Games That Hitler Played by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D.

http://www.neurosemantics.com/games-that-hitler-played/
It was then that, in the beer halls, he discovered that (as he expressed it) I could speak. He
found that by formulating the angry expressions over the injustices and the bitter experiences that
he could move a crowd. And this was his gift and our curse. As he turned to politics and to the
use of propaganda, he found that he could persuade people. He found that he could capture the
minds-and-hearts of the people in that age with his extremist ideas. And, of course, it was an age
that allowed such extremist ideas to take root and grow.
He sold his racism and hatred inside of a strategy for national recovery. That made it acceptable.
It was in this way that he gained control. He paced, paced, paced. He paced the current situation
and concerns. He gave voice to their fears, resentments, bitterness. This gave him credibility.
When he finally won the 1932 election and the Nazi party actually won the majority of seats in
the Reichstag, it was because, while the National Socialists were vulgar and distasteful, they at
least stood for German interests in the face of the growing Communism threat. By finding an
easy target in the Jews and blaming them for over a decade, he gave the people a target or
scapegoat for their negative emotions.
He used the trickery of propaganda to invite and seduced them to play his Games.
What Games did Hitler have to play to facilitate an escape from freedom in people? Fromm
said that he relied upon the idea of the unworthiness of the individual, his fundamental
inability to rely on himself and his need to submit (1969, p. 54).
He set out to learn how the propaganda of the British worked so well and became a persuasion
genius in reading the political times and opportunistically taking advantage of everything to
persuade people to see things his way.
Hitlers genius of playing to the times and the events of the times arose as the socio-economic
situation grew increasingly worse. Inflation became hyper-inflation, Government became less
effective, then the Stock Market crashed, etc. He played the Opportunist Game.
Hitler discovered and played out Games that invited people to frame him as a messiah, a
savor, the coming great national leader, etc. As he learned the propaganda arts he learned how
to stage things for effect. This led him to use pageantry and razzmatazz in the meetings, parades,
and rallies to impress people. He used techniques to posture himself as the exciting and
inexplicable guru that seemed more than and other than human that brought forth
worship, adoration, and an unthinking following.
The backside of his intense hatred of the black races, the Jews, and others was his fantastical
passion for the Aryan race. He set out his plans for how to get rid of, and exterminate, both
Germans and non-Germans who interfered with his world-changing and history-molding plans.

Mein Kampf presents his contempt, disgust, and hatred for the Jewish people as something he
learned from studying history and the causes of Germanys defeat in WWI. His anti-Semitic
hatred was justified so that he came to framed the socio-economic and political problems in
Germany as the now infamous, The Jewish problem. It was out of his own personal hatred that
he easily fell into believing a conspiracy theory that it was the Jews plotting and scheming that
was at the source of all the woes of that age.
Without the clearest knowledge of the racial problem and hence of the Jewish problem there
will never be a resurrection of the German nation. (Hitler, p. 339)
He accused the Jews of trying to funnel [that idea] into the minds of the nations. (Hitler, p.
430).
Hatred is a very powerful emotion and Hitler played it to the max. He did so by blaming the Jews
and others for the national defeat and all of the problems (economic, social, moral, and political)
in the nation. Of course, the interesting thing in playing the Hate Game is that it encourages
irrationality
This is what Hitler did. He didnt just blame some Jews who might have held to Marxist
theory, he over-generalized and identified all Jews as Marxists and then declared them all
guilty, inferior, worthless, contemptible, a disease on society, etc.
What did Hitler say in his speeches that people found so convincing. This is fascinating. He
repeatedly used the speech which he called, Peace Treaties of Bres-Litovsk and Versailles. He
would make this presentation night after night in the rallies as he toured cities throughout
Germany. By contrasting the previous treaties, he could present the Treaty of Versailles that
concluded WWI against Germany as one of the most shameful acts of rape in the world. This
was his theme. He would then set forth how that the Treaty and the treatment of Germany was
one of total injustice, that it was shameless and monstrous.
About all of this, Hitler was right. He was correct about the treatment of Germany after WWI. It
was not just. Yet it was more than that. He had to connect the injustice with intolerance and a
refusal to accept and as an insult to national pride and honor.
While a soldier in the trenches, Hitler recognized that the ultimate battle is always the battle for
the mind and hearts of people. He knew that the primary frame game is winning the game of
persuasion. In what follows, remember that in those days persuasion went by the term
propaganda.
His persuasive powers began to develop as he developed a fascination with the propagandist
activity which he considered a true art. As a young soldier in the First World War, Hitler
blamed Germans lost of the war upon the effectiveness of the enemys power of propaganda. It
took the spirit out of the soldiers.
Propaganda had convinced the Germans that the English people were basically cowards and
would not stake their own blood for economic policy.

Regarding Hitlers pragmatic side, he was very focused on results. To that end, he focused
almost exclusively on arousing the emotions and forgetting the intellect. Having very little
faith in the intellectual capacity of the masses, he discounted any attempt to reason with
them. He seemed to have an intuitive knowledge that once people were in a certain passionate
state, they would find or invent the reasons to justify the feelings. This isnt far from the tactics
of most cult leaders today.
All propaganda must be popular and its intellectual level must be adjusted to the most
limited intelligence among those it is addressed to. Consequently, the greater the mass it is
intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be
Hitler played to the emotions rather than to the mind, that is, to educate. It wasnt about
educating, it was about inducing strong primitive emotions to create a fanatical mob mentality.
He would rather harp on his basic ideas until they became slogans in the mind. If he could do
that, he would have them.
Against we see the simplistic, black-or-white frame of mind that Hitler had and imposed on
others. He valued posing things in either-or terms to make his proposals more stark. He used a
persuasion that rested on absolutism.
But the most brilliant propagandist technique will yield no success unless one fundamental
principle in borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a
few points and repeat them over and over. Here, as is often in this world, persistence is the first
and most important requirement for success. (184)
He used simplicity so that the recipients would not think, would not question, would not
doubt. He needed fanatics to carry out his program, obedience and submissive fanatics, not
equals who would think, run their own brain, and question his ideas.
He didnt want his followers to be thinkers, but submissive. So he framed things in his rallies,
parades, and party organization so that there was as little discussion as possible. For him,
discussion only plants doubt.
In summary, Hitler described his model of effective propaganda in War Propaganda (Sixth
Chapter) as a way to effectively persuade the masses. To do that, one needed to use the following
techniques:
1. Keep the dogma simple: make only a few points. Aside from a few changes in the form
of presentation, their content was almost always the same. (p. 189)
2. Be forthright and powerfully direct. Speak in the telling or ordering mode.
3. Hold forth an extreme either-or, black-and-white a call to action.
4. Make it emotional: Direct your words to the emotions and stir them vigorously.

5. Use lots of repetition: persistently repeat your point over and over.
6. Forget beauty, literary criteria, scientific reasoning, balance, and novelty.
7. Focus solely on convincing people and creating zealots.
8. Find slogans that you can use and drive the movement forward.
This means that we set a frame ahead of time so that when an objection occurs later, it has
already been dealt with and made irrelevant. Hitler knew that if he took the ideas that people
would operate from and if he answered them during the presentation, he could use pre-frames to
take them away from his audience as objections. This gave him an attitude of wanting to know
objections so that he could make them irrelevant from the beginning.
Hitler also seemed to have a natural intuition about how to read a crowd and calibrate to their
ongoing feedback so as to pace them for the purpose of then leading.
There were other facets of persuasion with groups of people. He knew that the best time for a
public rally was in the evening, and the later the better. Why? Because people would be tired and
therefore more susceptible the influence of his ideas. He also knew the power to convince
people by giving them the sense that they are a part of something and that many others believe.
Part of Hitlers genius involved his skill in playing to the times that occurred and using them to
his benefit. In this, he was extremely skilled as an opportunist. He was able to read the political
and economic situation and exploit to his advantage.
Yet he did more than just play with the negative emotions, he outlined a road to national rebirth.
He not only fanned the emotions of aversion, he stimulated emotions of attraction to a better
future. He gave hope. Kershaw (1998) described it this way:
He could inspire an audience which shared his basic political feelings, by the way he spoke, by
the force of his rhetorical, by the very power of his prejudice, by the conviction he conveyed that
there was a way out of Germanys light, and that only the way he outlined was the road to
national rebirth. Another time, another place, and the message would have been ineffective,
absurd even. As it was, indeed, in the early 1920s the great majority of the citizens of Munich, let
alone of a wider population to whom Hitler was, if at all, only known as a provincial Bavarian
hot-head and rabble-rouser, could not be captivated by it. Nevertheless, at this time and in this
place, Hitlers message did capture exactly the uncontainable sense of anger, fear, frustration,
resentment, and pent-up aggression of the raucous gatherings in the Munich beer halls. The
compulsive manner of his speaking derived in turn much of its power of persuasion from the
strength of conviction that combined with appealingly simple diagnoses of and recipes to
Germanys problems. Above all, what came naturally to Hitler was to stoke up the hatred of
others by pouring out to them the hatred that was so deeply embedded in himself. (p. 132)
As the economic and political crisis mounted in the early years of the 1920s, most people joined
the party out of protest, anger, and bitterness. In those years, inflation became hyper-inflation.

Currency lost all of its value in the hyper-inflation of 1923. On the eve of WWI, it was 4.20
marks to the dollar. By 1923, it was 18,000 marks to the dollar. And that blossomed to
25,000,000 in September of 1923. This put the nation in a state of extreme emergency as lifetime
savings were rapidly wiped out and unemployment led to hunger and poverty. No wonder people
were angry, scared, stress, and in a mood to blame.
In spite of this, the 1928 election suggested the end of Hitler and his movement (Kershaw, p.
320). But then on October 24, 1929 came the Wall Street Crash. That was the crisis that Hitler
needed. He used that to offer a simple explanation, he blamed the Red government and
scapegoat the Jews. And because the sense of betrayal and exploitation was already acute, the
desperateness of the people made it believable.
He spoke dogmatically and absolutely to convey the power of certitude. He formulated his
principles so that they had a granite like feel to evoke states of belief and conviction. He
wanted his followers dogmatic and intolerant about those principles. That would create the
fanaticism that he needed.
In terms of the meta-states structure here, it wasnt mere belief that he sought to instill in people,
but an absolute belief in an idea and fanatical courage. He wanted people to close off
openness to other ideas. He wanted them to believe in their beliefs and to feel sure of that.
Hitler recognized that by using infallibility he could create more power for himself. To that end
he admired the Roman Catholic Church and modeled their use of infallibility. He wanted the
cultish role of being a pope to the Nazi movement.
Hitler knew that he would not be able to persuade the thinking populace, so he went after
the masses. To win the masses, Hitler used several tactics
He had to persuade them that everything was at stake and that firm belief in the right to apply
even the most brutal weapons was legitimate. Fanatical movements always have to do this
legitimize their use of cruelty and hatred. And it is commonly legitimized by belief in a particular
religion, ideology, or nationality.
Part of his strategy to put himself into the role of a Guru was his unavailability. As the
years passed, he became less and less available to any except his inner circle. Only they saw
his pathology deepen and grow. He would appear at the rallies 30 minutes late up to 2
hours late, leaving the crowds waiting, in anticipation. All of this was to reinforce the illusion
and the myth of the Fuhrer as being other-than-human, more than human, super-human.
He also had a genius for reading the masses and developing political tactical approaches for
winning the minds and hearts of the people to take over a country. Having lived in a desperate
time of socio-economic change, of fear and poverty, of insecurity and powerlessness, of indignity
and shame, he played on the sympathies of those who wanted to find someone to blame.