Activity Plan

The learning activity consists of 4 steps, each of them is connected to a key issue that students have to complete in order to understand the tools, strategies and outcome of censorship in Nazi Germany and how it was linked to propaganda. At the same time students will learn about the November Pogroms as a crucial historical moment.

Within the project a timeline of Nazi Germany was set up. This could be used as a contextualisation and document at the beginning of the unit. The unit is referring to the event which is also widely known as Kristallnacht. Since the anti-Semitic action did not take place only in one night but during several days and comprised burning, looting, deportations and killings it seems appropriate to use the term November Pogroms.

Lesson Plan

  1. Censorship in Nazi Germany

Ask students to make pairs and go through the list with extracts of advice given by the German News Agency in 1937. For every advice they should find a possible reason for the advice. In a following up talk in the classroom the students compare their results. See the table below for possible outcomes to this step.

The examples of advice show that they relate to different parts of life in Germany: politics, economics, morals, ideology. But not everything was totally censored. Some examples of advice show a partial censorship e.g. events which were known locally but information about it should not be spread nationwide. A list with key words on the possible outcome is available as teacher material.

Press Advice by the German News Agency 1937 (Possible Outcome).

Advice / Possible Reason for the Advice
13thSeptember
A special train for the Reichsregierung (Federal Government) is built at the moment in Kassel. In no case there should be a report about this. / Avoiding the image of an elite & privileges
30thSeptember
Reports about the visit of mayors from Latvia in East Prussia should be published only locally. / Cooperation versus Ideology (Feeling of superiority over people from East Europe)
5thOctober
About the Festival of German Church Music taking place from 7th till 13th October:should not be given so much attention. For this reason no misleading interpretation must come up. /

Nazi regime: a non-religiousregime

6thOktober
Reports on the execution of Emil Prigge [murder and sex offender] are only allowed in the region of the Higher Regional Court of Hamm. / Security / Morality / Crime
12thNovember
The big locomotive manufactureHentschel received a huge order from South Africa. Nothing is allowed to be reported about this order. / International contact / Business versus the concept of autarchy
19thNovember
From now on and for the future nothing should be reported about the Nobel Prize for Peace. Lord Cecil received this year the Nobel Prize for Peace. Nothing should be mentioned about this fact. / Peace / Pacisfism versus Nazi Ideology
10thDecember
There are only photos allowed which show the Fuehrer while entering or leaving the Italian art exhibition in Berlin. / Control of photos / Avoiding that Hitler is connected with certains artist or artwork
17th December
No line should be published about the election in the Soviet union, even no press comment. / Antibolschevistic / Anticommunistic attitude of the regime
  1. Censoring the Pogroms

After the students generally know what was controlled they deal with the concrete occurrence of the November pogroms. There are two examples of advice of the German News Agency as sources. One is relating to the assassination of Ernst vomRath from 7th November which the Nazi Government took as a pretense for the pogrom, the second shows the censoring on the pogroms. In case of the assassination some background information might be necessary. These could be taken from the extract of the book by the historian Peter Gay, which is also in the source collection and used in the third part.

After analyzing and discussing the censorship and press politics of the German government the students take a look at an article of the Manchester Guardian from 11th November and compare the information content. It should become obvious that certain information would have been censored in the German newspaper.

  1. What did the papers not tell?

The third task is leaving the sphere of the newspaper and dealing with the question what the paper did not tell: whether the source was not available at this time or could not be published. The three sources represent three different perspectives: a report by a victim, a report by an observer (American consul) and the analytic view of an historian (Peter Gay).

Divide the class into groups and let them work on the different sources. In the first step they summarize the sources and present their results to the class e.g. on a wall newspaper. In the second step they would compare the different reports.

Further groups could be also formed by using the video collection of survivors:

One group could deal with the use of questions marks in newspapers or history books. The relevant exercise to this can be found below in the source of Peter Gay. The exercise can be also done as a homework since the students have to refer to the Nazi propaganda (see Step 2) and the historical background.

Possible outcome:

Expression / Historical description
“spontaneous” / organized progrom
“impulsive” / Controlled by the Nazi Party and ist organizations
Collective “indignation” / Sentiment steered by propaganda

In this context also the widely used term “Kristallnacht” could be discussed.

  1. What a photo can tell

Since visual history has become an important part of history teaching there should be also some photos included in the teaching unit. Some pictures have already become iconic for the event of the Kristallnacht like the burning synagogue in Frankfurt. But also in Graz, former Austria, which became part of the Reich after the annexation, the synagogue was burnt down. In both cases one sees a lot of people watching the burning synagogues proving that the wider public took note of this event. This observation stands in contrast to the official NS-press politics to report about the pogroms only on page 2 or 3 (see source from Step 2).

The photos also give the opportunity to raise the question about the reaction of the people and the role of the bystanders.

Teaching Alternatives:

a) Use photos in step 3 and ask students to analyse them in an additional group.

b) Use the photos in the beginning of the Step 2 and raise the question to which historical event they refer.

Sources:

  1. Press Advice by the German News Agency 1937
  2. Press Advice by the German News Bureau November 1938
  3. Report by the Manchester Guardian, 11 November 1938
  4. Report from the Jewish witness YtzhakSophoniHerz
  5. Report from the American Consul Samuel Honaker in the Stuttgart Region (November 12 and November 15, 1938)
  6. The Historian Peter Gay writes about the Kristallnacht (1998)
  7. Photo Burning Synagogue in Frankfurt am Main November 1938
  8. Photo Burning Ceremonial Hall at the Jewish Cemetery in Graz November 1938; unknown photographers