2 - Germany in Lectures and Pamphlets

Summary

Chapter 2 describes the images of Germany in Japanese lectures and pamphlets. Lecturers and pamphleteers propagated their opinions on Germany to specific social classes. Lecturers spoke to elite circles, while pamphleteers wrote for the reading masses. The two audiences’ perspectives were reflected in the different receptions of Germany and Nazism by lectures and pamphlets. These attitudes evolved in three phases. First, during the 1920s, expert lecturers reacquainted listeners with Germany after war, revolution, democratization, and economic chaos. Then, from 1930 and coinciding with Hitler’s ascent, transnational Nazism began to spread as writers and speakers became enthralled with the man, his ideology, and his actions. Populist pamphleteers emerged from obscurity and conservative lecturers abandoned previous reservations to advocate aspects of Nazism and Japanese-German solidarity. Finally, between 1936 and 1937, as diplomacy caught up with opinion makers’ agitation for Japanese-German entente, pamphleteers and lecturers converged to rally around officialdom and exploited the remaining latitude in speech and association to trumpet the Anti-Comintern Pact.