denazify Germany, democratize Germany, and to diminish the influence of the USSR as a competitor for German resources.
             US propaganda, as a political tool to shape anti-nazi and pro-democratic attitudes amongst the German people, was justifiable-even though propaganda is an undemocratic means of shaping opinion. The "end", human rights, is the justifier of the political use of propaganda "means" in this particular use. In this same sense, however, the anti-communist propaganda is not justifiable because it denied the German people the chance to choose between a socialist or capitalist economic system and not necessarily the protection or promotion of individual human rights. The United States' government use of propaganda is always a problem, no matter how justified, because it interferes with- and the people's right to choose for themselves, which is a basic tenet of democracy
             The US Military Government and the Information Control Department's (ICD) use of propaganda as a political tool during the occupation was motivated "with the intention of fostering open, rational debate on society, politics and culture, to shape a democratic society" in Germany (Hartenian 352). The denazification of Germany was to "ensure a rational transformation of German political affairs... [because] the rejection of Nazism was conceived as the first step in the reconstitution of Germany (Hartenian 37)." The proposed aim in the denazification during the first months after the war of the propaganda campaign in Germany was to have the people realize their "collective guilt. (Hartenian)" The Germans had to realize their role as the instigator of WWII and regret playing this role. In a memo to Harold Guinzburg, Chief Overseas Publications Bureaus, from Norman Cousins, he states that the propaganda must "establish a cause and effect relationship between Nazism, the war, and Germany&ap...