Adolf Hitler's Own Book Mein Kampf (My Battle)/Chapter 18
Chapter XVIII
The Early Struggle
Echoes of the first mass meeting held on February 24, 1920, in the Hofbrauhaus had not yet faded away when preparations for the next meeting were undertaken.
Now we decided to hold one great meeting every week, along with small meetings once or twice a month. The same old thought still tortured us—would people come to our meetings, and would they listen to us? I, personally, believed firmly even at that time that once people came, they would absorb the speeches.
The Hofbrauhaus took on an almost sacred significance for us. More and more people came to hear us talk, first of the “war guilt”, then of the peace treaties, and so on through almost all vital subjects. Meetings at which the peace treaties were discussed always created great agitation. As soon as a speaker criticized Versailles, out of the audience would come the standard howl: “And Brest-Litovsk?”
The crowd would shout this again and again, until one could have beaten one’s head against the wall in disgust against such people!
- (Brest-Litovsk was the treaty Germany inflicted upon the defeated Russians in 1917. It was much more harsh than the Treaty of Versailles.)
“The value of physical terror, against the individual and against the masses, now was revealed to me.”
Mein Kampf—Chapter I
We had to creep into the minds of the people with our hate of the Treaty of Versailles so that finally, when the people realized the villainy of that document, memory of our stand against it would convince them that we could be trusted.
I was in favor of taking a direct stand against public opinion, whenever it was wrong on any basic question, without any hesitation. The Nazi party was not to be the slave of the masses, it was to be their master!
Almost always in those years, I stepped before a group of people who believed the precise opposite of what I intended to say. Then it was a two-hour task to cut off two or three thousand people from their own convictions, to hammer to pieces, blow by blow, the foundations of their old opinions, and gradually to swing them over to our view.
Always Disarm
The Enemy
I learned something very important from these talks—to knock the weapon of the enemy’s reply from his hand at the very beginning of my attack upon his view. Thus, very soon, I changed the title of my speech about the “Treaty of Versailles” and called it “The Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles.” I learned the stereotyped remarks the enemies in the audience always made about Brest-Litovsk, and I carefully prepared rebuttals to all these points and flung them in the face of the audience before the people could open their mouths.
I would compare the two peace treaties point by point, showing the really limitless humaneness of Brest-Litovsk against the inhuman cruelty of Versailles, with excellent results.
Two years later I was a master at this art of speedily disarming the enemy.
Meetings at which I talked about the peace treaties seemed never to end, for I considered this a vital subject, and repeated my speech of denunciation again and again in endless repetition; I gradually put it in better form until at last I was driving a powerful message into the heart of the people.
This constant practice in addressing meetings slowly but surely made me clever in the use of the pathos and the gestures needed to sway audiences of thousands.
I wrote a propaganda pamphlet about the treaties, too, and this was printed and spread far and wide. The first meetings were characterized by tables overflowing with leaflets, newspapers, and all manner of written propaganda. But the greatest emphasis was put upon the spoken word, which is ever far more potent than is the written word.
The speaker can establish such direct contact with the listeners! If he is sensitive he can tell, after he has spoken for just a few moments, exactly how he must adapt his talk in order to win his audience. A speaker can change the presentation of his subject for every throng—as a writer, of course, cannot do.
Never Orate
Before Breakfast
Audiences are so moody that even the same talk, the same speaker, and the same subject can have entirely different results at ten in the morning from those they will achieve at three in the afternoon or in the early evening. I remember how once when I spoke at a mass meeting in Munich at ten in the morning, how depressing the atmosphere was, and how I found it impossible to stimulate the audience—yet I spoke no worse than on other occasions. I left the meeting most unhappy, but with a rich experience. Tests I made later on led to the same result.
The stupid German intelligentsia from their lofty perch proclaim, of course, that the writer is superior to the speaker. I remember reading one of their criticisms, written during the World War, of the speeches of Lloyd George, dissecting them bit by bit as under a magnifying glass. The bright conclusion was drawn that his addresses were intellectually inferior, as well as commonplace and obvious. So I got some of George’s speeches to read them, and had to laugh at the masterly way they had been composed in order to reach and grasp the soul of the masses.
The mass meeting is invaluable partly because the individual often feels alone while he is considering joining the new movement—he is still upon uncertain ground—but when he joins together with many others he is encouraged and strengthened by the feeling of fellowship. Surrounded by thousands of those who believe implicitly in the new movement, the individual is swept off his feet by the magic compulsion of mass suggestion. He succumbs.
The Nazi movement must never overlook this, and must never allow itself to be influenced by the Bourgeois fools who know better—but who have tossed away a great state, endangered their own existence, and destroyed their position of leadership.
If those people today doubt the power of the spoken word, it is because, thank God, their ceaseless chatter has convinced them of the uselessness of words.