Social Media, Then & Now: How Anti-Jewish Propaganda “Went Viral” in the 1930s

How did the Nazi party’s messaging become so widespread in a time before Meta and TikTok and endless doomscrolling?

Well, largely,through the mail.

This label, which reads, “Anyone that buys from Jew is a traitor” was affixed to a piece of mail sent from Vacha Land, Germany to Washington, D.C., postmarked June 1, 1935.Talk about social media engagement — how many people saw this (and “liked” it) as it made its way from the sender to the recipient?

Another way to get views. These anti-Jewish flyers, roughly the size of a large postage stamp, were produced in Germany and dropped onto Allied soldiers on the front lines during WWII, implying not only that Jewish men were avoiding combat but that they were profiteering and taking advantage of the soldiers’ absence to steal their wives and girlfriends. I find it painful to imagine my dad or my uncle, both Jewish, having this imagery land on them as they were fighting for the United States.

As a collector, I am particularly interested in items, like these labels, that fall in the middle of the Venn diagram of my interest in Holocaust-related artifacts and my interest in philately (stamp collecting). Government-issued postage stamps and cancellation marks — as well as the unofficial labels (called “Cinderellas” in the philatelic world) that different organizations, companies, and individuals created to affix to letters — provide an incredible window into the political and social zeitgeist of any given moment in time.

Today we have social media to disseminate information (real or falsified), ideas, opinions, and propaganda. In the early to mid-1900s, “social media” consisted of radio and mail. So a letter from that period really contains two sources of information: there is the letter itself, but there’s also the outside of the envelope. The stamps and other accoutrements — some government-issued and many sponsored by companies or groups that wanted to promote a message or recruit customers and members with similar beliefs — tell a powerful story about what’s happening in a given region at a given time.

Because of my particular interest in philately, the Philipson collection contains a staggering amount of mail, and you’ll see quite a bit of it in our stories.Here’s one trend you might pick up on: leading up to and during the Holocaust, the German government was meticulous about keeping anti-Jewish propaganda off of official postage stamps. (One of many ways you’ll see they attempted to manipulate public perception to hide the atrocities they were perpetrating.)But you’ll see plenty of it in the cancellations and other labels, of course.

German Mail Propaganda

One way theGermans furthered their anti-Jewish narratives was by producing a series ofCinderellas, as well as rubber stamps and other decorations, that were glued to letters, documents, mail, etc. as a way to spread their message of hate and blame the Jewish people for anything and everything they could. As the mail and other documents travelled around Germany and the world, passed from hand to hand along the way, the propaganda affixed to them made their way into the broader social conscious. It “went viral,” you might say. The mail-oriented propaganda pictured here are just a small sampling of my collection — which itself covers only a small fraction of the hate that was spread through the mail during the time period.

“To practice usury with borrowing rate is mainly the business of Jews.”

“The housing shortage is the fault of the Jews.”

“The mask falls! They are the true masters in the USA!” A dire warning to anyone reading this flyer about the Jewish influence on American leadership under the Roosevelt administration.

“Do not give your vote to any list containing a Jew!”

Two caricatured Jews, posed to form a double-headed eagle (a symbol of Russian statehood) perched on a map of Russia.

Other Social Media Platforms

Along with mail, the Nazis had two other platforms from which to spread their hateful messages across Germany and beyond in the 1930s and 1940s. Periodicals like newspapers and magazines were one of them, and they deserve their own article — stay tuned for that. But the other was the radio, which Hitler used constantly to broadcast his messages of vitriolic hate.

Note the swastika above the dial on this radio. These would’ve been given out to German citizens(excluding Jewish people, who were not allowed to own radios) as a means to spread Nazi propaganda, growing and strengthening their network. The radio itself is made of Bakelite and still works today. I’ve used it myself to broadcast local Austin station KLBJ. (What would Hitler think of that?)

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Postage, flyer drops, and radio broadcasts may have been slower to spread than virtual likes and shares, but they were just as effective at spreading hateful political views. And as we look back on the way the Nazis used extremist messaging, obfuscation of truth, and sheer volume to build support for their atrocities, it’s easy to see how social media might present similar threats today if we aren’t vigilant about questioning what we see in our newsfeeds.

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