Disinformation and the Illustrierter Beobachter, 1926–1945

FAIN: FEL-288595-23

Daniel Howard Magilow
University of Tennessee, Knoxville (Knoxville, TN 37916-3801)

Research and writing leading to a book on the Nazi party’s official press organ, Illustrated Observer, and on techniques of disinformation in German print media (1926-1945).

In interwar Germany, photographically illustrated magazines informed and entertained much as television and the internet do today and were equally popular. Millions of copies circulated each week. Yet surprisingly, there exists no complete account of one of the most influential titles that was also a key space of misinformation and disinformation: the Illustrierter Beobachter (Illustrated Observer), the official illustrated magazine of the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. This project offers a much-needed corrective. In a manner that sheds light on strategies of contemporary media disinformation, this study shows how this enormously consequential tabloid paradoxically copied the cosmopolitan and modernist-inspired visual style of politically mainstream titles to advance anti-modern, anti-Enlightenment, and anti-democratic ideas.