mimi...not a valid comparison, in my opinion. People live much longer today on the average. Before Bernays ever entered the scene, it's not as if people were somehow more health conscious. We see people having health problems more because there are more people, and people are living longer. Bernays wasn't the direct cause of our modern bad health habits. Hitler's ordering the slaughter of 6 million human beings was a direct cause. I don't think it's a fair comparison.

This whole series is very interesting. From the beginnings of what is know as psychology today and how the government used such new liberal sciences as they learned more about human behavior and how to manipulate it into the consumerism and self-centered market it is today.
The series goes onto show how large corporations also learned of this and came out with new marketing campaigns to play at the "want" chords of americans. That is the house we just have to have and the "our neighbor has a nice big car, why can't we" mentality.

After viewing part one, I am led to believe that Edward Bernays is comparable to Hitler. He manipulated women to start smoking and used psychology to influence people into consumerism which is the basis of much of our pollution, obesity and health problems in North America today. As a result of this he is probably responsible for the death of many more people than Hitler but at least he wasn't zeroing in on specific groups based on predudism; he included - democratically- all people in his "final solution". And he got rich while doing it. Vive America!