Propaganda during World War 1 and World War 2 Free Essay Example, 1000 words

The World War II represented a check of violability of the theoretical statements about the effectiveness of skillfully organized informational and psychological effect imposed on the military forces and population of the opponent. During the World War II there were much more opportunities to make successful propaganda due to the development of radio and TV. Radio and press were the main tools of propaganda during the World War II (Rhodes, 1996 : 3). Germany failed to make good propaganda during World War I that was the reason of its failure. Having made the corresponding conclusions, the heads of the fascist Germany started paying more attention to the issues connected with war propaganda. Hitler stated: â€Å"Propaganda must always address itself to the broad masses of the people. (... ) All propaganda must be presented in a popular form and must fix its intellectual level so as not to be above the heads of the least intellectual of those to whom it is directed. (... ) The art of propaganda consists precisely in being able to awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses. We will write a custom essay sample on Propaganda during World War 1 and World War 2 or any topic specifically for you Only $17.96 $11.86/pageorder now The broad masses of the people are not made up of diplomats or professors of public jurisprudence nor simply of persons who are able to form reasoned judgment in given cases, but a vacillating crowd of human children who are constantly wavering between one idea and another. (... )† (Hitler, 1939: 5). Hitler’s government formed the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. (Chakhotin, 1940: 8) The Ministry united the existing propaganda organizations and became the monopolist in the sphere of propaganda. The influence of such propaganda was very strong. Moreover, Nazi widely applied such method as â€Å"black propaganda†. They provided the citizens of other states-participants with false facts on behalf of their government. This brought a lot of disorders to British and French societies. Actually, Great Britain was a country the propaganda of which was closely connected with film-making, many films was created during World War II: The Day Will Dawn (1942:2), One of Our Aircraft Is Missing (1942) are among them. Books, radio, leaflets and posters were also widely used (De Fleur, 1966: 24). The propaganda held by Hitler was great and influential, but it did not allow him to win the war as the propaganda held by Joseph Stalin was also strong. The main thing that helped him was so-called â€Å"soviet spirit†.