Backing Hitler

Gellately, Robert

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198205609.001.0001

Cited by 264 publications

(10 citation statements)

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“…Most notably, it accords with influential analyses proposed by modern historians (e.g. Abel, 1986; Gellately, 2001; Hobsbawm, 1995; Rees, 2002). Consider, for instance, Hobsbawm's account of the conditions that gave rise to the fall of the Weimar republic and the emergence of Nazism in 1930s Germany:…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study

Reicher

Haslam

2006

British J Social Psychol

309

263

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This paper presents findings from the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) prison study - an experimental case study that examined the consequences of randomly dividing men into groups of prisoners and guards within a specially constructed institution over a period of 8 days. Unlike the prisoners, the guards failed to identify with their role. This made the guards reluctant to impose their authority and they were eventually overcome by the prisoners. Participants then established an egalitarian social system. When this proved unsustainable, moves to impose a tyrannical regime met with weakening resistance. Empirical and theoretical analysis addresses the conditions under which people identify with the groups to which they are assigned and the social, organizational, and clinical consequences of either doing so or failing to do so. On the basis of these findings, a new framework for understanding tyranny is outlined. This suggests that it is powerlessness and the failure of groups that makes tyranny psychologically acceptable.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 83%

Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study

Reicher

Haslam

2006

British J Social Psychol

309

263

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“…Before 1942, however, deportations reflected hostility of local officials and non-Jewish neighbors. For example,Gellately (2001) provides evidence that the vast majority of the Gestapo cases against the Jews were based on denunciations by local non-Jewish population. This variable comes from the database of Jewish deportees during the Nazi period, which was compiled by the German Federal Archives(Bundesarchiv 2007).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany *

Adena¹,

Ениколопов²,

Petrova³

et al. 2015

The Quarterly Journal of Economics

409

181

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How do the media affect public support for democratic institutions in a fragile democracy? What role do they play in a dictatorial regime? We study these questions in the context of Germany of the 1920s and 1930s. During the democratic period, when the Weimar government introduced progovernment political news, the growth of Nazi popularity slowed down in areas with access to radio. This effect was reversed during the campaign for the last competitive election as a result of the pro-Nazi radio broadcast following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor. During the consolidation of dictatorship, radio propaganda helped the Nazis enroll new party members. After the Nazis established their rule, radio propaganda incited anti-Semitic acts and denunciations of Jews to authorities by ordinary citizens. The effect of anti-Semitic propaganda varied depending on the listeners’ predispositions toward the message. Nazi radio was most effective in places where anti-Semitism was historically high and had a negative effect in places with historically low anti-Semitism.

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“…Concentration camps were a frequent subject of press attention, far from being hidden in remote forests. They were sold to the German people as reformatory establishments, in the view of one writer (Gellately, 2001), rather like penitentiaries for offending adolescents in 1950s America, where the public were told fresh air, exercise and skills training were on offer to discipline social deviants who could then be returned to the society. There was of course the 'model' concentration camp, Sachsenhausen; an image almost of hi-di-di 1950s Butlins; the role of propaganda in fomenting the holocaust is considerable -propaganda as the preface to genocide.…”

Section: Manipulationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Selling Hitler: propaganda and the Nazi brand

O’Shaughnessy

2009

Journal of Public Affairs

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In this article we argue that Nazism functioned as a brand, and that this is key to our understanding of the extraordinary success of the Hitler regime in galvanising German public opinion. Nazis understood and manipulated the power of the brand, creating what amounts to a parallel universe of imagery and symbolism. The integuments of this brand strategy were the idea of Hitler himself and his projection, the stress on solidarity, the proclamation of a modernist Utopia with ancient accents, and the construction of an existential threat to the German way of life. But underpinning these were the deployment of what have become classic marketing concepts, such as targeting and segmentation, and a perceptive comprehension of the idea of packaging. Beyond this the regime was anchored in a kind of banality of ordinariness, it looked, at many levels, like a normal Western society and this element was made more credible by the promotion of a vigorous consumer culture. In many ways the Nazis were ahead of their time, masters of such political marketing arts as spin and rapid rebuttal. The fact that all this was done in the service of the most monstrous empire that was ever created, whose lasting legacy to the human race was its unique pictography of genocide, must alert us to the more sinister ends to which political marketing can be perverted.

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Backing Hitler

Cited by 264 publications

References 0 publications

Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study

Rethinking the psychology of tyranny: The BBC prison study

Radio and the Rise of The Nazis in Prewar Germany *

Selling Hitler: propaganda and the Nazi brand

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