Background: Eugen Hadamovsky’s Propaganda and National Power is the only book-length Nazi treatment of the general principles of propaganda. Published in 1933, it never saw a second edition. Hadamovsky himself was an early Nazi with technical interests. He earned Hitler’s esteem by arranging the sound system at mass meetings where Hitler spoke. After 1933, he was appointed Reichssendeleiter, something like national programming director, for German radio. He also wrote a variety of books that were published by the Eher Verlag, the Nazi publishing house. During the war, he moved to the party propaganda office, the Reichspropagandaleitung, where he was Goebbels’s second-in-command. Goebbels eventually determined that he could dispense with Hadamovsky’s services, and he met his death in February 1945 fighting with an SS unit in Poland. As time permits, I may add a lengthier biographic essay on Hadamovsky. For the present, I include a brief 1943 biographical sketch

This translation is based on my M.A. thesis (Northwestern University, 1973), though my translation skills have improved since then.

The source: Eugen Hadamovsky, Propaganda und nationale Macht: Die Organisation der öffentlichen Meinung für die nationale Politik (Oldenburg: Gerhard Stalling, 1933).

Propaganda and National Power:

The Organization of Public Opinion for National Politics

To the master of political propaganda,
Dr. Joseph Goebbels
under whose brilliant leadership the neglected weapon of German politics became a creative art

Table of Contents

Hadamovsky’s signature on a copy of Propaganda und nationale Macht inscribed to SS-Sturmbannführer Erich Kostenbader on 15 January 1945, six weeks before his death.

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