Biographical concern with the details of Hitler's life and his bizarre personality . . . falls some way short of explaining the extraordinary magnetism of his popular appeal. Nor can Hitler's obsessive ideological fixations, also well known, satisfactorily account for his remarkable popularity. It would, for example, be easy to exaggerate the drawing power of anti-Semitism as the determining element in winning support for the Nazi Movement (though its functional importance as a unifying idea within the Movement is scarcely disputable). And for a population concerned with improving material conditions from the depths of the slump and overwhelmingly frightened of the prospect of another war, the idea of a coming war for Lebensraum was unlikely to have a dominant appeal. It has been plausibly suggested, therefore, that deep into the dictatorship itself Hitler's own ideological obsessions had more of a symbolic than concrete meaning for even most Nazi supporters.

What seems necessary is to add to the extensive knowledge of Hitler as a person by turning the focus on to the image of Hitler as Führer. The sources of Hitler's immense popularity have to be sought, it has rightly been claimed, "in those who adored him, rather than in the leader himself." This book tries to take a step in that direction. It is not, in fact, primarily concerned with Hitler himself, but with the propaganda image-building process, and above all with the reception of this image by the German people--how they viewed Hitler before and during the Third Reich; or, expressing it slightly differently, less what Hitler actually was than what he seemed to be to millions of Germans, within this context, as a study in political imagery, it aims to demonstrate how the "Hitler myth"--by which I mean a "heroic" image and popular conception of Hitler imputing to him characteristics and motives for the most part at crass variance with reality--served its vitally important integratory function in providing the regime with its mass base of support. . . .

The dual concerns of image-building and image-reception are closely intermeshed. There is not the slightest doubt that the "Hitler myth" was consciously devised as an integrating force by a regime acutely aware of the need to manufacture consensus. Hitler himself, as is well known, paid the greatest attention to the building of his public image. He gave great care to style and posture during speeches and other public engagements. And he was keen to avoid any hint of human failings, as in his refusal to be seen wearing spectacles or participating in any form of sport or other activity in which he might not excel and which might make him an object of amusement rather than admiration. His celibacy, which Goebbels portrayed as the sacrifice of personal happiness for the welfare of the nation, was also regarded by Hitler as a functional necessity directed at avoiding any loss of popularity among German women, whose support he saw as vital to his electoral success. All this was closely related to Hitler's known views on the "psychology of the masses," already expounded in Mein Kampf and taking a line similar to that in Gustave le Bon's writings on the almost boundless manipulability of the masses. And during the Third Reich itself, Hitler was evidently aware how important his "omnipotent" image was to his leadership position and to the strength of the regime. To this extent, it has been aptly stated that "Hitler well understood his own function, the role which he had to act out as ‘Leader' of the Third Reich," that he "transformed himself into a function, the function of Führer."

The manipulative purpose behind the "Hitler myth" was, therefore, present from the outset. It was also welcomed and furthered in quite cynical terms, for the "stupefying of the masses" and their weaning away from the lure of socialism towards an anti-socialist, counter-revolutionary mass movement, by those members of the ruling classes prepared to give active backing to the Nazi Party--though it would be easy to exaggerate the extent to which the "Hitler myth" was either built to serve, or objectively did ultimately serve, the interests of monopoly capitalism. What does seem indisputable is that the constructed "Hitler myth" was indispensable in its integrative function, firstly as a counter to the strong centrifugal forces within the Nazi Movement itself, and secondly in establishing a massive basis of consensus among the German people for those aims and policies identifiable with the Führer. And the more the objective contradictions in the social aspirations of Nazism's mass base became apparent, the greater was the functional necessity for the reification and ritualization of the "Hitler myth" in order to provide a firm base of affective integration.