the audience is the thing.

Alice Hamilton makes note of the overwhelming powerlessness felt by much of the youth after World War I, and cites the lack of direction as the main reason that the youth were so susceptible to the propagandistic endeavors of both the Communists and the Nazis. Both of the factions appealed to these "insignificant, poverty-stricken, jobless youth of the slums" by inviting them to be part of a larger, grander design.
Kuhle Wampe and Hitlerjunge Quex are these groups' respective invitations, in a sense. With this in mind, when Hamilton says that Hitler's propaganda was "narrower and more concrete," I cannot help but to agree. Hitler's notion of the audience that he was seducing was more developed than the Communists'. This is evidenced by the sensational but easy to follow narrative of Quex, especially when compared to the more intellectual, and perhaps baffling series of events in Kuhle Wampe. Kuhle Wampe was on the edge- an avant-garde piece of cinematic artistry, but as is often true of the avant-garde, it was relatively inaccessible to the average person. That is to say that the propaganda of Hitler was more successful because it used modes that weren't new- Nazi propaganda uses the already established vocabulary to its own end, instead of inventing new modes, like the Communists. What good is propaganda if it is not accessible by the masses?