The
first great meeting on February 24, 1920, in the Festsaal
[Banquet Hall] of the Hofbräuhaus, had not died down
in our ears when the preparations for the next were made.
While up till then it had been considered risky to hold
a little meeting once a month or even once every two weeks
in a city like Munich, a large mass meeting was now to take
place every seven days; in other words, once a week. I do
not need to assure you that there was but one fear that
constantly tormented us: would the people come and would
they listen to us? - though I personally, even then, had the
unshakable conviction that once they were there, the people
would stay and follow the speech.
In
this period the Festsaal of the Munich Hofbräuhaus
assumed an almost sacred significance for us National Socialists.
Every week a meeting, almost always in this room, and each
time the hall better filled and the people more devoted.
Beginning with the 'War Guilt,' which at that time nobody
bothered about, and the 'Peace Treaties,' nearly everything
was taken up that seemed agitationally expedient or ideologically
necessary. Especially to the peace treaties themselves the
greatest attention was given. What prophecies the young
movement kept making to the great masses! And nearly all
of which have now been realized! Today it is easy to speak
or write about these things. But in those days a public
mass meeting, attended, not by bourgeois shopkeepers, but
by incited proletarians, and dealing with the topic, 'The
Peace Treaty of Versailles,' was taken as an attack on the
Republic and a sign of a reactionary if not monarchistic
attitude. At the very first sentence containing a criticism
of Versailles, you had the stereotyped cry flung at you:
'What about Brest-Litovsk?' 'And Brest-Litovsk?' The masses
roared this again and again, until gradually they grew hoarse
or the speaker finally gave up his attempt to convince them.
You felt like dashing your head against the wall in despair
over such people! They did not want to hear or understand
that Versailles was a shame and a disgrace, and not even
that this dictated peace was an unprecedented pillaging
of our people. The destructive work of the Marxists and
the poison of enemy propaganda had deprived the people of
any sense. And yet we had not even the right to complain!
For how immeasurably great was the blame on another side!
What had the bourgeoisie done to put a halt to this frightful
disintegration, to oppose it and open the way to truth by
a better and more thorough enlightenment? Nothing, and again
nothing. In those days I saw them nowhere, all the great
folkish apostles of today. Perhaps they spoke in little
clubs, at teatables, or in circles of like-minded people,
but where they should have been, among the wolves, they
did not venture ; except if there was a chance to howl with
the pack.
But
to me it was clear in those days that for the small basic
nucleus which for the present constituted the movement,
the question of war guilt had to be cleared up, and cleared
up in the sense of historic truth. That our movement should
transmit to the broadest masses knowledge of the peace treaty
was the premise for the future success of the movement.
At that time, when they all still regarded this peace as
a success of democracy, we had to form a front against it
and engrave ourselves forever in the minds of men as an
enemy of this treaty, so that later, when the harsh reality
of this treacherous frippery would be revealed in its naked
hate, the recollection of our position at that time would
win us confidence.
Even
then I always came out in favor of taking a position in
important questions of principle against all public opinion
when it assumed a false attitude - disregarding all considerations
of popularity, hatred, or struggle. The NSDAP should not
become a constable of public opinion, but must dominate
it. It must not become a servant of the masses, but their
master!
There
exists, of course, and especially for every movement that
is still weak, a great temptation, in moments when a more
powerful enemy has succeeded in driving the people to a
mad decision or to a false attitude through his arts of
seduction, to go along and join the shouting, particularly
when there are a few reasons - even if they are merely illusory
- which, from the standpoint of the young movement itself,
might argue for this course. Human cowardice will seek such
reasons so vigorously that it almost always finds something
which would give a semblance of justification, even from
one's 'own standpoint,' for participating in such a crime.
I
have several times experienced such cases, in which supreme
energy was necessary to keep the ship of the movement from
drifting with the artificially aroused general current or
rather from being driven by it. The last time was when our
infernal press, to which the existence of the German people
is Hecuba, succeeded in puffing up the South Tyrol question
to an importance which will be catastrophic for the German
people. Without considering whom they were serving thereby,
many so-called ' national' men and parties and organizations,
solely from cowardice in the face of Jew-incited public
opinion, joined the general outcry and senselessly helped
to support the fight against a system which we Germans,
precisely in this present-day situation, must feel to be
the sole ray of light in this degenerating world. While
the international world Jew slowly but surely strangles
us, our so-called patriots shouted against a man and a system
which dared, in one corner of the earth at least, to free
themselves from the Jewish-Masonic embrace and oppose a
nationalistic resistance to this international world poisoning.
It was, however, too alluring for weak characters simply
to set their sails by the wind and capitulate to the clamor
of public opinion. And a capitulation it was! Men are such
base liars that they may not admit it, even to themselves,
but it remains the truth that only cowardice and fear of
the popular sentiment stirred up by the Jews impelled them
to join in. All other explanations are miserable evasions
devised by the petty sinner conscious of his guilt.
And
so it was necessary to shake the movement with an iron fist
to preserve it from ruin by this tendency. To attempt such
a shift at a moment when public opinion, fanned by every
driving force, was burning only in one direction is indeed
not very popular at the moment and sometimes puts the venturesome
leader in almost mortal peril. But not a few men in history
have at such moments been stoned for an action for which
posterity, at a later date, had every cause to thank them
on its knees.
It
is with this that a movement must reckon and not with the
momentary approval of the present. It may be that in such
hours the individual feels afraid; but he must not forget
that after every such hour salvation comes at length, and
that a movement that wants to renew a world must serve,
not the moment, but the future.
In
this connection it can be established that the greatest
and most enduring successes in history tend for the most
part to be those which in their beginnings found the least
understanding because they stood in the sharpest conflict
with general public opinion, with its ideas and its will.
Even
then, on the first day of our public appearance, we had
a chance to experience this. Truly we did not 'curry favor
with the masses,' but everywhere opposed the lunacy of these
people. Nearly always it came about that in these years
I faced an assemblage of people who believed the opposite
of what I wanted to say, and wanted the opposite of what
I believed. Then it was the work of two hours to lift two
or three thousand people out of a previous conviction, blow
by blow to shatter the foundation of their previous opinions,
and finally to lead them across to our convictions and our
philosophy of life.
In
those days I learned something important in a short time,
to strike the weapon of reply out of the enemy's hands
myself. We soon noticed that our opponents, especially
their discussion speakers, stepped forward with a definite
'repertory' in which constantly recurring objections to
our assertions were raised, so that the uniformity of this
procedure pointed to a conscious, unified schooling. And
that was indeed the case. Here we had an opportunity to
become acquainted with the incredible discipline of our
adversaries' propaganda, and it is still my pride today
to have found the means, not only to render this propaganda
ineffective but in the end to strike its makers with their
own weapon. Two years later I was a master of this art.
In
every single speech it was important to realize clearly
in advance the presumable content and form of the objections
to be expected in the discussion, and to pull every one
of them apart in the speech itself. Here it was expedient
to cite the possible objections ourselves at the outset
and demonstrate their untenability; thus, the listener,
even if he had come stuffed full of the objections he had
been taught, but otherwise with an honest heart, was more
easily won over when we disposed of the doubts that had
been imprinted on his memory. The stuff that had been drummed
into him was automatically refuted and his attention drawn
more and more to the speech.
This
is the reason why, right after my first lecture on the 'Peace
Treaty of Versailles,' which I had delivered to the troops
while still a so-called 'educator,' I changed the lecture
and now spoke of the 'Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and
Versailles.' For after a short time, in fact, in the course
of the discussion about this first speech of mine, I was
able to ascertain that the people really knew nothing at
all about the peace treaty of Brest-Litovsk, but that the
adroit propaganda of their parties had succeeded in representing
this very treaty as one of the most shameful acts of rape
in the world. The persistence with which this lie was presented
over and over to the great masses accounted for the fact
that millions of Germans regarded the peace treaty of Versailles
as nothing more than just retribution for the crime committed
by us at Brest-Litovsk, thus viewing any real struggle against
Versailles as an injustice and sometimes remaining in the
sincerest moral indignation. And this among other things
was why the shameless and monstrous word 'reparations'
was able to make itself at home in Germany. This vile hypocrisy
really seemed to millions of our incited national comrades
an accomplishment of higher justice. Dreadful, but it was
so. The best proof of this was offered by the propaganda
I initiated against the peace treaty of Versailles, which
I introduced by some enlightenment regarding the treaty
of Brest-Litovsk. I contrasted the two peace treaties, compared
them point for point, showed the actual boundless humanity
of the one treaty compared to the inhuman cruelty of the
second, and the result was telling. At that time I spoke
on this theme at meetings of two thousand people, and often
I was struck by the glances of three thousand six hundred
hostile eyes. And three hours later I had before me a surging
mass full of the holiest indignation and boundless wrath.
Again a great lie had been torn out of the hearts and brains
of a crowd numbering thousands, and a truth implanted in
its place.
I
considered these two lectures on 'The True Causes of the
World War' and on 'The Peace Treaties of Brest-Litovsk and
Versailles,' the most important of all, and so I repeated
and repeated them dozens of times, always renewing the form,
until, on this point at least, a certain clear and unified
conception became current among the people from among whom
the movement gathered its first members.
For
myself, moreoever, the meetings had the advantage that I
gradually transformed myself into a speaker for mass meetings,
that I became practiced in the pathos and the gestures which
a great hall, with its thousands of people, demands.
At
that time, except - as already emphasized - in small circles,
I saw no enlightenment in this direction from the parties
which today have their mouths so full of words and act as
if they had brought about the change in public opinion.
When a so-called 'national politician' somewhere
delivered a speech along these lines, it was only to circles
who for the most part already shared his conviction, and
for whom his utterances represented at most an intensification
of their own opinions. This was not the important thing
at that time; the important thing was to win by enlightenment
and propaganda those people who, by virtue of their education
and opinions, still stood on hostile ground.
The
leaflet, too, was put into the service of this enlightenment.
While still in the army, I had written a leaflet comparing
the peace treaties of Brest-Litovsk and Versailles,
and it was distributed in large editions. Later I took over
stocks of it for the party, and here again the effect was
good. The first meetings, in general, were distinguished
by the fact that the tables were covered with all sorts
of leaflets, newspapers, pamphlets, etc. But the chief emphasis
was laid on the spoken word. And actually it alone - for
general psychological reasons - is able to bring about really
great changes.
I
have already stated in the first volume that all great,
world-shaking events have been brought about, not by written
matter, but by the spoken word. This led to a lengthy discussion
in a part of the press, where, of course, such an assertion
was sharply attacked, particularly by our bourgeois wiseacres.
But the very reason why this occurred confutes the doubters.
For the bourgeois intelligentsia protest against such a
view only because they themselves obviously lack the power
and ability to influence the masses by the spoken word,
since they have thrown themselves more and more into purely
literary activity and renounced the real agitational activity
of the spoken word. Such habits necessarily lead in time
to what distinguishes our bourgeoisie today; that is, to
the loss of the psychological instinct for mass effect
and mass influence.
While
the speaker gets a continuous correction of his speech from
the crowd he is addressing, since he can always see in the
faces of his listeners to what extent they can follow his
arguments with understanding and whether the impression
and the effect of his words lead to the desired goal - the
writer does not know his readers at all. Therefore, to begin
with, he will not aim at a definite mass before his eyes,
but will keep his arguments entirely general. By this to
a certain degree he loses psychological subtlety and in
consequence suppleness. And so, by and large, a brilliant
speaker will be able to write better than a brilliant writer
can speak, unless he continuously practices this art. On
top of this there is the fact that the mass of people as
such is lazy; that they remain inertly in the spirit of
their old habits and, left to themselves, will take up a
piece of written matter only reluctantly if it is not in
agreement with what they themselves believe and does not
bring them what they had hoped for. Therefore, an article
with a definite tendency is for the most part read only
by people who can already be reckoned to this tendency.
At most a leaflet or a poster can, by its brevity, count
on getting a moment's attention from someone who thinks
differently. The picture in all its forms up to the film
has greater possibilities. Here a man needs to use his brains
even less; it suffices to look, or at most to read extremely
brief texts, and thus many will more readily accept a pictorial
presentation than read an article of any
length. The picture brings them in a much briefer
time, I might almost say at one stroke, the enlightenment
which they obtain from written matter only after arduous
reading.
The
essential point, however, is that a piece of literature
never knows into what hands it will fall, and yet must retain
its definite form. In general the effect will be the greater,
the more this form corresponds to the intellectual level
and nature of those very people who will be its readers.
A book that is destined for the broad masses must, therefore,
attempt from the very beginning to have an effect, both
in style and elevation, different from a work intended for
higher intellectual classes.
Only
by this kind of adaptability does written matter approach
the spoken word. To my mind, the speaker can treat the same
theme as the book; he will, if he is a brilliant popular
orator, not be likely to repeat the same reproach and the
same substance twice in the same form. He will always let
himself be borne by the great masses in such a way that
instinctively the very words come to his lips that he needs
to speak to the hearts of his audience. And if he errs,
even in the slightest, he has the living correction before
him. As I have said, he can read from the facial expression
of his audience whether, firstly, they understand
what he is saying, whether, secondly, they can follow
the speech as a whole, and to what extent, thirdly,
he has convinced them of the soundness of
what he has said. If - firstly - he sees that they do not
understand him, he will become so primitive and clear in
his explanations that even the last member of his audience
has to understand him; if he feels - secondly - that they
cannot follow him, he will construct his ideas so cautiously
and slowly that even the weakest member of the audience
is not left behind, and he will - thirdly - if he suspects
that they do not seem convinced of the soundness of his
argument, repeat it over and over in constantly new examples.
He himself will utter their objections, which he senses
though unspoken, and go on confuting them and exploding
them, until at length even the last group of an opposition,
by its very bearing and facial expression, enables him to
recognize its capitulation to his arguments.
Here
again it is not seldom a question of overcoming prejudices
which are not based on reason, but, for the most part unconsciously,
are supported only by sentiment. To overcome this barrier
of instinctive aversion, of emotional haired, of prejudiced
rejection, is a thousand times harder than to correct a
faulty or erroneous scientific opinion. False concepts and
poor knowledge can be eliminated by instruction, the resistance
of the emotions never. Here only an appeal to these mysterious
powers themselves can be effective; and the writer can hardly
ever accomplish this, but almost exclusively the orator.
The
most striking proof of this is furnished by the fact that,
despite a bourgeois press that is often very skillfully
gotten up, flooding our people with editions running into
millions, this press could not prevent the masses from becoming
the sharpest enemy of its own bourgeois world. The whole
newspaper flood and all the books that are turned out year
after year by the intellectuals slide off the millions of
the lower classes like water from oiled leather. This can
prove only two things: either the unsoundness of the content
of this whole literary production of our bourgeois world
or the impossibility of reaching the heart of the broad
masses solely by written matter. Especially, indeed, when
this written matter demonstrates so unpsychological an attitude
as is here the case.
Let
no one reply (as a big German national newspaper in Berlin
tried to do) that Marxism itself, by its writings,
especially by the effect of the great basic work of Karl
Marx, provides proof counter to this assertion. Seldom has
anyone made a more superficial attempt to support an erroneous
view. What gave Marxism its astonishing power over
the great masses is by no means the formal written work
of the Jewish intellectual world, but rather the enormous
oratorical propaganda wave which took possession of the
great masses in the course of the years. Of a hundred thousand
German workers, not a hundred on the average know this work,
which has always been studied by a thousand times more intellectuals
and especially Jews than by real adherents of this movement
from the great lower classes. And this work was not written
for the great masses, but exclusively for the intellectual
leadership of that Jewish machine for world conquest; it
was stoked subsequently with an entirely different fuel:
the press. For that is what distinguishes the Marxist press
from our bourgeois press. The Marxist press is written
by agitators, and the bourgeois press would like to carry
on agitation by means of writers. The Social Democratic
yellow journalist, who almost always goes from the meeting
hall to the newspaper office, knows his public like no one
else. But the bourgeois scribbler who comes out of his study
to confront the great masses is nauseated by their very
fumes and faces them helplessly with the written word.
What
has won the millions of workers for Marxism is less the
literary style of the Marxist church fathers than the indefatigable
and truly enormous propaganda work of tens of thousands
of untiring agitators, from the great agitator down to the
small trade-union official and the shop steward and discussion
speaker; this work consisted of the hundreds of thousands
of meetings at which, standing on the table in smoky taverns,
these people's orators hammered at the masses and thus were
able to acquire a marvelous knowledge of this human material
which really put them in a position to choose the best weapons
for attacking the fortress of public opinion. And it consisted,
furthermore, in the gigantic mass demonstrations, these
parades of hundreds of thousands of men, which burned into
the small, wretched individual the proud conviction that,
paltry worm as he was, he was nevertheless a part of a great
dragon, beneath whose burning breath the hated bourgeois
world would some day go up in fire and flame and the proletarian
dictatorship would celebrate its ultimate final victory.
Such
propaganda produced the people who were ready and prepared
to read a Social Democratic press, however, a press which
itself in turn is not written, but which is spoken. For,
while in the bourgeois camp professors and scholars, theoreticians
and writers of all sorts, occasionally attempt to speak,
in the Marxist movement the speakers occasionally try to
write. And precisely the Jew, who is especially to be considered
in this connection, will, in general, thanks to his lying
dialectical skill and suppleness, even as a writer be more
of an agitational orator than a literary creator.
That
is the reason why the bourgeois newspaper world (quite aside
from the fact that it, too, is mostly Jewified and therefore
has no interest in really instructing the great masses)
cannot exert the slightest influence on the opinion of the
broadest sections of our people.
This
should surprise no one. Go to a theater performance and
witness a play at three o'clock in the afternoon and the
same play with the same actors at eight at night, and you
will be amazed at the difference in effect and impression.
A man with fine feelings and the power to achieve clarity
with regard to this mood will be able to establish at once
that the impression made by the performance at three in
the afternoon is not as great as that: made in the evening.
The same applies even to a movie. This is important because
in the theater it might be said that perhaps the actor does
not take as much pains in the afternoon as at night. But
a film is no different in the afternoon than at nine in
the evening. No, the time itself exerts a definite
effect, just as the hall does on me. There are halls which
leave people cold for reasons that are hard to discern,
but which somehow oppose the most violent resistance to
any creation of mood. Traditional memories and ideas that
are present in a man can also decisively determine an impression.
Thus, a performance of Parsifal in Bayreuth will
always have a different effect than anywhere else in the
world. The mysterious magic of the house on the Festspielhügel
in the old city of the margraves cannot be replaced or even
compensated for by externals.
In
all these cases we have to do with an encroachment upon
man's freedom of will. This applies most, of course, to
meetings attended by people with a contrary attitude of
will, who must now be won over to a new will. In the morning
and even during the day people's will power seems to struggle
with the greatest energy against an attempt to force upon
them a strange will and a strange opinion. At night, however,
they succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger
will. For, in truth, every such meeting represents a wrestling
bout between two opposing forces. The superior oratorical
art of a dominating preacher will succeed more easily in
winning to the new will people who have themselves experienced
a weakening of their force of resistance in the most natural
way than those who are still in full possession of their
mental tension and will.
The
same purpose, after all, is served by the artificially made
and yet mysterious twilight in Catholic churches, the burning
lamps, incense, censers, etc.
In
this wrestling bout of the speaker with the adversaries
he wants to convert, he will gradually achieve that wonderful
sensitivity to the psychological requirements of propaganda,
which the writer almost always lacks. Hence the written
word in its limited effect will in general serve more to
retain, to reinforce, to deepen, a point of view or opinion
that is already present. Really great historical changes
are not induced by the written word, but at most
accompanied by it.
Let
no one believe that the French Revolution would ever have
come about through philosophical theories if it had not
found an army of agitators led by demagogues in the grand
style, who whipped up the passions of the people tormented
to begin with, until at last there occurred that terrible
volcanic eruption which held all Europe rigid with fear.
And likewise the greatest revolutionary upheaval of the
most recent period, the Bolshevist Revolution in Russia,
was brought about, not by Lenin's writings, but by the hate-fomenting
oratorical activity of countless of the greatest and the
smallest apostles of agitation.
The
illiterate common people were not, forsooth, fired with
enthusiasm for the Communist Revolution by the theoretical
reading of Karl Marx, but solely by the glittering heaven
which thousands of agitators, themselves, to be sure, all
in the service of an idea, talked into the people.
And
that has always been so and will eternally remain so.
It
is entirely in keeping with the stubborn unworldliness of
our German intelligentsia to believe that the writer must
necessarily be mentally superior to the speaker. This conception
is illustrated in the most precious way by a criticism appearing
in the above-mentioned national newspaper, in which it is
stated that one is so often disappointed to see the speech
of a recognized great orator suddenly in print. This reminds
me of another criticism which came into my hands in the
course of the War; it painfully subjected the speeches of
Lloyd George, who at that time was still munitions minister,
to the magnifying glass, only to arrive at the brilliant
discovery that these speeches were scientifically inferior
products and hackneyed to boot. Later, in the form of a
little volume, these speeches came into my own hands, and
I had to laugh aloud that an average German knight of the
ink-pot should possess no understanding for these psychological
masterpieces in the art of mass propaganda. This man judged
these speeches solely according to the impression they left
on his own blasé nature, while the great English demagogue
had set out solely to exert the greatest possible effect
on the mass of his listeners, and in the broadest sense
on the entire English lower class. Regarded from this standpoint,
the speeches of this Englishman were the most wonderful
performances, for they testified to a positively amazing
knowledge of the soul of the broad masses of the people.
And their effect was truly powerful.
Compare
to it the helpless stammering of a Bethmann-Hollweg. These
speeches, to be sure, were apparently wittier, but in reality
they only showed this man's inability to speak to his people,
which he simply did not know. Nevertheless, the average
sparrow brain of a German scribbler, equipped, it goes without
saying, with a high scientific education, manages to judge
the intelligence of the English minister by the impression
which a speech aimed at mass effect makes on his own brain,
calcified with sheer science, and to compare it with that
of a German statesman whose brilliant chatter naturally
finds more receptive soil in him. Lloyd George proved that
he was not only the equal in genius of a Bethmann-Hollweg,
but was a thousand times his superior, precisely by the
fact that in his speeches he found that form and that expression
which opened to him the heart of his people and in the end
made this people serve his will completely. Precisely in
the primitiveness of his language, the primordiality of
its forms of expression, and the use of easily intelligible
examples of the simplest sort lies the proof of the towering
political ability of this Englishman. For I must not
measure the speech of a statesman to his people by the impression
which it leaves in a university professor, but by the effect
it exerts on the people. And this alone gives the standard
for the speaker's genius.
*...............*...............*
The
amazing development of our movement, which only a few years
ago was founded out of the void and today is considered
worthy to be sharply persecuted by all the inner and outer
enemies of our people, must be attributed to the constant
consideration and application of these realizations.
Important
as the movement's literature may be, it will in our present
position be more important for the equal and uniform training
of the upper and lower leaders than for the winning of the
hostile masses. Only in the rarest cases will a convinced
Social Democrat or a fanatical Communist condescend to acquire
a National Socialist pamphlet, let alone a book, to read
it and from it gain an insight into our conception of life
or to study the critique of his own. Even a newspaper will
be read but very seldom if it does not bear the party stamp.
Besides, this would be of little use; for the general aspect
of a single copy of a newspaper is so chopped up and so
divided in its effect that looking at it once cannot be
expected to have any influence on the reader We may and
must expect no one, for whom pennies count, to subscribe
steadily to an opposing newspaper merely from the urge for
objective enlightenment. Scarcely one out of ten thousand
will do this. Only a man who has already been won to the
movement will steadily read the party organ, and he will
read it as a running news service of his movement.
The
case is quite different with the 'spoken' leaflet! The man
in the street will far sooner take it into his hands, especially
if he gets it for nothing, and all the more if the headlines
plastically treat a topic which at the moment is in everyone's
mouth. By a more or less thorough perusal, it may be possible
by such a leaflet to call his attention to new viewpoints
and attitudes, even in fact to a new movement. But even
this, in the most favorable case, will provide only a slight
impetus, never an accomplished fact. For the leaflet, too,
can only suggest or point to something, and its effect will
only appear in combination with a subsequent more thoroughgoing
instruction and enlightenment of its readers. And this is
and remains the mass meeting.
The
mass meeting is also necessary for the reason that in it
the individual, who at first while becoming a supporter
of a young movement, feels lonely and easily succumbs to
the fear of being alone, for the first time gets the picture
of a larger community, which in most people has a strengthening,
encouraging effect. The same man, within a company or
a battalion, surrounded by all his comrades, would set out
on an attack with a lighter heart than if left entirely
on his own. In the crowd he always feels somewhat sheltered,
even if a thousand reasons actually argue against it.
But
the community of the great demonstration not only strengthens
the individual, it also unites and helps to create an esprit
de corps. The man who is exposed to grave tribulations,
as the first advocate of a new doctrine in his factory or
workshop, absolutely needs that strengthening which lies
in the conviction of being a member and fighter in a great
comprehensive body. And he obtains an impression of this
body for the first time in the mass demonstration. When
from his little workshop or big factory, in which he feels
very small, he steps for the first time into a mass meeting
and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinions
around him, when, as a seeker, he is swept away by three
or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive
intoxication and enthusiasm, when the visible success and
agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of the
new doctrine and for the first time arouse doubt in the
truth of his previous conviction - then he himself has succumbed
to the magic influence of what we designate as 'mass suggestion.'
The will, the longing, and also the power of thousands are
accumulated in every individual. The man who enters such
a meeting doubting and wavering leaves it inwardly reinforced:
he has become a link in the community.
The
National Socialist movement must never forget this and in
particular it must never let itself be influenced by those
bourgeois simpletons who know everything better, but who
nevertheless have gambled away a great state including their
own existence and the rule of their class. Oh, yes, they
are very, very clever, they know everything, understand
everything - only one thing they did not understand, how
to prevent the German people from falling into the arms
of Marxism. In this they miserably and wretchedly failed,
so that their present conceit is only arrogance, which in
the form of pride, as everyone knows, always thrives on
the same tree as stupidity.
If
today these people attribute no special value to the spoken
word, they do so, it must be added, only because, thank
the Lord, they have become thoroughly convinced by now of
the ineffectualness of their own speechmaking.