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The Rise of Hitler as a Beer Hall Orator

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Sterling Fishman
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Extract

A Dolf Hitler passed the long, summer days of his 1924 incarceration in the Landsberg fortress reliving his past. Each day he retired to a large and sunny room to dictate the story of his “Struggle Against Lies, Stupidity, and Cowardice” to his admirers, Emil Maurice and Rudolf Hess. As he paced the room, Hitler subjected his memories of childhood in upper-Austria, youth in Vienna and Munich, young manhood at the Western front, and political awakening in postwar Munich to the scrutiny of his accumulated political wisdom at thirty-five. He vindicated his ideas by an examination of his life revealing how personal experiences led him to knowledge and truth in page after page of poor prose.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , April 1964 , pp. 244 - 256
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1964

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References

1 Bullock, Alan, Hitler, A Study in Tyranny (New York, 1961), p. 92Google Scholar.

2 See article by Ewart, Edmund Turner, “To Hitler via Two Men,” The American Scholar, Vol. 6 (Winter, 1937), 3ffGoogle Scholar.

3 Hitler, Adolf, Mein Kampf, trans, under the auspices of DrJohnson, Alvin (New York, 1939), pp. 154–155Google Scholar.

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5 Ibid.

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13 Many scholars have briefly noted this. Such statements as that by Frederick L. Schuman are frequent: “From the hated Marxists he had learned to appreciate and to practice the collective hypnosis of oral agitation and of mass demonstration.” Schuman, Frederick L., The Nazi Dictatorship, a Study in Social Pathology and the Politics of Fascism, 2d edition (New York, 1936), p. 22Google Scholar.

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15 Ibid., p. 56. For a further discussion of Hitler and the principle of infallibility, see Gerth, Hans, “The Nazi Party: Its Leadership and Composition,” The American Journal of Sociology, Vol. XLV (01, 1940), 518–520Google Scholar.

16 Mein Kampf, p. 56.

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18 Ibid., p. 711.

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21 Graf, Oskar Maria, Wir sind Gefangene. Ein Bekenntnis aus diesem Jahrzehnt, p. 338Google Scholar.

22 Zarek, , German Odyssey, p. 94Google Scholar. Prof. Lujo Brentano was a professor at the University of Munich.

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28 See the description of one such session in Graf, , Wir sind Gefangene, p. 429Google Scholar.

29 Mein Kampf, p. 715. A French reporter from the Temps in Munich noted a difference in susceptibility between those soldiers who had been at the front and those who had not. See Gentizon, Paul, La revolution allemande (novembre 1918–Janvier 1919) (Paris, 1919), p. 99Google Scholar.

30 Needless to say, not all Hitler's speeches followed this pattern exactly. Hitler was a master at sensing the mood of his audience and varied his remarks accordingly. It is, however, interesting to read some of Hitler's early speeches with this sequence in mind. Hitler's earliest printed speech adheres to this pattern especially well. See The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922– August 1939 (London, 1942), trans, and edited by Baynes, Norman H., Vol. I, 4–21Google Scholar.

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46 Ibid., p. 513.