In recent years, research has tended to relocate the history of National Socialism in a transnational context of Global History. This approach reveals how intensely the Third Reich was tied into processes of perception, interpretation and cultural transfer, which it tried to determine at the same time. Transnational media reports, publicity, cultural diplomacy and propaganda were key factors in these developments. At our conference, these research perspectives will be combined with approaches from Communication and Media History, which have shifted from a national to an increasingly transnational view. In previous interpretations from Global History concerning fascism, National Socialism was presented, in contrast to Italian fascism, as less globally oriented, and without much sense of an international mission. However, in examining its foreign media policy, it becomes clear that transnational mass-media was a central component of National Socialist politics. This was directed at international news agencies and their networks, but German media influence abroad also ran through secret channels. This began well before 1933, and drew on the experience of the First World War, which ascribed defeat to a large part to the predominantly negative view of the German Empire among the international public.
The initial assumption of our conference is, therefore, that the NS-regime was by no means a closed-off propaganda state, but instead made a great effort to influence international public opinion: with disinformation as well as with propaganda and cultural diplomacy. The perception of National Socialism abroad was, however, not only the product of German propaganda and publicity, but depended on specific contexts of reception, and was subject to dynamic processes of breaks and projections. In many countries, anti-fascist, but also other groups and figures painted a critical picture of the NS dictatorship, which marked how it was perceived outside Germany. At the same time, the German public was itself influenced to a strong degree by international journalism: Not only because the Germans listened to foreign radio programmes during the war, and international newspapers were still in circulation; but also because the regime found itself in a continuing dialogue with foreign media, and did not withhold this confrontation from the public.
The papers for this conference should focus on these processes of communication beyond national and cultural boundaries, concentrating on the breaches, transfer problems, misunderstandings and misinterpretations inherent therein. Our conference intends to offer answers to the question of which image the world had of NS-Germany, how the regime presented itself abroad, and how it was perceived by others. Furthermore, we hope to investigate what kind of internationally connected public the German population found itself after 1933; and how the regime acted, both openly and secretly, on the global media market until 1945. Another purpose of this conference is to enhance the current discussion of “information wars” between and within individual states, as well as transnational media campaigns, by a historic dimension.
We especially welcome contributions on the following aspects:
- media reporting and discussion on NS-Germany for national and transnational audiences
- transnational dimensions of the German media and propaganda systems
- actors and networks of transnational media work: journalists, foreign correspondents, media creators, news traders, propagandists, diplomats
- practices, effects and receptions of German foreign propaganda abroad, and cultural diplomacy since 1933
- public representations of the NS-regime outside Germany, counter-representations and their actors, protest and criticism
- cultural exchange and media cooperation between the axis powers
- economic interrelations of internationally operating media companies and fascist regimes
- (media) materialism of transnational perception processes: texts, images, photos, sound, appeal to the senses, etc.
- international reporting on NS persecutions and crimes at home and abroad; the German conduct of the war, as well as genocide policy and its public resonance
- diachronic comparisons and classifications: psychological warfare, propaganda, cultural diplomacy in the 20th century
Conference Languages: English and German
Please send an abstract of 500 words + a short CV until 31 October to: norman.domeier@hi.uni-stuttgart.de; benno.nietzel@uni-bielefeld.de
Conference venue will probably be the University of Bielefeld/Germany. We are applying for travel and hotel cost reimbursement.