The first time Heinrich Hoffman tries to take a photograph of Adolf Hitler he is beaten to a pulp and his camera smashed. And then the Nazis change their minds, and hire Hoffman as Hitler's official photographer. It is the beginning of a propaganda campaign carefully orchestrated by propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels that is built around the image of the "Führer”. A film called Triumph of the Will, directed by Leni Riefenstahl shows the whole world how powerful Hitler has become. It is the most sophisticated piece of demagoguery anyone has ever seen in any medium. Throughout the 1930s Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, use propaganda to terrifying effect as they stoke German pride and spread hatred toward the Jews and other minorities.
When Adolf Hitler begins his campaign of conquest in 1939, most Germans actually don't want war. But Hitler and his propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels use every tool of propaganda to change their minds. German pride is invoked to justify the invasion of Poland and France -among other countries. Dark messages of hatred are used to persuade Germans that minorities should be stripped of their rights, deported or sent to “detention” camps. It is the beginning of the Nazi campaign of genocide. Hitler's despotism would have its admirers in France and even in far-away Japan. But in 1940 Hitler and Goebbels would also discover just how far they can push the German people before some begin to ask questions.
In 1941, Joseph Stalin thought he could count on his alliance with Germany to protect his Russia from the fires of war that are sweeping Europe. And then Adolf Hitler changes his mind and invades, sweeping through Russia with brutal efficiency. How would Communist dictator Joseph Stalin persuade his people to rise up when the Germans appear unbeatable? With a skillful appeal to Russian nationalism, Stalin convinces millions to take up arms. Among them a young woman named Lyudmilla Pavlichenko. Her deadly accuracy as a sniper would make her a useful tool of propaganda, inspiring others to fight and survive.
Germany and Japan have mastery of the seas and control of the major theatres of war. But by 1943, the tide is changing and both countries will have to change their messaging accordingly to reflect a new emerging reality. Truth and Total War tells the story of how “total war” proves a major turning point for all combatants and how the stories propagandists on all sides told tell their populations have to be accordingly adjusted.
With the D-Day invasion in June 1944, the Allies finally establish a beachhead in France and begin to roll back the Nazi forces. In order not to dampen morale, the Allied High Command hides the true human cost of taking Normandy, both for the allied soldiers and for the unfortunate citizens of Northern France who will suffer enormous casualties as the Germans retreat and the Allies advance. Canada”s master of propaganda, John Grierson, explains why “withholding the truth” is not the same as spreading lies – such as German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels has done throughout the war.
By 1945, propaganda machines that had geared populations for war now have to prepare them for peace. With the end of the war, and the beginning of the Cold War, enemies would become partners and allies would become foes.
1991. Out of the ruins of the Cold War, a dominant America finds itself in a new kind of war. A war with no true battlefield, no front lines, in which religion will be used as a weapon. It all begins with Operation Desert Storm. The Americans easily win the first Gulf War and drive Saddam Hussein from Kuwait, but they will make two decisions that fundamentally impact the future: Saddam Hussein is left in power in Iraq, while U.S. military troops remain in Saudi Arabia to ensure the region's stability. Muslims are incensed by the presence of foreigners on Mohammed's sacred land. The result will be the first attacks on the World Trade Centre in 1993, but also, and more importantly, Osama Bin Laden declares jihad, a holy war, against America in 1998. He orchestrates the attacks on the American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen. Then, the biggest shock of all, September 11, 2001, the worst attack on American civilians in history.
U.S. President George W. Bush sells his war in Iraq as a necessary conflict aimed at removing a dictator whose weapons of mass destruction pose a global terrorist threat. "Operation Iraqi Freedom" is supposed to be a quick surgical strike, a campaign of "shock and awe". The western media jumps at the chance to cover the story, but reporters have limited access, except for those "embedded" with the military. After three weeks, Bush declares "Mission Accomplished". The war is over, but it's really only the beginning. A guerilla insurgency takes hold. Al Jazeera, the Arabic language network, chronicles the conflict in detail. The White House loses control of its propaganda message; first, with the bloody combat in the city of Fallujah, then with shocking images from the Abu Ghraib jail, where American soldiers are revealed to be abusing their Iraqi prisoners. The propaganda war, meanwhile, is extending beyond the Middle East and into Europe and North America via cyberspace. Al Qaeda uses the internet as a tool to recruit and train new members, co-ordinate attacks and encourage others to do the same - in some cases with lethal consequences.
