Under the slogan “The Führer over Germany,” Joseph Goebbels coordinated a large-scale propaganda campaign centering on Adolf Hitler as part of the election campaigns for Reich President and for the Reichstag in spring and summer 1932. In several tours called “Deutschlandflüge” [Germany flights] Adolf Hitler traveled all over Germany by chartered plane and by car and appeared at around 200 major events, attended by hundreds of thousands of people. Hitler’s personal photographer, Heinrich Hoffmann, was part of the entourage, as well as a film team that was preparing a propaganda documentary about the campaign. Hoffmann took this photo at the third “Deutschlandflug” (“Germany flight”) in the summer of 1932, organized as part of the election campaign for the Reichstag in July 1932. The photo shows Adolf Hitler in an open car wearing a leather pilot's cap, while a worker, surrounded by children, shakes his hand. Hoffmann used photos from the campaign in a widely distributed propagandistic photo book, “Hitler über Deutschland,” which was published by Fr. Eher Verlag in 1932. The film of the same title was produced by the NSDAP's main propaganda department in 1932: https://digitaler-lesesaal.bundesarchiv.de/video/1248/666746

The modern propaganda techniques employed by the campaign, including the use of photography, film and choreographed mass rallies, helped to propel the rise of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP in the first half of 1932. In the elections for Reich President in March/April 1932, Hitler received a third of the votes and was only narrowly defeated by Paul von Hindenburg in the third round. In the Reichstag elections on July 31, 1932, the NSDAP received 37.3% of the vote and became the strongest party in the Reichstag for the first time, even if it did not achieve an absolute majority.