HISTORY 322 Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Military Operation Plan, Nordic Race, Negroid
March 15th - The Culture of Race
• Nazis put out propaganda - Time Warner, beat them at their own game
• Did the Germans know about Hitler’s intentions?
o 4 year plan was not advertised as war plan - kept internally
o External
▪ Military parades
▪ Celebration of German Strength
▪ Foreign policy maneuvers
• All public
• Thus, Germans were not particularly surprised
▪ Expecting war - in response to things Hitler did when he remilitarized Rhineland
and invaded Sudetenland
• People = fearful
• Quite aware that something was brewing
▪ Success of foreign political maneuvers made people think that they could get by
international community by being on their own
• Media misinterpretation
o Night of Broken Glass: interpreted as Goebbels wanted - independent mob violence to
show hatred against jews
▪ Stuff that was happening was not clad in secrecy - international community was
aware
▪ Reactions: shocked, Civilized modern country - not types of things you’d be
expecting to happen
o Charlie Chaplin - time to speak -- comedy announced in aftermath of night of broken
glass
▪ Goebbels thought it was producing fear rather than hatred → weren’t offended
o Proposal to Lampoon - not supposed to make fun of foreign leaders or defame them
▪ Was stopped from being released because they didn’t want to create further
drama
▪ Awareness of rest of the world -- assumes that the “things that made the nazi
movement the nazi movement” were well known
• Outrage over Lampoon - retaliation:
o Anti-Semitic Films - Propaganda made by Harlan
▪ How the film educates viewers on Nazi Racism:
• Jew has no homeland
• With emancipation - jews became unrecognizable, infiltrated German
society
• Set in 18th century, lines of ingenuity -- argues that jews have always
affected German society in a bad way
• Film lastingly worked in people’s minds
• Luxury of life, frivolity
o Attributed to various others - aristocracy, degenerate class, racial
other
o Vicariously could enjoy those pleasures while still feeling
morally superior
▪ Affirm their own sense of being a good, frugal German -
recognizing the dirtiness of others but still enjoying
entertaining sensationalist stories
• On some level, film worked on ways Nazis didn’t expect
o Many people went to it - enjoyed for different reasons than what
they were supposed to get out of it
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