Next to Goebbels, Himmler was the foremost connoisseur of Russian methods in the Nazi Party. But while the great propagandist was concerned mainly wi… - Curt Riess

The thing that strikes you most: there is very little war news in German-controlled papers. There are, to be sure, all the notices of promotions: the new generals, the new commanders. There are also items listing decorations conferred for some distinguished service or other. And there are a lot of what they call in Europe feuilletons, colorful and gossipy essays or think pieces which have to do with the war. But there is precious little news. There are some very good reportages on the life at the front or in U-boats or in bombers, and some good photos. The Germans were always good at that. But when it comes down to actual information, if you really want to know something—you don’t get much.

In a number of contributions published in the Voelkischer Beobachter [Goebbels] celebrated Lenin as the national liberator of his country. ‘The Soviet system does not endure because it is Bolshevist or Marxist or international, but because it is national—because it is Russian,’ he wrote to a leftist friend. ‘No Czar has ever aroused the national passion of the Russian people as Lenin did.’

'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.'