Marketing the Third Reich

<p>In this fascinating volume Nicholas O’Shaughnessy elucidates the phenomenon of the Nazi propaganda machine via the perspective of consumer marketing conceptualising the Reich as a product campaign. Building on his acclaimed <i>Selling Hitler </i>(2016) he uses marketing scholarship to show how propaganda and political marketing existed not merely as an instrument of government in Nazi Germany but as the very medium of government itself.</p><p>Marketing the Third Reich explores the insidious connection between a mass culture and a political movement and how the cultures of consumption and politics influence and infect each other – consumerised politics and politicised consumption. Ultimately its concern is with the ‘engineering of consent’ – the troubling matter of how public opinion can be manufactured and governments elected via sophisticated methodologies of persuasion developed in the consumer economy. Nazism functioned as a brand packaging almost everything with persuasive purpose.</p><p>Revealing obvious parallels between Adolf Hitler’s use of the living theatre of politics and our present public–political dramaturgy between Nazi lies and our post-truth the book raises the chilling question: was Hitler ahead of his time? This radical original in-depth study will be an invaluable resource for all scholars of marketing history political marketing propaganda and history.</p>