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Persuasive?
Author: Josh Wilmoth
http://hubpages.com/education/Adolf-Hitlers-Tremendous-Persuasive-Ability
propaganda. Nevertheless, in July 1921 Hitler was made party leader and began to hold weekly
meetings, during which he gave speeches that were eventually attended by thousands of people,
including several men who would eventually become infamous Nazi leaders.
Two years later, Hitler was involved in an unsuccessful rebellion against the government and was
jailed for nine months (Adolf Hitler, pars. 5-8). It was during this imprisonment that Hitler wrote the
first volume of Mein Kampf (My Struggle), his autobiography and statement of political philosophy.
This book was very influential in spreading his idea of the master race, and by 1939, 5,200,000
copies had been sold (Mein Kampf, paras. 1-3). After he was released from prison, Hitler
reestablished himself in the Nazi party and eventually ran for president in 1932. Although he lost, he
received over thirty-five percent of the votes and was appointed to the chancellorship in 1933. Hitler
quickly gained more power; following the death of the president the following year, he assumed the
presidency in addition to the chancellorship, giving him absolute power. Thus, Hitler became a
dictator. (Adolf Hitler, pars. 8-17).
Hitler and the Nazi Party treated the German people as if they were one entity, because
individuals are rational, think for themselves, and are concerned about their own well-being;
whereas groups are unintelligent and easily persuaded. Sigmund Freud stated that groups tend
to have the characteristics of weakness of intellectual ability,lack of emotional
restraint,...incapacity for moderation and delay, [and] the inclination to exceed every limit in the
expression of emotion. Freud went on to say that groups show an unmistakable picture of a
regression of mental activity to an earlier stage such aschildren (qtd. in Bosamajian 69).
Hitler used this understanding of groups to strategically manipulate the German people.
Hitler and the Nazis recognized that if the German people had a group mentality they would
be much more receptive to Nazi ideology and propaganda. To reinforce this mindset in the
German people, or Volk, the Nazis held events that required mass participation and did not invite
individuality, such as parades, mass meetings, semi-religious rituals, [and] festivals (Boasmajian
70). Anyone who did not openly participate or share the emotion of the rest of the crowd was easily
identified and dealt with by either the crowd itself or by security personnel. One did not even have to
be resistant or cause a disturbance to be viewed as subversive; indifference alone was enough to
infuriate the crowd (Bosamajian 69-70).
Freud said that a crowd demands strength or even violence of its leaders: It wants to be ruled and
oppressed and to fear its master (70). Hitler and the Nazis fulfilled this psychological need by
infusing the Volk with the idea that the Nazi Party was strong and powerful, and thus, to the feeble
mind of the crowd, trustworthy. This was accomplished through a myriad of ways, some obvious and
others subtle. One of the most overt ways that Hitler conveyed a sense of strength and power was
through his speeches, during which he would yell and wave his arms violently. The Nazis displayed
strength through demonstrations of military might. During the frequent military parades, the army
would march with its distinctive goose-step walk. The Heil salute made famous by the Nazis added
to their powerful image, as did Hitlers title, Der Fhrer, which meant the leader. Some of the more
subtle ways that strength was portrayed include the excessive use of common Nazi symbols such as
the eagle, the swastika, and trigger words such as sword, fire, and blood (Bosamajian 70).
Hitlers inordinate use of trigger words helped him to maintain the support and attention of his
audiences and allowed them to get exceedingly excited about his speeches. These words added to
Hitlers tactics of persuasion by creating word association. When referring to Germany, he used
words that conveyed strength. When speaking about enemy nations or about Jews and Marxists, he
used words that alluded to weakness, his favorite of which was pacifist; he used this term to refer to
anything and everything that he disagreed with. To Hitler, pacifism was the ultimate sign of weakness
(Bosamajian 71).
Another technique Hitler employed in his speeches was the either-or fallacy. By creating a false
dilemma in the mind of his audience, he was able to convince them that although something was
unethical, it was the only option. The shallow nature of the group was not able to comprehend that a
statement such as either the German people annihilate the Jews or the Jews will enslave them is
not logically true. According to Bosamajian, either-or dilemmas appealed to the crowd mentality
because of the definiteness and strength in the either-or presentation. There is no compromise
[or] weakness in either-or....Either-or [is] power and strength (73-4). These arguments created a
sense of urgency in the audience; they were a call to action.
The final tactic Hitler used to persuade the Volk through his speeches was convincing his audience
that the rest of the world thought of Germany as inferior, second-class citizens. This angered the
crowd, who had been comprehensively indoctrinated to believe that they were the master race. Hitler
offered up as evidence the Treaty of Versailles, which he believed treated the Germans as
subhuman. The average German must have thought, How dare those pacifist cowards call us, the
perfect Aryan race, second class or inferior? He would have doubtlessly been enraged. Hitler
furthermore blamed Germanys relegation to second-class status on the Jews, who he claimed both
caused Germany to lose World War I and stole wealth that rightfully belonged to those of German
descent. The irrational nature of the crowd caused the Germans to be very accepting of this idea
and to defer blame to those it felt possessed something of which they were undeserving
(Bosamajian 74-6).
References