[shenacatro]

Was there something you wanted to discuss or are you just showing admiration for the man ?

[Xutrsavf]

No, realy? I just wandered what the first response would be... now that I got It I can go on to the question.

What made Hitler a good pubilc speaker? Was he one of the best ever? And which is your favorite Hitler speech?

[Eviftilia]

Love the irony of that one...

[eCw56dzY]

That is very true, I imagine him as the kind of person who can do very well in a formal situation but not in informal ones. Could you perhaps recommend a book that analyses his psyche?

[Dildos]

Originally posted by Zkribbler
Do we have an English translation. I can't understand what he's saying.
Why he's Hitler! He's talking evil German stuff. duh






(I'll google a transcript in the morning)

[freflellalafe]

Originally posted by Nostromo
Good public speakers preferably don't read their speech True. But most of them do.

[shieclulaweew]

Originally posted by Ecthy
I think he was a nice man really, just very misunderstood. Scary coming from a German


( )

[ZX3URrBH]

Originally posted by JulianD


His 'greatest' must be the one where he mocked Roosevelts list of countries not to invade .. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eWFk7fzaRGc. didn't work.

[Affiltavajefe]

Did you miss your chance at OT dictator hurt & heal?

[__CVineXPharm__]

I've got the movie. Maybe i will even watch it some day .

[mylittlejewelaa]

Originally posted by Ecthy
Sympathetic character - where can I vote for him? k

[ranndomderr]

Originally posted by Kidicious


He wasn't really a good speaker. Germans were just good listeners.

[lkastonidwedsrer]

Hmmm, saw a fun spoof of this not long ago, dubbed with some hiphop song or something.

Right:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=bGMVVc0rU-w

[JOR4qxYH]

Originally posted by Kidicious


He wasn't really a good speaker. Germans were just good listeners. Oddly enough you've hit on a truth. It's not so much what he was saying or how he said it, but the fact that so many Germans were willing to hear it as an explanation that worked.

If Germany (and many other European countries) had not already had a history of antisemitism (official and unofficial) then I doubt that Hitler's 'message' would have caught on- his voice, according to unbiased witnesses, was not particularly attractive or mellifluous- he certainly didn't have cadences of Martin Luther King or Churchill.

His words, especially the antisemitic diatribes, were often thought to be so ludicrously over the top by even his contemporaries, that people found it hard to take him seriously at first.

A good comparison would be with Mussolini- lacking the vision of a theatrical mind like Leni Riefenstahl's, Musso's rallies and speeches look like the bald chap fom the Three Stooges channeling Chaplin's 'Great Dictator'.

Similarly, every time I see a Reagan snippet, I can't help but be impressed by the complete lack of genuine substance in a Reagan speech- it's all flannel and soft soap, nothing real beyond the soap bubble surface.

[weluvjessicaalba]

Originally posted by Kidicious


I would more accurately blame nationalism and militarism as the reasons why Germans were so exited about his speeches. Nationalism was a common feature across Europe, post WWI- and in parts of the rest of the world too.

Militarism was hardly a defining feature of the Weimar Republic- and it could also be found (post WWI) in the Soviet Union, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey....

Antisemitism and easy (bonehead) answers for complex problems made Hitler popular- although accordingtomy old headmaster (ex-spy in Nazi Germany) large numbers of German women found Hitler sexually exciting (at least in his speeches...).


Now that is bizarre...

[incizarry]

Also, German was specifically nationalistic and militaristic because of their history.

[DghtRdc]

Originally posted by BeBro
What are you referring to? Prussian history pre-unification.

[Eunatis]

Originally posted by BeBro
Bad example. Militarism was much more a problem post the unification of 1871 and esp. after 1900 and in the pre-WWI times. Prussian militarism seems to be the root which is why I mentioned it.

[DenisLevvin]

Originally posted by Heraclitus
I disagree molly, antisemitism was convenient but it you are underestimating nationalism and militarism in the context of a desire for revenge and what the Germans percived as justice. I'm not underestimating it, simply placing it in context.

Antisemitism also featured in places like Poland, the Ukraine and France- all states which had had a previous history of antisemitism.

However, in Weimar Germany (and Austria) Jews, especially converted or secularized Jews were also extremely successful and powerful, owning industries, shipping lines, and being (for instance) German foreign minister, and thus easily blamed for the perceived ills besetting the Weimar Republic- which were of course complex, and tied in to the world economy.


The Weimar Republic was hardly nationalistic or militaristic- which has been cited as one of its weaknesses- that it failed to set out a sufficiently simplistic notion of what Weimar stood for, in the same way that Prussia/the German Confederation could be reduced to militaristic/expansionist, the Kultur Kampf, etc...

[Vulkanevsel]

Originally posted by Kidicious


The Weimer Republic only lased 14 years after all, and it was very unpopular. Certainly not for all of its history. It's unpopularity is closely allied to the economic downturns in the world at large, and Nazi propaganda.



That doesn't mean that the German people were not still militaristic. It's a far cry from saying that certain elements in the German population were militaristic (like the rightwing Freikorps, like the Nazi party and its predecessors, like some of the old aristocracy and the Prussian Junker class ) to then saying that German culture and the German people as a whole was militaristic.