If Hitler's Speeches Were in British English, What Would They Sound Like?

[Kamakiri]

I’ve asked the question before: did Hitler speak English? No doubt on a vermin-level, but, I’ve always wondered, as a native German, what did his speeches REALLY sound like?

To me, who understands a paltry amount of German, they sound strident, shrill, and hysterical. I know his fucking Adolf style: start slowly, pause often, let the crowd simmer down. Then, start speaking slowly, in a low voice, with many pauses. Then (he’s so fucking predictable) he starts ratcheting it up.

He’s no Fidel Castro, who could drone on for four hours – obviously, the fuck was someone the Germans, no matter what rank or station, listened to. I mean, they weren’t toadstools.

Churchill was good – but he had his own style. He never got hysterical.

Mussolini was Bugs Bunny in Eye-Tal-ee-An.

Tojo – sorry, I speak fluent Japanese, but those guys used such polite speech that the common man in the street would never have had a clue what they were talking about. They didn’t talk to the “common man,” anyway.

But if there were some equivalent of Hitler in English . . . what would it be?

More like, WHO would it be? Joseph McCarthy? Douglas McArthur? Richard Nixon?

You know what I’m saying? Hitler obviously held the Germans in thrall – completely under his oratorical spell.

But WHO would he have sounded like in English? Patton? Eisenhower?

Maybe a German/bilingual would be the best to answer this one.

[notfrommensa]

I have no idea, but Gilbert Gottfried would be my first guess.

[grude]

My mom was German and German sounds strident and shrill to me no matter what the subject matter.

[Senegoid]

Father Coughlin maybe?

More: An entire web site devoted to discussing him.

[Donnerwetter]

Hitler didn’t speak a word of English. If he had, I always figured he would have sounded like a stereotypical fire & brimstone preacher from the American south giving a vivid description of what hell is like for sinners (by which I am absolutely not making a comparison with regards to their religious and/or political views; it’s just the agitated manner of delivery).

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

@Donnerwetter

Hitler didn’t speak a word of English.

Odd, that.
He lived in Ireland, with relatives, for awhile.

[mind_the_gap]

In the film Cold Comfort Farm, Ian McKellen plays a character named Amos Starkadder, a farmer and itinerant preacher. There’s a scene where he’s preaching a sermon to his flock. He starts low and cautionary and builds to an angry, scolding crescendo. Too much so for the lead character and she abandons the church service for the calm outside. His tirade is the sort of traditional style associated with “fire and brimstone” preaching. I suspect Hitler’s speeches may have sounded like that to a native German speaker. WAG.

[Leo_Bloom]

@Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor

Odd, that.
He lived in Ireland, with relatives, for awhile.

Wait, what?

[D18]

This site says Liverpool, but the point remains the same: Roundcube Webmail :: Welcome to Roundcube Webmail

[Exapno_Mapcase]

Oh, for Pete’s sake.

The most sensational part of the book deals with an alleged visit to Britain made by Adolf Hitler. Bridget claims that during the period November 1912 to April 1913 Adolf resided at her flat in Liverpool with herself, Alois and William Patrick. Adolf was draft dodging at the time. He was avoiding compulsory service in the Austrian army. This is the main reason, she says, why he afterwards maintained silence about his English trip, it ‘would not have made good publicity for the German prophet’. Much of his time was spent in the company of Bridget: ‘he would often come and sit in my cosy little kitchen playing with my two-year old baby, while I was preparing our meals. I thought he felt very much at home then. Usually he wouldn’t say much, but just sit, from time to time telling me of the different dishes his mother used to make.’

Bridget claims to have introduced Adolf to astrology, a subject in which she herself had been interested since childhood. Before Adolf’s arrival, she had become acquainted with a Mrs Prentice who cast horoscopes. Again and again, she claims, Adolf asked Mrs Prentice to cast his horoscope. Reflecting on how it was said that in later life Adolf Hitler did very little of importance without consulting his astrologers Bridget says ‘I thought back then to the idle words I had spoken which had served as an introduction to this absorbing interest’. In May 1913 Adolf took leave of his sister-in-law and her family and went, on Alois’s advice, to Munich , where he would still be able to evade service in the Austrian army.

Before he left, Bridget advised Adolf to trim his moustache. Like Alois, he sported a handlebar moustache at that time and she suggested that he should cut off the points. Years later, when she saw his picture in a newspaper she noticed that he had taken her advice but, she comments, ‘Adolf had gone too far’.

It is difficult to imagine how Bridget and Adolf managed to communicate so well on such a variety of subjects. Bridget says that Adolf hadn’t enough English at the end of his stay to enable him to ask directions to the railway station. She describes her own German as ‘stumbling’.

The suspicion that My Brother-in-Law Adolf is a work of the imagination is strengthened by much of the rest of the book.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

@Leo_Bloom

Wait, what?

Sorry, the relations were Irish, not the location.

[Schnitte]

@Exapno_Mapcase

Oh, for Pete’s sake.

The story sounds very questionable to me. I just checked one of the reputable biographies of Hitler, the one by Joachim Fest, and it makes no mention of a stay in Liverpool or Ireland for the years 1912 or 1913; instead, it discusses his life in Vienna at that time in a great amount of detail. Sounds very much like a legend to me.

As for his language proficiency, biographers dug out his school report cards, and there is only one foreign language listed as a subject that he took in school, French (with very unsatisfactory grades).

[Idilia_Dubb]

To get an English-language flavor of what Hitler’s speeches were like, go to Youtube and watch some of the rabble-rousing addresses made by the British Fascist demogogue Sir Oswald Mosley in the 1930’s.

Mosley, an acolyte of Hitler (who was best man at Mosley’s wedding), modeled his political party, the British Union of Fascists, on National Socialism. He imitated Hitler’s style of delivering public addresses.

[astro]

This is interesting

The Führer as a Speaker by Dr. Joseph Goebbels

[Malden_Capell]

Munich and Bavaria, from what I understand, from a German perspective was partly rural, slightly rustic, and always felt itself distinctive from the rest of Germany. I’ve heard Hitler’s south German accent as being akin to being Yorkshire in England.

[Idilia_Dubb]

@Malden_Capell

Munich and Bavaria, from what I understand, from a German perspective was partly rural, slightly rustic, and always felt itself distinctive from the rest of Germany. I’ve heard Hitler’s south German accent as being akin to being Yorkshire in England.

Hitler rose to power in Munich but he wasn’t born there; he was a naturalized German. He was born in Austria and spoke throughout his life with an Austrian accent. It wasn’t a very strong one, but it was noticeable.

[Jackmannii]

“Ve vere not Narrr-zis, ve was Nazis!!!”

[Siam_Sam]

As 1940s movies have taught me, the Nazis did speak English, and they did so with pronounced British accents.

[tellyworth]

Aside: Mosley was the inspiration for P.G. Wodehouse’s amateur dictator, Roderick Spode. The actor John Turner looks to have modelled his performance on Mosley’s speeches.

[Flywheel]

“My dog’s got no nose…”