Rove seemingly authorizing the establishment of Talon News and creatures like Jeff Gannon are deja vu all over again:
Hans Fritzsche, the author of the following essay, was a leading Nazi radio broadcaster. Here he praises Goebbels and outlines the nature of the newly-founded Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda.
FROM HANS FRITZSCHE, 1934:
The Propaganda Ministry is not bureaucratic administrative apparatus, but rather an spiritual center of power that stays in constant touch with the whole people on political, spiritual, cultural and economic matters. It is the mouth and ear of the Reich government.
Dr. Goebbels laid his hand on all the powers that once made common front against him and against the idea of Adolf Hitler that he represented. On radio, the press, literature, theater, film. On the whole enormous apparatus of propaganda that once in the Reich capital used the whole of its enormous power to make the unknown but dangerous Dr. Goebbels from the Rhineland into a dreamer and crackpot, the subject of public scorn. The same enormous apparatus that some others, using enormous millions had attempted to influence without having any real success; for decades only one had dominated it, the Jewish intellect.
This multifaceted apparatus of modern propaganda, which Dr. Goebbels had faced without the weapon of money, only with the strength of the idea even though the struggle seemed foolish, fell into the hands of the people that Dr. Goebbels, as a colleague of the Führer, had mobilized against this citadel of Jewish power.
Now he can begin the reconstruction of German spiritual life after the foreign elements have been eliminated.
Even during the very first beginnings of the work on building the ministry, the new Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda could give the first evidence of what it was capable of: The organization of the first Day of National Labor, 1 May 1933. Although its success was surpassed by 1 May 1934, Dr. Goebbels showed then for the first time that once the path was made clear for National Socialism, not hundreds of thousands, but rather millions could gather at a single place when it called.
Relatively little had to be changed in 1934 on the Day of Labor after the example of 1 May 1933. Organizationally, it had been done right the first time. The tradition had been created, and after a year one could assume that the content German national holiday needed only to be deepened. The waves of the first May mass meeting rolled over the many unions and parties. 1 May awoke old May customs in all the German Gaue had gave renewed life to the almost decayed German cultural treasure. Department II, Propaganda (under Ministerialrat Haegert) in the Propaganda Ministry has the task of carrying out such mass meetings. One might call this department the general staff of practical propaganda. But that is only part of the broad domain of Department II. To name only a few areas, it includes positive propaganda for the worldview, the structure of governmental life, youth and sports questions, economic advertising of every form, agricultural advertising, propaganda in the area of transportation and education in matters of public health.
Department III, Radio (Ministerialrat Dreßler-Andreß) unites the whole of the German radio system.
The radio, once a collection of private broadcasters in which the influence of the Reich, the states, political parties and private concerns battled, was united, cleansed and clearly organized. The radio was not only placed under National Socialist control, but also reconstructed on National Socialist lines.
The new people's radio has proven that it is able literally to draw a whole nation to the receiver for some "big events." Occurrences such as the state visit of the Führer and Reich Chancellor to Hamburg on 17 August 1934 have shown that the new German radio can make such events festivals for the whole nation. The radio allowed a whole nation to participate in the ceremony of the German Reichstag for the deceased Reich President, and the world followed as the General Field Marshal found his final resting place on the field of his greatest victory.
A year after Dr. Goebbels had taken the German radio in his hand, it was possible at noon on the first day of spring that not even three people could be seen at a major point in Berlin, the Potsdamer Platz, because the Führer was opening the second great battle for work in Bavaria. He was speaking to a few thousand, but he spoke over the radio to millions and millions. The new radio system, even at a time when the economic crisis had not been completely overcome, was able to win millions of new listeners and produce millions of new receivers, above all the Volksempfänger [an inexpensive radio receiver].
Without exaggerating, one can say that there is no country in the world where the radio is anywhere near as intensive an intermediary between the government and the people as in Germany.
A true labor of Sisyphus was necessary in the area of the press. From the chaos of 3500 German newspapers, of which only 120 were National Socialist in 1932, a responsible German press had to be created.
Department IV, the Press (Ministerialrat Dr. Jahnke) is the tool of the Propaganda Ministry in this area. It is simultaneously the Press Office of the Reich government. Its head is the Assistant Press Chief of the Reich government, State Secretary Walter Funk of the Reich Ministry for People's Enlightenment and Propaganda.
The destructive effects of the past liberal era had especially serious effects on the German newspaper system. Anyone, even foreigners and those foreign to the German spirit, could with no regard for the people or the state write whatever he wanted about any political question, even if that which he wrote offered foreign opponents all possible support and aid.
Bans could not help deal with the general decay of the German newspaper system. They are only a temporary means to deal with the worst manifestations. Dr. Goebbels therefore created the new Editor's Law, which laid the foundation for a complete transformation of the German newspaper system in the moral, political, and economic areas. The law gave the German editor major rights, but also major duties.The German editor is now the representative of the whole people, and must as such give account for all his actions and inactions. For the first time in the world, this law makes the interests of the people and the state the supreme law for the whole press.
Some foreign newspapers thought this was the end of press freedom. Within a year, even those abroad realized that true freedom stabilizes a decent and nationally-conscious journalist class.
Department IV, which supports the press, holds a daily press conference. It provides constant information for the never-ending work of domestic and foreign newspapers, news agencies and correspondents.
It also incorporates the Drahloser Dienst, the news agency of the German radio that provides all Reich stations with news and broadcasts as well in four languages over shortwave.
Since the most modern ministry works with the most modern methods, the Drahtlosen Dienst has an excellent teletype system that transmits its news to all German stations in a form ready for broadcast.
http://www.calvin.edu/academic/cas/gpa/goeb62.htm