Informatologia, Vol. 47 No. 2-3, 2014.
Original scientific paper
PROPAGANDA IN THE PRESS AND THE FORMATION OF PUBLIC OPINION: POLITICAL AND WARTIME GOALS OF THE USTASHA GOVERNMENT AND THE THIRD REICH IN THE PRESS OF THE INDEPENDENT STATE OF CROATIA AT THE END OF WORLD WAR 2
Alan Labus
; B A Krčelić College of Business and Management, Zaprešić, Croatia
Abstract
Based on the primary documentary sources of the Croatian State Archives (CSA), the Fonds of the Foreign Ministry of the Independent State of Croatia (ISC) and the Croatian Information Bureau “Croatia”, as well as information found in daily and periodical newspapers printed from late 1944 to May 1945, the author analyzes the content of the ISC press regarding foreign and domestic politics and war issues. Comparing political orders and dictations to newspaper editors with a large number of articles and the actual situation at the European battlefronts of that time, the author concludes that Ustasha propaganda, supported by the Third Reich, significantly influenced the formation of public opinion in the ISC at the end of World War II. From the sources available, it is now obvious that the majority of the ISC population was fully aware that the Third Reich, as well as its satellite states, had lost the war but the atmosphere which was deliberately created by the Ustasha authorities in the ISC caused a mass exodus in early May 1945 nevertheless.
Keywords
propaganda; the Independent State of Croatia (the ISC); the Third Reich; newspapers; public opinion
Hrčak ID:
125803
URI
Publication date:
8.8.2014.
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