Marketing the Third Reich: Persuasion, Packaging and Propaganda

305 Pages·2018·43.21 MB·English

by  Nicholas Jackson O’Shaughnessy

‘Nicholas O’Shaughnessy has come up with an incisive and intriguing way of
looking at the Third Reich through its fiendishly effective brand marketing. The
methods of Joseph Goebbels’ sinister genius at PR is laid bare superbly, and this
book is replete with fascinating and important lessons for the present day.’
Professor Andrew Roberts, Author, The Storm of War
‘“Onlyfirst class business andthatina first class way” was a mottoof David Ogilvy.
But what if the product and clients were loathsome? Like a barrister’s advocacy the
power of brilliant marketing can serve a false and perverse master. Never has this
been truer than in the case of the Third Reich. Nicholas O’Shaughnessy’s extra-
ordinary book shows how it set out to be a well-managed brand and previewed
many of the techniques of modern marketing communications in a sedulously first
class way.’
Miles Young, Non-Executive Chairman, Ogilvy and Mather Worldwide
‘This is an accomplished, rare, interdisciplinary text. It provides an historical over-
view of how one of the most heinous regimes in history used prototype marketing
and propaganda to gain and retain power. It’s a must-read both for those who
would wish to govern us and those who are governed alike.’
Professor Paul Baines, Cranfield University, UK
‘Professor O’Shaughnessy has found an innovative new way of examining the
Third Reich, by looking closely at how it was sold and marketed.’
Giles MacDonogh, Writer and Historian
‘Nicholas O’Shaughnessy’s elegant and detailed historical scholarship has previously
drawnourattentiontounsettlingtracesofbrandmarketingstrategybehindthecala-
mitousriseofAdolfHitlerandtheNazis.InMarketingtheThirdReichO’Shaughnessy
emboldenshisthesistoshowthattheNaziswereineluctablymastersofmarketing.He
challengesconventionalwisdominbothpoliticalhistoryandinmarketingscholarship
by arguing that both are swayed by the nebulous yet compelling techniques of mass
persuasion.Inourpropagandisticeraoftumultuouspoliticalpopulism,thispenetrating
workisalarminglyresonant.’
Professor Chris Hackley, Royal Holloway University of London, UK

MARKETING THE THIRD REICH
In this fascinating volume, Nicholas O’Shaughnessy elucidates the phenomenon of
the Nazi propaganda machine via the perspective of consumer marketing, con-
ceptualising the Reich as a product campaign. Building on his acclaimed Selling
Hitler (2016), he uses marketing scholarship to show how propaganda and political
marketing existed not merely as an instrument of government in Nazi Germany,
but as the very medium of government itself.
Marketing the Third Reich explores the insidious connection between a mass cul-
ture and a political movement, and how the cultures of consumption and politics
influence and infect each other – consumerised politics and politicised consump-
tion. Ultimately its concern is with the ‘engineering of consent’ – the troubling
matter of how public opinion can be manufactured, and governments elected, via
sophisticated methodologies of persuasion developed in the consumer economy.
Nazism functioned as a brand, packaging almost everything with persuasive
purpose.
Revealing obvious parallels between Adolf Hitler’s use of the living theatre of
politics, and our present public–political dramaturgy, between Nazi lies and our
post-truth, the book raises the chilling question: was Hitler ahead of his time? This
radical, original, in-depth study will be an invaluable resource for all scholars of
marketing history, political marketing, propaganda and history.
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy is Professor of Communication at Queen Mary Uni-
versity of London, UK and latterly director of their Marketing and Communica-
tionsGroup;VisitingProfessorintheDepartmentofWarStudiesatKing’sCollege
London, and a Quondam Fellow of Hughes Hall Cambridge. He has written and
edited numerous books on commercial and political persuasion, including Politics
and Propaganda; WeaponsofMassSeductionandmostrecentlySelling Hitler:Propaganda
and the Nazi Brand.
ROUTLEDGE STUDIES IN FASCISM AND THE FAR RIGHT
Series editors:
NigelCopsey,TeessideUniversity,andGrahamMacklin,TeessideUniversity
Thisnewbookseriesfocusesuponfascist,farrightandright-wingpoliticsprimarily
within a historical context but also drawing on insights from other disciplinary
perspectives. Its scope also includes radical-right populism, cultural manifestations
of the far right and points of convergence and exchange with the mainstream and
traditional right.
Titles include:
Marketing the Third Reich
Persuasion, Packaging and Propaganda
Nicholas O’Shaughnessy
Russia and the Western Far Right
Tango Noir
Anton Shekhovtsov
Understanding Racist Activism
Theory, Methods and Research
Kathleen M. Blee
Corporatism and Fascism
The Corporatist Wave in Europe
Edited by António Costa Pinto
Anti-Fascism in Britain
(Second Edition)
Nigel Copsey
Right-Wing Terrorism in the 21st Century
The ‘National Socialist Underground’ and the History of Terror from the
Far-Right in Germany
Daniel Koehler
MARKETING THE THIRD
REICH
Persuasion, Packaging and
Propaganda
’
Nicholas O Shaughnessy
Firstpublished2018
byRoutledge
2ParkSquare,MiltonPark,Abingdon,OxonOX144RN
andbyRoutledge
711ThirdAvenue,NewYork,NY10017
RoutledgeisanimprintoftheTaylor&FrancisGroup,aninformabusiness
©2018NicholasO’Shaughnessy
TherightofNicholasO’Shaughnessytobeidentifiedasauthorofthisworkhas
beenassertedbyhiminaccordancewithsections77and78oftheCopyright,
DesignsandPatentsAct1988.
Allrightsreserved.Nopartofthisbookmaybereprintedorreproducedor
utilisedinanyformorbyanyelectronic,mechanical,orothermeans,now
knownorhereafterinvented,includingphotocopyingandrecording,orinany
informationstorageorretrievalsystem,withoutpermissioninwritingfromthe
publishers.
Trademark notice:Productorcorporatenamesmaybetrademarksorregistered
trademarks,andareusedonlyforidentificationandexplanationwithoutintentto
infringe.
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ISBN:978-1-138-06056-2(hbk)
ISBN:978-1-138-06058-6(pbk)
ISBN:978-1-315-16300-0(ebk)
TypesetinBembo
byTaylor&FrancisBooks
CONTENTS
List of figures ix
Preface xi
Introduction 1
PARTI
Advocacy: The Nazi brand and its protagonists 13
1 Was there a Nazi brand? 15
2 Political marketing managers of the Reich: A chaos theory of
government 26
PARTII
Operational: Implementing the Nazi brand 57
3 Promotion: Political marketing communication: the ministry of
illusion 59
4 Product, Adolf Hitler: The ersatz kaiser 105
5 Packaging of the Reich: The politics of consumption and the
consumption of politics 136
6 Place: political marketing channels: The entrepreneurship of the
public space 194
viii Contents
PARTIII
Legacy: The implications of the Nazi brand 253
7 Hitler our contemporary: Brand heritage: the Reich as a power
brand 255
8 Was Adolf Hitler ahead of his time? A review of comparative
self-presentation 264
Epilogue: the Führer and the Donald: The ghost of a resemblance? 277
Index 282
FIGURES
3.1 German mother 73
3.2 Womens labour service 74
3.3 Nazi women voters pre-1933 poster 75
4.1 Ja! Referendum poster 122
4.2 Ja! Referendum poster 123
4.3 Hitler Youth wartime poster 127
4.4 Motivational speaker pre-1933 poster 128
4.5 Hitler floating head pre-1933 poster 129
5.1 Labour service poster 139
5.2 Storm trooper poster pre-1933 140
5.3 SA Mann poster 144
5.4 SA Mann Brand film poster 153
5.5 Wounded storm trooper pre-1933 poster 154
5.6 Work and fight wartime poster 155
5.7 Saar referendum poster 156
5.8 Volkswagen advertisement 169
6.1 German People’s Receiver 199
6.2 SS Netherlands recruiting poster 202
6.3 Farmer with scythe pre-1933 poster 218
6.4 Adolf Hitler is Victory wartime poster 219
6.5 Hitler wounded pre-1933 poster 220
6.6 Hitler frontline soldier pre-1933 poster 221
6.7 Hitler with sealed lips pre-1933 poster 222
6.8 The Marshal and the Corporal March 1933 poster 223
6.9 Hitler Youth SS wartime recruiting poster 225