Noted. But for once it wasn’t a political snark as much as what I reckoned to be a fair observation of down-to-earth, homespun attitude being better received by the masses in times of extreme economic hardship and general international humiliation. Relevant because she really did resonate with a large segment of our own population and things were bad, although not quite “wheelbarrows full of worthless bank notes” bad.
But I’ll cop to that bit about Bush. That was naughty.
Well, in the case of “Fight them on the beaches”, that could be either because it’s not Churchill or because it was recorded years after the war was over!
But what it apparently definitely ain’t is Churchill actually giving the speach in parliament!
None of Churchill’s speeches in parliament were recorded or broadcast when delivered. If you weren’t there, you weren’t there; you could only read them.
He did later record the major speeches, but it is a somewhat wooden performance.
But, even in so far as he recreated his earlier delivery, that was in a (somewhat) intimate space to a bunch of people who knew him well, and often joined in debate with him. So it wouldn’t be the delivery you would choose either for a mass rally or for a broadcast to millions.
How is it underwhelming? His ‘From the Stettin on the Baltic to Trieste on the Adriatic an iron curtain is descending on Europe.’ [paraphrase]
Still gives me chills. What an amazing orator. An amazing leader.
Bolding mine, though those were obviously big parts of it there was also immense fury at the notion that Germany had been betrayed from within, that while her soldiers had been fighting and dying they were stabbed in the back by the ‘November criminals’, Jewish interests, Marxists and Socialists. Hitler didn’t invent this idea but he subscribed to it wholeheartedly and found a ready audience;
“Subserviency towards the enemy, surrender of the human dignity of the German, pacifist cowardice, tolerance of every indignity, readiness to agree to everything until nothing more remains. This November Republic bore the stamp of the men who made it. The name ‘November criminals’ will cling to these folk throughout the centuries.”
Hitler, Munich, 1923.
If I recall my reading correctly, the Nazis also seeded the audience with agents who’s job it was was to help “cheer-lead” a little bit. Sometimes passionate emotions (anger, exultation) can be contagious in a live event type setting. You’re not going to get that effect while sitting in your living room watching historical black & white reels.
I think modern (U.S.) politicians often also have ringers in their crowds to clap and cheer at the right times too, in planned events.
I once read that after the rousing “we’ll fight them …” portion, as the parliament erupted in cheers, Churchill turned to the guy next to him and said “we’ll fight them with the butt ends of broken bottles, because that’s bloody well all we’ve got”.
No idea if this actually happened.
It seems very unlikely, unless he was joking. Great Britain had been re-arming since 1935, and despite the loss of army equipment in France the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force were still intact, which rendered a German invasion effectively impossible. (there are, I believe, other threads on this point)
BTW, I think Clive James in his “Fame in the 20th Century” documentary presented a good explanation of Hitler’s appeal:
Mussolini’s speeches “sharing the formal properties of a salami”. Heh.
You mean that they don’t already?
The Economist article I linked to mentions the broken bottles line. I don’t have time to take another look at it now and I forget whether it was alleged or verified, but if you’re interested in double checking, it’s referred to there.
The source for this anecdote is Hewlett Johnson, the Stalinist Dean of Canterbury, who revealed it in a speech in Colchester in 1947. The anecdote was picked up by the Associated Press and transmitted for posterity in this three-paragraph summary.
The summary is problematic, to say the least. It references a microphone and a broadcast. The “Report on Dunkirk” was never broadcast, at least not until recreated after the war. Either Johnson was misremembering from a different speech, or he was Making Shit Up.
Nevertheless the alleged aside is often quoted, usually without attribution, as in “it is often said” or “some say” that Churchill made an aside about beer bottles. Details are altered so that the aside is either “muttered” or “whispered” to a colleague in the House of Commons, during a round of applause, either during or at the end of the peroration.
My vote is that it’s nonsense. Churchill said a lot of funny things so people make up more.
And just think how much he could have accomplished, how many more hearts and minds he would have robbed without that preposterous toilet brush of a moustache. Picture this : same Hitler, same charisma, Lemmy’s facial hair. Soviet Russia really *would *have crumbled in a month !
And the adoring crowds did not realize that Hitler planned a war of extinction against Russia-one that would leave Germany broke and defeated.
Another Hitler question: Hitler was never promoted beyond corporal (in the WWI German Army). In his speeches (as Chancellor) Hitler usually wore a quasi-military outfit, with an officer’s peaked cap. Was he subsequently promoted or something?
No, they thought he would end the depression in Germany, annex the Sudetenland, conquer Czechoslovakia, defeat France, and lead the Aryan people to their destiny of overwhelming victory. What helped with his later speeches was, it looked like he was doing it.
His early speeches were a lot about how it wasn’t Germany’s fault she lost WWI - it was the fault of the Jews and the Marxists and slackers at home. It was the Dolchstoßtheorie. Germany was “stabbed in the back”, and it was all the fault of those dirty Jews. It wasn’t Germany’s fault for the Depression - it was the evil capitalists (and those dirty Jews) who made them pay reparations. Germany was being denied their place in the nations, and Lebensraum, by limits on her military. People in dire circumstances love being told it isn’t their fault, and they love even more if someone can point to an enemy and say that it is their fault.
So they elected him and he got appointed Chancellor. And by golly, it looked a fuck of a lot like it was going to work just like he said it would. He stopped paying reparations, ignored the limits of Versailles on German military buildup, Austria voted to be united with Germany, and he annexed the Sudetenland. And he said “Those others are weak. If we conquer Czechoslovakia, they won’t do anything”. And they didn’t.
So he and Stalin invaded Poland. “Those Slavs don’t have a chance against us Aryans”. They didn’t. Five years of WWI, and they couldn’t conquer France. Hitler smashed them flat in six weeks. How could you not be rivetted by speeches from someone who tells you it is your destiny, when it is happening right in front of your eyes?
Obviously it wasn’t going to work out in the long run. But Wizard’s First Rule held true then just as it does now -
And wanting to believe is the best motivation in the world.
I suspect, if anyone thought anything, that they thought it was a Fuhrer’s uniform. Der Fuhrer can wear anything he wants.
Regards,
Shodan
This x2.
My grandmother grew up in Germany just after WWI, and if you want to get some perspective on what that experience did to people–when she was in her 70’s we asked her what was the happiest day of her life and she said, “When we had all the food we could eat.”
She came to the US in the 1920’s. I asked her once why Hitler could be so popular when his ideas were so awful, and she told me, “He was a great speaker, and he told people what they wanted to hear.”
Just this little clip of Hitler speaking at the Siemens Dynamo factory will show how visceral a reaction he provokes–even if you don’t speak German. I know a little German, but not enough to follow every word. But I believe at the beginning of the speech he tells the crowd, “I know where you’re coming from. I was a blue-collar worker too. I understand you! I’m one of you!” Then he mops his brow and gives a moment for the words to sink in, and to show how emotional he is about what he’s saying. I think it’s genius. He said more with a handkerchief than all the speeches of our politicians of the last 50 years put together.
The Fuhrer promoted himself to head of military and head of state on the death of Hindenburg.
Pretty sure that rates a peaked cap of some kind.
There were some who saw through it. Ludendorff, an early supporter of the Nazis, told Hindenburg in January 1933 after he had promoted Hitler to the Chancellorship “I solemnly prophesy that this accursed man will cast our Reich into the abyss and bring our nation to inconceivable misery. Future generations will damn you in your grave for what you have done.”
Quasi-military is right, his uniforms are not of the WWI German Army but his paramilitary Stormtroopers.
His brown uniform is that of the Oberste SA-Führer.
One can hardly call Ludendorff a disinterested party.
IIRC, all of the politicians have some sort of training for gesticulations while speech making.
In the late 90s, a friend of mine saw Bill Clinton do some common JFK hand gesture, and he said “Wow…it reminded me so much of…JFK… (wistful note in his voice).” Apparently, to my friend, this was some sort of genetic thing for Camelot minded leaders or else the dream so infused it’s adherents that it remolded their autonomous nervous system after a JFK image.
Till then, I had thought that my friend was at least partly NOT a dolt.
