Background: The Nazi Party depended heavily on speakers
to get its message across. Those speakers needed to be informed. The following
is a translation of instructions to speakers in August 1943 that instructs them to build confidence in German victory. The problem was that there was no good evidence to back the claims, so this missive makes general claims that recent German reverses (e.g., Stalingrad, North Africa) were setbacks that would have no impact on the course of the war. One has the feeling that speakers who received this were not sure how they could translate it into effective rhetoric.
The source: Redner-Schnellinformation, Lieferung 64, August 1943.
Our Propaganda Line
We live during a time that demands strong nerves and firm hearts. The primary task for our speakers and propagandists is to maintain these in our people, which requires great effort.
He who watches opinion formation quickly recognizes the key issue: Our task is to create trust, faith, and firm confidence.
Fulfilling this task must be easy for all of us, for we have every reason to be determined optimists. True, in the months since last fall we have lived through a period of critical events, but none of the recent events was a genuine crisis. Nowhere did our opponent have a success that dangerously threatened our military situation. What we won in the past three years of the great and fateful German battle remains firmly in our hands, and will be defended by a military whose unbroken strength is prepared for every military challenge. This cannot be proven false by the enemy’s territorial successes last winter in the East and in Africa during the spring. Viewed in larger the context these were minor events on the periphery of the fronts. The core of our military and political strength, as well as our superiority, is not affected.
Also, neither enemy superiority in forces nor enemy superiority in military quality or matériel have overcome us. Where we were forced back, it was because of a higher power that the enemy cleverly used to force us to make hard and in individual cases painful decisions, but not the enemy himself.
Enemy news policy is trying to persuade the world that the turning point of the war has come because they are attacking us with massive forces and equipment with carefully planned tactical superiority in the East and South, as well as through the air. That in no way proves, however, that we are not able to respond to such efforts. The only difference is that we do not speak of our countermeasures and the resulting expectations as the enemy does, but rather act seriously and quietly, determined to do our utmost. We will leave the result to the success of that policy.
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