I am reading an historical novel about a young American girl who gets a job, during the late 1930s, writing copy for the German Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda’s Broadcasting Division, English Language Service. She writes for a Lord Lyon who broadcasts to England ala Tokyo Rose.
According to the novel, the department was assigned the job of mitigating the international consequences of Kristallnacht. The supervisor, Dieter, informed them, “… the Daily Telegraph in London called it ‘racial hatred and hysteria by otherwise decent people.’ We have to deal with this in a way that helps our listeners [the English and Americans] get a fuller picture than they have gotten from their own domestic press.”
That is, even the Nazis were concerned with the international implications and damage to reputation caused by their behavior. They didn’t want people outside Germany to lose the presumption that Germans were “otherwise decent people.”
This administration has so far indicated no interest or concern for damage to our international reputation caused by its outspoken positions or its behavior.
If some horrific attack on members of any of the groups already targeted for abuse, or worse, occurred – God help us nowhere near the horror of a “Kristallnacht” – would this administration attempt, even as propaganda, to mitigate damage done to our international reputation?
I, for one, am afraid not!
· Berlin Calling, Kelly Durham, 2015, 2017, Kindle Edition, p. 46
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