NAZI Fairy Tales

Why the NAZIs liked Fairy Tales


Family Goebbels visited Hitler, Obersalzberg 1938
Attribution: Bundesarchiv, Bild 183-1987-0724-502 / Heinrich Hoffmann / CC-BY-SA 3.0


It is scary to know that Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda, demagogue and mass-murderer, liked to read fairy tales to his children.

On April 10, 1937 he wrote in his diary: I read fairy tales to Helga and Hilde [two of his six children]. Oh, these fairy tales from the Brothers Grimm are just so gorgeous.

And it is even scarier to know that at the end of the war, he and his wife killed their 6 children, followed by their own suicide.

Goebbels himself once tried to write a [kitschy] fairy tale (1918).

So, what was it that he liked these fairy tales so much? As we will see later, his favorite writers were the Brothers Grimm and some of their collected (and re-written or polished) fairy tales became very useful for his antisemitic purposes and NAZI propaganda.

                    Jacob Ludwig Karl Grimm (1785-1863) and Wilhelm Carl Grimm (1786-1859). 

By Hermann Blow - [1], Public Domain, Date: 1847;  https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=78917236, for the US {{PD-US}} 


The NAZIs (mis)used the Grimm’s Fairy Tales (or NAZI modifications thereof) for nationalistic and racist (i.e. antisemitic) ‘education’. They were heavily used in children’s textbooks, widely broadcasted over the radio and shown in family-friendly entertaining movies. 


Kinder und Hausmärchen -  by the Brothers Grimm. Wikimedia Commons, CC BY


Aryan Fairy Tales

The Grimm Brothers were considered Aryan and their fairy tales regarded as ‘typically German/Deutsch’. Their collected and edited (or newly written) tales met the NAZI demand for clean, idealistic stories that promulgated NAZI Germany’s ideals of heroism, Vaterlandstreue (loyalty to the ‘fatherland’), and the value of family – and, of course also the humble devotion of the female heroes. These fairy tales (so the NAZIs believed) transported the ‘original Germanic/German mythos’ and ‘volkish’ values and therefore needed to be broadcasted over the radio and taught in school.

Radio Proaganda

Radio, newspapers  and films were the perfect tools for the cruel demagogue and psychopathic exterminator Goebbels. 

Year of Manufacture 1933 - Volksempfänger VE301W (literally ‘people’sreceiver’). Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0) // https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ve301w.jpg 


Nazi Loot Scheme

Goebbels wrote in 1933:

Ich halte den Rundfunk für das allermordernste und für das allerwichtigste Massenbeeinflussungsinstrument, das es überhaupt gibt. [I consider radio broadcasting to be the most modern and most important instrument for influencing the masses that exists.]

The Third Reich propagandists took advantage of typical Fairy Tales tropes: sense of community, loyalty, bravery, courage, a thirst for adventure and a willingness to fight. Since Fairy Tales often deal with good vs. evil, they fit well into the NAZIs ‘loot scheme’.


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