The German Corpse Factory is one of the most famous and scandalous propaganda stories of the First World War. It has been repeated many times down to the present day as the prime example of the falsehood of British wartime propaganda. But despite all the attention paid to it, the full story has never been properly told. In Spring 1917, parts of the British press claimed that Germany was so short of essential fats and glycerine that the German Army was being forced to boil down the bodies of its own dead soldiers, causing a brief scandal of accusation and counter-accusation, including the claim that the story was the invention of the British official propaganda organisations. Behind the scenes, British propaganda experts opposed exploiting the story as it was obviously false, and contrary to their basic principles of never telling an obvious lie in an official statement. But at the time, the British government refused to deny that the 'German Corpse Factory' might really exist. In 1925 the scandal re-erupted in New York, when the former head of British military intelligence on the Western Front, in the United States on a speaking tour, was quoted in newspapers as having confessed to making the whole German Corpse Factory story up, a claim that he immediately denied. As a gesture of friendship on the occasion of the Locarno treaties, the British government now accepted the German government position that the story was a lie, but in fact neither government knew what had really happened in 1917. This book provides the answers to these questions according to the best historical evidence available. It uses the scandal of the 'German Corpse Factory' as a case-study to explore the true nature of British official propaganda and its organisations in the First World War, including the events of 1917 and who might really have been responsible for the story. It also shows how this brief episode was taken up by the German government after 1918, and by interest groups in Britain and the United States after 1925, to paint a false picture of British propaganda, with far-reaching consequences for the peace of Europe, and for our subsequent understanding of the First World War.

Facts are and must be the coin of the realm in a democracy, for government "of the people, by the people and for the people," requires and assumes to some extent an informed citizenry. Unfortunately, for citizens in the United States and throughout the world, distinguishing between fact and fiction has always been a formidable challenge, often with real life and death consequences. But now it is more difficult and confusing than ever. The Internet Age makes comment indistinguishable from fact, and erodes authority. It is liberating but annihilating at the same time.
For those wielding power, whether in the private or the public sector, the increasingly sophisticated control of information is regarded as utterly essential to achieving success. Internal information is severely limited, including calendars, memoranda, phone logs and emails. History is sculpted by its absence.
Often those in power strictly control the flow of information, corroding and corrupting its content, of course, using newspapers, radio, television and other mass means of communication to carefully consolidate their authority and cover their crimes in a thick veneer of fervent racialism or nationalism. And always with the specter of some kind of imminent public threat, what Hannah Arendt called 'objective enemies.'"
An epiphanic, public comment about the Bush "war on terror" years was made by an unidentified White House official revealing how information is managed and how the news media and the public itself are regarded by those in power: " You journalists live] "in what we call the reality-based community. But] that's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality . . . we're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do." And yet, as aggressive as the Republican Bush administration was in attempting to define reality, the subsequent, Democratic Obama administration may be more so.
Into the battle for truth steps Charles Lewis, a pioneer of journalistic objectivity. His book looks at the various ways in which truth can be manipulated and distorted by governments, corporations, even loan individuals. He shows how truth is often distorted or diminished by delay: truth "in time" can save terrible erroneous choices. In part a history of communication in America, a cri de coeur for the principles and practice of objective reporting, and a journey into several notably labyrinths of deception, "935 Lies" is a valorous search for honesty in an age of casual, sometimes malevolent distortion of the facts.

This book develops a sophisticated account of propaganda and its intriguing history. It begins with a brief overview of Western propaganda, including Ancient Greek theories of rhetoric, and traces propaganda's development through the Christian era, the rise of the nation-state, World War I, Nazism, Communism, and the present day. The core of the book examines the ethical implications of various forms of persuasion, not only hate propaganda but also insidious elements of more generally acceptable communication such as advertising, public relations, and government information, setting these in the context of freedom of expression. This new edition is updated throughout, and includes additional revelations about a key atrocity story of World War I.

In 1898, Gustave LeBon published The Crowd, in which he examined the underlying forces behind the many horrors of the French revolution. More than 100 years later, its premises may be traced to the rise of Hitler, Mussolini, Pol Pot, Mao Tse-Tung, and countless American and European leaders. Here is presented an expansion and update of his work, in the hopes that the mistakes of the past are not repeated. Within is a step-by-step manual for the acquisition of political power, as well as the defense against those who would use the knowledge for their own purposes.

Many people consider their reputations to be something worth valuing above life itself. Throughout history, there has been no shortage of individuals who have fought duels to the death over matters of honor. Quite a few nations have gone to war with others or annihilated entire segments of their population purportedly in defense of their national honor or that of their race.

Character assassination is an attempt to discredit a person's reputation. The intention is to have the individuals targeted by such campaigns isolated and rejected by his community. Every personal merit or contribution of the individual would be erased under a constant flow of slander. With the pass of time such acts are often difficult to reverse. The process is equivalent to the literal assassination of a human life. The damage sustained can last a lifetime or, for historical figures, for many years and even centuries after their death.

What are the implications of deliberately assassinating a person's character, or of ruining a social group's or institution's reputation? What might be the implications of such actions if they are occurring as a response to the initiatives of a government with sufficient resources to exercise this kind of state-sponsored terrorism? Ready, Aim, Fire Character Assassination in Cuba analyzes this topic through the lens of the Cuban experience over the last fifty years.

In America, under the Constitution of the United States, we have the freedom of speech. This freedom allows us to say what we think and feel about any subject matter, regardless of how the listening ear receives the words being spoken. The mainstream media, such as talk radio, television, and Internet broadcasting, have millions upon millions of Americans tuned in each and every day. As a result, its influence is multitudinous and very powerful. What's being heard, right or wrong, good or bad, accurate or inaccurate, changes the way we think, feel, see, and even interact with one another. It changes the way we vote, thus changing America's leadership and eventually changing America. The Ugly Mouths of America is an insightful look at some of the most vociferous voices in media, such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Dr. Laura Schlessinger, and Neal Boortz. It examines the modern origins of the ever-expanding conservative Tea Party movement and its challenges from the NAACP. It contemplates the question of how a message of hate and division changes the spirit of our society. Was America ready for the change promised by President Barack Obama? Would these changes be the beginning of the decline of America on a global scale? To get an inside look at current affairs, the leaders of conservatism, and America's future, before you cast your next vote, you must read The Ugly Mouths of America

How to Look Good in A War examines the methods used to depict, defend, and justify the use of state violence. Many books have shown how "truth is the first casualty of war" but this is the first to analyze exactly how pro-war narratives are constructed and normalized. Brian Rappert details the "upside-down" world of war in which revelation conceals, knowledge fosters uncertainty, and transparency obscures. He looks at government spin during recent wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya where officials maneuver between circulating and withholding information. Examining how organized violence is justified, How to Look Good in A War draws on experiences from recent controversy to consider how ignorance about the operation of war is produced and how concerned individuals and groups can intervene to make a difference.

Only weeks after the D-Day invasion of June 6, 1944, a surprising cargo-crates of books-joined the flood of troop reinforcements, weapons and ammunition, food, and medicine onto Normandy beaches. The books were destined for French bookshops, to be followed by millions more American books (in translation but also in English) ultimately distributed throughout Europe and the rest of the world. The British were doing similar work, which was uneasily coordinated with that of the Americans within the Psychological Warfare Division of General Eisenhower's Supreme Headquarters, Allied Expeditionary Force, under General Eisenhower's command. Books As Weapons tells the little-known story of the vital partnership between American book publishers and the U.S. government to put carefully selected recent books highlighting American history and values into the hands of civilians liberated from Axis forces. The government desired to use books to help "disintoxicate" the minds of these people from the Nazi and Japanese propaganda and censorship machines and to win their friendship. This objective dovetailed perfectly with U.S. publishers' ambitions to find new profits in international markets, which had been dominated by Britain, France, and Germany before their book trades were devastated by the war. Key figures on both the trade and government sides of the program considered books "the most enduring propaganda of all" and thus effective "weapons in the war of ideas," both during the war and afterward, when the Soviet Union flexed its military might and demonstrated its propaganda savvy. Seldom have books been charged with greater responsibility or imbued with more significance. John B. Hench leavens this fully international account of the programs with fascinating vignettes set in the war rooms of Washington and London, publishers' offices throughout the world, and the jeeps in which information officers drove over bomb-rutted roads to bring the books to people who were hungering for them. Books as Weapons provides context for continuing debates about the relationship between government and private enterprise and the image of the United States abroad. To see an interview with John Hench conducted by C-SPAN at the 2010 annual conference of the Organization of American Historians, visit: http://www.c-spanvideo.org/program/id/222522.

Few twentieth-century political leaders enjoyed greater popularity among their own people than Hitler in the 1930s and 1940s. The German people's admiration rested less on the bizarre and arcane precepts of Nazi ideology than on social and political values recognizable in many societies other than the Third Reich. Kershaw charts the creation, growth, and decline of the 'Hitler myth', and demonstrates how the manufactured Führer-cult formed a crucial integrating force in the Third Reich and a vital element in the attainment of Nazi political aims.

Propaganda. Manipulation. Spin. Control. It has ever been thus--or has it? On the eve of the 60th anniversary of George Orwell's classic essay on propaganda ("Politics and the English Language"), writers have been invited to explore what Orwell didn't--or couldn't--know. Their responses, framed in pithy, focused essays, range far and wide: from the effect of television and computing, to the vast expansion of knowledge about how our brains respond to symbolic messages, to the merger of journalism and entertainment, to lessons learned during and after a half-century of totalitarianism. Together, they paint a portrait of a political culture in which propaganda and mind control are alive and well (albeit in forms and places that would have surprised Orwell). The pieces in this anthology sound alarm bells about the manipulation and misinformation in today's politics, and offer guideposts for a journalism attuned to Orwellian tendencies in the 21st century.

The Great War was the first example of a total war in history, reflected in the cultures and literatures of Europe in the shape of propaganda. What began as civic patriotism developed into a weapon of war, programmed and organized by the state to devastating effect. In almost all countries, writers of different ideological hues were ready to undertake the job of representing the war, in accordance with the state's guidance. War propaganda in the Ottoman Empire, the most anachronistic belligerent of the war according to historians, was condemned to failure. In the underdeveloped and multi-ethnic Ottoman Empire, the Ottoman-Turkish intelligentsia could not produce adequate propaganda to support the battlefronts and the home front. Why did propaganda efforts die after 1915? Can this be explained with the laziness or cosmopolitanism of the cultural agents? Or did the lack of propaganda derive from reasons that are more material?Erol Koroglu seeks to address these questions in a unique interdisciplinary assessment of Turkish literature and propaganda, interpreting literary texts written by the representative writers of the period. These interpretations follow a literary cultural history method and give an analysis of the complex interaction between literary texts and the historical context. Koroglu discusses the subjects of First World War propaganda, Turkish nationalism and national identity construction. He concludes that the unfavourable conditions in the Ottoman-Turkish cultural sphere, the literature of the years 1914-1918, even if superficially full of propaganda aims, was essentially the continuation of a project to build a national culture, inherited from the pre-war years and never completed. Turkish literature therefore did not reflect powerful propaganda, but was more a difficult attempt to create 'national identity'.

The Thought War is the first book in English to examine the full extent of Japan's wartime propaganda. Based on a wide range of archival material and sources in Japanese, Chinese, and English, it explores the propaganda programs of the Japanese government from 1931 to 1945, demonstrating the true scope of imperial propaganda and its pervasive influence, an influence that is still felt today. Contrary to popular postwar rhetoric, it was not emperor worship or military authoritarianism that led an entire nation to war. Rather, it was the creation of a powerful image of Japan as the leader of modern Asia and the belief that the Japanese could and would guide Asia to a new, glorious period of reform that appealed to imperial subjects. Kushner analyzes the role of the police and military in defining socially acceptable belief and behavior by using their influence to root out malcontents. His research is the first of its kind to treat propaganda as a profession in wartime Japan. He shows that the leadership was not confined to the crude tools of sloganeering and government-sponsored demonstrations but was able instead to appropriate the expertise of the nation's advertising firms to "sell" the image of Japan as Asia's leader and modernizer. In his exploration of the propaganda war in popular culture and the entertainment industry, Kushner discloses how entertainers sought to bolster their careers by adopting as their own pro-war messages that then filtered down into society and took hold. Japanese propaganda frequently conflicted with Chinese and American visions of empire, and Kushner reveals the reactions of these two nations to Japan's efforts and the meaning of their responses.

When President Dwight Eisenhower spoke of waging "total cold war," he was proposing nothing less than a global, all-embracing battle for hearts and minds. His wide-ranging propaganda campaign challenged world communism at every turn and left a lasting mark on the American psyche.

Kenneth Osgood now chronicles the secret psychological warfare programs America developed at the height of the Cold War. These programs-which were often indistinguishable from CIA covert operations-went well beyond campaigns to foment unrest behind the Iron Curtain. The effort was global: U.S. propaganda campaigns targeted virtually every country in the free world.

"Total Cold War" also shows that Eisenhower waged his propaganda war not just abroad, but also at home. U.S. psychological warfare programs blurred the lines between foreign and domestic propaganda with campaigns that both targeted the American people and enlisted them as active participants in global contest for public opinion.

Osgood focuses on major campaigns such as Atoms for Peace, People-to-People, and cultural exchange programs. Drawing on recently declassified documents that record U.S. psychological operations in some three dozen countries, he tells how U.S. propaganda agencies presented everyday life in America to the world: its citizens living full, happy lives in a classless society where economic bounty was shared by all. Osgood further investigates the ways in which superpower disarmament negotiations were used as propaganda maneuvers in the battle for international public opinion. He also reexamines the early years of the space race, focusing especially on the challenge to American propagandists posed by the Soviet launch of Sputnik.

Perhaps most telling, Osgood takes a new look at President Eisenhower's leadership. Believing that psychological warfare was a potent weapon in America's arsenal, Ike appears in these pages not as a disinterested figurehead, as he's often been portrayed, but as an activist president who left a profound mark on national security affairs.

Osgood's distinctive interpretation places Cold War propaganda campaigns in the context of an international arena drastically changed by the communications revolution and the age of mass politics and total war. It provides a new perspective on the conduct of public diplomacy, even as Americans today continue to grapple with the challenges of winning other hearts and minds in another global struggle.

" A History Book Club Alternative Selection No part of the Nazi movement contributed more to Hitler's success than the Sturmabteilung (SA) -- the notorious Brown Shirts. Bruce Campbell offers the first in-depth study in English of the men who held the three highest ranks in the SA. Organized on military lines and fired by radical nationalism, the Brown Shirts saw themselves as Germany's paramilitary saviors. Campbell reveals that the homogeneity of the SA leadership was based not on class or status, but on common experiences and training. Unlike other investigations of the Nazi party, The SA Generals and the Rise of Nazism focuses on the military and political activities of the Brown Shirts to show how they developed into SA Leaders. By tracing the activities, both individual and collective, of these men's adult lives through 1945, Campbell shows where members acquired the experience necessary to build, lead, and administer the SA. These men were instrumental in creating the Nazi concept of "political soldiering," combining military organization with political activism. Campbell's enlightening portrait of the SA, its history, and its relationship to the overall Nazi movement reveals how the organization's leaders reshaped the SA over time to adapt to Germany's changing political concerns.

Weapons of Mass Deception reveals:

• How the Iraq war was sold to the American public through professional P.R. strategies.

• "The First Casualty": Lies that were told related to the Iraq war.

• Euphemisms and jargon related to the Iraq war, e.g. "shock and awe," "Operation Iraqi Freedom," "axis of evil," "coalition of the willing," etc.

• "War as Opportunity": How the war on terrorism and the war on Iraq have been used as marketing hooks to sell products and policies that have nothing to do with fighting terrorism.

• "Brand America": The efforts of Charlotte Beers and other U.S. propaganda campaigns designed to win hearts overseas.

• "The Mass Media as Propaganda Vehicle": How news coverage followed Washington's lead and language.

The book includes a glossary — "Propaganda: A User's Guide" — and resources to help Americans sort through the deceptions to see the strings behind Washington's campaign to sell the Iraq war to the public.

In Baghdad, an enormous monument nearly twice the size of the Arc de Triomphe towers over the city. Two huge forearms emerge from the ground, clutching two swords that clash overhead. Those arms are enlarged casts of those of Saddam Hussein, showing every bump and follicle. The "Victory Arch" celebrates a victory over Iran (in their eight-year-long war) that never happened. This text is a study of the interplay between art and politics - of how culture, normally an unquestioned good, can play into the hands of a power with devastating effects. Kanan Makiya uses the culture invented by Saddam Hussein as a window into the nature of totalitarianism and shows how art can become the weapon of dictatorship. Under Saddam Hussein, culture connived in his evil - this text explains how. It should be useful reading for anyone concerned with the power of culture and the culture of power.

What did the media tell us in the run up to war on Iraq? Was it all true? Where are the weapons of mass destruction? This book is for everyone who is appalled by the duplicity and misinformation churned out by the media in the lead up to war with Iraq, and in its long and continuing aftermath. Written by some of the world's leading journalists and commentators, it's a scathing indictment of the media's role in creating public support for a war which, day by day, is taking a heavy toll in coalition and Iraqi lives, and which threatens to create further instability and resentment of the US throughout the Middle East. Critics, activists and journalists from both sides of the Atlantic destroy the idea that the mainstream media have anything to do with objectivity and balance. The propaganda machinery of the UK and US in the Iraq war is exposed as fundamentally dishonest and as a significant threat to freedom of thought and expression. The book draws on the experience of leading anti-war and media activists to provide analysis and guidance on how to resist the media war.Contributors include John Pilger, Noam Chomsky, Robert Fisk, Edward Herman, Mark Thomas, Mark Steel, Phillip Knightley, Tim Llewelyn (BBC Middle East Correspondent), Abdul Hadi Jiad (Iraqi journalist sacked by the BBC before the war), David Cromwell and David Edwards (Media Lens), Mark Curtis, John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton (PR Watch, and co-authors of Weapons of Mass Deception and Toxic Sludge is Good For You), Pat Holland, Norman Solomon (columnist and director of the Institute for Public Accuracy), Nancy Snow (California State University, Fullerton, author of Propaganda Inc. and Information War), Doug Kellner (UCLA),Julian Petley, Yvonne Ridley (Aljazeera.net and author of In the Hands of the Taliban), Tim Gopsill (Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom), Faisal Bodi (UK Guardian, Aljazeera.net), Alistair Alexander (Stop the War Coalition), Greg Philo (Glasgow University Media Group), Steve Dorrill, Andy Rowell, Granville Williams and cartoonists Steve Bell, Steve Caplin and Polyp.

" Among America's most unusual and successful weapons during the Cold War were Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty. RFE-RL had its origins in a post-war America brimming with confidence and secure in its power. Unlike the Voice of America, which conveyed a distinctly American perspective on global events, RFE-RL served as surrogate home radio services and a vital alternative to the controlled, party-dominated domestic press in Eastern Europe. Over twenty stations featured programming tailored to individual countries. They reached millions of listeners ranging from industrial workers to dissident leaders such as Lech Walesa and Vaclav Havel. Broadcasting Freedom draws on rare archival material and offers a penetrating insider history of the radios that helped change the face of Europe. Arch Puddington reveals new information about the connections between RFE-RL and the CIA, which provided covert funding for the stations during the critical start-up years in the early 1950s. He relates in detail the efforts of Soviet and Eastern Bloc officials to thwart the stations; their tactics ranged from jamming attempts, assassinations of radio journalists, the infiltration of spies onto the radios' staffs, and the bombing of the radios' headquarters. Puddington addresses the controversies that engulfed the stations throughout the Cold War, most notably RFE broadcasts during the Hungarian Revolution that were described as inflammatory and irresponsible. He shows how RFE prevented the Communist authorities from establishing a monopoly on the dissemination of information in Poland and describes the crucial roles played by the stations as the Berlin Wall came down and the Soviet Union broke apart. Broadcasting Freedom is also a portrait of the Cold War in America. Puddington offers insights into the strategic thinking of the RFE-RL leadership and those in the highest circles of American government, including CIA directors, secretaries of state, and even presidents.

In November 1918, German women gained the right to vote, and female suffrage would forever change the landscape of German political life. Women now constituted the majority of voters, and political parties were forced to address them for the first time. Analyzing written and visual propaganda aimed at, and frequently produced by, women across the political spectrum - including the Communists and Social Democrats; liberal, Catholic and conservative parties; and the Nazis - Julia Sneeringer shows how various groups struggled to reconcile traditional assumption about women's interests with the changing face of the family and female economic activity. Through propaganda, political parties addressed themes such as motherhood, fashion, religion, and abortion. But as Sneeringer demonstrates, their efforts to win women's votes by emphasizing ""women's issues"" had only limited success. The debates about women in propaganda were symptomatic of larger anxieties that gripped Germany during this era of unrest, Sneeringer says. Though Weimar political culture was ahead of it time in forcing even the enemies of women's rights to concede a public role for women, this horizon of possibility narrowed sharply in the face of political instability, economic crises, and the growing spectre of fascism.

"Strangely moving. . . . While in China, Schrift] discovered a subculture of people who collected buttons bearing portraits of the Great Helmsman: thousands of varieties had been manufactured from the Cultural Revolution, when they served as one of the few permitted forms of personal adornment or aesthetic display. . . . I found reading the book a surprisingly emotional experience."-Newsday; Newsday Long Island "A wonderfully rich and riveting account, Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge represents an important contribution to our understanding of the Cultural Revolution and its place in Chinese culture. Schrift provides an informative examination of the Mao cult's recent transformation into its present form of pop cultural campiness." -William Jankowiak, author of Sex, Death, and Hierarchy in a Chinese City "An excellent study of symbolism and factionalism in Maoist China. Schrift shows how mundane objects were transformed into sacred icons of revolutionary ideology. This book offers new insights into the dynamics of the Cultural Revolution."- J. L. Watson, author of Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia With the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966, the regime of Chairman Mao Zedong launched a propaganda campaign aimed at disseminating inspiring images of the chairman to a skeptical populace. Thus was born the "Mao badge," a political icon in the form of a pin that was widely distributed to create, sustain, and inflate the Mao personality cult during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976). Scholars estimate that over two billion Mao badges, featuring over fifty thousand different designs and themes, were produced. As China now enters an era in which people can more openly express their views about the Cultural Revolution, these icons have taken on new meanings, and people are wearing and talking about them in subversive ways. Melissa Schrift suggests that the badges developed "lives" that far surpass the intentions of their creators, as the Chinese ironically commodified them, both during the Cultural Revolution and today. During the Mao years, people wore the objects to symbolize their unquestioned loyalty to Mao. Yet even then many Chinese subverted the badges' symbolic meaning. Using them in socially approved rituals, they gained a measure of political credibility that masked their practice of prohibited customary rites. Biography of a Chairman Mao Badge is a work of cultural history that contributes to our understanding not only of Chinese society but, more generally, of strategies people employ in responding to and transforming the meaning of propaganda campaigns and symbols. Melissa Schrift is an assistant professor of anthropology and sociology at Marquette University.

Noted media pundit Douglas Rushkoff gives a devastating critique of the influence techniques behind our culture of rampant consumerism. With a skilled analysis of how experts in the fields of marketing, advertising, retail atmospherics, and hand-selling attempt to take away our ability to make rational decisions, Rushkoff delivers a bracing account of why we buy what we buy, and helps us recognize when we're being treated like consumers instead of human beings.

The World War II era represented the golden age of radio as a broadcast medium in the United States; it also witnessed a rise in African-American activism against racial segregation and discrimination, especially as they were practised by the federal government itself. In this study, the author links these cultural and political forces by showing how African-American activists, public officials, intellectuals, and artists sought to access and use radio to influence a national debate about racial inequality. Drawing on a body of national public affairs programming about African-Americans and race relations, the author uses these radio shows to demonstrate the emergence of a new national discourse about race and ethnicity, racial hatred and injustice, and the contribution of racial and immigrant populations to the development of the United States. These programmes, Savage contends, challenged the nation to reconcile its professed egalitarian ideals with its unjust treatment of black Americans and other minorities. This examination of radio's treatment of race as a national political issue also provides important evidence that the campaigns for racial justice in the 1940s served as an essential, and still overlooked, precursor to the civil rights campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s, Savage argues. The next battleground would be in the South, and on television.

Hitler was one of the few politicians who understood that persuasion was everything, deployed to anchor an entire regime in the confections of imagery, rhetoric and dramaturgy. The Nazis pursued propaganda not just as a tool, an instrument of government, but also as the totality, the raison d'etre, the medium through which power itself was exercised. Moreover, Nicholas O'Shaughnessy argues, Hitler, not Goebbels, was the prime mover in the propaganda regime of the Third Reich - its editor and first author. Under the Reich everything was a propaganda medium, a building-block of public consciousness, from typography to communiques, to architecture, to weapons design. There were groups to initiate rumours and groups to spread graffiti. Everything could be interrogated for its propaganda potential, every surface inscribed with polemical meaning, whether an enemy city's name, an historical epic or the poster on a neighbourhood wall. But Hitler was in no sense an innovator - his ideas were always second- hand.Rather his expertise was as a packager, fashioning from the accumulated mass of icons and ideas, the historic debris, the labyrinths and byways of the German mind, a modern and brilliant political show articulated through deftly managed symbols and rituals. The Reich would have been unthinkable without propaganda - it would not have been the Reich.