Everyone knows that propaganda played a major role in the Third Reich. One can debate the extent to which propaganda persuaded the German people to get behind the Nazi movement and to support its ideals through thick and thin. Also it is not certain whether negative propagandistic representations of Jews, communists, and other enemies of National Socialism were more or less effective than positive portrayals of German leaders, soldiers, and victories. There can be no doubt, however, that Adolf Hitler believed that propaganda was crucial to the success of the Nazi movement. Indeed, Hitler openly wrote about this in Mein Kampf, published years before he took power in Germany. Devoting an entire and sizable chapter to the subject under the title of “Propaganda and Organization,” Hitler began by stating, “The year 1921 had a special significance for me and the movement in many respects. After my entry in the German Workers' Party, I immediately took over the leadership of propaganda. I viewed this as the absolutely most important department at that moment.”

Before the publication of Daniel Uziel's The Propaganda Warriors, however, most people have assumed that the Nazi Propaganda Ministry led by Hitler's loyal and brilliant paladin Josef Goebbels had overwhelming control over the propagandistic images and strategies used in the Third Reich. Although Uziel's well-researched study does not dispute the importance or leadership of Goebbels and the Propaganda Ministry in propaganda matters, he demonstrates convincingly that the German military (Wehrmacht) not only played a major role in Nazi propaganda generally, but also created most of the images of battle and of Nazi Germany's foreign enemies that were presented to the German home front through a torrent of photographs and military reports published in German newspapers, film clips shown weekly in German movie houses, and even by a number of full-length films and novels.

Uziel's study examines a huge volume of evidence in providing perhaps the first comprehensive study of the propaganda troops, strategy, and overall effectiveness of German military propaganda during World War II. Actually Uziel's book is even more than a study of Wehrmacht propaganda in the Third Reich, for two of the book's eight chapters deal with the years before and after the Third Reich itself. In chapter two he examines the somewhat limited and only partially successful German military propaganda employed in the Kaiserreich and the Weimar Republic. Then, after four sizeable chapters that focus on military propaganda during the Third Reich, he examines the changing image of the Wehrmacht and its former propaganda troops from 1945 to the present.

Chapters three to six constitute the heart of his book. Here Uziel begins with a discussion of the organizational development of “propaganda companies” by the German military. The first of these were formed in September 1938 on the eve of the crisis over Czechoslovakia. Each of the original four propaganda companies had slightly more than one hundred men. In the next few years the propaganda troops grew in number and size, reaching a height of more than two hundred troops per company with a total of around 15,000 troops by late 1942. Large numbers of the propaganda troops were embedded with the different branches of the German military. Most of the propaganda troops were well trained in media matters even before they enlisted, highly resourceful, and voluntarily supportive of the Nazi movement. An unspecified, but presumably large number of the propaganda troops were members of the Nazi party. Their original task was to prepare the German population psychologically for war. Once the war began, they were given the prime task of boosting civilian and military morale by presenting positive images of German military men and battles and negative images of the Third Reich's enemies. Uziel argues that they were so effective in nearly all of their efforts that the military propaganda was often viewed more positively by the civilian population than the propaganda put out by Goebbels's Propaganda Ministry.

Uziel writes in a sober manner with a lack of polemics and theatrics. In addition, his book has little to do with theory in any direct way. Nevertheless, Uziel makes, intentionally or not, salient contributions to some of the most important explanations of the nature of the Third Reich. Included in this are the “Working Toward the Führer” argument of the Hitler expert Ian Kershaw (especially by demonstrating that the military propaganda units did not usually have to be told what images Hitler and Goebbels desired because they already intuited what these were and knew how to create them). Also Uziel's account in some ways contradicts the “polycratic state” argument of Martin Broszat and others about Nazi Germany being inefficient and chaotic, with overlapping jurisdictions, infighting, and incompetence on numerous levels. Simply put, Uziel portrays the “civilian” Propaganda Ministry and the military propaganda organization as working in efficient cooperation as opposed to being at loggerheads or in any way redundant. His book may flatter the competence of the German military during the Third Reich, but it also adds to the black eye it received in the postwar years, especially with the exhibition on the “Crimes of the Wehrmacht” that circulated through German cities in the mid to late 1990s and became a political hot potato.

Straightforward as Uziel's account reads, it does contain many intriguing passages on several topics. High points of the book are his depictions of the military propaganda effort during major military campaigns, especially the defeat of the German Sixth Army at Stalingrad. His analysis of the changing postwar images of the German military will also find considerable interest. Here he focuses on the Nuremberg and other postwar trials, and on the postwar veteran's associations and their publications (including those of the former members of the propaganda companies who often became leaders in the German media after the war). He also provides a lengthy account of the famous postwar movie Das Boot about German submarine warfare that originally began with two novels written during the war by Lothar-Günther Buchheim, a member of one of the military propaganda companies. Buchheim's original literary efforts morphed eventually into a number of postwar books, television series, and specials in addition to the famous movie appearing in 1981.

In sum, Uziel's book makes important contributions to the history of the German military, propaganda industry, and nature and memory of the Third Reich generally. Some readers might wonder why the issue of antisemitism was given rather limited space, even though Uziel states on page 142 that Goebbels “viewed the Jewish question as the second-sharpest propaganda arrow in Germany's quiver” next to anti-bolshevism. The reason for this is possibly that something like half of the German military's propaganda records have not survived. Still the records that do exist are enormous, such as the million and a half Wehrmacht photos stored in the German Federal Archive. These records will continue to remain prime sources for future images of the German military, the Third Reich, and World War II.