Nobody knew better than Goebbels that a Propaganda Ministry was almost a contradiction in terms. Propaganda is the more effective the less people kno… - Curt Riess

'We will never get anywhere,' Goebbels wrote, perhaps remembering his discussions with Fledges, 'if we lean on the interests of the cultured and propertied classes. Everything will come to us if we appeal to the hunger and despair of the masses.'

Only in exceptional cases have the Nazis ever used German citizens or former German citizens as agents in the United States. This is only logical. A man or a woman with a German accent would have small chance indeed of convincing a gathering of even the most stupid people that, in advocating America’s isolationism or withdrawal from the war now, he is motivated solely by patriotic feelings for America.

If the German Propaganda Ministry is trying to tell the world that there is even the slightest bit of liberty left to the editors in making up their newspapers, the newspapers themselves belie this completely. It is astonishing, to say the least, to what degree they resemble each other. On any one date all of them, in Germany and in the occupied countries, carry exactly the same headlines, talk about the same subjects. Of course, I am not referring to the news of the day. It is only natural that all of them should carry the news of the day or whatever is handed out as the news of the day over there. But the similarity extends even to general subjects, to subjects which are not timely, which could be published today or tomorrow or in four weeks or not at all.