page_title: Themes in Nazi propaganda
section_title: Death and sacrifice
hierarchical_section_title: Themes in Nazi propaganda / Values / Death and sacrifice
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Russland, deutscher Kriegsgefangener ADN-Zentralbild/Archiv II Weltkrieg 1939-45 Die Schlacht um Stalingrad vom 17.7.1942 bis 2.2.1943. Nach der Kapitulation der faschistischen deutschen Truppen am 31.1. und 2.2.1943 gingen 91 000 Überlebende in die Gefangenschaft. Ein junger Soldat und fanatischer Nazi, der dieses Ende noch nicht begriffen hat. [Sowjetunion.- Sowjetischer Soldat mit Maschinenpistole PPSch-41 bei Bewachung eines verletzten, deutschen kriegsgefangenen Soldaten] Information added by Wikimedia users.A wounded German POW taken at the Battle of Stalingrad. English translation of the original image caption: The Battle of Stalingrad from 7 July 1942 through 2 Feb 1943 After the capitulation of the fascist German troops on 31 January and 2 February, 91,000 survivors became prisoners of war. A younger soldier and fanatical Nazi, who has not realized this end, yet.
context_page_description: The propaganda of the National Socialist German Workers' Party regime that governed Germany from 1933 to 1945 promoted Nazi ideology by demonizing the enemies of the Nazi Party, notably Jews and communists, but also capitalists and intellectuals. It promoted the values asserted by the Nazis, including heroic death, Führerprinzip, Volksgemeinschaft, Blut und Boden and pride in the Germanic Herrenvolk. Propaganda was also used to maintain the cult of personality around Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, and to promote campaigns for eugenics and the annexation of German-speaking areas. After the outbreak of World War II, Nazi propaganda vilified Germany's enemies, notably the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the United States, and in 1943 exhorted the population to total war.
context_section_description: Heroic death was often portrayed in Nazi propaganda as glorious. It was glorified in such films as Flüchtlinge, Hans Westmar, and Kolberg. Wunschkonzert, though chiefly about the homefront, features one character who dies playing the organ in a church in order to guide his comrades, though he knows the enemy forces will also find him. The dead of World War I were also portrayed as heroic; in a film of Operation Michael, the general tells a major that they will be measured by the greatness of their sacrifice, not by that of their victory, and in Leave on Parole, the people are portrayed as being corrupted by pacifist slogans while soldiers stand their ground unflinching. Even the film Morgenrot, predating the Nazi seizure of power and containing such un-Nazi matters as a woman refusing to rejoice because of the sufferings on the other side, praised such deaths and found favor among Nazi officials for it. Karl Ritter's films, aimed on youth, were "military education" and glorified death in battle.
  Propaganda about the Volk depicted it as a greater entity to which the individual belonged, and one worth dying for. The effect was such that a Jewish woman, reflecting on her longing to join the League of German Girls, concluded that it had been the admonition for self-sacrifice that had drawn her most. This call for self-sacrifice and not individuality was praised by many Germans.
  Several dead stormtroopers were singled out for glorification by Goebbels, especially Horst Wessel. His posthumous fame stemmed from his "martyr's death" and Goebbel's selection of him to glorify among the many Storm-Troppers who died. While the film Hans Westmar had to be fictionalized to omit details not palatable with the Nazis in power, it was among the first films to depict dying for Hitler as dying for Germany and glorious. His decision to go to the streets is presented as fighting "the real battle." The films Hitler Youth Quex and S.A.-Mann Brand also glorified those had died in the struggle to seize power; Quex was based on a novel that sold over 200,000 copies over two years. Soldiers and street fighters were the heroes of the Nazi movement—those who had died or might die. Even the 1936 anthem for "Olympic youth" celebrated not sports but sacrificial death.
  This continued in the war. In 1942-3, the Winter Relief booklets recounted the stories of 20 decorated war heroes.
  The dead of the Battle of Stalingrad were portrayed as heroes of Valhalla, not as having failed but as having held back Russian regiments. A 1944 Mother's Day Card, particularly intended for the wives and mothers of the war dead, presented a mystical view that, although there was no afterlife, the dead continued in the life that followed them. Similarly, Die grosse Liebe depicted its self-centered heroine learning to bravely send the air force lieutenant she loves back to his squadron. The battle was seen by others outside Germany as the turning point in the defeat of Hitler.
  Goebbels attempted to contrast German heroism with Douglas MacArthur's flight, accusing him of cowardice—somewhat ineffectually, as the Germans knew he had been ordered to leave.
  The creation of the Volkssturm had propagandists make full use of themes of death, transcendence, and commemoration to encourage the fight.
  While men were the ones depicted as dying for Germany, women were also presented as needing to sacrifice. Exercise was praised as making young women strong, able to do hard physical labor for their country at need, particularly in agriculture, where the blood and soil ideology glamorized hard labor at the farm. This was not, however, translated in strong propaganda for women to join the workforce during the war; NS-Frauenschaft, in its magazine NS-Frauen-Warte and the speeches of Gertrud Scholtz-Klink, urged such behavior, and collections of essays praised heroic German women of the past, but the propaganda was weak and not widespread or repeated. Part of the problem may have been that the German government had called for sacrifice incessantly since 1931, and could bring no new appeal to it w
caption: A Red Army soldier marches a German soldier into captivity.
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