What do you think of the Mannerheim recording? (believed to be the only known recording of Hitler speaking German in his normal, relaxed, non-public-speaking voice)
Is it “better” German than his speech voice?
What’s interesting about that recording is the reason it’s so rare is Hitler was very image conscious. He did not want the regular public associating him with common behavior or seeing into his personal / private life. He did not like being photographed / video’d in a private context either.
I couldn’t stand more than two minutes of it, but it sounds to me just like his speeches, only much calmer, restrained and non-agitated. The kind of language and mode of expression is the same. And it’s not that he speaks bad German, just the opposite, he knew how to express himself in a sophisticated way, but his language was very quaint, flowery and pathetic, even a bit old-fashioned for his time.
Ironically, it’s sometimes precisely showing a little bit of your private/personal side that can really burnish a tyrant’s image. This is something Goebbels probably understood better than Hitler - Goebbels had a good grasp of how propaganda needs the “soft” aspect and not just the hard.
I see, thanks.
I’ve long been fascinated by German; it’s my favorite non-English language, although I hardly know anything other than the barest of Bundesliga stuff.
Thanks Velocity. I had never heard the full Mannerheim recording before.Hitler’s German is very clear and his accent not as strong as I had expected. (not like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s for example who tends to clip his words, if that is the right word to use)
Well, this is blocked in Belgium and I guess it will be blocked in Germany too when I get back there. I have never heard more than a couple of seconds of Hitler’s speeches, it makes it even more intriguing for me how he could have had such an impact. The short bits I heard sound ridiculous, histerical, unhinged, but if you only hear the end of the crescendo it is likely you misjudge the tone. I understand why those speeches are censored here, so many idiots would like to hear them because they would like to agree with them and they know in advance they would agree, but I would like to hear them to understand how they worked. It seems hard, I have no VPN and I don’t want some Inlandsgeheimdienst (Domestic Secret Service - who btw tend to be close to Nazi ideology anyway, at least in Germany and in Spain) to be able to acuse me of being a Nazi sympathiser myself for searching online for the “wrong” thing.
As per the original questions of the OP I agree with the content and the tone of @EinsteinsHund and @Martin_Hyde replies.
As per ridiculous gestures and intonation I am surprised there is no mention yet of Mussolini, who predated Hitler as a boastful public speaker (and as an ugly corpse too, if I may say so).
Fantastic post. So Hitler used the Beer Halls as a testing ground for both his oratorical style based on emotion and the nature of his ideas. Must have been easy to manipulate those men too given men who get drunk to drive away their sorrows and frustrations were able to hear over and over from someone with a level of popularity tell them their problems are caused by some other group of people.
Something big to keep in mind is remember how most politicians reach audiences today–through television and video on the internet. They do interviews, they give speeches that, even when they reach a decent live audience reach far more people through a televised audience. They run campaign ads where they address the camera.
Since 1960 or so politicians have understood that this is a different type of dialogue, they’re essentially in your living room. That changes the expected tone and nature of a speech. A fiery revivalist preacher who literally could generate a huge throng of fervent followers, would look silly on TV. That’s why a lot of slicker televangelists for example have a very different style to those old school revivalist preachers.
In a sense it’s the difference between stage acting and film acting. One of the first things you’ll ever learn if you take an acting class geared towards getting you ready to act in local plays, is that when you gesticulate, it needs to be bold and noticeable, you’re acting for “the guy in the last row” as much as the guy in the front row. Subtle facial expression and subtle movements don’t get conveyed as easily in a large room as they do with film. In public speaking in which you’re primarily intended to be conveying a message to an in-person audience, in pre-television times, subtlety was not really all that effective.
Nitpick: Hitler was still in the army, and assigned to the Intelligence Division. He was sent to a September, 1919 meeting to gather information so the army could keep an eye on the German Workers’ Party(DAP). He liked what he heard and quickly joined and then led them. The party was renamed the National Socialist German Workers’ Party(NSDAP/Nazi) in February, 1920. Hitler left the army in March, 1920.
Thanks @Bayaker for the correction. I was working from memory and thought that he was spying the DAP for another party.
What took you so long? 
They are usually seen as ridiculous, hysterical, and unhinged unless one is aware of what led to that and WW2 itself. To address that, I suggest books and documentaries.
Books and documentaries sound like a magnificent proposal, I thank you very much. So constructive and original, should have thought of myself. If I may contribute with a proposal myself, I recommend reading the posts you answer to before you do.
From George Orwell’s review of Mein Kampf, 1940:
“But Hitler could not have succeeded against his many rivals if it had not been for the attraction of his own personality, which one can feel even in the clumsy writing of Mein Kampf , and which is no doubt overwhelming when one hears his speeches….I have reflected that I would certainly kill him if I could get within reach of him, but that I could feel no personal animosity. The fact is that there is something deeply appealing about him. One feels it again when one sees his photographs….It is a pathetic, dog-like face, the face of a man suffering under intolerable wrongs. In a rather more manly way it reproduces the expression of innumerable pictures of Christ crucified, and there is little doubt that that is how Hitler sees himself…. He is the martyr, the victim, Prometheus chained to the rock, the self-sacrificing hero who fights single-handed against impossible odds. If he were killing a mouse he would know how to make it seem like a dragon. One feels, as with Napoleon, that he is fighting against destiny, that he can’t win, and yet that he somehow deserves to. The attraction of such a pose is of course enormous; half the films that one sees turn upon some such theme.”
Has anyone seen the movie The Man in the Glass Booth (1974), inspired by the trial of Adolf Eichmann in Israel? Maximiliian Schell gives a brilliant performance explaining how Hitler managed to appeal to so much of the German public.
Also, in the miniseries Inside the Third Reich (1982) Derek Jacobi as Hitler gives a rousing speech to a university crowd that (according to Albert Speer) moved him and many of his fellow students to go Nazi.
It’s a basic proposal to those who see things like this as hysterical. That response is usually based on the inability to see the context of those speeches.
That’s bullshit. I also was one of those who characterized his style of speeches as hysterical, and I know the history of the rise of Hitler, his party and the nazi terror damned well. But taken those speeches as they are from a modern POV, they just sound that way, and it’s hard to get why anyone fell for them.
ETA: watch Charlie Chaplin’s “The Great Dictator”. Chaplin was right to make fun of Hitler, though it did him no good at the time.
I am afraid we both have fallen victim of this poster and have fed him, which he is surely enjoying. Reading some other posts by him I believe he is the right candidate to try out the block function in this board. A premiere for me. Goes to show that everybody is good for something.