The following is just a little bit from a paper I wrote awhile ago about the influence of Nazi propaganda on the german people in the prewar and war years. I didn't address the Weimar republic specifically, but it should still address your question.
Prior to the Nazi takeover of Germany, the nation had been suffering deeply. An economic depression, large-scale unemployment, and the shame of losing World War I had put Germany in a dark place. The Nazi’s were incredibly aware of this, and their propaganda at the time reflected a need to reunite the German people. Propaganda appealed to national pride, and putting ones country before themselves. Of course, a strong united people needed a leader that was just as strong, and the “myth of Hitler” would create that leader. Slogans like “One People, one Fuhrer, one Reich!” promoted national unity, and a Wochenspruch from February 1938 states, “The greatest of all sacrifices is to give one’s life to preserve the existence of the community.” Leni Riefenstahl’s Triumph of the Will comes from this time period and helps form the mythological image of Hitler. Propaganda also focused on the good the Nazi party was doing. It discussed how well the Nazi welfare system was working, newsreels showed happy German people enjoying the benefits of the Nazi regime.
It is often said that nothing brings people together like a common enemy, and the Nazi’s knew this. The Jew and the communist would become this collective punching bag. The Nazi’s were convinced of an international conspiracy to “exterminate— that is, to kill— all the German people.” The Jews were the cause of all the recent suffering of the German people. Any world events that pointed away from this conspiracy, such as removal of England’s Jewish secretary of state for war, was painted in a manner as to make the Jewish people look incompetent. The simultaneously belief that the Jews were organizing and international conspiracy against the Germans, while at the same time being totally incompetent, was a feature of Nazi propaganda for the whole of their reign.
Magazines like Der Stuermer used anti-Semitic cartoons and essays to further the point that the Jew was the enemy of the German people. One comic reads, “The Jew’s symbol is a worm, not without reason. He seeks to creep up on what he wants.” A lead article from July of 1933 lays out evidence of the Jewish conspiracy and calls for the extermination of all Jews.
The effect of all of these campaigns on public opinion is a question still pondered by historians. Public opinion polls were just recently coming into wide spread use, and there were no independent sources taking the opinion of the German people. The records we do have come from various groups including the Gestapo, the SD, the local governments and the judiciary. These reports would be read by many of the higher up officials in order to accurately gauge public mood. We can also look at accounts from German’s during the time period in order to fully understand the affect propaganda had on their lives and beliefs.
Reading accounts from common German’s in Eric Johnson’s book What We Knew a few thing about the effectiveness of these campaigns become clear. First of all, the effort by the ministry of propaganda to unite the people and inform them of the positive effects of the Nazi regime seems to have worked. Many witnesses say that they and the people around them were excited for the future of Germany. Helga Schmidt states “We were at first wild with enthusiasm about the Nazi regime.” Erwin Hammel says that in the beginning years of the war, “We even thought, that as Germans, we were invincible. … Everyone was happy to be a soldier. They felt like members of the master race.” Rolf Heberer’s interview is the most insightful when it comes to just how effective the propaganda was, “The propaganda had prepared the people so that when the war broke out they were in favor of it.” He cites the argument of Nazi propagandists “Where ever there are Germans, they have to come back into the Reich.” This argument, he says, convinced the people of the need to invade Czechoslovakia. “We then heard on the radio that the Germans had marched into Czechoslovakia and the people were all for it. There was nobody who said this was wrong.” He then goes on to reiterate
“The great majority of the population had been prepared (for war). Goebbels was the best propagandist there ever was. When he spoke, people were ecstatic. The population that eventually lost house and home were later no longer ecstatic. That was at the end of the war. But in 1945, 1935, 1936, it was completely different. At that time they were all ecstatic.”
What does not seem to have worked so well is propaganda’s attempt to draw up intense hatred of Jews from the German population. The first major evidence of this failure is seen in the public’s reaction to Kristallnacht. The pogrom was painted as a spontaneous uprising of the German population against the Jews in retaliation of the shooting of a Nazi official. In fact, Nazi party officials had organized it and many of the participators were Nazi storm troopers. The public approval of the pogrom was incredibly low. One interviewee says that when he asked his boss, a Nazi party member, what he thought of the pogrom, his boss responded that he too could not approve of it. Kristallnacht would be the last public pogrom in Germany as the Nazi’s were making an effort to not upset the German people. It is also evident from Johnson’s book that many German citizens viewed magazines like Der Stuermer with a certain disgust. Herbert Lutz refers to it as “the National Enquirer equivalent in the Nazi Party.”
Films like Jud Suess and Der Erwige Jude were also produced, but for a majority of the public, one anti-Semitic film was enough. According to Welch, “The public’s reaction to anti-Semitic films reveals that propaganda had considerable success in persuading the population that a Jewish ‘problem’ existed, but equally that there was a limit to their tolerance of the type of virulently anti-Semitic propaganda to be found in films like Der Ewige Jude and publications like Der Stuermer.” Even after years of Nazi propaganda, even Goebbels wasn’t convinced that “such propaganda had persuaded Germans to condone open violence against Jews.”
As the war waged on, and it became clearer and clearer that Germany was going to lose, the public became increasingly disinterested in the message of Nazi propaganda, instead turning to the allies to receive their radio news. Many Germans in Johnson’s book reported getting their news from the BBC. Hitler and Goebbels made many efforts to win back the attention of the German public and boost their moral, believing that this could significantly help the Germans win the war. At one point in 1945, while soviet troops were crossing the East Prussian border, troops were pulled from the front in order to shoot a propaganda film. Hitler and Goebbels both believed that a film would be more useful than a military victory. Even up to the final days before Hitler and Goebbels would commit suicide, propaganda was there ensuring the people that victory would come.
Victory would not come for the German people. No amount of propaganda was going to help the Germans get more oil, or build more weaponry. What propaganda did do was lead a misguided German public into a war that they truly believed they would win. It is clear though that the ability of Nazi propaganda to convince German’s to take up violent actions against the Jews has been vastly overestimated, nor was extreme public outrage at the Jews needed in order for Hitler and the top Nazi officials to carry out their final solution. As long as they could keep the public content, and convinced that there was a Jewish problem, they would be able to commit their atrocious crimes.
Also, the sources I consulted:
Welch, David. The Third Reich: Politics and Propaganda. Routledge, 1993.
Bergen, Doris L. War and Genocide. Roman and Littlefield publishers, 2009 Bytwerk, Randall. Nazi Propaganda 1933-1945. http://research.calvin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/ww2era.htm.
Herf, Jeffery. Jewish Enemy : Nazi Propaganda during World War II and the Holocaust. . Harvard University Press, 2006.
Hitler, Adolf. Mein Kampf.
Johnson, Eric, and Karl-Heinz Reuband. What We Knew: Terror, Mass Murder, and Every Day Life in Nazi Germany . Basic Books, 2005.
Johnson, Eric, Nazi Terror: The Gestapo, Jews and Ordinary Germans. Basic Books, 2000