World War II ... Never before propaganda had been as important as in the 2nd World War. From now on education was one more field of propaganda: its purpose was to teach how to think, while pure propaganda was supposed to show what to think. Every nation founded at least one ministry of propaganda - of course without calling it that way. For example the British called it the Ministry of Information (= MOI), the U.S. distinguished between the Office of Strategic Services (= OSS) and the Office of War Information (= OWI), the Germans created a Ministry of Propaganda and Public Enlightenment (= RMVP) and the Japanese called their disinformation and propaganda campaign the "Thought War". British censorship was so strict that the text of an ordinary propaganda leaflet, that had been dropped from planes several million times, was not given to a journalist who asked for it. Atrocity stories were no longer used the same way as in the 1st World War. Instead, black propaganda was preferred, especially to separate the Germans from their leaders. German war propaganda had started long before the war. In the middle of the 1930s Leni Riefenstahl filmed Hitler best propaganda movies. For the most famous one, "Triumph of the Will" (1935), she was the only professional filmier who was allowed to make close-up pictures of her admirer. Some of the pictures of fear, hatred and intolerance still exist in people's heads. Considering this propaganda did a good job, unfortunately it was the anti-national-socialist propaganda that failed at that time.

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Movies as a Propaganda- and Disinformation-Tool in World War I and II Movies produced in Hollywood in 1918/19 were mainly anti-German. They had some influence but the bigger effect was reached in World War II-movies. The first propaganda movie of World War II was British. At that time all films had to pass censoring. Most beloved were entertaining movies with propaganda messages. The enemy was shown as a beast, an animal-like creature, a brutal person without soul and as an idiot. Whereas the own people were the heroes. That was the new form of atrocity. Leni Riefenstahl was a genius in this respect. Her movies still have an incredible power, while the majority of the other movies of that time look ridiculous today. The combination of light and shadow, the dramatic music and the mass-scenes that resembled ballet, had its effect and political consequences. Some of the German movies of that period still are on the index. U.S.-President Theodore Roosevelt considered movies the best propaganda-instrument, as they are more subtle than other tools. In the late twenties, movies got more and more important, in the USSR, too, like Sergei Eisenstein demonstrated with his movies. Historic events were changed into symbolism, exactly the way propaganda should function. It was disinformation - but in its most artistic form, especially in comparison to most U.S.- and European movies of that time.

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NATO The North Atlantic Treaty was signed in Washington on 4 April 1949, creating NATO (= North Atlantic Treaty Organization). It was an alliance of 12 independent nations, originally committed to each other's defense. Between 1952 and 1982 four more members were welcomed and in 1999, the first ex-members of COMECON became members of NATO (the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland), which makes 19 members now. Around its 50th anniversary NATO changed its goals and tasks by intervening in the Kosovo Crisis.

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