Politics of Death

The Cult of Nazi Martyrs, 1920-1939

Once the Nazi movement had taken control of German state apparatus, the mechanisms for disseminating the exemplary martyr in society may have changed, but not the specifics of the propaganda strategy itself.

To disentangle the National Socialists’ path to power in Germany, one must attend to the discursive strategies and liturgical practices employed by its emocrats, or manipulators of emotions. The apotheosis of martyrdom in the National Socialist propaganda template is far from being a marginal element in the movement’s history. Owing to its mobilising and unifying potential in constructing a community of memory, the glorification of Nazi martyrdom constituted a fundamental pillar of the movement’s communicative and propaganda strategy, stressed to the point of paroxysm.

The propaganda and lies that ground the construction of the martyr as a prefiguration of the "new man" are the core ideas that form the backbone of this book. The Nazis’ politics of death was a carefully managed element of National Socialism from its very inception. The martyrs, and their blood sacrificed on the altar of the fatherland, were an invaluable propaganda weapon.

There were three pillars of the Nazi martyrdom frame: sublimation of death, posthumous sugar-coating and "tamed" death. Once the Nazi movement had taken control of German state apparatus, the mechanisms for disseminating the exemplary martyr in society may have changed, but not the specifics of the propaganda strategy itself.

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