Ectoplasm

[davemarc]

Jan asks, "why did wartime propaganda pass up the obvious opportunity to
portray   
Uncle Adolf as a literal rather than a symbolic Satanist?"

I doubt that wartime propagadists really did give up that opportunity. 
Anybody?

David Casseres writes 
 
> Generally speaking, lots of motivation everywhere for a conspiracy of 
> silence -- not just about the occultism and the weird pseudoscience, but 
> about the death camps and many other examples of war against civilian 
> population -- Why? because apart from overstepping the bounds of 
> international propriety for a recently defeated nation, the Third Reich 
> was a marvelous laboratory where They could see all sorts of fascinating 
> ideas tried out, just as Fascist Spain had earlier been a laboratory for 
> the Nazis -- and for Them.  Quite a lot of the Nazis' program looked 
> pretty good to Business as Usual, actually (even that 
> Rassenwissenschaft!), so there was no profit in painting them as a bunch 
> of wackoes and sadists and genocidal mass-murderers.  It would have 
> detracted from the main order of business, which was to get these clowns 
> back in line and working for Them as they were supposed to in the first 
> place.

There was plenty of profit in depicting Nazis and their allies as wackoes,
sadists, and genocidal mass-murderers.  There's loads of evidence that they
were portrayed this way--just look at wartime comic books.  The suppression
of evidence of death camps is puzzling in many ways, but I think it does an
injustice to the nations that fought the Nazis to claim outright that they
were fascinated by what went on in concentration camps.  That's much easier
to post than to prove.

Cheers,

davemarc