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The Nazis in particular utilised the mass media of the times, most especially audio, public address, and radio, though also video newsreels and cheap paperback publishing, to spread their message. During and prior to WWII, german advances especially in audio capture (mic), recording (mag tape), playback (speakers), and broadcast & receiver (radio) were decades ahead of the Allies' own technology. You don't get the Nueremberg rallies without high-quality mics, massive public-address ampifiers and speakers and cinematgraphy (Leni Riefenstahl). Hitler's ability to broadcast live-quality radio addresses across Germany stumped Allied intelligence -- their best recording technologies were wire recordings and low-fidelity vinyl, both with very obvious artifacts (wire recorder demo here, at beginning of video: https://youtube.com/watch?v=90ihiTwJPCc). The only way to achieve this quality otherwise was to be in the studio, and this clearly wasn't possible. ("Wearing a wire" refers to wire recorders.) After WWI, Bing Crosby, with support through military and government intelligence, was instrumental in developing US magnetic audio and data tape technology, through AMPEX and 3M. https://web.archive.org/web/20070929110934/https://www.ameri... https://web.archive.org/web/20080821140025/http://history.sa... (There is a further AMPEX-CIA connection through Larry Ellison and Oracle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Ellison) It was German use of mass media -- though in WWI-- that turned the meaning of 'propaganda" from literally a holy undertaking (the propagation of faith by the Roman Catholic Church) to its present pejorative sense. WWII Nazis capitalised heavily on and greatly extended earlier practices. Tactical use of radio communications also playe a decisive role in war -- the key differentiator between Grman and French armour in the Battle of France was that German tanks all had radios, and could respond to developing circumstances. French tankers could only play out prescribed batle plans, or act independently and uncoordinated with all other units. There is actually a long history of the disruptive (and often highly harmful) effects of new and especially mass media, and numerous historical inflection points can be traced to revolutions in information and communications technologies: moveable type and the Thirty Years War, vast advances in printing technology and literacy and the revolutions of 1789-1914, and later ("the long 19th century" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_nineteenth_century), yellow journalism and the Spanish-American War, WWI, tje Russian Revolution, WWII, the Chinese Revolution, Father Coughlan, Jim Crow, Civil Rights, the Vietnam War ant ant-war movements, the rise of hard-right talk radio and cable television, and lately, social and mobile Internet. Today's Nazis and KKK are using the Internet. It's the cheap, high-fidelity, visceral-imact mass medium of the age. |