Goebbels' Principles of Propaganda #9

CREDIBILITY, INTELLIGENCE, AND THE POSSIBLE EFFECTS OF COMMUNICATING DETERMINE WHETHER PROPAGANDA MATERIALS SHOULD BE CENSORED

Photo by Toa Heftiba on Unsplash

"News policy," [Goebbels] stated, "is a weapon of war; its purpose is to wage war and not to give out information."

Goebbels relied on three things to decide whether or not to censor news.

Credibility

Ignoring an event completely will just drive the public to get the information from your enemy. In times of high tension and anxiety, Goebbels felt that even uncomfortable topics, like German evacuations, had to be addressed.

There was a line between foreign and domestic censorship. Stories of Russian cannibalism weren’t told to the German people because too many people had family fighting in Russia and it would terrify them. Those same stories were communicated outside of Germany because the information served a different purpose - to show the desperation and weakness of the Russian army.