propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
All authoritarian regimes begin with propaganda. They must control the “truth” to control their people.
Richard J. Evans, the British historian, is in a small class of scholars who can legitimately be termed a “preeminent” authority of Nazi Germany. Evans’s trilogy is the fundamental story of the Nazi rise to power and then ultimate defeat. The three books are clearly among the indispensable works of modern history.
Evans, who has taught at Cambridge among other places, published a new book – Hitler’s People: The Faces of the Third Reich – in 2024.
To read the book against the backdrop of the steady (and quickening) rise of American authoritarianism is enough to make one shudder. The book details the low life incompetents, opportunists and basic evil doers who enabled Nazism to come to power in the 1930’s in Germany.
And at the risk of being accused of hyperbole or Trump Derangement Syndrome it’s impossible not to think of the cast around the current president of the United States as you read Evans’s book.
The Trump cabinet is a collection of the most unprepared, least serious people in any American administration, and the runner up – Warren Harding, maybe – isn’t even close. The Nazi hierarchy bears striking resemblance.
And like the German Reichstag following Hitler’s takeover, the American Congress has abdicated all of its Constitutional responsibility in order to appease the party leader. After 1942 the Reichstag simply quit meeting. They had ceded all power to the party leader, so why bother. Congress is still meeting, of course, but largely to carry out Trump’s directives without an ounce of independent judgment.
At the heart of Nazi German was, of course, the supreme leader, the Fuehrer, the man his deputy Rudolf Hess said was Germany, and Germany was Hitler. In the eyes of his many close disciples Hitler simply could do no wrong. They vied to stay in his good graces, often debasing themselves, their families and careers in the process. To a person they embraced Hitler’s viral anti-semitism, even when some clearly didn’t believe in it.
Most of these Nazis, as Evans documents, never recanted their slavish loyalty to Hitler and his cause. Most went to their deaths never admitting they had done anything wrong, and in many cases family members lived long lives never coming to grips with the totality of evil their relatives had unleashed.
Among the truest of the true believers was Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi Hitler placed in charge of propaganda and culture. The section on Goebbels in Evans’s book is simply chilling, in no small part because Goebbels invented the “reality” that came to define Nazi Germany before and during World War II. ¹
Evans says:
Once his initial doubts had been quelled, Goebbels believed passionately in Hitler’s greatness and destiny. There can be little doubt either that he was sincere in his belief that the Jews were engaged in a global conspiracy to destroy Germany. That provided the justification for the cascade of lies that Goebbels unleashed in his propaganda, and for his unprecedentedly unscrupulous deployment of disinformation both before and after Hitler’s creation of the Third Reich. His propaganda tactics have been, and are being, widely imitated in the twenty-first century by populist politicians from Donald Trump to Viktor Orban [the Hungarian authoritarian] to discredit and ridicule their opponents and sweep aside opposition to their rule, though they are surely less ideologically fanatical in their motivation.
I find myself wondering about that final line: “less ideologically fanatical.” I’m not sure we can confidently say that Trump or Orban are not deeply committed ideologues.
Trump is, first and always, about the self-preservation of his power, position and money, but if the last six months tell us anything it is that we should never underestimate Trump’s ability to do, in the name of his own preservation and power, even more unimaginable, evil things.
He seems to be heading toward a pardon or commutation for a convicted sex trafficker in order to try and insulate himself from his own role in the Jeffrey Epstein affair.
He’s already pardoned everyone convicted in connection with the January 6 insurrection. He’s fired or intimidated government statisticians, prosecutors, the chair of the Federal Reserve, generals and admirals. He’s called for the prosecution of a former president and members of Congress who oppose him.
Can you really say he’s not capable of the next step … and the next?
More from Evans on Goebbels and the use of propaganda and disinformation:
By using derogatory nicknames for his critics, by denying the legitimacy of opposition to his cause, by cynically refusing to accept the truth when it turned out to be inconvenient, and by creating powerful but ultimately imaginary menaces to society that threaten to destroy unless countered by the power of a supposedly great leader, Goebbels set an example that was to be followed long after his death.
Beyond the unrelenting nature of the propaganda and cultishness of the Nazi regime, one feature stands out – the abject willingness of so many Germans to bow and scrape before the Fuehrer.
Hitler would frequently berate a subordinate, often for an extended period, only to see the subject of his temper and arrogance do anything possible to return to his favor. The underlings would flatter and cajole, make the grand gesture proving their loyalty, all the while ignoring the corruption, evil and incompetence all around them. They came to owe their very sense of self to the supreme leader.
Think Lindsey Graham. Or Marco Rubio.
Or it reminds me, frankly, of the comments Trump made this week directed at Republican Chuck Grassley. Trump teed off on Grassley, the Senate Judiciary Committee chairman, for not doing enough, in Trump’s view, to advance his judicial nominees. Grassley’s simpering response: “I was offended by what the president said, and I’m disappointed that it would result in personal insults,” Grassley said.
Nothing at all about being a member of a co-equal branch of government with specific duties under the Constitution. Grassley will, you can be sure, crawl back to the good graces.
Or there is the embarrassing spectacle of congressional Republicans seeking to rename the Kennedy Center Opera House for Melania Trump, or taking that idea even farther and renaming the entire place for Trump.
And, of course, Trump aims to build a grotesque “ballroom” addition to the White House, a monstrosity that the conservative pundit Charlie Sykes says is a mash up of late stage Ceau?escu [the Romanian dictator] meeting Liberace.
And Liberace had more taste. But it’s all about stroking the big man’s ego.
All of this eerily reminiscent of Hitler mandating the remaking of his hometown in Austria into a personal shrine, or empowering Nazi architect Albert Speer to remake entire German cities to conform with Hitler’s vision of the new Germany.
Idaho Republican Mike Simpson, once a serious supporter of the arts who has now become a Trump show pony, proposed the Opera House renaming. As NPR’s Elizabeth Blair noted, Simpson’s amendment to an appropriation bill likely violates the law. But that is just a technicality in Trump World.
BLAIR: Representative Simpson said that it would be an excellent way to recognize her appreciation for the arts. The first lady is an honorary chair of the Board of Trustees at the Kennedy Center, and that’s a long tradition. Past first ladies have also served as honorary chair.
There’s a point to be made about whether the opera house can legally be renamed. The guidelines that explain how the Kennedy Center spends federal dollars is very specific. Lots of dos and don’ts. It says, quote, “no additional memorials or plaques shall be designated or installed.” This is why there isn’t a theater named after the former board chair, David Rubenstein, who gave the Kennedy Center over a hundred million dollars.
Of course, reality is simply that Melania Trump is anything but a patron of the arts. But never mind. It’s the performative act of obsequiousness by Simpson (and so many others) that is the point. Simpson is a perfect example of how a once serious conservative became a true believer in the propaganda and nonsense that has enveloped his party.
Many such examples exist in Evans’s book.
The United States isn’t – at least yet – Germany in 1932, but all the signs are there if we care to see them: the vast propaganda machine that cranks out the daily dose of lies; the incompetent but completely loyal enablers; the attacks on education and free expression; the book banning; the remaking of the judiciary – and where that hasn’t yet fully taken place, the discrediting attacks on judges – ignoring judicial rulings; the performative celebration as undesirables – without due process – are cashiered into concentration camps; the destruction of science and research for purely ideological purposes; ceaseless attacks on political enemies and more and more. ³
Above all the lies. The petty propaganda. The first and essential act of every authoritarian.
It can happen here. It is happening here.
Read the Harris book. You’ll be stunned by the parallels between Germany in the 1930’s and Donald Trump’s America.
Read more of Marc Johnson’s posts on Substack.
Share on Facebook
