The UC Santa Barbara Undergraduate Journal of History

Prior to World War II, Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) marketed their warped ideals, virtues, and goals to the German people under the veil of attractive imagery that exploited post-World War I discontent in Germany. Hitler believed that effective propaganda imagery, or visual rhetoric, could be used to “...awaken the imagination of the public through an appeal to their feelings, in finding the appropriate psychological form that will arrest the attention and appeal to the hearts of the national masses.” By exploring the visual rhetoric of Hitler and the NSDAP, this article reveals their strategic use of propaganda that resulted in the establishment of an attractive, persuasive facade that facilitated their rise to power. Analyzed in this essay are not only various compositions of party propaganda but also written and spoken compositions that highlight the ideals established by the visual rhetoric. Such works of rhetoric include Hitler’s Mein Kampf, the “25 Points of the Nazi Party,” and “Hitler’s Speech to the National Socialist Women’s League.” Those works broadened the NSDAP’s targeted audience to women and children and communicated the party’s racial and biological constructs related to beauty standards.