Sigmund Freud's nephew Edward Bernays (1891-1995), also known as the "Father of Spin", has designed PR campaigns for politicians and companies such as General Motors, Procter & Gamble and American Tobacco. He was a member of the Creel Committee, and helped President Woodrow Wilson propagandize in support of allied war aims during World War I.

Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels praised Bernays work saying it was the blueprint for the Nazis taking control. He used Bernays ideas to create a "Fuhrer cult" around Adolph Hitler. Goebbels was inspired by two of Bernays early works: Crystallizing Public Opinion and Propaganda. Here are a few passages from the book Propaganda:
"If we understand the mechanism and motives of the group mind, is it not possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing about it?" (Page 71)

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country." (Page 37)

"It might be better to have, instead of propaganda and special pleading, committees of wise men who would choose our rulers, dictate our conduct, private and public, and decide upon the best types of clothes for us to wear and the best kinds of food for us to eat." (Page 37)

"Who are the men, who, without our realizing it, give us our ideas, tell us whom to admire and whom to despise, what to believe about the ownership of public utilities .. about immigration who tell us how our houses should be designed, what furniture we should put into them, what menus we should serve at our table, what kind of shirts we must wear, what sports we should indulge in, what plays we should see, what charities we should support, what pictures we should admire, what slang we should affect, what jokes we should laugh at?" (Page 59)

Bernays referred to this process as the "engineering of consent." It provided the government, corporations, and the media with tools for social persuasion and control.

"Why of course the people don't want war ... But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship ... Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger." - Hermann Goering, Nazi leader, at the Nuremberg Trials after World War II

Through clever and constant application of propaganda, people can be made to see paradise as hell, and also the other way around, to consider the most wretched sort of life as paradise. - Adolf Hitler (Mein Kampf)