"And we learned about the critical importance of propaganda, the deliberate misinforming of the public in order to sway opinions en masse and achieve popular support (or at least the appearance of it). While Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels purged Jewish and leftist artists and writers, he built a massive media infrastructure that played, writes PBS, "probably the most important role in creating an atmosphere in Germany that made it possible for the Nazis to commit terrible atrocities against Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities.""
"How did the minority party of Hitler and Goebbels take over and break the will of the German people so thoroughly that they would allow and participate in mass murder? Post-war scholars of totalitarianism like Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt asked that question over and over, for several decades afterward. Their earliest studies on the subject looked at two sides of the equation. Adorno contributed to a massive volume of social psychology called The Authoritarian Personality, which studied individuals predisposed to the appeals of totalitarianism"
Early education emphasizes basic causes of the Third Reich's rise in the early 1930s: paramilitary terror, conservative opportunism, and the Reichstag Fire. Propaganda functioned as deliberate public misinformation to sway mass opinion and manufacture the appearance of popular support. Joseph Goebbels purged Jewish and leftist artists and writers while building a massive media infrastructure that created an atmosphere enabling atrocities against Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities. The minority Nazi party overpowered German society and induced participation in mass murder. Postwar scholars such as Theodor Adorno and Hannah Arendt examined how societies and individuals became susceptible to totalitarian appeals. Adorno coauthored The Authoritarian Personality studying predispositions to such appeals.
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