Hitler Destroyed David Lloyd George

In 1935 he sought to promote a radical programme of economic reform, called "Lloyd George's New Deal" after the American New Deal.  However the programme did not find favor in the mainstream political parties.  Later that year Lloyd George and his family reunited with the Liberal Party in Parliament. 

In August 1936 Lloyd George met Hitler at Berchtesgaden and offered some public comments that were surprisingly favorable to the German dictator, expressing warm enthusiasm both for Hitler personally and for Germany's public works schemes, upon returning, he wrote of Hitler in the Daily Express as "the greatest living German," "the George Washington of Germany".  Despite this embarrassment, however, as the 1930s progressed Lloyd George became more clear-eyed about the German threat and joined Winston Churchill, among others, in fighting the government's policy of appeasement. In the late 1930s he was sent by the British government to try to dissuade Adolf Hitler from his plans of Europe-wide expansion. 

In perhaps the last important parliamentary intervention of his career, which occurred during the crucial Norway Debate of May 1940, Lloyd George made a powerful speech that helped to undermine Chamberlain as Prime Minister and to pave the way for the ascendancy of Churchill as Premier. 

A pessimistic speech on May 7, 1941 led Churchill to compare him with Pétain. He cast his last vote in the Commons on February 18, 1943 as one of the 121 MPs, 97 Labour, condemning the government for its failure to back the Beveridge report. Fittingly, his final vote was in defense of the welfare state which he had helped to create.

During the Second World War there was speculation about Lloyd George returning to government, but this came to nothing. Churchill offered Lloyd George a position in his cabinet as Minister for Agriculture, but was refused because Lloyd George felt he was too old. He was pessimistic and resigned about Britain's prospects, fearful of German air raids, and perhaps he wished to avoid being too closely identified with his former protégé in the event of a German conquest. He enjoyed listening to the broadcasts of William Joyce. 

Increasingly in his late years his characteristic political courage gave way to physical timidity and hypochondria. He continued to attend Castle Street Baptist Chapel in London, and to preside over the national eisteddfod at its Thursday session each summer. 

At the end, he returned to Wales. In September 1944, he and Frances left Churt for Tŷ Newydd, a somewhat bleak farming property near his boyhood home in Llanystumdwy. He was now weakening rapidly and his voice failing. He was still an MP but learned that wartime changes in the constituency meant that Caernarfon Boroughs might go Conservative at the next election.

In early 1945 the great commoner was raised to the peerage as Earl Lloyd George of Dwyfor and Viscount Gwynedd, of Dwyfor in the County of Caernarvonshire, this did not raise his reputation among his admirers. He died of cancer shortly afterwards at Tŷ Newydd, aged 82, without ever taking up his seat in the House of Lords, Frances and his daughter Megan at the bedside. Four days later, in a simple service, he was buried beside the River Dwyfor in Llanystumdwy. A great boulder marks his grave, there is no inscription.

His perceived double-dealing on many issues alienated many of his former supporters, but there is no doubt that he was a brilliant politician, hence his nickname, The Welsh Wizard.  In an interview in London, the Rt. Hon. David Lloyd George summed up the impressions which he had derived from his recent visit to Germany.

“Germany,” he said, “does not want war, but she is afraid of an attack by Russia, and is suspicious of the Franco-Russian Pact. I have never seen a happier people than the Germans, and Hitler is one of the greatest of the many great men I have met.”

“I am fully convinced that the German people today earnestly desire peace. Undoubtedly, Germany fears an attack by Russia, and in the same way Russia fears an attack by Germany, and I believe that the fear in each case is quite genuine.”

Asked how he reconciled Germany’s desire for peace with the recent attack on the Soviet, he replied, “How do you reconcile Russia’s professed desire for peace with her years of attack upon Germany? The fact is they have been abusing one another like pickpockets for years.It has been a sort of slanging match but I think that today people are rather apt to overlook what is said over the Soviet radio, and to pay attention only to German attacks upon Russia.”  “Germany does not want war. Hitler does not want war. He is a most remarkable personality, one of the greatest I have ever met in the whole of my life, and I have met some very great men.”

“Affection is a quite inadequate word to describe the attitude of the German people towards Hitler. It amounts almost to worship. I have never seen anything like it. Some men I met who are not Nazis told me that they did not know what the country would have done without him. They are inclined to blame Hitler’s supporters for some of the things which they do not approve, but there is no whisper of criticism of Hitler. It is just like our motto, “The King can do no wrong.'”

Mr Lloyd George was asked, “How do you reconcile that attitude towards Hitler with the suppression of the trade unions and the freedom of expression of opinion?”  “I cannot explain it,” he replied. “I am merely stating the facts, but you must remember that the Germans are a highly disciplined people, and have always been so. They are far more accustomed to discipline than we are, and I think that the restrictions in existence in Germany at the present time would have a far greater effect upon people of this country than upon Germany.”  “I have always thought, and still think, that the persecution of Jews in Germany has been a great misfortune. But Germany is not the only country that has persecuted Jews. We must not forget the pogroms in Russia and in other European countries.”

Giving his impression of the German people of today, he said: “I have never seen a happier people. The feeling of depression and gloom which has oppressed them in post-war years has completely disappeared. The are today a very gay people. That is not merely my own opinion. Since I returned from Germany I have had letters from Englishmen who have been in the habit of visiting Germany on business or holiday, and they all confirm my own view.”

“One of the foremost impressions which I derived from my visit was the universal desire to remain on terms of closest friendship with Great Britain.  I found that among everyone I met, from Hitler down to the working men with whom I spoke. Everywhere Britain is held in deepest respect, and there is a profound desire that the tragic circumstances of 1914 should never be repeated.”

Mr. Lloyd George was profoundly impressed by the economic recovery of Germany. “We hear a great deal,” he said, “of the efforts that Germany is making in the direction or re-armament, but little is said of the colossal schemes that are being pushed through for the development of the internal resources of the country, and the improvement of the conditions of the working population.”

“I saw a good deal of the latter, and I was enormously impressed by the boldness and beneficence of the German plans. The Germans are reclaiming over 4,000,000 acres of land which was either completely waste or barely cultivated at all. They are building millions of houses for their working population, and everywhere they are constructing settlements for their town workers outside the city boundaries, with gardens attached to each house.”

“The new roads which they are constructing are magnificent. By these and similar means they have reduced unemployment from 6,000,000 to 1,000,000 in three and a half years. Whatever we may think of Hitler and the present regime, that in itself is a very great achievement.”

Propaganda is defined as ideas that are spread, through various media, for the purpose of influencing opinion. This term is often used to refer to material that is used for or against a specific political agenda. Hitler and the Nazis were known for their ability to create extensive and varied forms of propaganda, with words and images carefully chosen and deliberately used to give life to old antisemitic prejudices, elicit opportunistic tendencies, quench dissent, and turn neighbor against neighbor. In Mein Kampf, Hitler wrote, “From the child’s primer down to the last newspaper, every theater and every movie house, every advertising pillar and every billboard must be pressed into the service subjected of this one great mission”.

By establishing the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda as one of his first acts as chancellor, Hitler demonstrated his belief that controlling information was as important as controlling the military and the economy. He appointed Josef Goebbels to direct this department. Goebbels’s strategy as Propaganda Minister was guided by the maxim, “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” He penetrated virtually every sector of German society, from film, radio, posters, and rallies to school textbooks with Nazi propaganda about the dominance of the Aryan people and the threat posed by the Jews.

Hitler is known for saying, “What good fortune for governments that people do not think,” and his policies were based on the premise that most individuals are conformists who do not think for themselves. Hitler and Nazi officials believed it was possible to manipulate public opinion by using propaganda techniques including euphemisms, name-calling, fear, and “bandwagon” you are either for us or against us. 

For example, the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda changed the words used in the army, replacing the word “work” with “service to Führer and folk” and “worker” with “soldier of labor.” Writer Max von der Grün recalls the impact these euphemisms had on him during his service in the German army.

It is easy to understand that if, for whatever reasons, these words are hammered into a person’s brain every day, they soon become a part of his language, and he does not necessarily stop and think about where they come from and why they were coined in the first place.

The scenario described by Max von der Grün exemplifies how the Nazis’ effective use of propaganda shut down Germans’ capacity for thoughtful deliberation about the information around them. Demonstrating his commitment to shutting down critical thinking in Germany, Hitler instructed Nazi Party officials to hold rallies in the evening, warning, “Never try to convert a crowd to your point of view in the morning sun. Instead the dim lights are useful, especially the evening when people are tired, their powers of resistance are low, and their complete ‘emotional capitulation’ is easy to achieve.” 

Horst Krueger admitted that many residents of his town of Eichkamp were skeptical of Hitler when he first came to power. But he remembers how even those who were not able to attend rallies in the big cities were eventually caught up in the spirit they evoked, explaining, “the citizens of Eichkamp were eager to give themselves over to intoxication and rapture. They were weaponless.” The Nazis’ distribution of antisemitic films, newspaper cartoons, and even children’s books roused centuries-old prejudices against Jews and presented new ideas about the racial impurity of Jews. 

Therefore, when the Nazis began implementing policies against Jews, from the Nuremberg laws which stripped them of citizenship rights to isolating Jews into ghettos, many in the German public were already predisposed against this group of people and thus unlikely to stand up for the rights of their former neighbors. 

Many have remarked on the effectiveness of Hitler’s use of information to manipulate public opinion. After his visit to Munich during the 1936 Olympic Games, David Lloyd George, former Prime Minister of Britain, wrote, “Whatever one may think of his methods, and they are certainly not those of a parliamentary country, there can be no doubt that he has achieved a marvelous transformation in the spirit of the people, in their attitude towards each other, and in their social and economic outlook...not a word of criticism or disapproval have I heard of Hitler.”

Scholars, such as professor of philosophy George Sabine, describe Hitler as a leader who “manipulates the people as an artist molds clay.” Ultimately, the effectiveness of Nazi propaganda reveals as much about the content and strategies involved in producing this information as it does about the audience that received it. When exploring this history with students it is important to look at propaganda not only through the lens of its creators, the messengers, but also through the lens of its audience. 

Hitler and other Nazi leaders could advance their racist agenda because most members of the German public believed the lies they spread about Jews. From studying Nazi Germany we learn how individuals, especially young people, are vulnerable to believing myths and lies when they are not encouraged to critically analyze the world around them and make informed judgments based on evidence.

According to the Center for Media Literacy, “Media Literacy is the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and create media in a variety of forms.” The Nazi education system discouraged media literacy. 

Students were not taught how to develop their own ideas about the images and messages that permeated life during the Third Reich because the success of Hitler’s dictatorship depended on the youth believing the lies disseminated by the Nazi Party. And, for the most part, the Nazis succeeded in these efforts. Testimonies of German youth reveal that they mostly accepted what they heard and saw as the truth, without evaluating the accuracy of the statements or the harm these messages inflicted on vulnerable groups, especially Jews.

The success of Nazi propaganda in influencing the minds and hearts of many Germans, especially German youth, demonstrates the dangers that can befall a society whose citizens are not able to make informed judgments about the media around them. By helping students develop the habit of asking questions such as, “What is the intended purpose of the text?  What message is being expressed? 

How do I know if this information is true?” and the ability to answer these questions, we nurture their growth as responsible citizens who are less likely to be manipulated by malicious propaganda. It is also critical for students to learn to evaluate the ethical dimensions of propaganda. 

Studying Nazi propaganda reveals that the effective use of information to persuade the public is not the same as the responsible dissemination of ideas. Many forms of media (i.e., advertising, political campaign speeches, public service announcements) are produced with the purpose of persuading public opinion, and might be classified as propaganda. 

Yet, should all propaganda, all information that uses emotion or misleading claims to persuade an audience, be considered unethical, even propaganda aimed at causes we support? What criteria should we use to evaluate the ethical use of information? In the twenty-first century, when most of us have increasing access to a wide range of information, it is especially important for students to be equipped with the ability not only to comprehend ideas, but to evaluate this information from a moral and intellectual perspective.

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