Posted on 10/15/2015 6:33:36 PM PDT by markomalley
Many of us marvel at Trump's ability to bring 35,000 to a political rally early in an election.
Hitler used to bring 700,000 to a million.
He is widely considered the best political orator in the history of man.
Every politician would do well to study his delivery and cadence. His absolute sincerity. His commitment to his country.
Not that he should be emulated in any other way, but the man was very, very good at leading an enormous crowd.
Hitler’s master stroke was the debate with Otto Wels during the discussion of enacting The Enabling Act.
My thought exactly-—and you can be sure the Muslim horde will skip the annotations, and go right to “the good parts”
I've read Mein Kampf a couple of times. Uneven quality but it reflected the zeitgeist as well as helped drive it. Touches of badly misplaced resentment over the outcome of WWI - his "November criminals" were, after all, no more than the civilians left holding the bag when the Kaiser, Hindenburg, and Ludendorff skipped town. Overlaying that, a monstrous and pathological ego, pure paranoia, and a monomaniacal hatred of the Jews who were simultaneously supposed to be in charge of conspiratorial capitalism and Bolshevism, a pretty neat trick if you think about it. It's a real insight into interbellum Germany, invaluable for the student if a bit of a slog. It is curious that so few political leaders of the time - Chamberlain, especially, and Ciano and the entire French diplomatic establishment - could have missed Hitler's clearly stated intentions to strike east for lebensraum. Whatever else, we can't say they weren't warned.
It is also the tantrum of a child lost in its own fantasy world. Hitler conflates his own personal trials with those of his nation, the act of a narcissistic fool. Except for his army service he never once held an honest job in his life. There are a number of American politicians of whom one might say the same.
"By its decision to carry out the political and moral cleansing of our public life, the Government is creating and securing the conditions for a really deep and inner religious life. The advantages for the individual which may be derived from compromises with atheistic organizations do not compare in any way with the consequences which are visible in the destruction of our common religious and ethical values.
The Government will treat all other denominations with objective and impartial justice. It cannot, however, tolerate allowing membership of a certain denomination or of a certain race being used as a release from all common legal obligations, or as a blank cheque for unpunishable behavior, or for the toleration of crimes. [The national Government will allow and confirm to the Christian denominations the enjoyment of their due influence in schools and education.] And it will be concerned for the sincere cooperation between Church and State.
The struggle against the materialistic ideology and for the erection of a true people's community (Volksgemeinschaft) serves as much the interests of the German nation as of our Christian faith. ...The national Government, seeing in Christianity the unshakable foundation of the moral and ethical life of our people, attaches utmost importance to the cultivation and maintenance of the friendliest relations with the Holy See. ...The rights of the churches will not be curtailed; their position in relation to the State will not be changed"
Spooky, at least.
I was in Germany in 92 for a couple of months and ran into a lot of people who had grandfathers that were SS and were still Nazi but had to keep it muted because of the harsh repercussions for even giving the salute.
A lot of these guys are now in positions of power throughout the country and this effin imbecile Merkel (FORMER COMMUNIST EAST GERMAN OFFICIAL)has sown the seeds of the Fourth Reich.
It is that.
And it is one of the most impactful books of all time.
As you said, it captured the interbellum zeitgeist.
And did so in both a elementary and brilliant fashion.
The man knew how to tune in to the passions of the people. Logic was just a plot device.
Hitler aped silent screen actors and their exaggerated gestures. If you watch him speak today, at times he appears to be having some kind of fit. The Germans ate it up much the same way North Koreans are reduced to tears of joy upon hearing birds speaking in human voices praising Dear Leader.
Mein Kampf is mostly gibberish, but it did lay out what Hitler and his Nazis were planning. Marx’s Das Kapital would be more productive reading in order to understand what Obama and company are planning. Mein Kampf Cliff notes on the totalitarian state Hitler planned would be worth reading.
But Hitler was worth emulating for his speaking and thoughts? No more than another megalomaniacal tyrant who plagues us today.
I had seen copies of Mein Kampf in a bookshop in Middlesex, England as a small child. It was 1940. Of course I was not interested in it. An act of defiance by the British methinks.
Someone defaced a library book in Canada. It was a biography. The words were "Polish Power" in big black lettering on the cover. The library threw it out and I got it for two dollars.
The Life and Death of Adolf Hitler.
Robert Payne.
Praeger Publishers. New York Washington.
1973.
I reviewed it on my about page. A lot has been written about WW2. Including "Body Guard of Lies". I will never know in my lifetime, as to whether Hess was sent to try to gain a cessation of hostilities. At 90 years of age, just before his release, he was found hanging with electrical cord. British custody, some think murder.
An awful question was posed and I will never see the answer. Could the German Jews have been saved? One day the facts will come out.
Only for his speaking.
Go to youtube and watch some of his early speeches with subtitles.
When you know the words he is speaking, in context, and his gestures...exaggerated as they were...he WAS very impressive.
Even now. In the context of what happened.
His early speeches were the most histrionic. I’ve seen them. Sometimes he seems to be having an epileptic fit, grimacing, throwing his arms up, almost weeping. He would really wind the Volk up in the beer halls. Granted, as he gained more experience he learned to moderate his outlandish body language.
Ja, I’ve seen Dolph the green orator in his Landsburg prison/Mein Kampf salad days, and they are almost comical.
Anyone speaking like that today would be laughed off stage.
Yes, he did. He also rehearsed for hours in front of a mirror. Goebbels imitated the style so well it's sometimes difficult to tell the two apart. Himmler as well although with less success.
What these men were accustomed to was speaking with no amplification to a large room full of listeners, and the exaggerated gestures became more and more necessary as the crowds got larger. Take a look at microphone placement for all three men: it's much further forward than anyone uses today. They shout into it as if it isn't there. All of the rhetorical drama, the exaggerated gestures, the modulation of the voice, all of that was essentially stage acting. No contemporary politician could possibly get away with it and most of them aren't smart enough ever to have heard of it.
Donald Trump emulates much of that pantomime. He does so in a less exaggerated way because everyone can see him up close on TV.
In Hitler's case he wanted the folks in the back to see that he was agitated.
I do my checking afterward- not wise. Hess was 93 years old. British and German political figures tried to get his release. They failed. He was found hanging with a table lamp electrical cord. Suicide was the information given.
I had to read that brick for a college history class. I doubt if anybody will read more than a few unintelligible pages of that dreck.
I’ve noticed that myself. But I don’t think it’s because The Donald is unaware of the rhetorical effect he creates.
I’m pretty sure he just doesn’t really care if he’s persuading the crowd or if they agree with him.
It’s probably because after spending a million and a half of his own money, he’s still got about ten billion (more or less) reasons to tell everyone to **** off.
Yeah, his speaking style and manner is appalling. You want someone ‘slick’? ;^]
But he could try harder, you’re right.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EV9kyocogKo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnpTWKKWQ1o
And, I think most reviewers would agree.
He is widely considered the best political orator in the history of man.
...
Perhaps. And it was an unknown talent. He failed as a painter. He worked mostly as a messenger during WWI. When the war ended he figured he wouldn’t be able to find a job, so he stayed in the military. He was sent by the military to infiltrate a tiny political party called the DAP. There he quickly started winning political arguments and his primary talent was soon discovered. So many things about his life were so improbable, which led to great evil, but then some great things came from that. It make me wonder.
You do, or don't think it is?
I'm being sincere.
"Don't" seems incongruous with the rest of your post.
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