Hitler's Oratory
How did Hitler come to power?
A combination of factors:
- world economic depression
- weak current government
- the current government exchanged Nazi support for Hitler’s
place as Chancellor & the President died
What made the National Socialist Party powerful?
- Hitler’s personal oratorical methodology
- exclusive media control = complete propaganda power
What techniques did Hitler use that made him such a powerful speaker?
- investigation into psychology (inspirations include Freud), the attention span of his audience was monitored so as to electrify audience when most vulnerable
- the calculated use of hand gestures
- repetition of key concepts
- superlatives
- positive association
How did the Nazi Party come to have absolute power?
- Reich Chamber of Commerce = absolute control of media
- “The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, insofar as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”
Excerpt from Mein Kampf, autobiography of Adolph Hitler
- control of education... ‘racial theory’
- The People’s Radio
- Triumph of the Will
- Der Sturmer
- The threat of the SA and SS
Why does it matter today?
- powerful modern orators use the same techniques of rhetoric and persuasion
+ Obama?
- similar movements have taken place in recent history + White Australia Policy
+ Khmer Rouge
- high concentration of media ownership means limited opinions instilled in public
A combination of factors:
- world economic depression
- weak current government
- the current government exchanged Nazi support for Hitler’s
place as Chancellor & the President died
What made the National Socialist Party powerful?
- Hitler’s personal oratorical methodology
- exclusive media control = complete propaganda power
What techniques did Hitler use that made him such a powerful speaker?
- investigation into psychology (inspirations include Freud), the attention span of his audience was monitored so as to electrify audience when most vulnerable
- the calculated use of hand gestures
- repetition of key concepts
- superlatives
- positive association
How did the Nazi Party come to have absolute power?
- Reich Chamber of Commerce = absolute control of media
- “The function of propaganda is, for example, not to weigh and ponder the rights of different people, but exclusively to emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. Its task is not to make an objective study of the truth, insofar as it favors the enemy, and then set it before the masses with academic fairness; its task is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.”
Excerpt from Mein Kampf, autobiography of Adolph Hitler
- control of education... ‘racial theory’
- The People’s Radio
- Triumph of the Will
- Der Sturmer
- The threat of the SA and SS
Why does it matter today?
- powerful modern orators use the same techniques of rhetoric and persuasion
+ Obama?
- similar movements have taken place in recent history + White Australia Policy
+ Khmer Rouge
- high concentration of media ownership means limited opinions instilled in public