101
votes
Accepted
Why does this London Underground poster from 1924 have a Star of David atop a Christmas tree?
The hexagram is not an exclusively Jewish symbol. For that matter, the Star of David as a symbol of Judaism (as opposed to a symbol used by Jews) is far newer than people realize, dating only to 1897 ...
- 8,544
50
votes
Accepted
Did Joseph Goebbels really say this about German opposition in 1933?
No, most probably not. On that day Goebbels was silent in public, and the entire text looks made up.
Proving a negative is very difficult, and currently this 'funny propaganda meme' lacks an accurate ...
- 80.8k
42
votes
Accepted
Did the Soviet Union or its satellite states have any broadcast propaganda media for an international audience?
Yes. Ample supply. At least for print and radio.
Newspapers and magazines
Not really 'broadcast medium', but mentioned in the question:
Many versions printed directly under the auspices of a communist ...
- 80.8k
40
votes
Accepted
Why did this anti-communist pamphlet, from the USA in the 1950s, include UNESCO among its targets?
You're talking about fringe political pamphlet here, so be careful generalizing from it. To paraphrase Tolstoy, all mainstream thinking may look alike, but fringe beliefs are all fringe in their own ...
- 118k
18
votes
Accepted
Why did Joseph Goebbels allow an all-Jewish Orchestra to exist and perform in Berlin from 1938 to 1941?
The short answer is that the orchestra served as a useful propaganda tool both at home and abroad, helped the Nazi regime achieve their initial goal of seperating Jews from German society and culture, ...
- 108k
13
votes
What access did people in the Warsaw pact countries have to Western television and radio?
It varied from country to country. Deep inside the Soviet Union they could not watch Western TV and the only access was shortwave broadcasts. You could easily listen short-wave broadcasts in European ...
- 38.5k
11
votes
Did the Soviet Union or its satellite states have any broadcast propaganda media for an international audience?
Let me add to the previous answer some Soviet media outlets.
Soviet Union, a journal published in 18 languages.
It had a supplement called "Sports in the USSR".
Moscow news - a newspaper ...
- 38.5k
10
votes
How did Nazi Germany justify the attempted invasion of Britain?
You only need a public justification to start a war. Or to continue a war after the other side offers a peace deal.
Nazi Germany had not (directly) started the war with Britain. Britain had declared ...
- 4,629
10
votes
Accepted
How did Nazi Germany justify the attempted invasion of Britain?
The war with Great Britain was justified because when Hitler invaded Poland, Great Britain declared war. The invasion of Poland itself was justified by the "provocation" at Dantzig.
For ...
- 6,474
9
votes
What access did people in the Warsaw pact countries have to Western television and radio?
People in the German Democratic Republic could and did receive TV from the Federal Republic of Germany. Terrestrial reception of TV was limited in some parts of the GDR, notably the Dresden area. In ...
- 16.8k
9
votes
Who was the first to accuse enemy troops of impaling babies, cutting fetuses from women's bellies, etc.?
There are a number of Biblical (Old Testament, so over 2000 years ago) mentions of such things, for instance Hosea 13:16, 2 Kings 15:16, Joshua 6:20-21, 1 Samuel 15:3, Psalms 137:8-9... The ...
- 2,915
9
votes
Accepted
Did Soviet propaganda assert that the Jews lived badly/poorly in Israel?
Here is a short answer (I will add more detail and background when I have more time):
One of the most "comprehensive" examples of such propaganda is
“The White Book: Evidence, Facts, ...
- 6,263
8
votes
Accepted
When did the German people learn that they had a large, powerful military, in violation of the Versailles Treaty?
If people were paying attention, March 1929 when Die Weltbühne published an account of secret German rearmament. If they weren't, rearmament was officially revealed in a speech by Hitler on March 16, ...
- 54.9k
8
votes
Is Snyder's claim about Soviet-German friendship propaganda posters (1939‒41) supportable?
Short answer:
I have only read half of Snyder's books, but I think that OP's skepticism is misguided.
The OP is in error interpreting "posters" as propaganda items for mass-distribution, and ...
- 2,256
8
votes
Accepted
In which East European country in the 1980s did people put their TVs in front of windows and turn them facing outside?
At last I found the answer to my question.
The country is Poland, the city is Gdansk and the year is 1981.
In Gdansk, there were the black TV screens. People there began moving their television sets ...
- 149
7
votes
Did the Soviet Union or its satellite states have any broadcast propaganda media for an international audience?
@LangLangC's answer mentioned
This gets even more interesting when one would look at the propaganda against each each other between Soviet Union and China
but did not go into details.
There is ...
6
votes
Accepted
When was the White Feather first used as a symbol of cowardice?
I've found several articles state that the OED dates the first usage of the term "white feather" as a symbol for cowardice to 1795. A representative example is White Feathers : Stories of Courage, ...
- 77.4k
6
votes
Why did Joseph Goebbels allow an all-Jewish Orchestra to exist and perform in Berlin from 1938 to 1941?
Before the decision to kill all the Jews they could reach, the Nazi regime was interested in extracting as much as possible from Jewish-owned assets. It maintained a thin façade of legality, so simply ...
- 31.4k
6
votes
Accepted
Is there any documentation of the use of scientific knowledge or technology in pagan temples?
Ancent Greeks and Romans sometimes created various automations for use in temples.
Here are quotes from the first source I found googling "Hellenistic automations".
Religion was a very ...
- 19.1k
6
votes
How did the Soviet press talk about the opposing forces (mujahideens) during the Soviet-Afghan war?
Based on the 1990 Conflict Quarterly piece (found/suggested by Dan M in comments), there were significant difference between Brezhnev and Gorbachev times, although change during the latter was rather ...
- 5,090
5
votes
Did imperialist propaganda inflate map size?
There are a number of possibilities here, though none fully meet your criteria. Aside from the Mercator distortion mentioned by SJuan76 in his comment, you may be thinking of the McDonald Gill ...
- 108k
5
votes
Who made this Sino-Soviet Propaganda Poster?
Soviet Union supported the Chinese Communist Party during the Chinese Civil War, so since the Mao Zedong's rise to power in 1949 to Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s Sino-soveit relations were quite good....
- 51
5
votes
At which point in time did the majority of German population become aware of the Holocaust?
In addition to the other excellent answers, I would like to mention the Posen Conference of October 6, 1943. Its express purpose was to make sure that the Nazi leadership (Reichleiters and Gauleiters) ...
- 26.9k
5
votes
Accepted
Is there an example of a civil rights movement supporter with a record of being against it?
Senator, and later President Lyndon Baines Johnson was such a person, as described in "Means of Ascent."
A staunch segregationist when he was young, he became the Vice-President of John F. Kennedy, ...
- 104k
4
votes
How prevalent were American disinformation campaigns during the Cold War?
As far as I know, solid evidence of programs dedicated specifically to dissemination of false information in Soviet Union and Soviet-aligned countries is rare. As an example, there's this piece by ...
- 8,865
4
votes
Are there any historical examples of (non government-approved) fake news having a strong effect?
Just prior to the start of WWII, Nazi Germany managed to use lots of induced street violence and fake stories about German unification supporters being suppressed to take over Austria without ...
- 118k
3
votes
Accepted
How did people react to these WWI posters with their 'brutal messages'?
It's hard to separate the effects of the posters from the larger effects of mass propaganda, and of using shame as a strategy in general, most notably the notorious White Feather campaign.
But the ...
- 14.5k
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