More stuff about history from me (the 3rd Reich this time) lol

As I often do, I was looking at Wikipedia last night, and happened to be reading the (English language) article about nazi propaganda minister Josef Goebels. I guess my initial reaction is that it is strange that there is a "propaganda minister". This isn't an office that to my knowledge has any specific equivalent to any other time period or government I know about, or at least in such an obvious manner, which is my main point. The definition of propaganda is that it is something that is designed to coerce or convince in a devious or false manner, so that the people who consume it develop an understanding of reality. Therefore to so blatantly state that something is propaganda could possibly undermine it's effectiveness, because any reasonably intelligent person could see that it's BS. (in the case of some propaganda this is evident anyway, but that's another argument). So why then did they have this office of "Reich propaganda minister"? perhaps it was not necessary to be so secretive, because the threat of physical harm or violence (or at least unemployment) was sufficient to keep people in line. As a side note: with the article (or a link from it) there was a picture of Goebells with his family. I guess he his wife had had a son from a previous marriage or affair and this son was included in the portrait wearing a military uniform. I didn't look at the image carefully, but read the caption which stated that his image was cut and pasted into the photo. I looked more carefully and laughed out loud when I saw it, because it was so obvious. He was dressed completely different, he did not interact with any of the other people, his pose and expression was different and even his picture was more formal than the other less relaxed and expressive people. It looked almost parodic, like a bad photoshop from "the Onion". I think something like this technique was also used during Stalin's purges to make people disappear from people's memory (in this case they were removed though). I think also laughed out loud when I saw some of those pictures...

Trust me I'm not so easily duped by present day propaganda either. I've seen those BP ads and the picture of Bush looking real determined and resolved that was on the cover of Time magazine. And Obama gazing hopefully into the future, his head turned upward looking I guess to a point in space above his head to the right. And the Marine corps "fire monsters" in their ads. lol.