The war had many preconditions, yet a structured sequence of events led to the commencement of armed conflict. On September 1^st, 1939 Germany invaded its neighbor state, Poland, after having already invaded Czechoslovakia in April of the same year. This caused Britain to declare war on Germany two days later in defense of Polish sovereignty when it then became clear that the Soviet Union had already agreed a secret pact with the Germans to partition Poland. The leader of the Soviet Union, Stalin, would soon find himself in a difficult position as he had underestimated Hitler and the German intentions. It became clear that the Soviets would also be targeted. With the war in the European theatre well underway, Japan began attacking and defeating its neighbors in the Pacific. On December 7^th, 1941 the Japanese launched a surprise attack on the American navy in Pearl Harbor and destroyed much of the Pacific Fleet of the United States. In response, the United States declared a state of war against Japan the next day. Throughout this sequence, almost all of the world’s states became involved on one side or the other. Many became partners, in the case of Italy with Germany, or many became occupied states, such as France.

The war had many underlying currents, some that had been in action many years prior to the actual conflict. One of the most striking features of the Second World War was the ideology and use of propaganda in the fabric of each nation. The goal of this paper is to identify the types of propaganda that became such a central focal point in the prosecution of the war and to judge the effects on those that were the target audience. The other feature of war that examined in this paper is the role of the “hero”; in this war there would be the victors and the vanquished, as there are in most wars. Accordingly, there would be heroes and villains.

Propaganda in Nazi Germany

In the 1930s, the National Socialist ideology and aesthetic were successfully attached to the state in the person of Adolf Hitler. While nearly all countries give their fallen soldiers a place in national myth, Germany went beyond memorial, making death in war a philosophy of life. At the forefront of Nazi propaganda was minister Josef Goebbels, who produced the primary thrust of Nazi propaganda through the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. He was an outstanding graveside orator, speaking at all major Party funerals, and in this tradition he knew how to morph terrible defeats and the horrors of war into victories. Unlike much propaganda elsewhere, which was addressed to existing belief systems, his propaganda works would also serve to be the building blocks for the irrational ideology of National Socialism. The pledge that German soldiers took is reflective of the die-hard sacrificial loyalty adopted in much of the Third Reich: “I swear before God this sacred oath, that I will obey absolutely the Führer of the German Reich and people, Adolf Hitler, the Supreme Commander of the Wehrmacht, and that I will be ready at any time as a brave soldier to give my life for this oath.” Every common foot-soldier who did not know otherwise ideally possessed a firm belief in this statement, with the ultimate satisfaction in knowing that fighting and living for his country was great, but fighting and dying for his country was even greater.

This myth, though it was nurtured by a long previous German tradition of warrior hood and heroism, was born for the Nazis from a battle in Langemarck, where in 1914 tens of thousands of young, poorly trained Germans died in a frontal assault against entrenched, veteran English troops. They became iconic of the pure Aryan warriors who would restore the heroic spirit of their ancestors to the dying Germany. In reality, the attack was a tremendous waste of young human life, and was testament to the gross excesses of nationalism which were recognized by much of the participants after World War I. In Nazi Germany, the blood of the sacrificial dead in Flanders would be the force that would revitalize the glory of the nation, and these battles of martyrdom would repeat themselves in Marne, Verdun, and Somme. Nazi propaganda posters would come to be dominated by images of shirtless, young Aryan men working and flashing their weapons in heroic poses.

In 1923, the Nazi Party found its own martyrs during Hitler’s failed beerhall putsch. After an unsuccessful attempt at a coup in a beer hall with government officials, sixteen Party members were killed in the ensuing violence. These became the Sixteen Immortals, to whom Hitler built the Temple of Honor in Munich to honor them. Each year, he commemorated the failed putsch by reenacting his march. Large celebrations honoring the German war dead became a critical part of Hitler’s arsenal in reinforcing the sacrificial Nazi ideology. Horst Wessel, a member of the Stormtroopers killed by communist partisans in 1930, was turned into Germany’s number-one national martyr by its propaganda machine. His image was so well-admired that celebrations in his name were turning into a national cliché, and Minister Goebbels even banned all celebrations except those commemorating the day of his death in order to preserve Wessel’s strength as an icon.

Horst Wessel, the Sixteen Immortals, and the dead at Langemarck were only a few of the numerous symbols that summated to create the German national mythology and its attraction. When Hedges refers to “War as Culture,” no better major example springs to mind than the National Socialists of Germany. Ironically, without World War I, World War II probably would not have happened. The major tragedy and loss of life in the first war supposedly told the world that this was the end of war. For Germany, however, the carnage in hindsight only brought them closer to war, and needless death became necessary heroism. War pervaded their culture in the absence of stable, orderly, and productive society. In a propaganda publication, Friedrich Holderlein wrote, “live on high, O fatherland, and do not count the dead! Not one too many has died for you.” Ideas like these brought the Nazi party to power by creating the higher cause that could justify anything, and making it noble to be a part of it. In the end, its follies and absurdities were too great for even the greatest of giants to sustain.

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