
Series
Volume 13
New German Historical Perspectives
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Audiences of Nazism
Using Media in the Third Reich
Edited by Ulrike Weckel
Afterword by Jane Caplan
354 pages, 42 illus., bibliog., index
ISBN 978-1-80539-099-2 $145.00/£107.00 / Hb / Not Yet Published (September 2023)
eISBN 978-1-80539-100-5 eBook Not Yet Published
Reviews
“This is an excellent collection. Its clearly stated project is to revisit and revise existing historical accounts of media audiences and media consumption in Nazi Germany. The book presents a range of high calibre contributions, with much new and original research, and all offering innovative perspectives on the relation between media consumption, National Socialist political culture, and social and cultural life in Nazi Germany.” • Erica Carter, Kings College London
Description
Traces of audience responses to propaganda in the Third Reich are particularly sparse given that the public sphere was so highly regulated. By taking an interdisciplinary and innovative approach to found historical sources of audiences’ responses, the contributions to Audiences of Nazism critically approach the effectiveness of the Nazi media. The volume presents a comprehensive array of case studies including, but not limited to, Jewish responses to anti-Semitic media, personal reports from Nazi party rallies, responses to “degenerate art” exhibitions, and the afterlife of visual documentations of Nazi crimes. It uncovers the target groups of certain Nazi media products; how effective these products were in disseminating propaganda; and their chances to win over readers, listeners, and spectators not yet convinced of Nazism.
Ulrike Weckel is Professor of History in the Media and the Public at the Justus Liebig University Giessen. Her research interests include postwar dealings with Germany’s Nazi past, gender history, media history, and audience reception. She is the author of Beschämende Bilder. Deutsche Reaktionen auf alliierte Dokumentarfilme über befreite Konzentrationslager (Stuttgart 2012) and has analyzed audience responses to representations of the Nazi past in various feature films and radio and theater plays.