Granted, we are nearly 70 years removed from the Nazi era-but I ask because I have seen many old newsreel films of Hitler’s speeches. He clearly was a powerful speaker, but he was not physically impressive.
Foreign reporters of the period (like H.V. Kaltenborn) remarked that the (German) audiences seemed very moved by the speeches, but I find them more like ravings-yet they certainly impressed most audiences.
Have you seen any of these, and what is yor reaction to them?
Yeah, I bet dozens of our German posters are just itching to show up and say, “Hell, yes, those Hitler speeches were AWESOME!!!” That won’t get them any flak at all…
My Grandmother, who was born in 1930, says that the speeches were impressive on the radio, but seemed quite ridiculous when she first saw them on television (obviously quite some time later, after the war).
I’m sure being part of the huge rallies at Nuremburg and the like was quite moving indeed.
For us contemporary Germans, it’s impossible to approach them unbiased. The diction and gestures seem over the top and unhinged to me, how much that is influenced by the myriad of parodies I can’t tell.
I would call them “bombastic” and “inflammatory.”
They are also not very easy to understand - with all the screaming going on, it’s very hard to make out the words. It is, of course, totally impossible for us to listen to them in an aesthetic context and go: “What a great public speaker!”, but 80 years ago those speeches must have had some appeal to a large number of people. What that appeal was eludes me.
Would you look at a picture of a KKK mob and go: “Oh my, those hoods are pretty! And the burning crosses sure add a nice touch!”?
People in Germany were angry then, and he spoke to that. It sounds like unhinged lunacy to us, but for the people caught in the grips of a economic recession who were nervous and frustrated with their situation, it was an inspired expression of how they felt.
But I don’t think many modern-day Germans will say “Boy howdy, what an inspiration!” Unless they’re feeling the same anger/frustration/fear that 1930s Germans were feeling.
This is so interesting, it’s something I never understood. (For the record, I’m not German but my German is very good and I understand Hitler’s speeches.) I have read so often how he was “a charismatic speaker” etc, and I just don’t see it. I’m not sure if it’s all down to the bias of hindsight though.
When I compare the measured, calm, authoritative and smiling speeches of other (respectable) politicians to Hitler (who just comes across as a raving, screeching lunatic with zero charisma) I just can’t see the appeal at all.
I’m also somewhat curious as to what the claims of his charismatic speeches are really based on. I mean, obviously he enjoyed popular support, but why would that be because of his great speeches? I’m not doubting the veracity, but I’d like to know more about how he was perceived at the time, how that compares to the public performance of other German politicians, to social norms at the time, to other forms of public speaking, to other politicians in times of economic crisis etc.
Who knows, maybe it’s just impossible to see it objectively and I just can’t see how blinded I am to Hitler’s amazing charisma?
Not the speeches per se but I recently read a collection of letters from the Mitford sisters. Two of them were well acquainted wiht Hitler. One, Diana, the wife of British fascist, Oswald Mosely has a grown up admiration of him. The younger, Unity, was basically a fangirl. She travelled to Germany with her sister and attended the first Nuremburg rally and became fascinated by Hitler, literally stalking him around Munich until he finally took notice of her. She then, to some extent, fascinated him.
The way she writes of Hitler is quite extraordinary, she gushes about him. She relates little triumphs, of seeing him in the street when he did not see her, of receiving some little favour denied to other members of the fanclub. Quite impossible I think today to see what she saw in him.
Charisma is a temporal thing. You can’t compare Obama and Churchill, for example. Both charismatic individuals in their own way, but both clearly products of their times.
Hitler was riding on the same vibe as an evangelist or cult leader, but on a much bigger scale. Add in fear and oppression.
The section of the above link “Hitler As the German people know him” pretty much answers the entirety of the OP.
Albert Speer, certified Nazi war criminal, gave an interview to “Playboy” in 1971. In it he talks about how in late 1930 he was disillusioned about where Germany was headed and some acquaintances persuaded him to go see Hitler speak.
"I had tended to view him as a vulgar, rabble-rousing fanatic in a comic-opera Brownshirt uniform. But that meeting in a dirty ill-lit beer hall drastically altered my image of him. He entered wearing a well-cut blue suit and after the tumultuous ovation died down, he spoke earnestly, persuasively, almost shyly. His manner was completely sincere, more like a dedicated professor delivering a lecture than a screaming demagogue.
“Within a few minutes, he had the entire audience in his grip-and by no means was everyone there his supporter. Soon his low key manner disappeared, his voice rose to a hypnotic pitch and there was a palpable aura of tension and excitement in the hall, a crackling emotional voltage, the kind of supercharged atmosphere I’d encountered before only at dramatic sporting events. Hitler’s dynamic presence filled the room, his voice swelled, his eyes transfixed the audience. It wasn’t so much of what he said-I hardly remembered afterward- but the mood he cast over the entire hall: it had an almost orgiastic quality.
" Hitler always said the masses are essentially feminine and his aggressiveness and charisma elicited an almost masochistic surrender and submission in his audience- a form of psychic rape. I believe there may be a tendency of man, perhaps rooted in Jung’s concept of the collective unconscious, to surrender himself to the yoke of a stronger personality, and this was certainly true of Hitler’s mass meetings. He didn’t convince his audience, he conquered them.”
Unguarded Germans have told me that being at a rally was enthralling even if you hated the guy. He knew his ways with a crowd and spoke to the problems they had.
A similar experience happenned to a female teacher friend who went to Cuba for a course and had to go to a Castro rally. She’s as free-market capitalist as Mises, but she said that after 30 minutes she had tears in her eyes.
Nice one!
In my own experience, I’ve never seen or heard a clip or soundbyte of Hitler that wasn’t him screaming. However, as Speer’s description explains, Hitler’s speaches weren’t composed of just ranting and raving. A longer description put that all of his speaches followed the same basic formula:
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Start off in a calm and collected manner discussing certain issues.
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Adopt a cold and condescending tone while explaining the opposition’s viewpoint and use the same tone to counter those points.
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Move on to an emotional appeal over how the opposition is leading the crowd astray and he just wanted to lead them right.
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Based on cues given from crowd behaviour: transition from emotional to angry
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Once they’re firmly in your hand start yelling.
So really, all that we have experienced is step 5 and because of that, Hitler will always seem like a raving lunatic.
Wish I could provide a cite, but my mind almost never bothers remembering where/how I learned something new(or even all the details) it just stores whatever I find interesting.
I will say that when my Grandmother(I’m actually American, she met my grandfather during his tour in Europe with the US Army Air Corp but spent some time as a member of Hitler Youth) went to a rally, when trying to describe it to her mother, she couldn’t remember a single thing that Hitler had actually said, just the emotional charge of the crowd and how she got swept up in it. It was actually from her mother pointing out that Hitler’s words were forgotten the same day they were said that conviced her to get out of the Hitler Youth(an act for which she had to go into hiding at her grandparent’s farm in East Prussia for some time).
James C. Humes in Speak Like Churchill, Stand Like Lincoln: 21 Powerful Secrets of History’s Greatest Speakers called it the Power Pause.
I imagine it’s the ultimate “you had to be there” deal: watching the speeches on DVD or YouTube can’t be anything like attending one of those enormous rallies. The energy of the crowd would have made for an entirely different experience.
And many Germans could have seen Hitler on television from 1935 onward. Broadcast television became very popular with the 1936 Olympics. “Party bigwigs got first-dibs on sets, but television parlors for the general public also became popular.” per Stuart Galbraith’s DVD review of “Television Under the Swastika” – link to review here.
You also have to take into account where the German psyche was at the time of the little dictator’s rise to power. The country had been devastated by the first World War, their economy was in the toilet. Germany was only about 60 years old when Hitler started his rise, and the idea of democracy there was still relatively fresh.
Interestingly, and really not to compare any contemporary politician to Hitler, I was really impressed by Santorum’s speech after the primaries yesterday. He also did a slow build, some pauses and works up his momentum. I didn’t agree with much he had to say, but it was difficult not to get caught up a bit in the flow. I’m sure most good speakers do the same. Watch a good evangelical preacher some time and they also follow the same patterns, maybe a bit less manic at the end.
A lot of people who aren’t fans of Nazi politics would agree that Nazi uniforms often looked pretty spiffy.