Single Review on past events

Fascist propaganda in the inter-war era (1922-1939) was omnipresent, both in Germany and Italy. Not only the films by Leni Riefenstahl or reports of the „Wochenschau“, showing speeches by Hitler or Mussolini, but also a wide range of commercials for radio and cinema were created to rally support for the regimes.

In her research, historian Bianca Gaudenzi focuses on commercial advertising in both countries in the inter-war years. Her talk carves out the multiple functions of politicised advertising and the strategies implemented by both fascist regimes to control and practice them. Italy and Germany had developed similar strategies to use and control the production and distribution of advertising. Several national boards and inspecting authorities were established by both regimes and displayed a growing entanglement, culminating in the establishment of the German-Italian Committee for Advertising in 1940.

Slogans like „Buy German bread to create jobs in Germany“ or its Italian counterpart “Do not take bread away from the sons of our workers – buy Italian” were used to support massive autarkic campaigns. Symbols, settings and pictures changed significantly from Golden Twenties to styles more suitable for both regimes, whose aesthetic requirements were however quite different. Fascist ideology and language were incorporated into everyday products, as in the case of a commercial for a big Berlin-based creamery, where bottles were shown marching and singing through the German capital. However, this was only one side of the story, as shown by Gaudenzi’s case study of women’s commercial representations. Here, “degenerate puppets” were not always replaced with “smiling Hitler girls with plaits” as wished by the dictatorship, as political and economic concerns were often in strong competition and conflicts of competences often characterized the everyday workings of both dictatorships.

The process of politicization further intensified with the beginning of World War II, when the political use of commercial advertising in order to support the regimes’ warmongering became even more visible. Cosmetics’ commercials now showed female workers in factories and labs, replacing soldiers at the front, and even the famous figure of Johanna, FeWa washing powder’s icon, was shown in a 4-minute commercial as she proudly presented her „Kriegsauftrag“ to produce more and more efficient washing powder for soldiers.