Hitler's piano

Reaching the truth requires effort and time. Yet, it is easy to get swept away by perceptions.

Societies guided by perceptions have been dragged into mistakes that are difficult to rectify, and humanity has suffered greatly as a result.

The method for igniting perceptions is PROPAGANDA. And the lead actor of propaganda is the PRESS…

Like all dictators, Hitler began his siege of the press 2 months and 16 days after coming to power.

The calendar read May 29, 1933.

Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, summoned the editors-in-chief of all newspapers to a meeting. He then made the following statement, which went down in history;

“NEWSPAPERS MUST BE LIKE A PIANO THAT THE GOVERNMENT CAN PLAY AS IT WISHES”

And so it was. It had to be, anyway. Not complying with the established action plan would have meant giving up on life.

Society had to be convinced that purging the Jews, who were declared the cause of all evils, was a matter of patriotism. The boycott of Jewish businesses was announced through the press.

However, newspapers were not the public's only source of news. 70% of the German population had a radio in their homes.

All radios were connected to the Ministry of Propaganda, and broadcasting began from a single station. Local radio stations were shut down.

It did not end there. Radio employees were fired, and a reliable team loyal to Hitler and the regime was formed.

A condition was imposed that all those working in the press must be of the “ARYAN RACE.”

Hitler said that what was being done was a REVOLUTION. The goal of the revolution was a restructuring that would encompass all of social life. People's relationships with the state would be reorganized in accordance with these principles.

Were there no people who did not comply with these rules, who showed opposition, or who rebelled?

Of course there were; it was impossible to silence everyone.

However, a tragic end awaited them: CONCENTRATION CAMPS.

Hitler's Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, “declared that the way to achieve power was not for the people to understand what was being said, but for them to be attached to it with faith,” and with this method, he succeeded in making Hitler a “man to be worshipped.”

By marketing Hitler like a commercial commodity, Goebbels became the first person to bring the marketing strategy of the capitalist economy into politics. For this, he utilized commercial advertisements developed in the USA, and by constantly repeating slogans that everyone could easily understand, he etched Hitler into memories.

For this strategy to succeed, concepts valued by society were skillfully used and identified with Hitler.

Hitler's “democracy, which he accepted as the source of all evil,” was presented in election campaigns as the “goal to be reached,” but once the goal of power was achieved, the true identity of the world's most ruthless dictator was revealed.

POWER IS THE LITMUS TEST OF TRUE IDENTITY

How did Hitler, who won the elections on March 5, 1933, with 43.91% of the vote through a tremendous campaign, remain in power for 12 years?

Between 1935 and 1945, Germany was the most highly educated country in the world, with 99% of its population being literate.

How could the German people have seen Hitler as a “man to be worshipped” for years, despite all the brutality, ruthlessness, boundless fascist dictatorship, and massacres displayed?

Undoubtedly, the role of false perceptions created through propaganda and the besieged press in this picture cannot be denied.

DACHAU – ARBEIT MACHT FREI/ 1933-1945

Dachau Concentration Camp is 30 minutes away from Munich. The translation of the German inscription on its gate is: WORK SETS YOU FREE.

Hitler had this written on the gates of all concentration camps. He also savored the pleasure of mocking the people he killed in gas chambers and burned their bodies in ovens…

When I visited in 2006, the thing that caught my attention most was that there were single-story houses with gardens on the other side of the narrow asphalt road leading to the camp.

I asked the guide who was showing us around the camp whether the houses were there during the time the camp was active.

The answer I received was shocking; “Yes,” the guide said, “They were in the same place. Families were living in them, just as they are today.”

Had they seen the women, children, elderly, and young people brought to the camp in trucks? Had they heard the screams and smelled the scent of human flesh rising from the chimney of the oven?

“Of course they knew,” said the guide.

I still feel the unbearable pain I felt while watching the footage taken in the camp. But those living there had seen it live. How had they continued to applaud Hitler for 12 years?

History has recorded that the besieged press and intense propaganda caused the German people to experience not just a lapse of reason, but a lapse of conscience.

Well, was it only the German people who were captivated by Hitler's spell?

Of course not… The world's greatest leaders also competed in praising Hitler.

For example, Churchill said the following one year before World War II;

“If England were defeated in the war, I hope we would find a man like Hitler who would restore us to our rightful place in the international arena. The whole world would like to see Hitler as an element of peace and tolerance… “

Roosevelt was praising both Hitler and Mussolini.

Even more surprising was that the famous Norwegian writer Knut Hamsun, a Nobel Prize winner in Literature who visited Germany in 1943, gifted his Nobel Prize medal to Goebbels with a note emphasizing his “belief in Germany's victory.”

All of this was the work of propaganda carried out through the Nazified press.

Methods remaining from the Hitler era are still being discussed today. Sometimes they are even attempted to be applied.

The “leader never admitting the mistake they made, immediately denying the accusations made, not forgetting that the public can always believe a big lie more easily than small lies, and the perception of reality created in the public by repeated lies,” which were used in the propaganda strategy of that period, seem to have turned into the indispensable elements of the phenomenon of leadership. It is considered a prerequisite for being a world leader and, as we see in the example of the USA, it is not found too strange.

Those who make political criticisms are sometimes scolded, sometimes punished.

The cadres who show unconditional loyalty to the Leader are, of course, what keep this mechanism alive.

The “heroes” (!) who ensure the survival of totalitarian social structures have been those who accept following the orders and instructions given to them as a sacred duty; in other words, those who “sell their minds and consciences to authority.”

One of the most prominent examples of this is Eichmann, one of the leading figures of the genocide.

The world-renowned social psychologist and psychoanalyst Erich Fromm recounts Eichmann's testimony in court as follows:

“Eichmann did not hate Jews. Or rather, he did not love or hate anyone. He was just doing his job. What was important for him was to obey the laws and orders. He would only feel a sense of guilt if he disobeyed these orders.

Before the court, he declared that he had only felt guilty twice in his life. Once when he skipped school as a student, and secondly when he disobeyed an order during an air raid and did not enter the shelter.”

WHY IS THE PRESS THE FOURTH ESTATE?

Within the principle of the separation of powers, the press is accepted as the fourth estate after the legislative, executive, and judiciary.

For this reason, press organizations are among the first institutions targeted by dictatorships.

For example, MUSSOLINI was a former journalist and knew very well the power of the press over the masses. For this reason, after coming to power, he turned the Italian press into his own propaganda power.

His first act after establishing his own fascist organization was to have the Avanti newspaper, where he had previously been editor-in-chief, burned.

He turned the Popolo d’Italia newspaper, which he founded, into the official and largest propaganda organ of the National Fascist Party. He declared all anti-regime publications illegal. He banned those who did not receive approval and certification from the Fascist Party from practicing journalism. He banned all kinds of news that would demoralize the public and make the regime appear unsuccessful.

FRANCO applied very heavy censorship to the press in Spain (1939-1975). During the period until the Press Law was enacted in 1966, all media outlets that criticized the regime were shut down. Oppositional journalists were imprisoned and punished. The press was used to polish Franco's leadership.

STALIN used the press as a propaganda tool for the Communist Party. There was no room for an independent and oppositional press; all press organs were connected to the state. All books, newspapers, and magazines to be printed were passed through an ideological filter by the censorship institution called Glavit.

Famines, economic hardships, worker deaths, and war losses were hidden from the press. Former leaders were erased from history. With the intervention in culture, literary works, theater plays, and film scripts were subjected to censorship.

Humanity, which experienced the pains of the era of dictators who are remembered with curses in the dusty pages of history, closed the era of those who used the press for their own power, never to be opened again.

The world understood the value of PRESS FREEDOM by experiencing these.

It declared the Free Press the FOURTH ESTATE and sanctified the public's right to receive information.

A Free Press is a compass for governments. It displays the truth through the eyes of the public and the society's view of events.

It contributes to the solution of problems. It guides governments and strengthens democracy.

Humanity has learned through bitter experiences that handcuffs placed on hands cannot be placed on thoughts, and that a free press is the most indispensable power of democracy. The era of appointed journalists has left its place to a free press as a result of century-long experiences, and democracy has been crowned.

Waters do not flow backward… Preventing the public's freedom to receive information by shutting down televisions and radios and arresting journalists is now a thing of the past. Just like water finding its bed, news finds its way, flows, and meets the society. What remains is the sediment, reaction, and dissatisfaction left in minds and hearts.

With respect to all press workers….