James Holland: evaluation

Transcript context

…Especially when there’s a resentment about like Treaty of Versailles, when there’s economic hardship, and if there’s effective, modern technology that allows you to do propaganda and sell the message. There’s something really compelling about the black and white message. It is because it’s simple. And what Hitler does throughout the 1920s, is he sticks to this. There is actually, when he comes out of prison, so it is the Beer Hall Putsch in November, 1923, he gets charged with treason, which he has been, because he’s attempting a coup, and he gets sentenced to five years, which is pretty lenient for what he’s done. And he then gets let out after nine months. Nazi party is banned at that point, but then comes back into being. And the year that follows there is then a substantial debate about where the party should go. And there are actually a large number of people who think that actually they should be looking at how the Soviets are doing things and taking some of the things that they consider to be positive out of the communist state, and applying those to the Nazis. And Hitler goes, “No, no, no, no, no, no. We’ve just got to stick to this kind of Jewish Bolshevik thing. This is how we’re going to do it. This is how we’re going to do it.” Goebbels, for example, who is very open, Joseph Goebbels, he’s a not very successful journalist, but he does have a PhD in German literature. He’s very disaffected because he was born with talipes, which is more commonly known as a club foot. He’s disabled. He can’t fight in the first World War. He’s very frustrated by that. He’s in a deep despair about the state of Germany in the first part of the early 1920s. He’s looking for a political messiah, a sort of quasi-religious messiah, thinks it’s Hitler, then discovers that Hitler is not open to any ideas at all about any deviation, but then sees the light. Hitler recognizes that this guy is someone that he wants on his side, and so then goes to him, makes a real special effort. “Come on, come to dinner. I think you’re great,” All this kind of stuff. Wins it about over. And Goebbels has this complete vault fast, discards his earlier kind of, “Hitler’s right, I was wrong. Hitler is the kind of messiah figure that I want to follow. I want to follow the hero leader.” And they come aboard and they absolutely work. And Hitler completely wins out of all dissenters within what had been the German Workers party, drop, becomes the German National Socialist Party, becomes the Nazis. He comes out, emerges as the absolute, undisputed führer of that, leader of that party. And what he says goes, and everyone toes him behind it. And part of the genius of that, Hitler does have some genius. I just don’t think it’s military, but he does have some genius. And a question about is the simplicity of message. one toes him behind it. And part of the genius of that, Hitler does have some genius. I just don’t think it’s military, but he does have some genius. And a question about is the simplicity of message. What he’s doing, it’s that us and them thing that we were talking about earlier on. It’s the kind of either/or. It’s kind of, “It’s my way or the highway.” It’s kind of, “This is the only way. This is how we get to the sunlit uplands. This is how create this amazing master race of this unification of German peoples, which dominates the world, which is the preeminent power in the world for the next thousand years, or its decay, and despair and being crushed by our enemies. And our enemies are the Jews and the Bolsheviks, the communists.” And what he taps into as well is [German 00:59:44] and [German 00:59:48]. There’s no direct English translation of [German 00:59:51] or indeed [German 00:59:52], but in its most basic form, it’s communities, it’s people, community or front veteran’s community. So the [German 01:00:02] is, “We are the guys. We are bonded because we were in the trenches. We were in the first World War. We were the people who bravely stuck it out, saw our friends being slaughtered and blown to pieces. We did our duty as proud Germans, but we were let down by the elites and we were let down by this Jewish Bolshevik plot. We were stabbed in the back.” The myth of the stabbing in the back is very, very strong. So, “We’re bound, we’re bonded by our experiences of the first World War and the fact that we did what we should and what we could. And we didn’t fail in what we were doing. We were failed by our leaders, by the elites.” So that’s [German 01:00:47]. [German 01:00:49] is this sense of national unity. It’s a cultural, ethnic bonding of people who speak German, who have a similar outlook on life. And again, that just reinforces the us and them.…

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