The film “The Minister of Propaganda” by German filmmaker Joachim Lang warns of the destructive power of lies over life, personal dignity, and human relationships. The film shows the propaganda methods of Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi ideologist who raised Hitler, incited the Germans to war and promoted the Jewish genocide. His ideas to distort the truth inspire modern lies and emotivism so that the story eclipses reality.
“Propaganda is like art, the painting that best represents reality is not worth more, but the one that awakens the most emotions.” The forceful phrase of Joseph Goebbels (Robert Stadlober), in the first sequences of The Minister of Propaganda, offers the viewer clues about the protagonist’s personality and, in addition, is a good synthesis of the essence of the film. German director Joachim Lang blends fiction and reality by incorporating into the fictional sequences some shocking archive images of events, rallies, military parades, extermination camps, testimonies of Holocaust survivors, and scenes from Nazi propaganda films of the time created to stir up hatred towards Jews, such as Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will (1935) or Veit Harlan’s Jew Süss (1940).[1]
However, the filmmaker’s interest in this film goes beyond historical revision and conventional biopic. Lang intentionally puts the focus on Goebbels’ histrionics and sophisticated skills to distort the truth, influence the feelings of the masses and weaken their capacity to reason. The filmmaker shows how he designs institutional advertising campaigns, controls even the smallest detail in the public events in which Hitler (Fritz Karl) appears, writes the speeches, orders documents to be falsified, makes the girls rehearse again and again the act of appearing spontaneous when giving flowers to the Führer, artificially creates images of crowds waving flags that have gone down in history, filters false and tendentious information, buys the support of intellectuals through subsidies and uses all the resources at his disposal to silence critical journalists in the written press and on the radio. In short, Joseph Goebbels uses unlimited resources to dominate all the powers of the State and strengthens the image in the service of ignominy and totalitarian barbarism with three thousand weekly news programmes in movie theaters.
In different sequences, the propagandist boasts of Hitler’s rise and messianic molding to a people diminished by the defeat of World War I; He boasts of his ability to deceive the German nation into a second war, using a discourse contrary to the most basic common sense; and promotes the so-called “final solution,” a euphemism with which the Nazis referred to the mass murder of the Jews.
It is relevant to realize how Goebbels resolves the image crises of the Government, the public scandals or Hitler’s mistakes, either by looking for a scapegoat, or by turning the propaganda machine into a distraction to hide the true facts. In this sense, the film shows the systematic intensification of attacks on the Jews to counteract the bad image or the loss of social support.
Goebbels’ current apprentices
The mantra par excellence of the propagandist magician to achieve the effect of “illusion of truth” is well known: repeat a lie often enough, and it will become the truth. In one of the scenes, surrounded by his propaganda machine, Goebbels boasts: “I am the one who decides what is true and what is best for the people (…) No government survives without good propaganda.” And he adds, in a defiant tone: “Who knows Stalin’s propaganda minister or the one of the English government? On the other hand, my name will go down in history.”
The film illuminates the Nazi ideologue’s strategies for spreading slander against other government ministers until he manages to sit at Hitler’s right, becomes the person he trusts most and obtains plenipotentiary powers from the Führer. He even uses his wife, Magda (Franziska Weisz), and his six children to convince the top Nazi leader of his loyalty and family affection. In one sequence, Joseph Goebbels forces his son Helmut to read a school essay to Hitler. The surprise comes when he asks him: “And what else have you learned in history class?” The boy, lacking his father’s skills at lying, innocently answers what he had heard, occasionally, from his father’s own mouth: “That Germany has not won any war fighting on two fronts.” Goebbels and Magda cannot hide their stupefaction at the boy’s lack of filter, while Hitler also turns a deaf ear to Helmut’s response. In the fiction, Goebbels’ double standards involve the personal intervention of the German president to prevent the government from being discredited by the propaganda minister’s intention to divorce Magda and marry a singer. The image of a loving father is also called into question when we learn of the pressures to force his wife to commit suicide and, beforehand, poison her six children. It was a matter of thoughtlessly linking their destinies to Hitler’s. The atrocity has gone down in history as a symbol of fanaticism and self-deception that can lead human beings to commit the most execrable actions when the capacity for critical thinking is neutralised.
At the end of the film, the director reiterates to the audience his true intentions, alluding to a phrase by Primo Levi, an Italian writer of Jewish origin who survived the Auschwitz concentration camp: “It happened… and it can happen again. This is our only objective, to remember it and tell it so that it does not happen again.” This warning from Joachim Lang is particularly relevant because of the tendency of world politics to control the narrative and appeal to emotions in the face of the search for truth and the acceptance of true facts. Goebbels’ propaganda principles, reflected in the film, continue to be used today to confuse and distract citizens or wear down political adversaries, as convenient. Social networks have become the most suitable medium in the effort to spread blindness and accept with meekness and naturalness that lies, propaganda, misinformation and manipulation become part of the fabric of everyday life.
The evils of modern lies
The film illuminates the bioethical implications of distorting reality that fragments and dehumanizes the person, attacks their dignity and prevents peaceful coexistence by making us forget that we inhabit the earth together and participate in a common world.
The philosopher Hannah Arendt offers an accurate diagnosis of the evils of modern lying that should not be lost sight of[2]. Arendt argues that hoaxes, propaganda and manipulation contain elements of violence and destruction that appear in democracies and totalitarian states. In the latter, as a preliminary step to murder. The Holocaust or the Soviet Gulags are a good example of the Jewish thinker’s admonition.
What does lying destroy? The sense and the way of orienting ourselves in the real world that are essential to build moral reflections on basic human values, accept natural laws and connect, through empathy, with the pain or suffering from others. Arendt emphasizes that not distinguishing reality from fiction makes it extremely difficult for us to share our experiences and make sense of them in the common understanding of truths. Human beings need stable references. Thus, the characteristic of mass man, says the philosopher, is not only brutality, but also his isolation and lack of normal relationships[3]. The power of propaganda lies precisely, as Lang’s film shows, in isolating people from the real world.
Julián Marías also reflects on the right of the person not to be deceived and the objectification that occurs through the premeditated concealment of true facts with the purpose of satisfying the interests of programs that are as disloyal as they are dangerous. According to Marías, the lack of truth affects the freedom of the person to reason and exercise his or her judgment. “I am concerned about the general passivity with which lies are received. Some, carried away by the force of propaganda, do not notice them, one could say that they accept them; others feel a certain discomfort, an impression that ‘it is not that’, but they lack any reaction of their own. This causes a very broad impunity for lies, that they have no sanction or remedy”[4].
For Spaeman, peace cannot be forged on lies, half-truths or false consensus with that which can destroy the human being, in reference to the culture of death implied by abortion and euthanasia[5].
Lang’s film shows that improving our humanity is the way, and that the best way to follow it is to treat the person as an end in itself and not a means to satisfy the desires of others.
Amparo Aygües – Master’s Degree in Bioethics from the Catholic University of Valencia – Member of the Bioethics Observatory – Catholic University of Valencia
[1] Both films are the most representative of the anti-Semitic propaganda cinema produced by the Third Reich. The first, commissioned by Hitler himself, with the intention of reinforcing the image of being the only one capable of leading the German nation to glory and returning its status as a world power. The second, represents Jews as materialistic, immoral, manipulative and physically unattractive beings.
[2] Arendt, H. (2017). Truth and Lies in Politics. Ed. Página indómita. A classic consisting of two essays: the first, written in the sixties, in response to the reactions to Eichmann in Jerusalem, dedicated to the truth; and the second, on lying, written in the early seventies, before the publication of the “Pentagon Papers” about Nixon’s lies to justify the Vietnam War.
[3] Arendt, H. (2006). The origins of totalitarianism. Ed. Alianza.
[4] Marías, J. (2001). The impunity of lying. Column in the ABC newspaper. Published on November 22.
[5] Spaeman, R. (2005). Ethics: fundamental issues. Ed. Eunsa.
