How Hitler Did It
Nobody has the right to deprive simple people of their childish certainties until they've acquired others that are more reasonable.
-- 14 October 1941, Hitler's Secret Conversations 1941-1944, N Cameron, trans.
How, I keep wondering as the 2008 election looms, how did he do it? I can't sleep for thinking, how did he persuade so many people against logic and conscience? It haunts me deep in the night, because in newsreels Hitler looks ridiculous, arms flailing, screaming, spit spraying from his lips.
How did one person working within the system, using legal means, not breaking the German laws at the time -- how did he come to be master of an empire stretching from the Volga to the Atlantic, from the Arctic Circle to North Africa?
It wasn't the power of his writing, his ideas, they were threadbare, crude, silly. In Mein Kampf (pp 106-7) he dismisses the written word, it's merely useful for giving theoretical foundations. "But the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word, and that alone. Particularly the broad masses of the people can be moved only by the power of speech."
I hate to look to another Austrian for the answer, but psychoanalytic group therapists believe and teach that -- for good or for evil -- two phenomena drive the power of groups: Amplification and contagion. (Note to self: Go back and read Totem and Taboo. Freud had at least some good ideas.) Contagion is the way feelings transfer from one member to another, the way emotions spread through the whole group. Amplification is how emotions in a group grow and grow bigger than the sum of their parts -- the emotion of the group-as-a-whole becomes more than that of the members additively.
Hitler sensed their impact on your average Joe: "When from his little workshop or big factory, in which he feels very small, he steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinions around him...he is swept away by three or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm...." (Ibid. 478-9)
If you look at Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will, or more recent American and British documentaries, the way he used contagion shows. Hitler starts slow, speaking to one section of the crowd, one area, and slowly the feelings spread from that nucleus. Emotion, starting small, ripples from that center to the periphery.
Hitler's friend and early Nazi party member Ernst Hanfstängl (Harvard Class of 1909, by the way) describes the structure of the early speeches. They begin very quietly with what psycholinguists call a "nuanced silence." He stands at the podium, the silence growing over a minute or two, or more. (To our consciousness, the pressure of such a silence feels almost unbearable, dead air time.) Then, there is a cough or a rustle or some noise from someone in the crowd. At this point, he speaks directly to that person, and to that person alone. Often it is a woman. Usually it is about what is going on here and now, he makes a remark about food shortages or domestic difficulties. Heads begin to nod. Assent ripples outward through the crowd. Contagion starts its work.
Hanfstängl describes the architecture of those speeches as built up of past, present, future -- and as having the shape of a horizontal figure-of-eight. First, there would be the soft empathic comment about how hard life can be. Then after the whole crowd was nodding, after he had them completely under control, he would shift to the past (this was the upswing of one circle of the figure-eight). Then tempo shifts as he crosses to the other side of the figure eight, and there comes a shift into march time, 4/4 time. This is the beginning of emotional amplification.
His speech rate accelerates as he sweeps down into a bitter criticism of those in power for neglecting the myths of teutonic greatness, for betraying the Volk, the German Race with "the stab in the back." He sets up an adversary, an imaginary person from the opposition to "debate" -- first argument, then counterargument. His diction becomes almost Biblical, and perhaps by now the tempo is 2/4 time.
In the last segment, he looks to a future under the Party. Faster, faster he rhapsodizes. He promises them the world -- literally. In the last ten minutes, plunging and thrusting he is bringing the crowd to an orgasm of words. Finally he screams, "Deutschland über alles!" and, drenched with sweat, he collapses exhausted, the crowd is on its feet, stretching, straining, hot to do whatever he asks.
As 2008 bears down on us, I try to keep in mind how groups work because I know what a sucker for propaganda I am, just like your average Joe. Contagion and amplification worked then and they work now, on everybody. The image I try to hold in mind is the Nuremberg rallies: A multitude swept up in patriotic psychosis, eager like lemmings to throw themselves over a cliff.
Now, excuse me, I have to go read more about Ron Paul. Maybe he'd let me coach him on his speeches. Or not.
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Oh, bravo Mr. Groves, you've defined mob mentality. And that way you subtly compared Bush to Hitler, that's just original.
It's easy to distance oneself from the masses, think you are above them, especially when looking at them from the past. It's even easier to appear sympathetic, to pity the average Joes who don't know better. But when the moment happens and you do nothing, you're jsut as ignorant as you imagine them to be.
An MD capable of saying of a vastly superior intellect that "Freud had at least some good ideas," is an MD in need of a few good ideas, himself, indeed.
Let's face it without 9/11 Bush would be the laughingstock of the world, blithering idiot that he is. And like Hitler, America after 9/11 was fertile psuedo nationlistic, quite ripe for the barrage of lies prepared by these Nazis. Just like Germany and Japan went out and conquered for national resources so are we. And it will end the same way, with our defeat. It simply can't be done. Every empire fails for the same reason, and each one of them is led by someone who thinks this time it's different. It's not.
Dr. Groves,
Thank you for this insightful post. The major fact that is left unsaid is that television plays a major role in elections in today's world. Ronald Reagan is still remembered as the "great communicat
Somehow these words never scared me. What scared me about Ronald Reagan was that he stated that, "Now that I'm Governor of California, I'm going to raise your tuition at the University of California so that your voice will never be raised in protest against a massive upward shift in wealth. Later, he fired the air traffic controllers, after having pulled off the October Surprise, and the Iran/Contra mess. He was just warming up with the Reagan tax cuts and borrowing and military expenditures.
George W. Bush was "wired" during the debates but it was the Fox News which "amplified" all the hysteria. Rush Limbaugh shouts out the fear and hatred every day for the "contagion" factor. Bill 'O even calls it the "factor." Sean Hannity is the echo. The "reality" is echoed everywhere you turn today.
Same game plan, different amplification system. To say that American exceptionalism and fear-mongering are not being used on the voters is to ignore Marshall McCluhan's work, "The Medium is the Message." Propaganda today is a twenty-four, seven proposition. It would be counter-productive for even a fascist to scream fear and hatred, even in a suggestive, rhythmic tempo; we already have the merchants of hate doing that for them non-stop.
My prescription is John Edwards. He doesn't scream at you or hypnotize you, he just uses the power of persuasion based on the truth, the best medicine.
You should talk to the Republicans, because they have been studying the art of Fascism for decades and have become experts in the field.
Beyond that, in order to gain control of a large group of people you only need about 10% to be strongly on your side. Here's how it works.
First, you tell the members of the society that 1/2 of the citizens, the women, are unintelligent, weak, untrustworthy, lacking in credibility, incapable of thinking about anything beyond house cleaning and childbearing, and whatever justifiably low-paying job they do outside the home. And, logically, that means that the men are the more intelligent, capable, competent, and trustworthy, and must run everything. When you do that, the men, will make sure that anything women say is disregarded in public discourse.
Next you undermine other small categories within the population. For example, spread the belief that most black men and Hispanic men are to be disregarded based on traditional racist theories. You might want to also exclude Asians, Native Americans, certainly Arabs.
Among the approximately 30% of the total population that remains, you can further eliminate other groups based on things like physical appearance (fat men, skinny men, no good) and religion (non-Christians are no good).
You now have an even smaller group of white male Christians. They have the basic belief system which they spread throughout the country. They also control the business, media and political world, so can require adherence to this world view from their employees.
All men, 50% of the population, will accept the dominant view because, after all, they get to better than the women. Probably half the women will accept the view because it is accompanied by the suggestion that men need to take care of them which is an attractive idea in an often violent world.
Voila: fascism. Or, modern Republican America. Take your pick.
The extreme Pat Roberson end days millions are America's greatest danger. They are the cannon fodder for the new age of global freeze.
This post is not, as some ignorant folk have expressed , a comparison of Bush and Hitler...i
The more scientifically educated a person is the less influence this has .
The superstitious rubbish of religion, the jingoism of the fearful and the emotional hysteria of those who watch TMZ and other celebrity gossip are examples of how easily led Americans are.
How else could someone so mediocre ate best like Bush be President twice? How else could an obvious no talent like Oprah become so influential?
The fact that most Americans can't even define what the scientific method is goes a long way to showing how ignorant American's are and why they are so easily duped.
BushFarbenBurton
George W. has pulled the same thing with the American people. He even invented a new term "Islamo-Fascism" to try and demonize people of an entire religion to meet his ends. Sound familiar?
I think Hitler is a great example of how willing
people are to grasp at straws when they've been
pushed into a situation of social and financial
duress. The end of WWI left Germany perpetually
on the hook for war reparations they could
not afford, and Hitler made his speeches in
front of willing audiences who desperately
wanted a way out. Desperate people, desperate
times, desperate measures, and one shiny-eyed
asshole making promises=third reich.
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" ...In 1946, the U.S. government investigation concluded that without the IG Farben the Second World War would simply not have been possible..
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"The IG Farben Trial was the largest of all industrial trials. All defendants were indicted for the same crimes as the Krupp defendants: planning and waging of wars of aggression, conspiracy for this purpose, economic plundering, and forced labour and enslavement of prisoners of wars, deported persons, and concentration-camp inmates. Furthermore, three defendants were indicted for SS membership. "
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The experience of the Hitler rallies is not so alien to today as some suggest. In fact, we've learned to use mass media to replicate the experience over television. No wonder the Bush campaign was so careful to eliminate dissenters from the televised crowd at all their events. No wonder Bill Clinton was so successful with his Town Hall meeting format. And most importantly, no wonder that the coverage of polls and the race exclude the coverage of issues and policy.
Eugenics was extremely popular in this era and which spread like a disease throughout Europe and the U.S. It was promoted as science and it's dangerous ideas where spread through school textbooks, medical journals, newspapers and media and given false credibility by doctors and psychiatrists of the day.
Hitler was one of the first politicians to give this dangerous pseudo-science true support and helped to enforce ideas and policies created by these "doctors", which included sterilization then murder of disabled children and adults, the so-called mentally ill, Jews, Slavs, Blacks, Arabs and anyone else they wanted to label as a threat to Aryan bloodline.
Read up about it, as this is a terrifying and horrific story that is intentionally not being told.
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What is it about Germans and their nouns? What did their language convey as absolute? Oh.
To be fair, Bush is no Hitler. The peculiar threads of childhood trauma, semi-literate blather, amphetamine-induced manias, and the slowly increasing insanity and dementia brought on the ravages of syphilis that combined to produce Hitler will probably never be replicated.
It is worthwhile pointing out, however, that stressful times often prove easy pray for those sufficiently loud and sufficiently crazy to take advantage of them.
Fascinating read. I wish Dr. Grove provided some context of the German economical, religious and cultural backdrop which allowed Hitler's crazed propaganda to flourish, regardless his manipulative meter and cadence.
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