A mother nursing her new born baby can be considered one of the most intimate moments a person can experience. The beauty behind nursing a child can capture people’s hearts as they can appreciate the innocence and love involved. This peaceful moment is the center of a poster that represents something far more complex than a mother connecting with her child. The poster filled with peaceful shades of light yellow of the background allows the deep blue of the women’s dress to pop, emphasizing the mother and child as the focal point. In the background lies a quaint, charming German farming town representing the elements of German pride throughout the poster. This poster depicts the ideal lifestyle of the German people, or rather an individual’s interpretation of the ideal Germany. Translated from German to English, the words in the poster read, “Join the Organization: Mother and Child”. The overall message of the poem is centered at the value of motherhood. However, the motives behind the poster were nothing but sinister. The poster is example of the manipulative propaganda that was displayed in Nazi Germany. The Nazi movement needed more than a ruthless leader, it needed the support and cooperation of the German people. In order to gain the cooperation of desperate Germans, Nazi leadership strategically placed propaganda posters around Germany to rally support. The posters were designed to gain the trust of the population. The desperate German people were susceptible to blindly following a destructive leader, making the propaganda posters increasingly effective.  Although the center piece of the poster depicts an innocent moment between and mother and her child, the poster’s purpose was to convince the German people to join a Nazi organization by appealing to their emotions, logical reasoning, and sense of nationalism, representing the qualities of effective propaganda. 

The German people were in a unique situation when it comes to comes to the government propaganda during WW2. The goal of Hitler was to convince to German people that they were members of a superior race to gather support for the Nazi Party. In order to capture the support and obedience of German people, Hitler needed to alter or eliminate the existing values and principles of the population. Propaganda and visual communication expert David Welch describes the overall aims of Nazi Party and its intentions in his book Nazi Propaganda: The Power and the Limitations. Welch brands the underlying objective of propaganda in Germany as “the reconstruction of values.” In reconstructing the values of the German people, the Nazi party needed to create solidarity of national community, a desire for racial purity, hatred for established enemies, and a sense of trust in leadership (Welch 182). The desire for racial purity corresponds with the objectives of the Mother and Child propaganda poster. The Mother and Child organization during Nazi Germany was created to promote pregnancies among young women. The Nazi Organization is trying convince German women that is it their greatest obligation to produce and rear children, or rather it is the obligation of German to create of large population of racial pure, Aryan German children. The poster represents an ideology that Hitler wishes to instill within the people. The Mother and Child Organization poster is an attempt to promote an ideology with German racial superiority at the foundation. Additionally, the propaganda displayed in Germany effectively hide the truth from the German people. The depiction of a beautiful young mother with her child failed to reveal the fact that Hitler forcibly sterilized more than 400,000 people who did not fit the Hitler’s description of pure Aryan German (Forced). Although the poster appears to be focused increasing the birth rate in Germany, the poster represents Nazi Eugenics and Hitler’s attempt to manipulate human reproduction. The poster romanticizes nursing a child as an attempt to appeal to the emotional side of women. The poster suggests that having a child would create a perfect life for women. The Mother and Child Organization taught women that it was only logical to have a child, because the ideal German lifestyle would be assured once the child is born. With women as the target audience of the poster, there is a focus on an emotional appeal as women typically have a higher emotional intelligence than men. The illustrator of the poster depicts a young, beautiful, blonde German mother to glamorize motherhood. Effective propaganda targets a certain demographic within the population. Targeting young women would require more emotional appeals. I believe persuasion is more likely to be achieved when there are emotions and logical reasoning involved. This poster effectively portrays motherhood as a way to serve your country as a young girl. The collection of Nazi propaganda promoted the idea that serving one’s country is only logical, so having a child must be a reasonable decision to make. Nazi propaganda altered Germans’ perception of what is logical. The women targeted in this poster were unaware of Hitler’s objective of creating a pure race of Aryan Germans rather than providing young mothers with quality child care. The poster associated motherhood with civic duty and national pride. The most effective element of this poster is the appeal to the nationalistic side of the German people.

The background of the poster is an attempt to invoke German National pride within the audience. The green, fertile hills and the romantic farming town represents the ideal German town. In reality the town represents the lifestyle or the Germany Hitler is trying to protect by fighting in war. The idealistic German town in the background was meant to remind the German people that this is what the country is fighting for in second world war. In reality during this time period much of Germany was not a perfect farming town. Much of Germany was impoverished, further representing how propaganda can mask reality. Further exposing the German people to the reality of the desperate nation would not develop national pride across the country. A romantic depiction of the town becomes effective when attempting to create a sense nationalism within the people. The Nazi Party made substantial efforts to promote nationalism throughout Germany as national pride often meant support for the German army. Most Nazi propaganda posters contained some elements of Hitler’s idea of perfect Germany in order to promote pride within in people. Promoting nationalism can be dangerous as the line between nationalism and exceptionalism is rather fine. The Nazi movement collectively shows the negative effects of exceptionalism. One of the underlying goals of Nazi propaganda was to promote a sense of exceptionalism within the German people, as exceptionalism typically denotes a justification of radical actions because of an inflated sense of nationalism. In Hitler’s case, there was little room for a minor sense of nationalism among the German people. Support, loyalty, and devotion to the Nazi Party required exceptionalism across the German population. Hitler and the Nazi Party’s belief in Germany’s superiority to other countries caused Hitler’s disregard for the basic rules of humanity, believing that the extermination of millions of Jews was somehow justified.  The lighting from the sunset makes the German town resemble a place similar to the concept of heaven. The concept of a beautiful, peaceful place is represented in the poster and was meant to relate Germany to heaven. The over exposure to nationalistic propaganda led to most of the German people supporting a movement that caused so much destruction. 

It is rather appalling that this beautiful moment between a mother and child can be used to promote a cause created by the Nazi party. The purpose of the poster was to create more humans to participate Hitler’s movement, yet the poster was an illusion, promoting an organization that was supposedly designed simply to promote health for new born children. The motives behind the poster were sinister, however, it is important to understand what makes propaganda widely effective. At the head of the Nazi Party stood a leader who used propaganda to grab the attention of the German people. The propaganda’s success in grabbing the attention of the German people made Hitler’s leadership increasingly powerful. Kenneth Burke describes the power behind Hitler’s leadership in The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle as he claims, “the efficiency of the truly national leader consists primarily in preventing the division of attention of a people and always concentrating it on a single enemy” (Burke 34). The Nazi Party’s use of propaganda created unified attention across the nation, allowing Hitler to convince the German people to unite against a common enemy or cause. The collective attention of the German people, created by propaganda, made gathering the support for a cause such as The Mother and Child Organization remarkably simple. Nazi propaganda ultimately created a unified Germany as the population came together under collective attention, which in turn created collective action.  Hitler’s plan to increase to overall birth rates in Germany was successful as the birth rates gradually increased from 15 percent in 1933 to over 19 percent in 1936. The overall increase in birth rates was somewhat unique to Germany as the rest of European countries typically experienced stagnant birth rates (Whelpton 299). The concept of creating a collective attention, whether it be directed a common enemy or cause, is significant in that collective thought yields unified action across the population. The Mother and Child propaganda poster created collective attention, thought, and action among young German women, which facilitated the increasing birth rates. The authors of the Mother and Child poster were masterful in capturing the collective attention of the German people by appealing to the audience’s pathos and logos. The Nazi Party persuaded millions of Germans by knowing how to manipulate the emotions and logical reasoning of the German people. The effective poster possessed to the power to pursued German men and women to follow the Hitler’s desire. 

  The effectiveness of the Nazi propaganda can be measured by the amount of the Germans who accepted Hitler’s ideology. The underlying goal of Nazi propaganda was to distribute Hitler’s beliefs in order to convince the German people to adopt a uniform ideology. One of the earliest forms of Nazi propaganda was Hitler’s auto-biography, Mein Kampf, which outlined his social, political, and economic ideologies along with his plans to create his vison of an ideal Germany. In a Germany plagued with economic depression and desperation in the years following WW1, Mein Kampf captured the German people’s attention as  outline of Hitler’s ideology offered a solution to the problems the nation faced. In addition to solutions, Hitler provided a scapegoat that the German people could cast their blame on, which was just as effective as providing a solution. It is evident that Hitler knew what the German people were looking for as he wrote Mein Kampf. The manner in which Hitler presents his solutions proved to be effective as the many Germans slowly began to adopt Hitler’s ideology. Kenneth Burke explains the effectiveness of Mein Kampf in Rhetoical of Hitler’s Battle. Burke investigates the rhetoric of Mein Kampf that made the auto-biography attractive to the German people. The language and style Hitler uses makes his manifesto a convincing testimony which raised concern for Americans like Burke. Burke illustrates Mein Kampf’s effectiveness as he depicts Hitler as a medicine man, offering the German people a cure for their problems, in addition to explaining the sexual symbolism Hitler used throughout his manifesto.

Creating and implementing a solution to the economic and social issues Germany faced after WW1 became the first priority of both Hitler and the German people. Humans, however, when faced with difficult situations often demand quick and easy solutions. Prior to Mein Kampf, the German people were never presented with a solution to their problems. Struggling to find a solution, Germans flocked to Hitler who provided a supposedly logical plan to bring Germany back to greatness. The ideology of Hitler includes the extermination of the Jewish population, which serves as the medicine for the German middle class’ economic “illness.” Burke explains the effectiveness of the economic medicine symbol as he states, “there is medicine for the Aryan members of the middle class in the projective device of the scapegoat, whereby the bad features allotted to the “devil” and one can respect himself by a distinction between good and bad capitalism…This doubtless “relief” of this solution that spared Hitler the necessity of explaining just how the “Jewish Plot” was to work out.” (Burke 36) In a Germany where capitalism seemed to be failing, Hitler gave the people a scapegoat to blame for when flaws of capitalism become apparent. Instead of accepting the failure of capitalism, the Nazi Party and the German people were willing the accept the extermination of the Jewish population as the medicine for “bad capitalism”. The failures of capitalism in Germany and America during the early 20th century were identical in that both the government and the people would rather cast blame on scapegoat for the failures of capitalism rather than questioning the economic system itself. Hitler’s framing of the Jewish population as the ultimate “vessel of bad capitalism” allows Hitler to suggest the medicine of removing Jews from the economy and society without explanation. Mein Kampf offers a plan to revive the German economy, but lacks an explanation of how Hitler’s “Jewish Plot” will create financial stability for the Aryan middle class. The depiction of Hitler as a medicine man represents creates a metaphor. The German people are consumed in economic depression, which is their “illness”. Hitler offers a medication that will purge that the German society from the Jewish “devil” who acts as a parasite, polluting the Aryan way of life. After the publication of Mein Kampf, the German people were introduced to the ideology of a man that would describe the German people as a feminine population looking for a masculine leader.

Burke examines Hitler’s logic behind the sexual symbolism that is portrayed throughout Mein Kampf. Hitler plays off gender roles and sexual behavior in order to describe the desires of the German people. According to Hitler, the German people resemble the role of a damsel in distress, waiting for a masculine, demanding figure to lead them out of discomfort and agony. Hitler establishes himself as the strong, masculine figure that would lead Germany to prosperity. Burke explains Hitler’s reasoning in Mein Kampf as he states, “the sexual symbolism that runs through Hitler’s book, lying in wait to draw upon the responses of contemporary sexual values… The masses are feminine. As such they desire to lead by a dominating male. This male, as orator, woos them-and, when he has won them, he commands them” (Burke 35). Once Hitler captured the support of the German people, he assumed the role of the dominating male figure, commanding the population as they accept the same ideology as Hitler. Hitler’s comparison to himself as the masculine leader over the feminine population speaks to his ideas of gender roles. Respectively, the relationship between a man and women consists of masculine domination which includes the female’s acquisition of the male’s ideology and beliefs. Burke also depicts Jews the “rival male” in respect to Hitler. The fear of Hitler is that the Jew seduces the feminine German population in attempt to poison the blood of the Aryan by intermingling with them (Burke 35). Hitler portrays Jews as an evil sexual entity trying to pollute the purity of Aryan blood. Mein Kumpf’s purpose was to create a sense of fear and hatred within the German people toward the Jews. Hitler used Mein Kampf to convince the Aryan population that Jewish objective is to destroy the German way of life and dismantle the German economy for personal gain. 

The significance behind Mein Kampf and other forms of Nazi propaganda is that Hitler and the Nazi Party were effective in implementing a common belief system among Nazi supporters. Although Hitler’s arguments outlined in his book were underdeveloped and lacking support, the mass acceptance of Hitler’s idea transformed Mein Kampf into foundation of the Nazi ideology. The tragedy of Hitler’s control of Germany illustrates the effects of the acceptance of ideology that is derived from the singular. One person cannot the only source or author of ideology for the masses. Ideology is collective and ultimately requires the mass acceptance of the people. Nazi Germany demonstrates how a destructive and unreasonable ideology can be accepted by the masses when the people are desperate. Desperation allows the manipulation or altering of one’s ideology. The Nazi propaganda displayed in Germany were essentially ads, selling an ideology to a people who were willing to buy anything in order to save themselves from discomfort.
