As much as any political
figure in history, Hitler placed tremendous importance upon the manufacture
and dissemination of propaganda, and that’s to be expected in light of
his extreme philosophy. This became quite apparent from the outset
when he said in the 1920’s:
After
my joining the German Workers' Party, I immediately took over the management
of the propaganda. I considered this section by far the most important.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 846
Like the Bushites,
he reveled in the ability of propaganda to make black look white.
Hitler was well aware of the fact that through control of the media: information
can be manipulated, wars can be censored, accomplishments can be exaggerated,
failures can be prettified, casualties can be minimized, expenses can be
understated, support can be hyped, press reports can be shaped, and opponents
can be silenced. Under those conditions propaganda, does indeed,
become an extremely potent force.
As Hitler correctly stated:
In addition, the authoritative parties of the government understood next
to nothing of the value and the nature of propaganda. That by propaganda,
with permanent and clever application, even heaven can be palmed off on
a people as hell, and, the other way round, the most wretched life as paradise,...
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 379
Some Nazi propaganda
tactics are forerunners of those practiced so prolifically today, such
as slanting presentations in such a manner that listeners can only come
to one logical conclusion even when not being verbally guided. It
is much more effective if viewers think they attained a conclusion on their
own than if they are told how to judge events by others.
Hitler outlined this technique
while discussing anti-British propaganda:
As
regards news-bulletins to Britain, we should confine ourselves to plain
statements of facts, without comment on their value or importance.
News about British high finance, its interests in certain sections of the
armament industry, in the leadership and conduct of the war should be given
without comment, but couched in such a way that the British listeners will
themselves draw their own conclusions. As the old saying has it,
little drops of water will gradually wear the stone away.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 421
There can be no doubt
this propaganda stratagem is utilized by all propaganda agencies but the
Bushites have excelled. Being the effective and versatile propagandist
that he was, Hitler contended speakers were more effective in swaying the
masses than writers and he mastered the former technique to a degree Bush
could never achieve, although Bush probably envies Hitler’s facility with
same.
Hitler provided some rather
illuminating commentary in this regard:
I
know that one is able to win people far more by the spoken than by the
written word, and that every great movement on this globe owes its rise
to the great speakers and not to the great writers.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page xiv
And
just the same, the greatest revolutionary change of most recent times,
the bolshevistic revolution in Russia, has not come about by Lenin's writings,
but by the hate-creating oratorical activity of countless greatest and
smallest apostles of instigation.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 711
For
let it be said to all knights of the pen and to all the political dandies,
especially of today: the greatest changes in this world have never been
brought about by a goosequill!
No, the pen has always been reserved to motivate these changes theoretically.
But the power which set the greatest historical avalanches of political
and religious nature sliding was, from the beginning of time, the magic
force of the spoken word alone.
The great masses of a nation will always and only succumb to the force
of the spoken word. But all great movements are movements of the
people, are volcanic eruptions of human passions and spiritual sensations,
stirred either by the cruel Goddess of Misery or by the torch of the word
thrown into the masses, and are not the lemonade-like outpourings of anesthetizing
literati and drawing-room heroes.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 136
He
to whom passion is denied and whose mouth remains closed is not chosen
by Heaven as the prophet of its will. Therefore, may every writer remain
by his inkwell in order to work "theoretically" if his brains and ability
are sufficient for this; such writers are neither born nor chosen to become
leaders.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 137
In the same work Hitler
expounded some simple propaganda rules that the Bushites adhere to religiously.
High on his list is the importance of repeating one or two simple points,
much like belaboring to the extreme since 9/11 the incessant drumbeat of
stopping terrorism in an insidious attempt to garner national support.
FDR said “the only thing we have to fear is fear itself.” Bush and
his cronies have replaced that with: “the only thing we have to fear is
that fear will disappear.”
Nevertheless,
all geniality in the makeup of propaganda will not lead to success unless
a fundamental principle is considered with continually sharp attention:
it has to confine itself to little and to repeat this eternally.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 238
All
advertising, whether it lies in the field of business or of politics, will
carry success by continuity and regular uniformity of application.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 240
The
great masses receptive ability is only very limited, their understanding
is small, but their forgetfulness is great. As a consequence of these
facts, all effective propaganda has to limit itself only to a very few
points and to use them like slogans until even the very last man is able
to imagine what is intended by such a word. As one sacrifices this
basic principle and tries to become versatile, the effect will fritter
away, as the masses are neither able to digest the material offered nor
to retain it. Thus the result is weakened and finally eliminated.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 234
The
masses, however, with their inertia, always need a certain time before
they are ready even to notice a thing, and they will lend their memories
only to the thousandfold repetition of the most simple ideas.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 239
... those
points of view which I have roughly outlined in my discussion on propaganda.
[Namely]: Influence on the great masses, concentration on a few points,
continuous repetition of the latter, self-assured and confident wording
of the texts in the form of apodictic assertion, greatest persistency in
spreading, and patience in awaiting the effect.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 506
The latter quote sounds like
something one would expect to find in the Bushite manual of effective mass
propaganda. Certainly G. W. Bush fulfills this role fully because
rarely does he ever talk in anything other than an apodictic manner whether
he knows what he is talking about or not.
Besides stressing
one topic, Hitler dwelled on the importance of emphasizing one enemy only,
even if one had to consolidate all enemies into one, in order to maintain
morale, determination, and conviction. The Bushites have incorporated
the same policy by combining Hussein, Ben Laden, and multiple, disparate
groups under the rubric of terrorists:
As
a whole, and at all times, the efficiency of the truly national leader
consists of primarily in preventing the division of the attention of the
people, and always in concentrating it on a single enemy. The more
uniformly the fighting will of the people is put into action, the greater
will be the magnetic force of the movement and the more powerful the impetus
of the blow. It is part of the genius of a great leader to make adversaries
of different fields appear as always belonging to one category only, because
to weak and unstable characters the knowledge that there are various enemies
will lead only too easily to incipient doubts as to their own cause.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 152
As
soon as the wavering masses find themselves confronting too many enemies,
objectivity at once steps in, and the question is raised whether actually
all the others are wrong and their own nation or their own movement alone
is right.
Also with this comes the first paralysis of their own strength. Therefore,
a number of essentially different internal enemies must always be regarded
as one in such a way that in the opinion of the mass of one's own adherents
the war is being waged against one enemy alone. This strengthens
the belief in one's own cause and increases one's bitterness against the
attacker.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 153
To admit or concede
the enemy had any points or arguments in his favor was simply beyond the
pale. The entire conflict must be painted in black and white tones,
reflecting an approach with which the Bushites heartily concur.
Propaganda's
task is, for instance, not to evaluate the various rights, but far more
to stress exclusively the one that is to be represented by it. It
has not to search into truth as far as this is favorable to others, in
order to present it then to the masses with doctrinary honesty, but it
has rather to serve its own truth uninterruptedly.
It was fundamentally
wrong to discuss the war guilt from the point of view that not Germany
alone could be made responsible for the outbreak of this catastrophe, but
it would have been far better to burden the enemy entirely with this guilt,
even if this had not been in accordance with the real facts, as was indeed
the case.
What, now, was the consequence
of these half measures?
The great mass of a people is not composed of diplomats or even teachers
of political law, nor even of purely reasonable individuals who are able
to pass judgment, but of human beings who are as undecided as they are
inclined towards doubts and uncertainty. As soon as by one's own
propaganda even a glimpse of right on the other side is admitted, the cause
for doubting one's own right is laid. The masses are not in a position
to distinguish where the wrong of the others ends and their own begins.
In this case they become uncertain and mistrusting, especially if the enemy
does not produce the same nonsense, but, in turn, burdens their enemy with
all and the whole guilt. What is more easily explained than that
finally one's own people believe more in the enemy's propaganda, which
proceeds more completely and more uniformly, than in one's own?
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 236
As far as Hitler was
concerned any and all opponents had no case and that was that.
And to compound a
masterful offense against the masses with mass offenses on the masses Hitler
declared that if one is going to lie then lie big:
Therewith
one started out with the very correct assumption that in the size of the
lie there is always contained a certain factor of credibility, since the
great masses of a people may be more corrupt in the bottom of their hearts
than they will be consciously and intentionally bad, therefore with the
primitive simplicity of their minds they will more easily fall victims
to a great lie than to a small one, since they themselves perhaps also
lie sometimes in little things, but would certainly still be too much ashamed
of too great of lies. Thus such an untruth [a great lie] will not
at all enter their heads, and therefore they will be unable to believe
in the possibility of the enormous impudence of the most infamous distortion
in others;...
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 313
The brazen and blatant
contempt Hitler held toward the masses and their ability to think and reason
is a sight to behold. The masses to Hitler were little more than
children fit to be ruled, fit to be fooled, and fit to be tooled.
This disdain accounts
in large measure for his contention that:
In
politics the lie is proper. In public only fools speak the truth.
I AM ADOLPH HITLER,
by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page
The degree to which
principles of this nature are utilized by the Bush regime is made evident
by current events.
Being a far more forceful,
dynamic, persuasive and informed speaker than Bush, Hitler was able to
effectively employ techniques and stratagems that are beyond Bush’s capability.
Although both appeal to the heart over the head, Hitler took that ability
to a level well beyond the norm and outlined his strategy as follows:
At
that moment I began to realize what power there is in a crowd when it has
been inspired, when it has been welded together. Not by an idea.
Crowds do not take to ideas. Not by appeals to self-interest, either.
That is the mistake of the Marxist maggots. They think they can move
crowds by more cheese. Of course, if a crowd is starving you can
move it to break the grocer's windows. You cannot fight a sustained
battle on the promise of more cheese, or bread, or money.
The individual, the private man, will plan, and cheat and intrigue and
risk much for money. But to move a crowd, the appeal must be more
mystical: power, honor, glory, blood and soil. The bigger the crowd,
the bigger and hazier its expectations. Nothing can arouse them to
higher pitch than the call to battle. Not battle to get something,
but to prove something. Battle promises victory, and victory is merely
a word for the limitless and undefinable ambitions of the masses.
If you want the masses to follow you, you must promise them victory.
Only victory! No more, no less.
I AM ADOLPH HITLER,
by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 84
The extent to which
Hitler placed emotion and feeling above logic and reason in mass persuasion
was elucidated vividly when he said:
I am conscious that I have no equal in the art of swaying the masses, not
even Goebbels. Everything that can be learned with the intelligence,
everything that can be achieved by the aid of clever ideas, Goebbels can
do, but real leadership of the masses cannot be learned. And remember
this: the bigger the crowd, the more easily it is swayed. Also, the
more you mingle the classes--peasants, workers, black-coated workers--the
more surely will you achieve the typical mass character. Don't waste
time over "intellectual" meetings and groups drawn together by mutual interests.
Anything you may achieve with such folk today by means of reasonable explanation
may be erased tomorrow by an opposite explanation. But what you tell
the people in the mass, in a receptive state of fanatic devotion, will
remain like words received under an hypnotic influence, ineradicable, and
impervious to every reasonable explanation.
THE VOICE OF DESTRUCTION,
by Hermann Rauschnigg, 1940, page 212
For the Fuhrer truth
was little more than a joke, an obstacle to his message, something to be
redefined or discarded:
The
truth is what I want to be true. But I do not know yet what I want
to be true.--Does it matter? That truth does not matter.
I AM ADOLPH HITLER,
by Adolph Hitler, Ed. by Werner/Lotte Pelz, 1971, Page 55
Yet, in another example
of Hitlerite incongruity he says:
I
shall never believe that what is founded on lies can endure for ever.
I believe in truth. I'm sure that, in the long run, truth must be
victorious.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 342
When the Bushites lied about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq to foment a war and lied as to who is responsible for the revenge exposure of a CIA operative, Hitler’s attitude toward truth comes readily to mind.
Fully realizing that
if propaganda is your game then press control is your aim, Hitler and his
allies dominated, manipulated, and censored the media on a level comparable
to that exercised by Bush senior during his war on Iraq in 1991.
Press coverage was all but non-existent during what was labeled Operation
Desert Storm and the recent attack on Iraq by Bush Junior followed suit.
Hitler was fully attune
to the power of the press for mass manipulation and proved as much by saying:
By
far the greatest bulk of the political "education," which in this case
one may rightly define with the word "propaganda," is the work of the press.
It is the press above all else that carries out this "work of enlightenment,"
thus forming a sort of school for adults. This instruction, however,
does not rest in the hand of the State, but partly in the claws of very
inferior forces. As a very young man in Vienna, I had the very best
opportunity of becoming really acquainted with the owners and spiritual
producers of this machine for educating the masses. At the beginning
I was astonished how short a time it took this most evil of all the great
powers in the State to create a certain opinion, even if this involved
complete falsification of the wishes or opinions in the minds of the public.
In the course of a few days a ridiculous trifle was turned into an affair
of State, whereas, at the same time, problems of vital importance were
dropped into general oblivion, or rather, worse: from the minds and the
memory of the masses.
MEIN KAMPF, Adolf
Hitler, New York, Reynal & Hitchcock, 1939, page 108
He divided the press
into two groups but conveniently avoided admitting his propagandists belonged
to the latter category:
For
journalists happened to be divided into two different types of people:
those who love the truth, and on the other hand hypocritical, inferior
swindlers, traitors to the peoples, and warmongers.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1027
Hitler made no attempt
to hide is preference for mastery of the press when he openly stated:
I
had some difficulty, also, in persuading the Old Gentleman [Hindenburg]
of the necessity of curtailing the liberty of the press.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 502
In his December 1937
speech before 2,000 workers to celebrate the completion of the first
2,000 kilometers of motor roads he reportedly said:
Magnificent
roads were better evidence of the civilization of a people than the so-called
freedom of the Press to complain and lie daily.
HITLER'S SPEECHES
by Norman Baynes, 1942, VOLUME 1, Page 947
His total domination
of the press reached a milestone of suppression and constraint when he
demanded blind adherence to himself in a secret speech on 10 November 1938:
To
this end, it is imperative that the press blindly pledge itself to one
principle: "The leadership acts correctly!"
Gentlemen, we all must admit
that we do indeed make mistakes. Journalists are not exempt from
this either. Nevertheless, we all can only endure if, instead of
permanently criticizing each other in full view of the world public, we
highlight each other's positive aspects.
In other words, it is imperative that--while not disclaiming the possibility
of errors or even of discussion--the correctness of the leadership's actions
must, in principle, be continuously emphasized. That is crucial.
Above all, you know, this is necessary because of the Volk. Still
today I hear some people demanding--they are throw backs to a more liberal
age: "Should one not place this issue before the Volk for once?"
Well, gentlemen, I do believe I have accomplished not little, at least
a lot more than some old cobbler or some old dairymaid.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1252
At this stage in American
history George Bush would not dare to be so bold, indeed brazen, as to
proffer such a demand, even though it is in accord with his sentiments.
From Hitler’s point
of view the press must be unified and speak with one voice; otherwise,
when the masses see various outlets giving different facts, views, opinions,
or assessments of world events they will lose confidence in its credibility
and begin to view the press as a joke:
For
only a unified press is free from those contradictions of news items, of
political, cultural, and such-like communications, which make it laughable
in the eyes of the public, rob it of any prestige as a purveyor of truth
and of any value as an instrument for the education of public opinion.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 526
...Take
the case of a town with, say, a dozen newspapers; each one of them reports
the various items in its own way, and in the end the reader can only come
to the conclusion that he is dealing with a gang of opium-smokers.
In this way the press gradually loses its influence on public opinion and
all contact with the man in the street. The British press affords
so excellent an example that it has become quite impossible to gauge British
public opinion by reading the British newspapers. This has been carried
to such a pass, that as often as not the press bears no relation whatsoever
to the lines of thought of the people.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 480
In Hitler's secret
speech of 10 November 1938 he stated:
Out
of this, we must arrive at one fundamental realization: the press, gentlemen,
can achieve the impossible and it can have an enormous effect if it is
used as a means to an end. We live in a time when the opposite is
proving itself to be true. For example, assuming there are 2400 newspapers
in one country and each of them makes its own politics based upon its journalists'
reflections, then there are 2400 newspapers aiming to discredit each other.
The net result would be chaos like the one we are witnessing at present
in the French press. One newspaper repudiates the conclusion of the
other and, within a short time, the result is that every newspaper is discredited.
When we look to the past six years, we cannot deny that the French press
played a pivotal role in the collapse of the country. And this was
so because of the complete muddleheadedness and lack of discipline of the
French press. Every paper published whatever it thought appropriate
at one particular point in time.
HITLER, [Speeches
and Proclamations], by Max Domarus, Vol. 2, page 1247
Yet, having said this
Hitler reversed course to a significant degree by saying:
I
am similarly not in support of the press simply printing only what it has
been instructed to print. It is no pleasure to read newspapers which
all have almost exactly the same text. In the course of time, our
editors will be so trained that they will be able to make their own valuable
contributions to building the nation.
HITLER, SPEECHES AND
PROCLAMATIONS 1932-45, Vol. 1, by Max Domarus, page 444
The Fuhrer felt a major
advantage of press control by the party is that it facilitated a smooth
reversion of policies, programs, and actions with minimal adverse pubic
reaction:
As,
in the military sphere, the aircraft has now become a combat weapon, so
the press has become a similar weapon in the sphere of thought. We
have frequently found ourselves compelled to reverse the engine and to
change, in the course of a couple of days, the whole trend of imparted
news, sometimes with a complete volte face. Such agility would have
been quite impossible, if we had not had firmly in our grasp that extraordinary
instrument of power which we call the press--and known how to make use
of it.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 480
A
year before, when the Russo-German Pact was signed, we had the task of
converting to a completely reverse opinion those whom we had originally
made into fanatical opponents of Russia--a maneuver that must have appeared
to be a rare old muddle to the older National Socialists. Fortunately,
the spirit of Party solidarity held firm, and our sudden about-turn was
accepted by all without misgivings. Then, on 22 June 1941, again:
"About turn!" Out shot the order one fine morning without the slightest
warning! Success in an operation of this nature can only be achieved
if you possess the press and know how to make tactical use of it.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 481
Bush is able to perform
similar reversals with the same agility by having a mass media more than
sympathetic to his program and eager to minimize or omit references to
his failures and inadequacies. In simple parlance, he is given a
pass by the media when his highly vulnerable record reeks with numerous
delinquencies and few accomplishments. Were the press to focus fully
and with determination on his shortcomings and highlight them with the
attention they deserve, they could all but destroy him as a serious political
figure in a matter of weeks, despite the position he holds.
In one of his appeals
to a mass audience, Hitler asserted that freedom of the press in bourgeois
democracies is of a farcical nature because only a few potentates actually
determine the content:
Wherever
it may be, this fetish of the liberty of the press constitutes a mortal
danger par excellence. Moreover, what is called the liberty of the
press does not in the least mean that the press is free, but simply that
certain potentates are at liberty to direct it as they wish, in support
of their particular interests and, if need be, in opposition to the interests
of the State.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 480
As far as press domination
is concerned, Hitler and Bush would appear to differ because the former
is less oriented toward private control:
I
myself put the press on the same footing as the Department of Education,
and in both cases, I maintain, private interests must play no part whatsoever,
either in their organization or in the control of them.
HITLER'S TABLE TALK,
1941-1944, Translated by Cameron & Stevens, 2000, page 526
Yet, the symbiotic
relationship that exists between the Bushites and the American press, exemplified
by the monumental propensity of the latter to overlook failings of the
former while magnifying its minor successes and complying with virtually
every request, provides substance to the contention that the Bushites have
essentially achieved what Hitler demanded.
And, of course, Hitler
could never discuss the press in bourgeois democracies without alleging
Jewish dominion.
In a speech on July 28,
1922 in Munich he stated:
The
master-stroke of the Jew was to claim the leadership of the fourth estate:
he founded the Movement both of the Social Democrats and the Communists.
His policy was twofold: he had his "apostles" in both political camps.
MY NEW ORDER
by Adolf Hitler, Edited by de Sales, 1941, page 32