he will stop playing the fiddle. The servant then takes the gold and
goes on his way, whereupon the Jew runs to the town judge and tells him that this servant beat
and robbed him. The servant is arrested and sentenced to be hanged. The judge at first chooses to
believe the Jew's story because he doesn't believe that a Jew would just freely give up money to
someone else. In the end the servant gets out of being hanged by making a last request to play his
fiddle, which causes everyone to dance until the judge agrees to let him go if he stops. In the end
the judge believes the servant's story and the Jew is hung in his place (Robertson 64-67). Stories
such as this had been told in German household from generation to generation for centuries by
the time the Third Reich came to power, and it is appalling to think that the children who listened
to these stories were provided with a moral that encouraged them to identify with a hero who
maliciously tricks and steals, but is ultimately exonerated of any wrongdoing simply because his
victim is a Jew.
Children, with their affinity for the universal appeal of fairy tales with clear right and
wrong answers, were the primary targets of the National Socialist government’s indoctrination of
anti-Semitism. With the campaign aimed at children, the Nazis integrated both anti-Semitic
ideology and encouraged children to join the either Hitler Youth for boys of the League of
German Girls. The enrollment rate was very high, but the influx of children joining the two
youth organizations were not all going for their hatred toward Jews. Rather, many saw it as a
good opportunity to go camping, make friends; in a way, the equivalent of today’s Boy and Girl
Scouts of America Organization. It was likely that this combination of collective nationalism and
social interaction with perhaps more racist peers served to teach many of the children that anti-
Semitism was not only acceptable, but even beneficial for the glorification of their country.
Daniel Horn argues that “during the years 1933 to 1945 the real educational changes emanated
not so much from the government and its educational leaders as from the agitation and disruption
of schools by young Nazis. Their rebellion kept the schools in perpetual turmoil, disrupted the
educational process, undermined the status and prestige of the teachers, and brought about such a
catastrophic decline in academic quality that it placed Germany in jeopardy of losing its
technical and industrial preeminence” (Horn 426). The Nazis organized mass burnings of books
written by Jews or expressing objectionable ideas. Virtually all books by Jewish authors were
language as well as many foreign texts to huge bonfires. Throughout the spring of 1933, Nazi
student organizations, professors, and librarians compiled an extensive list of books they
determined to be degenerate and should not be read by decent Germans (Ritchie 627). They
proceeded to unabashedly use schoolbooks for propaganda purposes. Bernhard Rust, the
Minister of Education, saw the purpose of school textbooks was to achieve an ideological
education of young German people, so as to develop them into “fit members” of the national
community. Censorship Director Bouhler worked closely with Reich Education Minister
Bernhard Rust to revise German textbooks. Large numbers of text books were destroyed in 1933
leading to shortages of texts for several years. Publishers initially made only minor changes in
existing texts. They often reprinted existing with the addition of swastikas and Nazi Party
slogans. Rust by the late 1930s had overseen the replacement of school books that had been
completely rewritten by authors approved by the Ministry of Education and members of the
National Socialist Teachers’ Association. The new text and carefully chosen illustrations were
designed to support major Nazi tenants and were blatantly used to promote the Party program.
These major themes were incorporated into children's books. Children's literature in the Third
Reich was geared towards teaching children at an early age the evils of the Jewish race. One
example of this literature, Der Giftpilz, was published by Julius Streicher who operated the
The book Der Giftpilz was created with the intention to spread a fear and hatred of Jews
quickly became a popular beginner’s book for children learning to read. Perhaps what makes the
book all the more disturbing is that, despite its sinister underlying message, it is beautifully
illustrated. For an audience raised on the fairy tales of the Grimm Brothers, this kind of aesthetic
would have been something they were familiar and comfortable with. The propagation of these
anti-Semitic ideologies are fueled just as much, if not more so, by aesthetics as careful
manipulation of coherent reason. A book like Der Giftpilz is clearly targeted towards a young
audience, and it presents its message in an oversimplified manner that children can easily follow,
using images that they can easily relate to. The book uses seemingly innocent and commonplace
scenarios such as picking mushrooms in the forest and going to school, and the victims of the
Jews are often portrayed as defenseless young women, children, and animals. “Young Germans
are cast as the hope of Germany and the saviors of a world under siege by a Jewish plague. The
cumulative effect of so many comparisons with the world of nature, one might think, would be to
make the elimination of Jews a natural and expected occurrence. Their extermination is
presented as being part of the natural order of things, and the child is invited to rescue the desired
natural order from the disaster planned by the Jews” (Mills). The image of the Jew as an
inhuman monster who victimizes helpless Germans is visually reinforced through the use of
grotesque images such as the ones below, portraying Jews as lewd and menacing strangers. This
The Nazi government brainwashed their citizens with anti-Semitic beliefs and taught the
German people that they were a supreme race using comparative representations of the Jew as a
dark and sinister enemy. Nazi propaganda was heard on the radio and seen on the television and
posters. They frequently targeted the minds of children, using colorful illustrations intended to
create a clear distinction between the “good” Germans and the “bad” Jews. Don’t Trust a
Fox/Trust Not the Jew is an anti-Semitic Children's Book published by the German anti-Semitic
newspaper, "Der Sturmer." Like the book Der Giftpilz, this book presents provides illustrations
that deal with issues such as “alleged Jewish control of capital, lust for world domination,
oversimplified way by painting a portrait of the Jews as lewd, gluttonous, and almost inhuman
figures who attempt to manipulate and take advantage of wholesome, hard-working Germans.
The cover of a similar children’s book Der Pudelmopsdackelpinscher by Ernst Hiemer depicts a
dog made up of different parts from poodles, pugs, daschsunds, and pinschers, which illustrates
the genetic catastrophe that supposedly result from miscegenation between Jews and non-Jews.
“Realizing that children are basically very interested in the world of nature that surrounds them,
Hiemer constructs little stories centered upon what are generally considered to be despicable
traits in certain animals and insects and concludes each story by transferring the undesirable
characteristics to the human world via the Jews” (Mills). The book contains eleven stories that
use animals to illustrate anti-Semitic stereotypes. It draws correlations between Jews and such
animals as chameleons, poisonous snakes, locusts, and parasitic tapeworms. At the end of the
“At the end of each story, we made comparisons between the animal and human
worlds. And we learned that Jews pose the same danger to humanity as
drones to bees, the same danger that the coo-coo is to the grasshopper, the
sparrow to the starling, and so on. Later, we learned about the Jewish brood of
poison vipers, of Jewish parasitism, and finally, about the Jewish world
plague.”
Under the Third Reich, racial education became an important part of the curriculum. “By
1937, 97% of all teachers belonged to the National Socialist Teachers’ Union. Every member of
this union had to submit an ancestry table in triplicate with official documents of proof. On the
topics that teachers were required to treat, the most important was racial theory and, by
extension, the Jewish problem” (Mills). It was presented formally as well as worked into many
other curricula materials. Pseudo-scientific works were taught as scientific fact. Racial science
was not only introduced as part of biology courses, but was presented to children in one form or
another at virtually every grade level. In 1933 and 1934 there were large numbers of Jewish
children in the schools and vicious racial thought was present to the class with them in it. Some
teachers even required the Jewish children to serve as class models of "inferior" "Jewish" racial
types. As illustrated in Der Giftpilz, teachers taught as part of the curriculum physical traits that
were supposed to identify those who were Jewish. Exams were given on this and other aspects of
Nazi ideology and Jewish children would fail if they did not provide the required answers on
their own inferiority. Some times in other subjects Jewish or part Jewish children would have
their grades reduced on principle. Faced with this treatment and sometimes physical harassment
from their classmates, which would always go unpunished, Jewish patents withdrew their
children from the state schools. At the same time the Nuremberg and other racial laws were
making it increasingly difficult for their parents to work. Hatred of the Jews and other so-called
sub-humans was the main theme in all courses, even math. Problem solving often included word
problems with questions about ammunition or the cost of maintaining an insane asylum.
The media spewed forth a continuous stream of propaganda celebrating the genius of
Hitler who liberated the German people from the depression, the Bolsheviks and the Jews. As
Jefferey Herf writes, “Hitler remained the key storyteller and propagandist. His speeches were
printed in the press, broadcast over the radio, and excerpted on hundreds of thousands of
posters… Hitler’s anti-Semitic convictions defined policy” (Herf 17). The vast majority of
Germans did not have access to any other news source and were completely under the influence
of this propaganda. Numerous spectacular rallies and pageants were held to show to the citizens
the power and influence of Germany and to provide a sense of security in the belief that
Germany was doing well at last under the Nazis. The ease and familiarity with which the
German people identified with their fairy tales was even used to elevate public opinion of Hitler
himself. The Reich propaganda leader for the National-Socialist Party, Joseph Goebbels, began
constructing the “Führer myth”, an image of Hitler to which the German people would give their
allegiance to even if they were dissatisfied with aspects of the regime itself (Peukert 67-70). In
the beginning Hitler was portrayed as the modest tireless worker who sacrificed himself for the
German people; as the friend, the caring older brother, a man with simple tastes who shared the
prejudices of the common German. Later he became the miracle worker, the savior who saved
Germany from destruction, the political genius who stood up against the rest of the world for the
The Nazis utilized propaganda to saturate Nazi ideology, philosophy, and mentality into
the German population, as well as to change the traditional German moral standards for thought
as well as behavior. Subsequently, as the Nazis hoped would happen, the ideas acquired through
these forms of propaganda would mature into a part of everyday German life. It would become
an issue in and out of the home. According to Hitler, the masses must not have two or more
enemies. Rather, they should concentrate on one primary enemy, the Jews. To support this idea,
the Nazi propaganda reinforced racist philosophy on the "normal" anti-Semitism by giving the
Jews the title of "enemy of the common people." Two elements, hatred and racism, were
integrated in propaganda to urge the population to find the importance of ridding Germany of the
portray them to be. In Hitler's view, anti-Semitism was a vital weapon in the propaganda
enterprise. He insisted that wherever it is used, it has a huge effect, and refused to it disregarded
as a political weapon. To achieve their goal, the National Socialist Party built upon the historical
anti-Semitism that long been a part of the culture, combined with the broadcasting and
distributing of their anti-Semitic propaganda through all means of media available to them.
Works Cited
Herf, Jeffrey, The Jewish Enemy: Nazi Propaganda During the World War II and the Holocaust.
Horn, Daniel. 1976. “The Hitler Youth and Educational Decline in the Third Reich”. History of
Kamenetsky, Christa. 1997. “Folktale and Ideology in the Third Reich”. The Journal of
Mills, Mary. “Propaganda & Children during the Hitler Years”. The Nizkor Project. 2008.
<http://www.nizkor.org/hweb/people/m/mills-mary/mills-00.html>
Peukert, Detlev, Inside Nazi Germany: Conformity, Opposition, and Racism in Everyday Life.
Ritchie, J. M. “The Nazi Book-Burning”. The Modern Language Review: Vol. 83, No. 3, p. 627-
643.
Wegner, Gregory. Anti-Semitism and Schooling under the Third Reich. Routledge, 2002.