| The Rise of Nazism (Perry 360-64) Many extreme racist-nationalist and paramilitary organizations sprang up in postwar Germany. Adolf Hitler (1889-1945), a veteran of World War I, joined one of these organizations, which became known as the National Socialist German Worker's Parry (commonly called the Nazi Party). Hitler's uncanny insight into the state of mind of postwar Germans and his extraordinary oratorical gifts enabled him to gain control of the party. Adolf Hitler MEIN KAMPF (1924) In the "Beer Hall Putsch" of November 1923, Hider attempted co overthrow the stare government in Bavaria as the first step in bringing down the Weimar Republic. But the Nazis quickly scattered when the Bavarian police opened fire. Hitler was arrested and sentenced to five years' imprisonment he served only nine months. While in prison, Hitler wrote Mein Kampf (My Struggle), in which he presented his views. The book came to he regarded as an authoritative expression of the Nazi world-view and served as a kind of sacred writing for the Nazi movement. Hitler's thought—a patchwork of nineteenth-century anti-Semitic, Volkish, Social Darwinist, and anti-Marxist ideas----contrasted sharply with the cure values both the Judeo-Christian and the Enlightenment traditions. Central to Hitler's world-view was racial mythology: a heroic Germanic race that was descended from the ancient Aryans, who once swept across Europe, and was bat-ding for survival against racial inferiors. In the following passages excerpted from Mein Kampf; Hider presents his views of race, of propaganda, and of the National Socialist territorial goals. THE PRIMACY OF RACE Nature does not want a pairing of weaker individuals with stronger ones; it wants even, less a mating of a higher race with a weaker one. Otherwise its routine labors of promoting a higher breed lasting perhaps over hundreds of thousands of yeas would be wiped our. History offers much evidence for this process. It proves with terrifying clarity that any generic mixture of Aryan blood with people M. a lower quality undermines the culturally- superior people. The population of North America consists to a large extent of Germanic elements, which have mixed very little with inferior people of color. Central and South America shows a different humanity and culture; here Latin immigrants mixed with the aborigines, sometimes on a large scale. This example alone allows a clear recognition of the effects of racial mixtures. Remaining racially pure the Germans of North America rose to he masters of their continent; they will remain masters as long as they do not defile their blood. The result of mixing races in short is: a) lowering the cultural level of the higher race; b) physical and spiritual retrogression and thus the beginning of a slow but progressive decline promote such a development means no loss than committing sin against the will of the eternal creator... Everything that we admire on earth--science, technology, invention—- is the creative product of only it few people, and perhaps originally of only one race; our whole culture depends upon them. If they perish, the beauties of the earth will he buried.... All great cultures of the past perished be-cause the original creative race was destroyed by the poisoning of its blood. Such collapse always happened because people forgot that all cultures depend on human beings. In order to preserve a given culture it is necessary to preserve the human beings who created it Cultural preservation in this world is tied to the iron law of necessity and the right to victory of the stronger and better…. If we divide humanity into three categories: into founders of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture, the Aryan would undoubtedly rate first. He established the foundations arid walls of all human progress.. - - The mixing of blood and the resulting lowering of racial cohesion is the stile reason why cultures perish. People do not perish by defeat in war, but by losing the power of resistance inherent in pure blood. All that is not pure race in this world is chaff… A state which in the age of racial poisoning dedicates itself co the cultivation of its best racial elements will one day become master of the world. Modern anti-Semitism was a powerful legacy of the Middle Ages and the unsettling changes brought about by rapid industrialization; it was linked to racist doctrines that asserted the Jews were inherently wicked and bore dangerous racial qualities. Hitler grasped the political potential of anti-Semitism: by concentrating all evil in one enemy.. he could provide non-Jews with an emotionally satisfying explanation for all their misfortunes and thus manipulate and unify the German people. ANTI-SEMITISM The Jew offers the most powerful contrast to the Aryan. ... Despite all their seemingly intellectual qualities the dervish people are without true culture, and especially without a culture of their own. What Jews seem to possess as culture is the property of others, for the most part corrupted in their hands. In judging the Jewish position in regard to human culture, we have to keep in mind their essential characteristics. There never was---and still is no—Jewish art. The Jewish people made no original contribution to the two queen goddesses of all arts: architecture and music. What they have contributed is bowdlerization or spiritual theft. Which proves that Jews lack the very qualities distinguishing creative and culturally blessed races…. The first and biggest lie of Jews is that Jewishness is not a matter of race but of religion, from which inevitably follow even more lies. One of them refers to the language of Jews. It is nor a means of expressing their thoughts, but of hiding them. While speaking French a Jew thinks Jewish, and while he cobbles together some German verse, he merely expresses the mentality of his people. As long as the Jew is not master of other peoples, he must for better or wine speak their languages. Yet as soon as the others have be-come his servants, ten all should learn a universal language (Esperanto for instance), so that by these means the Jews can rule more easily.... For hours the blackhaired red Jewish boy lies in wait, with satanic joy on his face, for the unsuspecting girl whom he disgraces with his blood and thereby robs her from her people. He tries by all means possible to destroy the racial foundations of the people he wants to subjugate. But a people of pure race conscious of its blood can never he enslaved by the Jew: he remains forever a ruler of bastards. Thus he systematically attempts to lower racial purity by racially poisoning individuals. In politics he begins to replace the idea of democracy with the idea of the dictatorship of the proletariat. He found his weapon in the organized Marxist masses, which avoid democracy and instead help him to subjugate and govern people dictatorially with his brutal fists. Systematically he works toward a double revolution, in economics and politics. With the help of his international contacts he enmeshes people who effectively resist his attacks from within in a net of external enemies whom he inches to war, and, if necessary, goes on to unfurling the red flag of revolution over the battlefield. He batters the national economies until the ruined state enterprises are privatized and subject to his financial control. In politics he refuses to give the state the means for its self-preservation, destroys the bases of any national self-determination and defense, wipes out the faith in leadership, denigrates the historic past and pulls everything truly great into the gutter. In cultural affairs he pollutes art, literature, theatre, befuddles national sentiment, subverts all concepts of beauty and grandeur, of nobleness and goodness, and reduces people to their lowest nature. Religion is made ridiculous, custom and morals are declared outdated, until the last props of national character it, the battle for survival have collapsed... Thus the Jew is the big rabble-rouser for the complete destruction of Germany. Where ever in the world we read about attacks on Germany. Jews are the source, just as, in peace and during the war the newspapers of both the Jewish stock market and the Marxists systematically incited hatred against Germany. Country after country gave up its neutrality and joined the world war coalition in disregard of the true interest of the people. Jewish thinking in all this is clear. The Bolshevization ¬of Germany, i e., the destruction of the German national people-oriented intelligentsia and thereby the exploitation of German labor under the yoke of Jewish global finance arc bur the prelude for the expansion of the Jewish tendency to conquer the world- As so often in history, Germany is the turning point in this mighty struggle. If our people and our state become the victims of blood-thirsty and money-thirsty Jewish tyrants, the whole world will be enmeshed in the tentacles of this octopus. If, however, Germany liberates itself from this yoke, we an be sure that the greatest threat to all humanity has been broken… Hitler was a master propagandist and advanced his ideas on propaganda techniques in Mein Kampf. He mocked the learned and book-oriented German liberals and socialists who he felt were entirely unsuited for modern mass politics. The successful leader, he said, must win over the masses through the use of simple ideas and images, constantly repeated. to control the mind by evoking primitive feelings. Hitler contended that mass meetings were the most effective means of winning followers. What counted most at these demonstrations, he said, was will power, strength, and unflagging determination radiating from the speaker to every single individual in the crowd. PROPAGANDA AND MASS RALLIES The task of propaganda does not lie in the scientific training of individuals but in directing the masses toward certain facts, events, necessities, err, whose significance is to be brought to their attention. The essential skill consists in doing this so well that you convince people about the reality of a fact, about the necessity of an event, about the correctness of something necessary, etc... You always have to appeal to the emotions and far less to the so-called intellect…. The art of propaganda lies in sensing the emotional temper of the broad masses, so that you, in psychologically elective form, can catch their attention and move their hearts... The attention span of the masses is very short, their understanding limited; they easily forger. For that reason all effective propaganda has to concentrate on very few points and drive them home through simple slogans, until even the simplest can grasp what you have in mind. As soon as you give up this principle and be-come too complex, you will lose your effectiveness, because the masses cannot digest and retain what you have offered. You thereby weaken your case and in the end lose it altogether. The larger the scope of your case, the more psychologically correct must be the method of your presentation.... The task of propaganda lies not in weighing right and wrong, but in driving home your own point of view. You cannot objectively explore the facts that favor others and present them in doctrinaire sincerity to the masses. You have to push relentlessly your own case.... Even the most brilliant propaganda will not produce the desired results unless it fellows this fundamental rule: You must stick to limiting yourself to essentials and repeat them endlessly. Persistence on this point, as in so many other cases in the world, is the first and most important precondition for success.... Propaganda does not exist to furnish interesting diversions to blasé young dandies, but to convince above all the masses- In their clumsiness they always require a long lead before they are ready to take notice. Only by thousandfold repetition will the simplest concepts stick in their memories. No variation of your presentation should change the content of your propaganda; you at-ways have to come to the same conclusion. Thu may want to highlight your slogans from various sides, but at the end you always have to reaffirm it Only consistent and uniform propaganda will succeed.. Every advertisement, whether in business or politics, derives its success from its persistence and uniformity... The mass meeting is ... necessary because an incipient supporter of a new political movement will feel lonely and anxiously isolated. He needs at the start a sense of a larger community which among most people products vitality and courage. The same man as member of a military company or battalion and surrounded by his comrades will more lightheartedly join an attack than if he were all by himself. In a crowd he feels more sheltered, even if reality were a thousandfold against him. The sense of community in a mass demonstration not only empowers the individual, but also promotes an esprit de corps. The person who in his business or workshop is the first to represent a new political creed is likely to he exposed to heavy discrimination. He needs the reassurance that comes from the conviction of being a member and a. fighter in a large comprehensive organization. The sense of this organization comes first to him a mass demonstration. When he for the first time goes from a petty workshop or from a large factory, whew he feels insignificant to a mass demonstration surrounded by thousands and thou-sands of like-minded fellows—when he as a seeker is gripped by the intoxicating surge of enthusiasm among three or four thousand others—when die visible success and the consensus of thousands of others prove the correctness of his new political creed and for the first time arouse doubts about his previous political convictions- then he submits to the miraculous influence of what we call "mass suggestion." The will, the yearning, and also the power of thousands of fellow citizens now fill every individual. The man who full of doubts and uncertain enters such a gathering, leaves it inwardly strengthened; he has become a member of a community....
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