Abstract
The NSDAP had already demonstrated the unusual effectiveness of its
propaganda in the election campaigns of the late 1920s and early 1930s.
The man pulling the strings was Joseph Goebbels, then “Reich Propaganda
Leader.” Like none other, he used the power of emotion to arouse
people’s fears and worries and to portray Hitler as the savior of the
German people. This propaganda poster for the Reichstag election of
March 5, 1933, shows how Goebbels manged to present rabble-rousing as
rational argumentation, slander as pure truth, and promises as effective
solutions. The poster represents a particularly imaginative take on “the
stab-in-the-back legend”
[Dolchstoßlegende], which is
portrayed here as “historical truth.” It begins with the words, “The SPD
demands historical truth. Well then they should have it: the historical
truth is that the revolt of 1918, [which is] called the German
revolution, was carried out at the behest of France….” According to the
poster, the SPD staged the 1918 revolution with the help of French
funds, was responsible for the the German defeat in the First World War,
and profited from the suffering of the people. As the poster explains,
Germans weren’t going to allow themselves to be abused any longer: “On
March 5, the German people will elect the man who has expended enormous
energy to create the conditions that will allow the traitors to be
thrown from the saddle. It will elect the man who will expend the same
energy in a slow but sure battle to secure a better existence for the
individual and the people as a whole. It will elect Adolf Hitler.”