The Man of the Twentieth Century

Time Magazine, founded by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden in 1923, for almost a century has been selecting a “Man of the Year”. More recently it has become “Person of the Year” as world affairs are now more inclusive with the growing participation of women in all aspects of public life. Time has stated that the person selected has had the greatest influence on world affairs in the past year whether positively or negatively. Joseph Stalin and Adolf Hitler have been selected as Man of the Year and they can hardly be praised as positive examples of human endeavor.  Accordingly, given political, economic and social conditions in the last century, it is a good idea at this time to select someone for the title of Person of the Twentieth Century. The choice will be explained in detail but it is important to remember that this selection is not some sort of individual popularity contest but rather a selection of one individual who has had the greatest influence, positively or negatively, on public affairs in the last century.

If we were to select someone for that title for the Nineteenth Century, there would be many persons to select. Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, Prince Metternich, Abraham Lincoln, Karl Marx, Benjamin Disraeli, Otto Von Bismarck among others are names that come to mind. All of these people affected life, not only in their own countries but also in the world of ideas and their influence lingers to this day. All are worthy candidates but many would select Napoleon as the man of the Nineteenth Century as his disruption of Europe changed the course of history on that continent, and indeed the world, to this day.

One great change in the twentieth century has been communication, namely its speed. Communication includes not only media but transportation and all other methods of communication. During the nineteenth century, communication was often by word of mouth. Major segments of the world population were illiterate, Progress is cumulative. Methods of transportation improved; transport improved from horseback to wagons, coaches and trains traveling longer distances at faster speeds. Distance would be measured in time rather than miles. Ships communicated between continents and even carrier pigeons were utilized. Samuel Morse invented the telegraph which was a great advance in speed, and Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone. Economic progress led to a wider dissemination of education and while illiteracy decreased, it still remained a major problem in rural areas and poorer countries. With the growth of literacy, print media became more common and more influential. Freedom of the press had been established in the United States after the John Peter Zenger trial in the eighteenth century. But a free press was not without its problems. Governments or other entities of authority and power may not appreciate the virtues of a free press in reporting corruption or other misdeeds by the powers that be. Censorship was widespread in authoritarian states, particularly in Czarist Russia. Additionally, during wartime, even democracies resorted to censorship in an attempt to control what is published, often in the name of national morale or security.  Newspapers differentiated themselves from competitors by expressing a point of view, not only in how they reported news but in expressing an opinion on various facts or events on so called editorial pages. Yellow journalism, practiced by the Hearst and Pulitzer news empires, screamed for war after the mysterious explosion of the Battleship Maine in Havana harbor, leading to the Spanish-American War (1898).

The twentieth century saw the development  of a more modern life and world after the Great War, also known as World War I (1914-18).  New nations were created on the European continent as three great empires dissolved . Guglielmo Marconi’s invention of the wireless led to the development of radio; it now extended news transmission to all parts the world and was  accessible to poorly educated and even illiterate people, who would become susceptible to manipulation by this new medium. European stability, previously stabilized somewhat by blood relationships among the rulers of the European empires, was now a thing of the past. Unstable borders and significant minority populations in the new nations of Europe made for trouble.  The Versailles treaty was not what Woodrow Wilson wanted but a sick Wilson was no match for Tiger Georges Clemenceau. The “peace without victors” included the infamous war guilt clause  (article 231 of the Versailles Treaty) which assigned sole responsibility for the war to imperial Germany.  The treaty had been negotiated by the “big four”, Wilson, Lloyd George, Clemenceau and Orlando and was simply presented  to the German delegation on a take it or leave it basis. The “diktat” of Versailles inevitably led to World War II twenty years later.

Imperial Germany collapsed in November 1918 with the abdication of Queen Victoria’s grandson, Kaiser Wilhelm II. The Hohenzollern dynasty was finished and the Weimar Republic was proclaimed. A super democratic constitution, essentially a suicide pact, led to years of instability, economically, socially and politically. However, by the late 1920s, the situation appeared to stabilize.  Then came the Great Depression. Dependent upon short-term loans, the German economy collapsed and widespread unemployment was rampant. The German population found itself squeezed by two extremes, the German Communist Party (KPD) on the left and the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP, Nazis) on the right. These two parties, or movements as they styled themselves, were experts at a new style of information, namely repackaging news events and facts as propaganda, frequently vile, vulgar and untrue.

The Communist movement, headquartered in Moscow, operated internationally through the Communist International or Comintern. It communicated the party line to Communist Parties throughout the world through its Department of Agitation and Propaganda (Agitprop in Soviet parlance). Their leading newspaper was Pravda (Truth). The name gives a clue to their utilization of agitprop as a weapon of indoctrination of the masses as well as their followers.

Most people, even relatively sophisticated and educated people would tend to accept print media as reporting the truth. After all, it’s printed! It must be true! The Nazis understood this very well and their chief propagandist was a Ph.D  who was a poor specimen of a German Aryan named Joseph Goebbels.  Though hobbled by a club foot, his mind was first-class in his understanding of the public mood and its susceptibility to the print word and other forms  of communication.  Goebbels’ Nazi Party position was Gauleiter or party leader of Berlin and his government positions was Minister of Public Enlightenment. In that position, he controlled the press, radio, cinema, theater, opera, music and any other form of communication within the Third Reich. Truly, he was the information czar of Nazi Germany.

The Nazis were masters of propaganda prior to assuming power on January 30, 1933. They charged admission to Hitler’s and other Nazis’ speeches in beer halls and other venues to earn money to support the party. Hitler was the first politician to make use of the airplane to travel great distances across a country and he made many speeches at distant locations on the same day. Nazi newspapers were published daily regionally and throughout Germany under the supervision of Goebbels.  Goebbels himself was an excellent orator who was flexible in his actions. During a strike in Berlin, he was able to cooperate with the KPD and even shared a platform with Communist leader Walter Ulbricht. At the same time street fights frequently broke out in “red Berlin” between the Nazis and Communists. After the death of Horst Wessel, a Nazi street tough and frequenter of prostitutes, the Nazis created an anthem named after their so-called martyr who was killed, it’s believed, by a pimp, in a non-political act. The Horst Wessel lied became the second anthem of Germany after the national anthem. Shortly after the installation of the Hitler government by an aged and increasingly dysfunctional President von Hindenburg, Hitler appointed Goebbels to his cabinet as Minister of Public Enlightenment. One of the first things the new Minister did was to “coordinate” the German press. Non-Nazi political parties were rapidly declared illegal, were dissolved or voluntarily disbanded after the Reichstag’s passage of an Enabling Act which became the legal basis for the actions of the Nazi tyranny. The Enabling Act was renewed periodically throughout the existence of the Third Reich to create a veneer of legality.

Goebbels and his Ministry drove the ownership of non-Nazi newspapers out of the publishing business. As the other political parties ceased to exist, their papers did too. Others, particularly liberal, democratically oriented journals were seized as their owners were forced to sell out to Nazi supporters at bargain basement prices. The Propaganda Ministry released daily guidance to all papers in Germany on what was to be published and how it was to be presented. This guidance from Berlin was the equivalence of a priori censorship and total control of the press. Goebels also directed the manufacture of cheap radios so that every German household could have one. The frequency and stations available on the radio were strictly limited, thus guaranteeing that the listener could only hear Nazi or Nazi approved stations and broadcasts. Between the press, the now widespread radio broadcast of propaganda and the “coordination” of the movie industry, control was total. Culture was rapidly “coordinated”, with the theatre, music and art brought under Goebbels control.  His ministry controlled which movies could be made or shown in Germany. The Reich Music Chamber controlled performances of musicals as well as music composition. Modern art was proscribed as degenerate as “heroic” Nazi art and sculpture were produced to further indoctrinate the German people. Control by Dr. Goebbels was total. Of interest was Goebbels’ reputation as a womanizer. During the 1930s, his mistress was the famous Czech actress Lida Baarova despite his marriage to an ardent Nazi Magda Quandt, formerly married to the heir of the BMW automobile fortune. Hitler, learning of Goebbels’ relationship with a non-Aryan quickly put an end to this extra marital affair . Goebbels survived this episode and remained a close collaborator and loyal follower of Hitler to the end. He committed suicide with his wife in the fuhrerbunker in Berlin after administering lethal drugs to his six children. Life was not worth living to the propaganda czar in a non-Nazi world.

Unfortunately, the legacy of this miscreant lives on. His techniques of control of the various media have been studied and utilized by despots of various persuasions. Throughout the world, censorship is common and newspapers are now known to report neither news nor facts. Truth is sacrificed in the name of political expediency and most of the world does not have the luxury of a free press. Even in liberal democratic countries, the press expresses its point of view not in editorial pages where their opinion is stated, but on the news pages. Stories are covered or not covered, depending on the editor and /or publisher’s point of view with the body of the text tilted to express that view. Many cities in the United States, for example, which fifty or sixty years ago had a half dozen newspapers in morning or afternoon editions, now frequently have only one paper, usually owned by a publishing chain which expresses a particular point of views. With only one paper, readers do not have a choice of viewpoint and are, in a sense, being slowly brainwashed. Television news channels, CNN, MSNBC and Fox  among others, are well known to have a particular point of view which affects their coverage of the news. All of these developments can be traced to Goebbels’ “innovations” of the 1930s as he assumed total control over the media of Germany. His techniques live. Americans, in particular, need to remember that the First Amendment to the US Constitution guarantees freedom of the press. This is an essential feature of a democracy. There can be no compromise regarding this right. No censorship, a priori or otherwise, can or should be tolerated.

If we need to find one individual who has influenced the world in a positive or negative manner during the twentieth century, Joseph Goebbels might be the Man of the Century. Of course, it would have been better had he done something else with his education and brain that would have left him with a more positive and benign legacy. But, alas, we must recognize that the twentieth century was full of evil which still endures. Yes, wonderful things happened. Human progress made giant strides in science and medicine among other fields, improving and prolonging the lives of billions of people. However, history has not ended. The isms of the last century, Fascism, Nazism and Communism are dead though not necessarily buried. The horrors of those isms still live in various despots and tyrants actions. Wars and aggression continue. As we have not yet reached the end of history (and never will), it is mandatory that we face the hard facts of reality. Regrettably, the evil of Goebbels endures and for that reason he is proposed to be the person with the greatest influence, though negative, of the twentieth century.

Garry S. Sklar

At Sea, in the Atlantic Ocean

November 19, 2024