Hitler's Chalet: How the Media Helped Hitler Rise to Power

Hitler's Chalet is now shorthand for how the media helped to launder Nazi propaganda even six years after the first Nazi concentration camp.

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The power of propaganda is probably well known by now, but what is less understood is how that propaganda gets laundered through the media and served up to the public to humanize people like Hitler. In fact, the media helped Hitler’s rise to power through lifestyle-type pieces.

Nazi Propaganda

The Nazis used propaganda meant to exploit fear while selling idealized womanhood. The Holocaust Explained delved into this:

The Nazis started advocating clear messages tailored to a broad range of people and their problems. The propaganda aimed to exploit people’s fear of uncertainty and instability. These messages varied from ‘Bread and Work’, aimed at the working class and the fear of unemployment, to a ‘Mother and Child’ poster portraying the Nazi ideals regarding woman.  Jews and Communists also featured heavily in the Nazi propaganda as enemies of the German people.

The Nazis used propaganda to sell Hitler as the one who would make Germany “a great power again.” (Sound familiar?)

Goebbels used a combination of modern media, such as films and radio, and traditional campaigning tools such as posters and newspapers to reach as many people as possible. It was through this technique that he began to build an image of Hitler as a strong, stable leader that Germany needed to become a great power again.

Hitler’s Chalet

In 1939, the New York Times was telling the public about what a great host Hitler was at his mountain chalet. “HERR HITLER AT HOME IN THE CLOUDS; High up on his favorite mountain he finds time for politics, solitude and frequent official parties.”

Yes, Hitler’s mountain chalet.

In a University at Buffalo news piece from 2015, Charlotte Hsu delved into this topic:

Equally haunting, however, are another set of images that are oft-forgotten: In the years preceding World War II, news outlets from home magazines to the New York Times ran profiles of the Nazi leader that portrayed him as a country gentleman — a man who ate vegetarian, played catch with his dogs and took post-meal strolls outside his mountain estate.

These articles were often admiring — even after the horrors of the Nazi regime had begun to reveal themselves, says Despina Stratigakos, an architectural historian at the University at Buffalo.

The research for Stratigako’s book “Hitler at Home” “uncovered a media landscape that felt surreal: ‘These news stories filled your head with positive images of Hitler. I was shocked at the extent of it and how late they appeared.’”

She notes that nine months after the deadly pogroms of Kristallnacht and six years after the first Nazi concentration camp opened at Dachau, and a mere twelve days before Germany invaded Poland and started World War II, “the New York Times Magazine published an article describing the day-to-day life at Hitler’s mountain chalet.”

“Unstained wainscoting and handwoven rugs combined to “create an atmosphere of quiet cheerfulness” in the Führer’s study, the New York Times reported.

The “quiet cheerfulness” of Hilter’s chalet is giving the modern media focusing on President Biden’s age after former president and currently indicted Republican frontrunner Donald Trump encouraged Russia to attack U.S. allies.

CONTROL

Jim Morrison once said: “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind.”

And now, in 2024, the media is still at it: Centering the politics of the elite, the stories that make the elite seem more relatable while rabidly foaming at the mouth for weeks over Hillary Clinton’s emails and now Joe Biden’s age. To be clear, it’s not that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden aren’t elites; they are. But their policies, especially in contrast to their running mate Donald Trump, were much more in line with freedom and human rights. Yet somehow, these policies are buried in favor of TMZ-style normalization of Donald Trump, like Hitler’s Chalet.

Even though they are the most egregious example, it’s sadly not just the New York Times, and the stories told to the public in our media matter because they frame issues and give signals about whether or not our democracy is working and who is working for the people.

Or, they mislead by choosing to center stories about issues that are less vital to the people, but serve to distract from the oligarchs and the general theft of prosperity from the working class.

In case it’s been missed, Biden is out here making democracy stronger -not just because he believes in it, but because it is the best way to fight encroaching autocracy.