Volume II – The Seeds of Hate
Chapter 9 – The Birth of Modern Propaganda
The nineteenth century had given Europe railroads, factories, and revolutions. But by the dawn of the twentieth, it had also given the world a new weapon; propaganda.
No longer confined to whispers in taverns or sermons in churches, hatred now traveled by ink and paper. Cheap newspapers, caricatures, pamphlets, and posters carried prejudice to every home, every café, every train station. With every headline, with every cartoon, suspicion was reinforced, hatred normalized, and lies became truth.
It was not enough for antisemitism to exist in private hearts. The modern age demanded that it be broadcast, dramatized, and sold like any other commodity.
The Echo of the Dreyfus Affair
The Dreyfus Affair had shown the power of the press. France had split in two not simply because of a trial, but because newspapers made the trial a battlefield. One day, headlines screamed "Jewish Traitor Exposed!"; the next, rival papers cried "Justice Denied!".
Caricatures of Dreyfus as a hook-nosed schemer appeared in shop windows. Broadsheets warned of a global Jewish conspiracy. Street pamphlets proclaimed that France was betrayed not by one man, but by an entire people.
For Europe, the Affair was a lesson: propaganda could shape nations. For Jews, it was proof that truth was fragile, easily drowned in ink. And for Adolf Hitler, growing into adolescence, it was one of the first demonstrations of how words could move masses.
The Jewish Experience of Propaganda
In Warsaw, the Asimovs learned to dread the papers. Each week, new articles accused Jews of controlling banks, stealing Christian children, or undermining governments. Yasha Asimov folded the sheets with trembling hands. "A lie repeated enough overtime becomes truth," he muttered bitterly.
In Odessa, the Zuckerbergs watched how caricatures inflamed the mobs before pogroms. "They draw us like rats," Sarah Zuckerberg whispered, holding her children close. "And when the people see rats, they come with clubs."
Even in Vienna, the Abramovich family could not escape. At the market, Jewish merchants were mocked with pamphlets portraying them as greedy parasites. Isaac Abramovich kept one such cartoon hidden in a drawer, not as entertainment but as warning: "This is what they think of us. This is what they teach their children."
The Kellers and the Comfort of Lies
In Munich, the Keller household welcomed propaganda like old scripture. Karl Keller subscribed to papers that ran antisemitic columns daily. He read them aloud at the table, his voice booming with approval.
"See this, Friedrich?" he laughed, waving a pamphlet. "They show the Jew as a snake coiling around the globe. And what does the snake do but strangle? They print the truth for all to see."
Friedrich, impressionable and eager to please, devoured every line. For him, propaganda was not manipulation; it was revelation. It confirmed what his father had always told him. It gave his prejudice pictures, slogans, and authority.
Where Jews saw lies, the Kellers saw truth. Where Jews felt fear, the Kellers felt vindication. Thus propaganda deepened the divide, cementing hatred into daily life.
Adolf in Linz
In Linz, young Adolf Hitler was not yet the man who would command nations, but already he was a boy who loved to read, to imagine, to brood. He spent long hours alone, sketching, daydreaming, drifting through books of history and mythology.
But in the streets and cafés of Linz, he also absorbed the chatter of the age. Newspapers displayed lurid cartoons of Jews as grasping bankers or conniving traitors. Pamphlets warned of a Jewish threat to German culture. Preachers thundered against "the foreign race" corrupting society.
Adolf listened. He watched. He remembered.
Later, when he moved to Vienna, he would plunge fully into this world, devouring pamphlets by antisemites like Georg Ritter von Schönerer and Karl Lueger, mayor of Vienna, who used propaganda as a weapon of politics. But even in Linz, the foundations were already laid.
The lesson was simple: words could move nations. Words could make neighbors hate, mobs riot, soldiers obey. Adolf learned that the pen and the picture could wield more power than the sword.
The Mechanics of Hatred
Propaganda succeeded because it simplified. It took the complexities of politics and reduced them to one symbol: the Jew.
Economic crisis? Blame the Jew.
Military defeat? Blame the Jew.
Moral decay? Blame the Jew.
Political corruption? Blame the Jew.
Every problem had one face, one enemy. And when that lie was printed in bold letters, repeated day after day, it began to feel like truth.
This was the genius of propaganda: it made hatred simple, and simplicity was seductive.
Adolf Hitler, the boy who struggled with discipline and success in school, found in such simplicity a strange comfort. The world was confusing, filled with failures and frustrations. But if propaganda was to be believed, it was not his fault, not Austria's fault, not Germany's fault. It was the fault of the Jew.
That narrative would one day become the very foundation of his ideology.
The Jewish Covenant Under Siege
Even as propaganda darkened Europe, Jewish families clung to their covenant.
On Sabbath evenings, in Warsaw, the Asimovs lit candles and prayed, even after their shop windows were smashed by mobs stirred by propaganda. In Vienna, the Abramovich family whispered psalms in Hebrew, affirming their faith even as pamphlets called them parasites.
What outsiders saw as stubborn separation was, for Jews, an act of survival. They could not abandon their identity because it was not merely tradition; it was covenant. They believed that to forsake it was to forsake the very thing that had kept them alive through centuries of exile.
Propaganda could distort, could incite, but it could not erase the bond. The more they were caricatured as "different," the more they leaned into the covenant that made them so.
Adolf's Awakening
By the turn of the century, Adolf Hitler was entering his teenage years. His father was dead, his mother doted on him, and he grew increasingly restless. He dreamed of art, of greatness, of destiny.
And around him, propaganda whispered a story: that Jews were the obstacle, the corrupters, the hidden enemy.
He did not yet have the words. He did not yet have the platform. But the seed had been planted. He had seen how propaganda could make millions believe. He had felt its power in his own imagination.
Later, in Mein Kampf, he would write:
"All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most limited intelligence among those it is addressed to."
That conviction did not emerge in a vacuum. It was born in these years, when Adolf was learning, through osmosis, that propaganda could define reality itself.
In a Summary
The birth of modern propaganda was the birth of a new battlefield. No longer fought only with armies, hatred now marched through newspapers, posters, and pamphlets.
For Jews, it meant enduring lies that sparked violence against them. For the Kellers, it meant reassurance that their suspicions were justified. For Herzl and others, it meant urgency to create a homeland where propaganda could not dictate their fate.
And for Adolf Hitler, still a boy in Linz, it meant awakening. The lesson of his youth was not only that Jews were despised, but that words could make them despised, that propaganda could turn prejudice into policy, suspicion into violence, and lies into destiny.
The storm was still gathering. But now, Hitler had glimpsed its first weapon.