 Hitler and the Nazis were experts at propaganda. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said what made for good propaganda. It had little to do with the truth unless it favoured the Nazis. It concentrated on simple messages and repeated them frequently.
Propaganda was better if heard rather than read. For this reason the Nazis liked mass meetings, preferably held at night when Hitler believed people would be more easily persuaded.
Josef Goebbels was responsible for putting Hitler's ideas about propaganda into practice. He had proved his talent for propaganda during the election campaigns between 1930 and 1933. On 13 March 1933 Goebbels took charge of the new 'Reich Ministry of Popular Enlightenment and Propaganda' which had complete power over official information and German culture. Goebbels did not have to persuade Germans to vote for Hitler now. He had to prevent anything critical of the Nazis being said or written and make sure that German radio, newspapers and the Arts all displayed Nazi ideas.
The most important new tool of Nazi propaganda was the radio because Hitler believed it reached the German people directly. The Nazis set up factories to build cheap radios like the 'people's receiver' (volksempfänger) which cost only 35 RM. They made sure that the new radios had a limited range so that they would only pick up the German stations that the Nazis controlled. By 1939, 70% of German households had a radio, which was three times the number in 1932 and the highest percentage of any country in the world. Broadcasting was directed at public places. Loudspeakers were put up in factories, cafes, offices, restaurants, even in the streets.
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It was not so easy for the Nazis to control German newspapers. There were over 4,700 daily papers in 1933 and they were owned by many different people and organisations. The Nazis set about gaining control of Germany's newspapers and what was written in them. Their first target was the newspaper owners. They used the Nazi Party's own publishing company, Eher Verlag, to gain ownership of the newspapers. Socialist and Communist papers were taken over or destroyed. Middle class papers were pressurised into selling to the Nazis. At the same time, Propanganda Ministry told the journalists what to write and how to put it across. News had to come from only one source, the State owned press agency, the DNB.