If you're fluent in German, have you ever listened to Hitler's speeches on

[raccoon]

film? What is your impression?

[BlooInBloo]

1. I really hope this isn't an Obama-is-like-Hitler thread,

[yurbud]

27. Obama once wore khaki pants and Hitler wore them ALL the time!

coincidence or homage?

:sarcasm:

[ColbertWatcher]

41. You know who else used to say coincidence?

[yurbud]

45. oh...MY...GAWD! I eat watermelon too.

[slampoet]

2. GD the place to haul out 70 year old bullshit just to distract people from anything productive.

[raccoon]

5. You think I should've posted to the Lounge, maybe? SHEESH....nt

[Bucky]

8. Thank you for this important reminder that the study of history is irrelevant

The best way to avoid the mistakes of the past is to forget about them & hope they go away.

Thanks, slampoet!

[elehhhhna]

36. lol

[slampoet]

49. What did you learn about WWII that hasn't been gone over?

Enlighten us or STFU.



This isn't studying history. This redoing the work that some author has already done 20 times over.

[LSK]

38. are books by Naomi Wolf irrelevant distractions too???

:eyes:

[mmonk]

46. Nope. They deal with actions of government.

[slampoet]

50. Did Naomi Wolf write a book about WW2 ?

Because there are 22,239 books about it on Amazon right now.



Nearly EVERYTHING even the smallest chapters of ww2 have been written about by people who were THERE.



What have you found out new by examining propaganda speeches that somehow MI5 missed during the war?

or was missed by 22,239 authors in the 60 years since?

[Bob Dobbs]

3. In content, the parallells to busholini are striking.

In presentation, not so much.

[Terry in Austin]

4. Wow - hit the Godwin's Law wall right out of the gate!

[hendo]

12. Im glad

that someone else here understands the implications of that. I mentioned Godwin's Law the other day and I got flamed for it.

[Terry in Austin]

33. Flamed for Godwin's Law!?

Man, you just never know!
So -- did they end up calling you a Nazi?

[Bucky]

6. I can get a little bit of what he says.

He just sounds angry and doctrinaire to me. His appeal, as the appeal of all fascists, depends on the irrational parts of the mind.

The closest American equivalent would be a hyped up conspiracy theorist, alternating between a droning convoluted paranoia and then more agitated rants.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

11. I can think of a handful of people who meet such criteria.

All in the right wing, ça va sans dire.

[Bucky]

14. Actually, if you get some people talking about 9/11, you can see loony is bipartisan

[Bob Dobbs]

16. The closest American equivilent would be busholini and his minons.

The most unbelievable conspiracy theory is the official one.

[PM7nj]

7. Why?

[still_one]

9. My impression is that his speeches are like glen beck, hanity, and limbaugh /nt

[Bucky]

15. Not Hannity so much--he has a "cool" style. But Beck isn't a bad analogy.

Beck has that naughty-boy vibe going on. Of course Beck isn't calling for genocide, so the naughtiness is all relative.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. I majored in German in college, and I find him hard to understand

without German subtitles. It may be that yelling is hard to understand, or it may be the sound quality of the old film clips, but without subtitles, I just catch a few words here and there.

My older relatives say the same thing, and they grew up in the German-American community and spoke German about half the time. Of course, they were from East Prussia, which has a distinctive accent (when my grandmother made her first visit to Germany with us at age 67, people kept asking her if she was from East Prussia, even though she was born in Minneapolis), and Hitler was from Austria, which also has a distinctive accent, so that may be the problem.

[hendo]

13. I have seen a few with English subtitles

The man was an expert at propaganda. It's too bad that he used his skills for such evil means.

"Triumph of the Will" in particular was very cool. However, this analogy falls apart because no modern politician is as good at it as Hitler was. Then again Hitler had Riefenstahl.

[alfredo]

17. Leni was such a talent, too bad she went to the dark side.

If you get the chance look for her photographs of the people of the Sahara.

[hendo]

18. Unfortunately, if she had not gone to the darkside

she likely would have been killed off for standing in the way.

[alfredo]

35. There's some things worse than death.

[hendo]

37. ah, but she was a master in her trade

and every good master wants to see how far they can push thier skill. Not that that is a valid excuse, but still.

It was probably incredibly hard to not get sucked into what Hitler was doing. There have been multiple psychological experiments, and in every case people have done things that they otherwise would not have. The two that immediately come to mine ad the Zimbardo prison study, and the classroom experiment called "The Wave".

Almost anyone can be tricked into doing anything. Then again, tricked isn't really the right word.

[alfredo]

40. Peer pressure. Maybe she really wanted to fit in with the in crowd.

[cemaphonic]

43. eh, she could have come to America

like Lang, Dietrich, Wilder and many other German filmmakers and actors. The best that can be said of her is that she was a somewhat naive opportunist, rather than a doctrinaire Nazi, but still it's not as if it was unclear what she was signing up for.

That said, she was indeed an excellent filmmaker. Anyone interested in cinema or politics should see Triumph of the Will at least once. (For me, I was amazed at how much modern political rallies, such as the party conventions we have coming up draw on ideas that the Nazis pioneered in their rallies.)

[Wizard777]

19. He veiled his evil and hatered in Passion.

[shraby]

20. I've often wondered what he was saying

that endeared him to the people. All I could see was that he was emphatic and the people cheered. To know what he said is to arm yourself against similar speeches.

[BlooInBloo]

21. You have to take the context of how Germany was devastated post WWI.

[guitar man]

30. I don't know exactly

Since I don't speak German, but if I had to guess, from the results, is that what probably endeared him to most was that he was telling them that their problems were not their fault. Scapegoating appeals to the irrational and emotional side of our nature.

I think that's why RW talk radio and Faux Noise are so popular among the segments of the population they appeal to. They have found a group to scapegoat and they beat that drum 24/7

[yellowdogintexas]

31. knowing what he said and how he phrased it is excellent ammunition

against the same thing happening here.

A former minister of my church gave an impassioned sermon one Sunday about the ability of that which is profoundly wrong becoming the norm simply because of 1. the way it is presented and 2. the inattention of the general public.
He was actually talking about prosperity preachers (this was around the time some bigwig dollar grabbing TV guy over in Dallas whose name escapes me at the moment was being exposed for what he was) but he sidebarred over into Nazi Germany as an example of the worst.

I will always remember this quote: "And if you think it couldn't happen here, then you need to sit up and pay attention, because it could happen here. It can happen anywhere if circumstances are right"

This sermon was probably given in 1993, and this man was old enough to have lived through WWII. He was also a very liberal Democrat and ecstatic that Clinton was elected. He did not say that in the pulpit, I just asked him. But he was very outspoken about civil liberties, caring for those less fortunate, and he hit one out of the park when the David Koresh thing happened.

Best sermons I ever heard in my life

[OneBlueSky]

22. when I was very young, my dad was stationed in Austria . . .

and the whole family joined him after a few months . . . as an Army officer, one of the things he was entitled to was a housekeeper, so we had an Austrian woman come in a couple times a week to clean and do various chores . . .

one of the things she did was teach me elementary German, which I learned later was really German with a distinct Austrian accent and which differed significantly from the German spoken in Germany . . . in fact, I remember her remarking on the fact that she sometimes had trouble understanding the language as it was spoken by natives of Germany . . .

while I don't remember much at all these days, I'm told that I got pretty good at conversational Austrian/German over a two-year period when I was seven or eight years old . . . if you asked me to say something in any kind of German these days, though, I'd be at a complete loss . . .

just as a "beside the point" . . . I do remember that once a week a man would ride up on his bicycle, on the back of which was strapped a small crate containing several chickens . . . my mome would select the chicken she wanted, and he'd butcher and clean it right there on the spot . . . it's an image that's stayed with me . . .

[texasleo]

23. "I hate Jews - pass the cabbage" pretty much sums it up.

[Lex]

24. Actually he coated it with religion and love of country.

Just as tyrants and dictators have always done.

[Xithras]

25. Hitler had a speaking style much like an evangelical preacher.

That wasn't a swat at preachers, and the speaking style is used elsewhere, but it's the most recognizable comparison. Hitler spoke in rhythms, building tempo as he went, gradually building his crowd to a fever pitch. Many people today make the mistake of trying to watch only the "interesting" parts of his speeches and can't understand why people fell for him so heavily. To really get it, you have to watch his speeches from beginning to end. We all hate his message, but it's hard to avoid becoming entranced by his speaking style. You hate the man, but he keeps your full and undivided attention.

It was no accident that Hitler spoke this way. Germany was in a dark place, and Hitler presented himself as the nations messiah. The compared his people to the repressed peoples of the Bible, and compared the Jews to the money changers in the temple. He had his promotional materials refer to him as The Leader (Der Fuhrer) to reinforce the idea that only Hitler could lead them out of their dark place and into a new golden age. His speeches reflected that idea, almost always outlining the "good" that was coming, reminding people of the "bad" that they had to deal with now, and explaining how he would lead them from one to the other.

Sadly, this is why the Jews were exterminated. It's been suggested more than once that Hitler didn't actually hate the Jews or even believe his own crap speeches about the "evil" they perpetrated. But in painting himself as a messiah figure, he understood that every story about a good guy has to have a bad guy. In order for him to lead his people to the "good" he needed to identify the force holding them back, and show his people how that force was being overcome. The Jews fit that role. As the religion of Hitler expanded, other groups were included as well, but his underlying idea was always the same; "It's their fault that our motherland is frail today. Together we can rid ourselves of the xxxxxx's, and we'll be one step closer to a new and better tomorrow." It was an appealing idea to people who were literally starving in the streets and were desperate to improve their situation, and Hitlers speeches promised them what they wanted.

FYI, my dad speaks fluent German and taught quite a bit of it to me as a kid. During my sophmore year in college, my history teacher played one of Hitlers better recorded speeches in the background while discussing his rise to power (the teacher had a flair for the dramatic). I didn't even catch his lecture because I found Hitlers speech to be far more interesting. Even without the rest understanding it, it was interesting to see how many people got caught up in the simple tone and cadence of the speech. Most history texts at the time presented Hitlers rise to power as something he achieved by force. After listening to a few of his speeches, I understood that there was a lot more to it. The man could have sold ice cubes to an eskimo, but instead chose to sell hell to the whole world.

[yurbud]

26. I use translations of his speeches to teach my college classes about propaganda

he uses every method the Bushies have: that a weak country is actually a threat, Germans are virtuous, doing a favor to less civilized people by liberating them, and even that Germany is bending over backwards to avoiding harming women & children in the case of the attack on Warsaw.

[raccoon]

32. Wish I could sit in on your classes! nt

[yurbud]

34. I give them an excerpt of Hitler on race, ask if they think he's nuts, then give them

what he wrote about how to do propaganda. The shift in their thinking on him is pretty dramatic, as is how quickly they see the parallels with the methods Karl Rove used for Bush, and, to a lesser extent, all other presidents have used as well.

[tsuki]

28. like Hannity.

[BelleCarolinaPeridot]

29. Sehr stark ...

[Jed Dilligan]

39. Here's a translated version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=feLqz1udhtY

[slackmaster]

47. I understand enough German to get the jest of a lot of his speeches

The language he used was intentionally uncomplicated. His tone of voice and overt behavior were just as important as the content of the message.

Far better qualified than I to address the question would be people like the German teacher at my high school. She was a teenager when Hitler rose to power. She described her feelings on witnessing a live Hitler speech as a combination of adoration and terror. She hated much of what he was saying, knew it was wrong, but she was still overwhelmed by the patriotic ambiance.

[Jed Dilligan]

48. My history teacher said the best time in his life was Hitler Youth.

They had the keys to the whole country. They could go anywhere and do as they pleased.

As far as party rallies went, he just made the analogy to "Beatle Concerts" and left it at that.

[Aristus]

42. His Austrian accent is almost unintelligible to those of us trained in HochDeutsch.

All those drawn out vowels and forward-rolled R's. Good notes above, pointing out that the frenzied shrieking and gesticulating we see in his speeches are just part of the whole. He was an effective speaker because he gave that to the audience only when they were ready for it. He would warm them up by starting out quietly, reasonably. He would build his case, ticking off points of grievance by the German people. When the crowd was sufficiently aroused to genocidal fury at whichever target he was aiming at (Jews, Communists, foreigners, intellectuals, etc.) then he would commence his screaming rants.

It's worth pointing out that most Germans heard Hitler speak for the first time not in person or in newsreels, but on the radio. They couldn't see the capering and flapping he did during a speech. So by the time they actually got to see him speak, they were already hooked on his message, and discounted the clownish theatrics.

[Vickers]

44. Yes, I am fluent in German (or what passes for it in Rheinland-Pfalz).

Yes, I have listened to his speeches.

What is my impression? Elmer Gantry crossed with Ed Gein, with a dash of Joel Osteen.