Sebastian Haffner plausibly reckoned that Hitler had succeeded by 1938 in winning the support

of "the great majority of that majority who had voted against him in 1933." Indeed Haffner
thought that by then Hitler had united almost the entire German people behind him, that more
than 90 percent of Germans were by that time "believers in the Fhrer." In the absence of any
genuine test of opinion, and in conditions of intimidation and repression for those who might
dare to challenge official propaganda, when the only public opinion which existed was that of the
regime's agencies, such a figure can only be guesswork, and is probably too high. At the same
time, it seems hard to deny that the regime had won much support since 1933, and that this owed
much to the perceived personal "achievements" of Hitler. The personalized focus of the regime's
"successes" reflected the ceaseless efforts of propaganda, which had been consciously directed to
creating and building up the "heroic" image of Hitler as a towering genius, to the extent that
Joseph Goebbels could in 1941 with some justification claim the creation of the Fhrer Myth to
have been his greatest propaganda achievement.
The propaganda image was never better summarized than by Hitler himself in his Reichstag
speech of 28 April 1939 (which Haffner also cited):
'By My Own Efforts'
"I overcame chaos in Germany, restored order, enormously raised production in all fields of our
national economy...I succeeded in completely resettling in useful production those 7 million
unemployed who so touched our hearts...I have not only politically united the German nation but
also rearmed it militarily, and I have further tried to liquidate that Treaty sheet by sheet whose
448 Articles contain the vilest rape that nations and human beings have ever been expected to

submit to. I have restored to the Reich the provinces grabbed from us in 1919; I have led millions
of deeply unhappy Germans, who have been snatched away from us, back into the Fatherland; I
have restored the thousand-year-old historical unity of German living space; and I have
attempted to accomplish all that without shedding blood and without inflicting the sufferings of
war on my people or any other. I have accomplished all this, as one who 21 years ago was still an
unknown worker and soldier of my people, by my own efforts..."
Hitler enjoyed widespread support in Germany.
The claim that the change in Germany's fortunes had been achieved single-handedly was, of
course, absurd. Fascinating, nevertheless, in this litany of what most ordinary Germans at the
time could only have seen as astonishing personal successes of the Fhrer, is that they
represented national "attainments" rather than reflecting central tenets of Hitler's own
Weltanschauung. There was not a word in this passage of the pathological obsession with
"removing" the Jews, or of the need for war to acquire living space. Restoration of order,
rebuilding the economy, removal of the scourge of unemployment, demolition of the restrictions
of the hated Versailles Treaty, and the establishment of national unity all had wide popular
resonance, ranging far beyond die-hard Nazis, appealing in fact in different ways to practically
every sector of society. Opinion surveys long after the end of the Second World War show that
many people, even then, continued to associate these "achievements" positively with Hitler.
Compared with the state of Germany six years earlier, it was hard for those listening to Hitler's
1939 speech, even many who had earlier opposed the Nazis, not to admit that Hitler had
accomplished something extraordinary. Few were clear-sighted or willing enough to analyze
what lay behind the "achievements," to reject the gross inhumanity on which Germany's

rebuilding had been founded, to perceive the undermining of governmental structures and
ruination of Reich finances that was taking place, above all, to comprehend the colossal risks for
the country's very existence involved in the regime's course of action. And few were in any
position to contradict the fundamental lie in the claim that Hitler had constantly endeavored to
avoid bloodshed and to spare his people (and others) the suffering of war. What for most
Germans in spring 1939 were aims in themselves, which Hitler appeared triumphantly to have
accomplished, were for Nazi leaders merely the platform for the war of racial-imperialist
conquest which they were preparing to fight.
But, however false their underlying basis, the claims in this speech point to areas of great success
in winning over the mass of the population to support for Hitler. With all the caveats that are
necessary for generalizations about approval, where those disapproving were mainly forced into
silence, it is surely not mistaken to speak of a wide-ranging consensus which the integrative
force of the Hitler Myth had cemented during the peace-time years of the dictatorship.