Hitler rehearsing his speech in front of the mirror, 1925

https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/hitler-rehearsing-speech-front-mirror-1925/

by pmastela • 5 years ago

2 1 5 years ago

belter• 5 years ago

Before I comment further, let me clarify I find the Nazi era one of the worst periods of human history...Just in case there is no ambiguity about what is behind my comments.

I understand a little German, though not much. One of these days, out of curiosity, I listened to excerpts of his speeches out of YouTube.

I was fascinated by how mundane and non-charismatic his speeches sound. Maybe somebody speaking fluent German can confirm my feeling. Looks like once in a while, he would drop some higher level concepts, like stuff around the vital space. Not sure most of the audience at the time was likely to understand. I watched it trying to get insights that would help me make sense of some recent fascinating events we have seen for example in US politics.

I am interested in understanding what really drives much of what we call crowd manipulation, demagoguery and all that. Is it driven and created by charismatic personalities and their speech ? Or are they just providing a vehicle for racist and resentment behavior that was anyway likely to emerge from that segment of the population ? In other words, was in that historical context an Hitler likely to emerge in one form or the other ?

I researched a little bit and found some interesting analyzes. The initial threat of the Nazi regime was underestimated as highly educated, and German speaking, British diplomats were analyzing Hitler speeches and saying "The man is an idiot".

Hitler rehearsing his speech in front of the mirror, 1925

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