Europe in the Year 2000:: And Other Essays, including “The Art of Propaganda”

by Joseph Goebbels

  This was probably the result of the times. There were no great ideas, no powerful projects. Rhetoric sank into a morass of self-satisfaction. The only apparent exception, Marxism, was secretly allied with them and its speakers represented a materialism that could never release the spark of true genius.

  But revolutions bring forth true speakers, and true speakers make revolutions! One should not overestimate the role of written or printed words in revolutions, but the secret magic of the spoken word reaches directly the emotions and the hearts of people. It reaches the eye and the ear, and the electrifying force of the masses seized by the human voice sweeps with it the wavering and the doubting.

  What would happen to a statesmanlike genius who fate had for some reason placed in an inferior position if he lacked the power of speech and the explosive force of the word! It gives him the ability to make ideas from ideals and realities from ideas. With its help, he gathers people to his flag those who are ready to fight with him; driven by it, men risk their health and their lives to bring a new world to victory. An organization comes from the propaganda of the word, a movement from the organization, and that movement conquers the state. The important thing is not whether an idea is right; the decisive thing is whether one can present it effectively to the masses so that they become its adherents. Theories remain theories when living men to not give them expression. Living people in difficult times follow only an appeal that reaches their hearts because it comes from the heart.

  It is difficult to place the Führer within these categories. His ability to reach the masses is unique and remarkable, fitting no organizational scheme or dogma. It would be ridiculous to think he attended some sort of speaker school; he is a rhetorical genius who developed his own abilities with no help from anyone else. One cannot imagine that the Führer ever spoke differently than he does today, or that he will ever speak differently. He speaks his heart, and therefore reaches the hearts of those who hear him. He has the amazing gift of sensing what is in the air. He has the ability to express things so clearly, logically and directly that listeners are convinced that that is what they have always thought themselves. That is the true secret of the effectiveness of Adolf Hitler’s speeches. The Führer is neither a speaker from reason nor from the heart. He uses both, depending on the needs of the moment. The essential characteristics of his speeches to the people are: clear organization, irrefutable logical reasoning, simplicity and clarity of expression, razor-sharp dialectic, a developed and sure instinct for the masses and their feelings, an electrifying emotional appeal that is used sparingly, and the ability to reach out to the souls of the people in a way that never goes unanswered.

  Long ago when he was still far from power, the Führer spoke to a meeting filled primarily with his political opponents. From the beginning, he was rejected. For two hours he struggled with the stubbornness of his audience, addressing all their problems and objections until at the end there was only thundering agreement, jubilation and enthusiasm. As he concluded, someone yelled from the highest row: “Hitler is Columbus!”

  That got to the heart of it. He had stood the egg on its end. He clarified the confused and mysterious nature of the age. He showed his hearers in a clear and simply way that the man in the street had long sensed, but had not found the courage to express. Hitler said what everyone thought and felt! More than that, he had the civil courage in the face of nearly everyone else to express with iron logic what had to be done.

  The Führer is the first person in Germany to use speech to make history. As he began, it was all he had. He had only a strong heart and his pure word. Using them, he reached the deepest depths of the souls of his people. He did not speak like everyone else. He could not be compared with them. He understood the cares and worries of the little man and spoke about them, but they were for him only brush strokes on the dreadful painting of Germany’s collapse. He did more than simply talk about them, he was not a mere reporter like the others. He took the events of the day and gave them a larger national significance that put them in context. He appealed to the good, not the bad instincts of the masses. His speaking was a magnet that drew to him whomever in the people who still had iron in his blood.

  Stupid and empty-headed bourgeois people for a time were pleased to disparage him as a “drummer.” They made themselves ridiculous, but did not realize it. Since they entirely lacked rhetorical ability, they thought his was a lesser form of leadership. They strove for power without realizing that Marxism had taken power from them by force, and would give up that power only as the result of force. They formed groups when they needed a national movement. They attempted putsches when revolution was in the air. They held the masses in contempt because they did not want to lead them. The masses bow only to him who puts them under his uncompromising command. They obey only him who knows how to give orders. They have a fine instinct for determining if something is really meant, or only said.

  It is perhaps a classic proof of the inner strength of the German people that it heard the appeal of a man who went his own way, in opposition to the state and society, the press and public opinion, apparently against all reason and good sense. It is also a classic proof for the outstanding rhetorical brilliance of the Führer that his word alone was enough to transform an entire period, to defeat an apparently strong state and to bring in a new era.

  An historic figure who has such impact must command all the skills of the spoken word. That is the case with the Führer. He speaks as confidently before workers as before scientists. His words strike deep into the hearts of farmers and city-dwellers. When he speaks to children, they are deeply moved. The magic of his voice reaches men’s secret feelings. He translates historical philosophy into the language of the people. He has the ability to call up long forgotten history and make those who hear him feel as if they had always known about it. There is no element of superiority in his speaking, the kind of thing one sees in the speeches of the educated.

  His words always focus on the central ideas of our people, our nation, and our race. He can express things in a thousand different ways. The listener never feels that he has heard it before. The masses hear the same major ideas of our national renaissance in ever new forms. There is nothing doctrinaire in his style. If he makes an assertion, it is proven by a multitude of examples. The examples are not taken only from the experiences of a particular area or class, thus leaving everyone else untouched. They come from everywhere in the nation, such that each is spoken to. They are chosen with such care that even the blindest opponent must in the end grant that, unlike the parliamentary speakers, this man believes what he says.

  Ordinary life is presented in a way that grips the hearers. The problems of the day are not explained only with the difficult tools of a worldview, but with wit and biting irony. His humor triumphs; one cries with one eye and laughs with the other. Every tone of daily life is touched upon.

  A sure sign of a good speech is that it not only sounds good, but reads well. The Führer’s speeches are stylistic masterpieces, whether he improvises at the podium, speaks from brief notes, or speaks from a manuscript at an important international occasion. If one is not in his immediate vicinity, he cannot tell if the speech is a written speech delivered extemporaneously, or an extemporaneous speech delivered as if it were written out. His speeches are always ready to be printed. The picture would not be complete if we did not point out that the Führer is a master of rhetorical discussion. The last time the public had an opportunity to see him in action was his reckoning with the Social Democrats in the Reichstag in 1933, when he responded to the then Representative Wels. One had the feeling that a cat was playing with a mouse. Marxism was driven from one corner into another. Wherever he sought cover, he faced destruction. With breathtaking precision, one rhetorical blow after another fell on him. Without a manuscript or notes, the Führer gave a major, long-desired attack on Social Democratic parliamentarians who here received their coup de grace. How often in the past he had defeated them when they dare
d to show up in our meetings. Back then they had the ability to turn shameful defeats into brilliant victories in their newspapers the next day. Now the whole nation saw then fall into his hands. It was a debacle.

  Judges and states attorney had learned to respect his rhetorical offensives. They asked the accused or the witness Hitler naive sounding questions or tried to lead him onto thin ice with innocent sounding questions. The 1924 trial on the uprising of 8-9 November 1923 turned into a triumphant success for the accused, since the Führer overcame the mountains of files, hostility, and misunderstanding through the shining strength of his obvious truthfulness and the power of his gripping eloquence. The Republic probably regretted that Leipzig Reichswehr trial in 1930, in which it tried to destroy the Führer and his movement. They gave him a platform from which the whole people heard his rhetorical effectiveness. One recalls today with a shudder that a Jewish-Communist attorney fired questions at him for nine hours straight, but recalls with satisfaction that Jewish Bolshevism found an opponent whose words and ideas wrestled it to the ground.

  We saw and experienced the Führer as a speaker at the Party Rally of Freedom in 1935. He spoke fifteen times within a period of seven days. Not once did he repeat a thought or a phrase. Everything was new, fresh, young, vital, and compelling. He spoke in one way to officials, another to the S.A. and S.S. men, one way to the youth and another to the women. In his major speech on culture, he explained the deepest secrets of the arts, and his speech to the Wehrmacht was understood by the last soldier in the last battalion. The entire life of the German people was spanned by his speeches. He is a proclaimer of the word who can express its thousand-fold nature through the grace of God.

  The Führer it at his best, however, before a small audience. Here he is able to reach each individual member of the audience. His speaking carries away the listener, who never loses interest because he always feels spoken to directly. He may speak about a random theme with an expertise that astonishes the specialists, or in speaking about everyday matters suddenly raise them to universal significance.

  On such occasions the Führer can be more intimate and precise than a public speech permits. He can go into the heart of things with irrefutable logic. Only one who has heard him in such a setting can understand his full brilliance as a speaker.

  One can say that his speeches to his people and the world have an audience unprecedented in world history. They are words that inspire the heart and have a lasting impact in forming a new international epoch, There is probably no educated person in the world who has not heard the sound of his voice and who, whether he understood the words or not, felt that his heart was spoken to by magical words. Our people is fortunate to know the voice the world hears, a voice that puts words into thoughts and uses those thoughts to move an era. This man is a man with the courage to say yes and no, without qualifying them with an if or a but. Millions of people are suffering from bitter sorrow, great troubles, and terrible need. They see hardly a star of hope through the dark clouds that cover Europe’s sky. No one is able to dispel the despair they face. But in Germany, God chose one from countless millions to speak our pain!

  A Unique Age

  Lead article in Das Reich magazine, 23 May 1940.

  History does not repeat itself. As with everything creative, its imagination and opportunities are inexhaustible. However, it always follows eternally valid laws. Because these laws are ignored or violated in the same or similar ways by nations or people, they apparently lead to similar situations or results.

  It is therefore wholly wrong to compare this war with the World War, or to seek parallels in their phases. The age in which we live, and this war, are unique in nature and conduct, unparalleled in history. He who attempts to evaluate them by past standards runs the risk of making the worst political and military mistakes.

  Even our national situation, and the whole international one, is entirely different than 1914. Because of the sterile foreign policy of the period, we were forced into a two-front war with intolerable military burdens. Furthermore, our nation was not psychologically prepared for war. The people had no idea why it was fighting, nor what it was fighting for, and the government did nothing to let it know what the situation was, and what the future would be. The German government missed every diplomatic opportunity to stop London’s encirclement plans. They practically gave their trump cards to the enemy. At the beginning of the war, they were prepared only for the most favorable circumstances, and were thus surprised by unfavorable developments. There formerly had been much better and more promising opportunities to fight the war that had now become unavoidable. They were surprised at the worst possible time, and then declared war themselves, which was to be of decisive psychological significance.

  Today, the situation is reversed. The Führer’s brilliant statesmanship succeeded by tireless diplomatic efforts in destroying attempts at encirclement, either in advance or through military means. False claims of neutrality, intended only to provide a marching route to Germany, were destroyed, and a dangerous two-front war avoided. Germany’s back is secure in this battle of fate. And our psychological war is being waged most successfully, not only at home, but also in the rest of the world. The nation knows exactly what is at stake. It knows what it is doing, is fully aware of what would happen if it lost the war, and knows the opportunities it will have if it wins. Every conceivable resource is being used in this gigantic struggle. The opponent lost one trump card after another, even before the war began. The Führer prepared for this historic conflict with care and foresight, planning for the worst, and thus preparing for the best. And at the critical hour, the Western plutocracies declared war, clearly putting themselves in the wrong.

  During the World War, we faced a deadly blockade. Germany had prepared only militarily, and that in an inadequate way. It was defenseless against a blockade. It had neither practice nor experience, and thus either took no measures at all, or took them so late that they did more harm than good. The rationing system was corrupt, which was a heavy psychological burden for people, and also made a consistent implementation of necessary economic measures impossible. It is therefore no surprise that the Reich succumbed to its enemies in this area in November 1918.

  Today our situation in no way resembles the former situation. True, the English-French plutocracy tried again to use the old methods of economic encirclement against the Reich, but these methods have lost their effectiveness. We prepared for a blockade. We knew its deadly effects from the World War, and thus did everything we could to be ready for it. We are prepared economically to wage war. The experiences of the World War were helpful. Our enemies mocked our Four-Year Plan, but it prepared us to survive even the tightest blockade. The Reich secured its economic and agricultural resources in such good time that we are safe from any unpleasant surprise. Corruption is impossible due to the most severe penalties. The Reich has sufficient reserves of raw materials to fight for as long as necessary.

  Militarily, we entered the World War without taking full advantage of our enormous population resources. We were then the strongest military power in the world, but could not resist the attack of the entire world. The tragedy of the first historic weeks of the gigantic battle was that we lacked the divisions on our endangered right flank, divisions that we could have had. All the later measures could not help.

  Today, the German military has the most modern technical equipment imaginable. The German population is being used fully. The German military is therefore prepared for any offensive. Everything is happening as planned, according to a firm system. Our army’s achievements are beyond all praise. They are admired by the whole world.

  In 1914, we were completely on the defensive psychologically. The Reich viewed the war from a middle class perspective, without realizing that we faced a world of enemies who were determined to use every method of falsehood and incitement. The German leadership had no experience in the battle for public opinion. It had no concept at all of the people’s dynamism. It set
tled for loud shouts of patriotism rather than any real confidence or sovereign spiritual attitude, which alone leads to victory. We faced hate-filled, treacherous and slanderous international enemies who knew how to make the leadership of the Reich look bad in every matter.

  How different is our situation this time! Here, too, Germany is clearly on the attack. It knows how to use the weapon of truth with sovereign assurance. Its news policy is fast, practiced, clear and powerful. It is prepared in every last detail to deal with public opinion at home and in the world. The German nation did not enter this war with the momentary enthusiasm of a bonfire, but rather the German people are fighting with clarity and determination. Thus it is no longer possible to use the international atrocity stories that were so extraordinarily dangerous to the Reich during the World War.

  And the German army today has the magic aura of invincibility and of a glorious revolution, which is of enormous importance. True, the world is still wavering between limitless hatred and unlimited admiration in its evaluation of this so-called German miracle. But it really was no miracle. Guided by the hand of a genius of historic greatness, the National Socialist system has been victorious. This man’s inspiring effect has awakened the spirit of a new ideal from the old German virtues: the precision of thinking and labor, the fanaticism of systematic preparation, a readiness to sacrifice, the greatest intelligence paired with imagination and inventiveness, sovereign knowledge, boundless enthusiasm on the part of the whole people, a youthful spirit of attack — in short, the ability to make of the German misery forced upon us by our enemies a brilliant virtue. What is it that from the beginning has guaranteed the success of the German military on every battlefield of this war? For the first time in history, creative German genius is freed of all bureaucratic and dynastic restrictions, and now has full freedom. Germany had always been as strong as it is today, but it did not know it. Never before in its history was it able to discipline itself, to use its full strength, and to develop a government structure that allowed it to make full use of its political and military opportunities.