Propaganda: Past and Present

by Michael Kent

Propaganda is regarded as an essentially modern development. It may be defined as a technique of persuasion whereby millions are induced to respond to a cause with devotion for one side and hatred for the other. The more intense the devotion and the more violent the hatred created by its means, the more successful the propaganda. The methods employed to rouse these emotions and bring them to the required intensity will be carefully adapted by the expert propagandist to the end in view, and will make skillful use of three indispensable agencies: speech, pictures, the press.

Propaganda is supposed to have reached its present effectiveness as the result of recent investigations into mass psychology. Among modern propagandists, Adolf Hitler easily holds first place. The part played by propaganda in his rise to power cannot be overestimated. He describes his technique at length in Mein Kampf. A convenient summary of his methods appears in a footnote on page 231 (Edition, Reynal & Hitchcock):

"Hitler says he awakened during the War to the importance of propaganda, discovered that German methods were too high-brow and too little adapted to drum up popular emotion, and learned that the first rule of the propagandist must be to find out what will affect the masses. In view of the fact that propaganda became a fundamental concern of the Nazi regime, some attention to Hitler's contributions to this science is called for. There is a convenient analysis in Propaganda Analysis, Vol. 1. (New York, 1938). This essay, prepared by experts, reveals very clearly how the various weapons of the militant propagandist—e.g., calling names— have been employed. It relegates to a position of minor importance, an aspect of the matter on which Hitler lays great stress — that the propagandist who is trying to wage war must eliminate the 'esthetic' and concentrate on stirring up hatred."

These statements confirm the popular view that propaganda is a modern device. A comparison of the writings of Hitler and those of a propagandist who preceded him by four centuries will, however, call for a revision of this opinion. Almost the first, and certainly the most important and effective use to which the printing press was put, was the dissemination of just such propaganda as that described in Mein Kampf, in defense of the Reformation and against the Catholic Church. From the pen of Martin Luther and the presses of Germany, an ocean of books and pamphlets, of sermons and letters, poured over Europe from the year 1517 onward, putting into practice the theories formulated four hundred years later by Hitler. In view of the fact that the masses were illiterate, the quantity consumption of these writings was astonishing: one brochure "sold out" an edition of four thousand in less than a month. Artists gave their talents to the cause of "reform," notably Lucas Cranach; Luther illustrated some of his writings himself. Preaching supplemented the written word, as speeches do today; and in his sermons as well as his books, Luther anticipates the technique of Hitler.

"To whom," asks Hitler, "has propaganda to appeal?" He answers unequivocally: "It has to appeal forever and only to the masses!" It "has to make use of small and smallest minds. . . . Propaganda has to be directed at the great masses and its efficiency has to be measured exclusively by its effective success" (Mein Kampf: pp. 230, 476).

Luther acts on this counsel: "I discourse as plainly as possible, for I desire that the commonest people, that children, that servants, should understand what I say. It is not for the learned that we go up into the pulpit; they have their books" (Table Talk: On Preaching).

Hitler prescribes further: "At a meeting of the broad layers of a people, not that speaker speaks best whose mentality is nearest to the intelligentsia present, but he who conquers the heart of the masses" (p. 476).

Luther applies this principle literally in his advice to a disciple who asked him how to preach: "Your sermons should be addressed, not to princes and nobles, but to the rude, uncultivated commonalty" (Ibid.)

Hitler admits the necessity of occasional concessions to more cultivated intellects: "If propaganda renounces the originality of expression, it will not find its way to the feeling of the great masses. But if in word and gesture it applies the coarseness of the masses' feelings and expressions, it will be rejected as rude and vulgar by the so-called intelligentsia. Among a hundred so-called speakers there are hardly ten who would be in a position to speak today with the same effect to an auditorium composed of street sweepers, locksmiths, sewer cleaners, etc., and to give on the following day a lecture of necessarily the same intellectual contents to university professors and students" (p. 475).

Luther does not hesitate to lay claim to this ability: "If, in my discourses, I were to be thinking about Melanchthon and the other doctors, I should do no good at all: but I preach in plain language to the plain, unlearned people, and that pleases all parties. If I know the Greek, Hebrew, and Latin languages, I reserve them for our learned meetings, where they are of use; for at these we deal in such subtleties and such profundities that God Himself, I wot, must sometimes marvel at us" (Ibid.).

Both men practice what Hitler preaches. The character, and even the objects, of their propaganda are the same. It is difficult to tell which propagandist is responsible for the following diatribes:

"The Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing; though overcome by testimony, they yield not an inch. It is a pernicious race, oppressing all men by their usury and rapine. . . . We must ever be on our guard against them. . . . They have haughty prayers, in which they praise and call upon God, as if they alone were His people, cursing and condemning all other nations" (Table-Talk: Of the Jews). "It is necessary to study this infamous Jewish method with which they simultaneously, and from all directions, as at a given magic word, pour bucketfuls of the basest calumnies and defamation over the clean garb of honest people. . . ." (Mein Kampf: p. 109).

"The Jews read our books and from them raise objections against us; it is a nation that scorns and blasphemes, taking out of our writings the knowledge of our cause, and using the same as weapons against us" (Table-Talk: Of the Jews).

"The Jews again most slyly dupe the stupid Goiim [Gentiles]. They have no thought of building up a Jewish state in Palestine, so that they might perhaps inhabit it, but they only want a central organization of their international world cheating . . . a refuge for convicted rascals and a high school for future rogues" (Mein Kampf: p. 447).

"Burn down Jewish schools and synagogues, and throw pitch and sulphur into the flames; destroy their houses; confiscate their ready money; take from them their sacred books, even the whole Bible; forbid their holding any religious services under penalty of death; and if that does not help matters, hunt them out of the country like mad dogs" ("Tracts against Jews," 1543).

Even when the objects differ, the method remains the same:

"Poor Germans that we are, we have been deceived. We were born to be masters and we have been compelled to bow the head beneath the yoke of our tyrants, and to become slaves. Name, title, ensigns of royalty, we possess all these; force, power, right, liberty, all these have gone over to the popes, who have robbed us of them. For them the grain, for us the straw. It is time we should cease to content ourselves with the mere image of empire; it is time we resume the sceptre, and with the sceptre our body, and our soul, and our treasure; it is time the glorious Teutonic people should cease to be the puppet of the Roman pontiff" (Letter to the Christian Nobility of Germany, 1519).

"Millions of decent people will not again with impunity be driven into the field of battle and be sacrificed in vain in the interests of a race burdened with a curse so that international Jewry may be able to conduct its business transactions or to indulge Old Testament rage. . . . If today the English and American Jews announce it is the intention of the Allies to deprive the German nation of its children, to butcher millions of young men, to split up the Reich and make it for all time a defenseless object of exploitation of its capitalist and Bolshevik environment—then they need not point this out to us at all, for we know it already" (Hitler: Speech, January, 1943).

"May it please God to send down upon them the rain of fire and sulphur which consumed Sodom and Gomorrah, and to cast them into the sea that their very memories may be effaced" (Luther: Pamphlet, 1521).

"Had the German nation in the year 1918, instead of putting its faith in Wilson's lying and hypocritical phrases, continued to conduct the fight with iron determination, the enemy world surrounding us would have collapsed then" (Hitler: Speech, January, 1943).

Hitler lays down a rule for leadership :

"Only he who harbors passion in himself can arouse passion. . . . He to whom passion is denied and whose month remains closed is not chosen by Heaven as the prophet of its will" (Mein Kampf, p. 137).

Luther applies this rule in practice :

"I never work better than when I am inspired by anger; when I am angry, I can write, pray, and preach well, for then my whole temperament is quickened, my understanding sharpened, and all mundane vexations and temptations depart." And, again: "There are many who think I am too fierce against popedom; on the contrary, I complain that I am, alas! too mild; I wish I could breathe out lightning against pope and popedom, and that every word were a thunderbolt" (Table-Talk: Of Antichrist).

Both men blame their enemies for the opposition roused and the conflicts loosed by their teachings:

"They have challenged me to war; well, they shall have war. They have contemptuously rejected the peace I offered them; they shall not have peace" (Luther: Reply to Henry VIII.—1522).

"No other means is left me than to meet force with force" (Hitler: Speech, September, 1939).

The most extraordinary parallel of all is to be found in a plan of anti-Catholic action outlined by Hitler, which, in its details and in its entirety, supplied the whole motive and basis for Luther's life work:

"Hitler said concerning Catholic opposition . . . that its fomenters were wasting their time. They might as well stop pipe-dreaming. . . . If the clerical caste would not disappear voluntarily, he would direct propaganda against the Church until people would be unable to hide their disgust when the word 'Church' was mentioned. . . . The German people would see how the clergy had exploited them, lived off them. How they had sucked the money out of the country. How they had worked hand in glove with the Jews, how they had practiced immoral vice, how they had spread lies. . . . He would make the clergy ridiculous. He would expose all the tangled mass of corruption, selfishness, and deceit of which they had been guilty. . . . He would guarantee that if he set his mind to it, he could destroy the Church in a few years. The whole institution was just a hollow shell. One good kick, and it would tumble together in a heap" (Foot-note by editors, Mein Kampf, pp. 147-148).

Step by step, Luther follows this technique.

He "directs propaganda against the Church," taking care always to address it to "small and smallest minds," in terms carefully chosen to fill those minds with "disgust" for the "Romish Church," "Popedom," and "Popery." He "concentrates on stirring up hatred" by "calling names." In this art he not only anticipates Hitler; he far outdoes him:

"Damned synagogue of the devil. . . . Coarse donkeys, cursed sows, bellies of blasphemers. . . . The Pope, cardinals, and the whole crowd of idolatrous papists ought to be hung and the tongues of the blasphemers pulled out by the roots and nailed to the gallows in the way that they affix their seals to the Bulls" (Luther: Pamphlet, 1545).

He undertakes to show the German people "how the clergy had exploited them, lived off them":

"From Rome flow all evil examples of spiritual and temporal iniquity into the world, as from a sea of wickedness. . . . It was a proverb among them that one ought to wheedle the gold out of the German simpletons as much as one could. . . . When we hang thieves and behead murderers and burn heretics, why do not we lay hands on these Cardinals and Popes and all the rabble of the Romish Sodom, and bathe our hands in their blood?" (Pamphlet, The Popedom of Rome, 1520).

"How they had sucked the money out of the country":

"Why should the Germans permit themselves to be despoiled by cardinals, who monopolize all the rich preferments, and spend the revenues at Rome? . . . Let us not give another farthing to the pope, as subsidies against the Turks: the whole thing is a snare, a miserable pretext for the purpose of draining us of more money. . . . Rome draws everything into her bag by the most impudent chicanery. . . ." (Letter to the Christian Nobility of Germany, 1519).

"How they had worked hand in glove with the Jews":

"The Holy Spirit is a fierce thunder-clap against the proud, boasting Jews and papists, who brag that they alone are God's people" (Table-Talk: Of the Jews).

"The pope . . . persecutes and kills upright, good, and godly teachers, as the Jews persecuted and slew the prophets" (Table-Talk: Idem.).

". . . how they had practiced immoral vice....":

"Pope, cardinals, bishops . . . are a pack of guzzling, stuffing wretches, rich, wallowing in wealth and laziness, resting secure in their power . . ." (Table-Talk: Of Antichrist).

"The pope places his cardinals in all kingdoms — peevish milksops, effeminate and unlearned blockheads, who lie lolling in king's courts, among the ladies and women" (Table-Talk: Idem.).

"They depend on it [the Mass] so surely, that they think he who has heard Mass is free from all danger, and cannot sin . . . hence it comes to pass, that after hearing Mass, many sins and murders are committed" (Table-Talk: Idem.).

". . . how they had spread lies...."

"They urge some decree or other of the Council of Constance, and say, though Christ speak, who is the truth itself, yet an ancient custom must be preferred, and observed for law. Thus do they answer, when they seek to wrest and pervert the truth. . . . Who would not, in this case, resist these devilish and shameless lying lips?" (Table-Talk: Idem.).

"He would make the clergy ridiculous":

"Every friar for his supper has two quarts of beer, a quart of wine, and spice-cakes, or bread prepared with spice and salt, the better to relish their drink. Thus go on these poor fasting brethren; getting so pale and wan, they are like the fiery angels" (Table-Talk: Idem.).

"The assemblies of his [the pope's] greased crew, in prayer, were together like the croaking of frogs, which edified nothing at all; mere sophistry and deceit, fruitless and unprofitable. . . . Thence a confused sea of Horae Canonicae, the howling and babbling in cells and monasteries, where they read and sing the psalms and collects, without any spiritual devotion, understanding neither the words, sentences, nor meaning" (Table-Talk: Of Prayer).

"The papists, for the most part, are mere gross blockheads. One of their priests I knew, baptized with this form of words: Ego te baptiste in nomine Christe. Another in singing, used to say, elema, instead of clama, and when corrected, only bawled the louder, elema, elema. Another said, elicere, instead of dicere. . . . In one convent the brethren read munsimus, instead of sumpsimus. A young brother, just fresh from study, correcting this error, the rest said to him: 'Mind thy own business; we have always read munsimus, and we are not going to change our reading for thee'" (Table-Talk: Of Antichrist).

Luther out-Hitlers Hitler in his resounding catalogue of vices, intended to "expose all the tangled mass of corruption, selfishness, and deceit of which they had been guilty":

"The devil begat darkness; darkness begat ignorance; ignorance begat error and his brethren; error begat free-will and presumption; free-will begat merit; merit begat forgetfulness of God; forgetfulness of God begat transgression; transgression begat superstition; superstition begat satisfaction; satisfaction begat the Mass-offering; the Mass-offering begat the priest; the priest begat unbelief; unbelief begat king hypocrisy; hypocrisy begat traffic in offerings for gain; traffic in offerings for gain begat purgatory; purgatory begat the annual solemn vigils; the annual solemn vigils begat church livings; church livings begat avarice; avarice begat swelling superfluity; swelling superfluity begat fulness; fulness begat rage; rage begat license; license begat empire and domination; domination begat pomp; pomp begat ambition; ambition begat simony; simony begat the pope and his brethren, about the time of the Babylonish captivity" (Table-Talk: Idem.)—and so on, through another paragraph, in paraphrase of the Gospel which traces the lineage of Christ.

After a lifetime devoted to the destruction of the Catholic Church by such expert means, Luther did not anticipate leaving so much as a hollow shell for his successor and fellow-apostate to kick:

"Let them [the papists] be assured, that ere many years the power of their abominable blasphemies, idolatries, and damnable religion will be broken, if not destroyed" (Table-Talk: Idem.).

"The Mass once conquered, we shall, I think, have conquered papacy. The Mass was the rock on which papacy rested, with its monasteries, its bishoprics, its colleges, its altars, its ministers, and its doctrines; its belly and its members. All these will crumble away with the abomination of their sacrilegious Mass.

". . . I have trampled under foot the idol of the Roman abomination which had put itself in the place of God, and had established itself mistress of kings and of the whole earth" (Reply to Henry VIII.).

"This power and domination of the pope's, God has brought to confusion and destruction by my pen.

". . . My doctrine will stand, and the pope will fall, despite all the gates of hell, all the powers of the air, of the earth, of the sea" (Reply to Henry VIII.).

In such wise Luther undertook to destroy the Church: flooding Europe with a torrent of words, addressed to "small and smallest minds," denouncing the Church and her ministers in terms which could not fail to stir up hatred, as he intended they should. The modern master seems an untried amateur, compared with his predecessor. By his propaganda alone, Luther drew half the peoples of Europe away from their previous spiritual allegiance and spread division and chaos where unity and order had prevailed. Thus he destroyed, not the Church, but the foundations of the Christian society which the Church had built.

Nor was he ignorant of what he had done. "During the pope's reign," he quotes his contemporaries as saying, "no one ever heard of these disorders, this confusion" (Letter to the Christians at Antwerp, 1525). He recognizes his own responsibility in this work of destruction: "The devil often assaults me, by objecting that out of my doctrine great offenses and much evil have proceeded, and with this he many a time vehemently perplexes me" (Table-Talk: Of Temptation and Tribulation). "The devil often casts this into my breast: How if thy doctrine be false and erroneous . . .? At which the sour sweat has drizzled from me" (Table-Talk: Of the Devil and His Works).

He seeks strange consolation when thus tortured by remorse:

"When I am assailed with heavy tribulations, I rush out among my pigs, rather than remain alone by myself" (Table-Talk: Of Temptation and Tribulation).

But the solace afforded by these companions could not stem the flood of destruction loosed by his doctrine. Luther's work was a necessary prelude to Hitler's. The Fuehrer has backed propaganda with persecution and armed force; nevertheless, he, too, has failed in his ambition to conquer the world and destroy the Church. He has succeeded, however, in further wrecking the structure of Western civilization, already undermined by Luther.

In the mass of false and tortuous verbiage with which Mein Kampf is filled, one statement is distinguished for clarity and truth: "Today the Catholic Church stands firmer than ever" (p. 682).

Intact in the midst of ruin, the Church alone can furnish a bond of union among Christian nations. If Western civilization is ever to be re-established on a basis of international co-operation and peace, the Church must take a leading part in rebuilding the Christian society which the divisions and conflicts engendered by the Reformation have all but destroyed.

© The Catholic World, Missionary Society of St. Paul the Apostle.

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