For the holocaust to work not only was anti-Semitism essential but the Nazis also needed to change and reinforce the cognitive aspect of German culture, because although it was already slightly anti-Semitic it was still not strong enough to allow for a Holocaust. To do this Hitler employed Josef Goebbels as minister of "Propaganda and Enlightenment", he was soon to become synonymous with the Nazi party.Adolf Hitler himself was born in Austria to a civil servant, he was a slow learner and did poorly in school, and due to this his very strict farther would often beat his son. When he was old enough he went to Vienna and tried to get into to art school but was rejected, whilst Jewish paint ...view middle of the document...
In August 1933, after having had his oldest allies the SA executed in June because he felt them a threat, and after the old president dying he abolished the presidents office and effectively made himself both head of government and head of state. Giving Germany no way out if they grew tired of him. So what that means is if they wanted rid of him they couldn't turn to say, the king, as Italy would do when they were to grow tired of Mussolini.Josef Goebbels was an undisputed master of propaganda, he was born into a strict Catholic, working-class family from Rheydt, in the Rhineland, on 29 October 1897. A very intelligent man he went on to study History and Literature at the University of Heidelberg, studying under a Jewish professor, Friedrich Gundolf.Propaganda was to play a major part in the Nazi's rise, and the rise of anti-Semitism in the 20th century. Throughout his life Goebbels suffered from a mental torment about a crippled foot due to contracting Polio as a child, due to this he was rejected from the army to fight in World War I. As the great depression hit Germany in 1927 Goebbels capitalised on this with the skill of a master propagandist and played on the nations psyche with "ice cold calculation", at this point he was still only in charge of one wing, the Berlin wing, of the Nazi party. Hitler was deeply impressed with his ability to turn the small Berlin section of the Nazi party into the great power in the north of Germany it had become, Hitler appointed Goebbels the leader of Nazi propaganda in 1929, years later, in 1942 he observed of Goebbels, "Dr. Goebbels was gifted with the two things without which the situation in Berlin could not have been mastered: verbal facility and intellect.. . . For Dr. Goebbels, who had not found much in the way of a political organization when he started, had won Berlin in the truest sense of the word."I mentioned earlier very briefly why Hitler had such hatred of the Jews, but to help clear up any cloudiness on this aspect I will now go into more detail on it. Hitler's parents both died before his sixteenth birthday, in the last months of his mother's illness he had gone to Vienna to take the entrance examination for "The Academy" in Vienna. Hitler was a very self assured man even a this young age and was supremely confident of his own talents as a painter as he comments in Mein Kampf, "I had set out with a pile of drawings convinced that it would be child's play to pass the examination. At the Realschule I had been by far the best in my class at drawing, and since then my talent had developed amazingly; my own satisfaction caused me to take a joyful pride in hoping for the best." So it is no surprise that when he was rejected it shocked him to his very core, as he described it "it struck me like a bolt from the blue." He was told that his skills as a drawer lay not in painting but in architecture, he left the school extremely downhearted. When he returned to Vienna to join the Academy's school...
