After seven parts of history, here is an eighth part, which contains my conclusions.
Can it happen here? (“It” being the formation of a American fascist regime by a President named Trump similar to the formation of a German fascist regime by a Chancellor named Hitler.) The short answer is “No.” The slightly longer answer is “No. Not at this time, not with Trump.”
Please bear in mind that I started this project about two months ago. It is just my bad luck that I have finished it on the same day that Trump finished his campaign. I am happy that Trump is sinking into total ignominy, but I am less than thrilled about all this work becoming moot. Still, I enjoyed it and learned a lot. If you read all the way through, I appreciate your interest and stamina and I thank you.
Pervasive Militarism In Germany
Military Defeat In 1918 And The Versailles Treaty
Flaws In The Weimar Constitution
The SA
The Communists
Tradition of a “Strong Leader”
Hitler vs. Trump
Pervasive Militarism In Germany
Germany was mostly Prussia. Prussia had a strong military tradition. Remember Schrötter’s mot, “Prussia ... is an army with a country.” Blücher, one of the victors at Waterloo (it wasn’t just Wellington and the British) was a Prussian. The three imperialist wars that consolidated Germany into the Empire were fought and won mainly by Prussians. After the birth of the German Empire in 1871, Chancellor Bismarck, a Prussian, shifted his focus primarily to social matters. He wanted to stabilize Germany’s position in Europe and maintain the peace. He attempted to put a leash on Germany’s rapidly growing military. When Wilhelm II became Kaiser in 1888, Bismarck was dismissed and the Reich resumed modernizing its military and their armaments. It was clear to everyone that Wilhelm II wanted to have another go at the French.
Under Kaiser Wilhelm II, militarism became almost fetishistic. Everyone, from the Kaiser on down to postal clerks, wore military uniforms. The Junkers (essentially the Prussian aristocracy, pronounced “yoon-kers”) had long loved to dress up in uniforms they may or may not have earned. This included Bismarck, whose military experience was limited to one year in his 20s as a low-ranking reserve officer, but who often wore the uniform of a Field Marshal. (See the picture at the right. The silly helmet with the spike is called a “Pickelhauben.”)
Under Wilhelm II, the Empire began preparing for war against France. To me this seems strange. In 1870-71, Germany had routed the French army, captured the French Emperor and imprisoned him for a time, and forced France to sign a harsh peace treaty which ceded strategically and economically important French territory to Germany. By rights, it should have been France that wanted a rematch with Germany, which they most certainly did. Around the time of Wilhelm II’s coronation, France began making preparations for war with Germany. When war finally came, in 1914, France had as many men under arms as did Germany.
Wilhelm seemingiy wanted this war himself for no other reason than to satisfy his war-lust and that of the Junkers. He fancied himself to be a great military commander (he wasn’t.) He had spent huge sums of money on new weapons, such as bigger and better artillery and U-boats, mostly from Krupp, who was rapidly becoming the largest arms manufacturer in the world. (I use “who” on purpose. Throughout its history, Krupp was a sole-proprietorship. It was owned by one man who was for all intents and purposes the firm.) From time to time, the Kaiser would dissolve the Reichstag because they wouldn’t appropriate enough money for his latest arms wish list.
By around 1910, the bulk of the German population was as eager for the coming war as he was. There were a few voices calling out against war – Karl Liebknecht, who was at that time a Reichstag member, was prominent among them. But their voices were drowned out. I think that there were two main reasons for the war between France and Germany in 1914. The first and most important was the intensive and pervasive war fever which had burned in Germany for years. France had the same war fever, but there it was based on anger and a desire for revenge over a humiliating loss. However, all evidence suggests they would not have attacked first. In Germany, a majority of the people wanted the war for no other reason than spectacular military victories were thrilling. The second reason was that the Kaiser had a huge army with better weapons than anyone else. He was very eager to use them. He always loved to play soldier. Also, the Germans (the Prussians, that is) hadn’t been beaten by anyone since Napoleon did so at Jena in 1806. Until 1918, no living German had ever experienced defeat.
When WWI began, it had nothing to do with either Germany or France directly. It began with the assassination of the Austrian Archduke (heir to the throne) by a Serbian nationalist. Austria declared war on Serbia. Russia had an alliance with Serbia, so it declared war on Austria. If it had stopped there, and it could have, the war would not have gone on very long. Neither Russia nor Austria had a particularly good army.
France was allied with Russia and Germany was allied with Austria. The French weren’t enthusiastic about going to war on Russia’s behalf. Germany was another matter. The Kaiser was very eager. The Kaiser now had an excuse for his big army with their shiny new weapons to go to war. He didn’t miss it.
Five years later, the Versailles Treaty was meant to make it impossible for Germany to make aggressive war again, or even really to defend itself. On the surface, Germany became a constitutional democracy, like its neighbors. There was no more extravagantly bellicose Kaiser. After the Treaty of Locarno, Germany joined the League of Nations. It was no longer a pariah state.
But even with all this public good behavior and seeming acceptance of the strictures of Versailles, Germany was secretly preparing for its next war. As we have seen, the military began rebuilding and rearming almost immediately. Now Germany was the country with the humiliating defeat which had to be avenged. And to make matters even more humiliating to the military establishment and the nation as a whole, the defeat wasn’t even honest. The Reichswehr hadn’t really been beaten on the battlefield. The defeat had come about through the “stab in the back.”
The ink was barely dry on the Versailles Treaty before rearmament for the future war with France was underway. (France was seen as the principal enemy. It would be Hitler which would make it a war against everyone else.) By 1926, Krupp had fully rebuilt and modernized his Ruhr factories. The Allied Control Commission was gone. German spies whose job it was to keep track of military manufacturing were murdered in the night. By about 1928, Krupp was cranking out artillery, tanks and other armored vehicles, submarines, warships, and their munitions. The military command was still cool toward the democratic government, but the government was paying the bills.
The Nazis kept the heat on. At every speech, Hitler (and other Nazi speakers) railed against the November criminals and the hated Versailles Treaty and the “stab in the back.” He spoke of the need for war to recover sacred German lands held by the unclean hands of the enemy. Germany had a glorious destiny which could only be achieved through victory over its foes through decisive war. It is unclear how much awareness he had during the 1920s of the secret military buildup, but my guess is little or nothing. Regardless, his speeches struck a significant chord among ordinary Germans. The feeling of national shame at the defeat of 1918 and the humiliation of the Versailles Treaty were widespread through the entire political spectrum, except perhaps the far left, which felt such things were irrelevant in the struggle between classes. To the majority, the only way to expunge such shame was to attack and decisively defeat France once and for all.
We have a lengthy military tradition in the United States as well. Our country has fought many foreign wars, some for noble reasons, some not at all. But our tradition has always been that of the citizen soldier. (I use the world “soldier” to include all service members.)The ordinary citizen who in a time of great crisis become a soldier in the struggle against it. After it is over, the crisis resolved, that soldier goes back to being a citizen. So the legend goes. However the world and the nature or warfare has changed.
Since WW2, the world has been in a more or less continuous state of war. The US, often for reasons unrelated to national security, has participated in many of these wars, sometimes overtly, sometimes not. All this activity has created a small, permanent military class here, a relatively cadre of professional soldiers, who see action everywhere. An enormous part of out national economy is devoted to making sure these soldiers have the newest, the best, and the most expensive equipment that can be provided (at a profit, of course.) I am afraid this is our future.
But there is a big difference between us and Germany before 1945. We have a superlatively strong military, but we do not have a militaristic society. The military is not worshipped, the soldiers not idolized. Quite the reverse is true. People give lip service to supporting the troops, but they don’t. Veterans who need expensive medical care, especially psychological or chronic, are shunted through an underfunded VA ill-equipped to provide it. In addition, there has always been a strong streak of isolationism here, the idea that other contries’ problems are their own to solve, that there is no need for us to get involved. This is another manifestation of our national skepticism.
In the face of a severe military threat, real or perceived, the skepticism disappears and militaristic fervor does take over (witness the few months after 9/11.) But this does not last. I do not know of any polls on this topic – to be honest, I didn’t look – but I feel that if a poll were conducted now that asked whether the US should be fighting in any of the places where they are currently doing so, the results would be strongly negative. Unless we were involved in an existential war, it would not be possible to keep an active war fever going for years or decades.
The Republican candidate for President makes vague noises about military actions, some patently illegal, in the Middle East. Aside from his most rabid, red-meat loving fanatics this sounds good. To the rest of us it is much less desirable. There is no pressure from most of society for war. I don’t see that changing.
Military Defeat In 1918 And The Versailles Treaty
Military Defeat In 1918
Two of the three most significant factors which which doomed the Weimar Republic occurred before it was even officially created. The first of these was Germany’s military defeat in western Europe. I don’t want to go into a lot of detail about WWI here, but I will say this – Germany lost in the West for two reasons.
The first became known as “The Miracle Of The Marne.” Germany’s battle plan called for them to encircle and capture Paris right away, and they launched an enormous army through Belgium into France to do this. It just wasn’t quite enormous enough. Not all the troops that the battle plan (“the Schlieffen Plan”) called for were available – some had been were pulled back and used elsewhere. There were other factors as well, but this was the most important. When the Reichswehr reached the Marne River, on the outskirts of Paris, the French had just enough strength to hold them off. The Germans fell back, and four years of stalemate and grueling, murderous trench warfare began. The Reichswehr bled to death in those trenches. So did the French and the British. Then the Americans entered the war.
This was the second reason. The US had (from the viewpoint of Europe in 1917) unlimited manpower and industrial might. The US the war in April, 1917, but at first mainly augmented existing British and French units. Later in 1917, Germany and Russia ceased hostilities, freeing German troops to go to the western front. These were the last troops Germany had available. In August, 1918, General Pershing and the fresh troops of the AEF broke through German lines and began driving north. The Wehrmacht began pulling back, not just along the American front, but the French and British fronts as well. The collapse was total, and could not have been stopped.
The United States has never had a military defeat like this one. We have no experience with the total collapse of our armed forces. Considering the militaristic nature of German society at that time, this was a near fatal blow to its self esteem. Rather than accept that they had beaten by numerically superior forces, many Germans found it easier to accept that their great army had “stabbed in the back.” I cannot think of any realistic scenario under which this could happen to the US military. The nature of war has changed. The days of huge armies and navies, clashing in enormous battles, are over.
Versailles Treaty
As we have seen, Germany’s war in the west was ended with the Versailles Treaty. The French finally got their revenge for Sedan and the siege of Paris. I don’t have anything to add to what I already said about the Treaty. I mention it here simply to to establish that the United States has never faced a similar situation where conqueror nations dictated surrender terms to it then forced it to sign the surrender document. Again, I cannot see any future circumstance in which this would be likely to happen.
Flaws In The Weimar Constitution As we have seen, there were major problems with the Weimar Constitution. The first one was that members of the Reichstag were elected at large, in a nationwide election. Each party submitted a slate of candidates. The total number of votes cast in the election was divided by the number of seats, yielding the number of votes needed to secure a seat. Then the number of votes won by each party was divided by the seat number. This yielded the number of members from each party. If a a party won 20 seats, the first 20 names from its slate became members. This seems like a reasonable way to allocate seats. But there are problems.
This encouraged the formation of small parties, sometimes single issue parties. The more parties there were, the harder it was for the Chancellor to build a governing coalition. By 1928, there were more than 30 parties represented in the Reichstag. Coalitions were unstable, and would collapse when faced with serious problems. The 1928 Reichstag had to deal with the 1929 depression, but couldn’t. Because of this, they effectively ceded their authority to the President and the Chancellor and became mostly irrelevant.
It could be argued that our Congress has voluntarily done much the same thing here. Extreme partisanship has caused gridlock. The other party is seen as the enemy. Its positions and legislative proposals are viewed as tantamount to treason. I am certainly guilty of this. The last Republican I voted for was Gerald Ford in 1976. I was in my 20s. Each party devotes much if not most of its time blocking the other one. The result of all this is that nothing gets done. President Truman nicknamed the 80th Congress (01/47-01/49) the “Do Nothing Congress.” They passed about 900 bills. The 113th Congress (01/11-01/13) passed 283 bills, of which 75 were purely ceremonial - naming a post office, etc. The 114th Congress (01/13-01/15) did slightly better. They passed 296 bills, of which 84 were ceremonial. I don’t know how the 115th Congress is doing. It seems to be headline news however whenever they do pass a bill.)
One big difference is that our President can’t really do anything substantive about it. His authority is very strictly limited. He can issue executive orders, but their scope is limited. Congress theoretically can pass legislation to block these orders, but more commonly they just sue, in a sympathetic Federal Court.
Generally, under the parliamentary form of government the head of state and the head of government are two separate people. In Weimar Germany (as in the current Federal Republic) the President was the Head of State and the Chancellor ran the government. However, in most parliamentary govenments, the President is largely a figurehead with little real power. The Weimar Constitution gave the German President had a lot more authority, however.
The President had the authority to appoint the Chancellor. In most Parliamentary systems, generally the head of the government is the head of the party with the most seats. The president also had the authority to fire the Chancellor and to dissolve the Reichstag. These powers definitely subordinated the Reichstag to the President. Then there was Article 48.
If the Reichstag couldn’t act because it was limited by the Constitution (as in 1923) or else because it was too fragmented to act (as in 1929 on) the President could issue a decree under Article 48 making whatever change he saw fit.
In 1923, President Ebert suspended several sections of the Constitution, making himself effectively dictator. The upside was that the hyperinflation crisis was resolved in a remarkably short time.
In 1930, President Hindenburg, who was much more conservative than Ebert, and who was surrounded by politicians (though not Hitler, not at first) who could be described as “proto-fascists,” issued decrees that smashed the faltering economy (Chancellor Brüning’s austerity measures,) which in turn created the hospitable environment for the growth of the extremist parties on both ends of the spectrum. The month Hitler was given the Chancellorship, January, 1933, the unemployment rate topped out at just over 30%.
The bottom line of all this is that both the German Reichstag and the American Congress, for different reasons and under different circumstances have failed to deal meaningfully with major issues, resulting in significant dissatisfaction with “the government.” Here, we gripe about it and wait for the next election. In Germany, largely through constitutional means, assisted by back-room pressure and street violence orchestrated by the SA, a professed fascist had become Chancellor and usurped nearly absolute power.
The SA
From 1930 on, the Sturmabteilung was a highly effective private army for the Nazis. In the early days of their existence, the SA was full of burly ex-soldiers, beer-hall brawlers, vicious Jew-haters and anti-communists. These men who nationalist and reactionary, like the Nazis as a whole, but more interested in kicking heads than in staging a political debate. Also, like the Nazis as a whole, they were relatively quiescent from 1924 through 1929. Then the Great Depression began and the Nazis became an important part of the electorate.
In 1930, Hitler assumed nominal leadership of the SA, but assigned day to day control to Ernst Röhm. From this point on, the SA’s main function was geared toward influencing elections. They established a very militaristic hierarchy - Röhm at the top, commanders and sub-commanders at state and local levels, down to individual units like military companies in each town. They marched in parades and staged elaborate quasi-military ceremonies. They always appeared in public in uniform, the only Nazis to do so, aside from top brass. (The famous “brown shirts” were government-issue war-surplus which were obtained at little cost in the early 1920s.)
At night, they beat up, sometimes to death, communists, Jews, and any others they perceived as inimical to the Nazis. At election time, they stepped up their activities. By 1932, they were too big and powerful for any part of the government to stop. They outnumbered the Reichwehr 20-1.
The excellent film Cabaret, set in Berlin in 1931, gives a whiff of what the SA was like then. Individual and small groups are seen throughout the film. They are all depicted as thugs. There is a scene in which several of them are thrown out of a nightclub by the owner. A little later, they have him outside, on the ground, and are kicking him and beating him. We never see him again. Toward the end of the film, o ne of the main characters confronts two of them and insults their flag and their leader. The next scene shows him in the hospital, seriously bruised and bandaged. There are other scenes as well. The atmosphere of threat and menace is low-level, generally in the background, but is more or less continuous throughout the film, which I recommend highly.
Needless to say there is nothing in the US that comes close to what the SA was in its latter years. The KKK in the 20s and later decades somewhat resembled the SA in its early days, except the Klan certainly lynched many more men than the SA killed during the same years. But the KKK never became a nationwide political force, able to influence elections.
The Communists As we all know, Communism grew out the theories and writings of Karl Marx, a German economist and philosopher. He thought that the revolution he wrote about would occur first in an industrialized country, like Germany or England, where he lived. After the successful revolution in Russia, German Marxists were energized and wanted a communist revolution of te ;
The communists were a very real presence just before the creation of the Weimar Republic. As we have seen, a communist revolution flared up quickly in October, 1918, and quickly spread throughout Germany. The main reason it failed was that there were no seasoned political leaders to guide the revolutionaries. There was no Lenin or Trotsky or Stalin. The revolutionaries occupied city centers, government buildings, ejected government officials, then couldn’t figure out what to do next. The Freikorps fought them on the streets and in the buildings until the last of these revolutionaries were themselves evicted in May, 1919. Thousands were killed.
Yet this was not the end of the communists in Germany. During the revolutionary period, they created a political party, the KPD. Its best electoral showing was in 1932, when it got about 16% of the vote, enough to throw a scare into the industrial barons of the Ruhr, who had, up to then, mostly been neutral, Now they threw their support, their money, and their influence with the Weimar government to the Nazis. In the decade prior to this, the communists staged parades and demonstrations. They were as good at it as the Nazis were. They published a newspaper, The Red Banner. They ran recruiting drives. They had their own private army too, though this was smaller than the SA. This was all financed by the Komintern, a Soviet agency which was set up to export Soviet-style communism overseas. (They had people here too, who had some influence during the depression years.)
During the revolutionary period the Social Democrats, who started out as Marxists themselves in the 19th century, felt that the KPD represented a serious threat to their nascent government. This would not do. Germans have a great respect for order. They have an expression, “Alles in ordnung.” “Everything is orderly.” They use this phrase in situations in which we might say, “Everything is OK.” The KPD, like the Nazis, were considered disorderly. Neither party ever represented, by itself, a majority, though the Nazis did better in the polls, gaining a plurality, because many, if not most, Germans agreed with their nationalist viewpoint.
There has never been thing here remotely like the communists in Germany in the post-WW1 years. The Republicans created a Red Scare in the late-40's to mid-50's for their own political advantage. Stalin and Mao, the Iron Curtain, the Cold War and the Korean War were all genuinely scary by themselves. It was a dangerous time, but it was not the huge, imminent threat to this country the McCarthyites made it out to be.
These days the Republican nominee and his sycophants are presenting Muslims as the primary threat facing us today. Aside from the fact that this is deeply offensive to decent people, it is also patently ridiculous. ISIS, Al Qaeda, and the Taliban, and all their many doppelgangers all added together would not, ever, represent any sort of threat to the existence or the structure of this country. Sharia law will not become the law of the land. In the speeches of the Republican nominee, these things are real threats. But saying something is so doesn’t make it so.
Tradition of a “Strong Leader”
By “Strong Leader,” (SL) I mean a ruler who had few or no checks on his (or, rarely, her) authority. The nature of his relationship to his people can range from paternalistic to brutal dictatorial. The supposed advantage to society is that the SL can act decisively, whereas a government where power is shared cannot, at least not quickly. There are no checks on bad decisions, but there is also little appearance of weakness or indecision. The SL is viewed somewhat as a parent figure, maybe benevolent, maybe not. (In Russia, for example, one endearment for the Tsar was “Little Father”) As such, the SL has the responsibility for making decisions for his people, relieving them of having to make many of their own decisions, or, in some cases, preventing them from being able to make them.
The SL has people (mayors, prelates, etc.) and agencies (police, government clerks, etc.) who assist him, but they have little personal power. Most or all power flows from the SL. Often there is even aome variety of legislative body, but its powers are limited. The Tsar, for example, had his Duma, which was essentially powerless. (Putin, definitely a SL, has the same situation.) Before 1871, each of the German political entities all had their king or prince or other titled person who was in charge. After unification, the Kaiser took over this function on a national level. The Kaiser was a SL, generally a benevolent one, at least as far as his subjects were concerned. He did have a Reichstag, but its power was largely restricted. People who spoke out against the Kaiser or otherwise opposed his government occasionally ended up in prison. For the average German, times were secure and placid. There was an expression that was used then, Kaisertreu, which meant “faithful to the Emperor.” Later, it mutated to Führertreu.
The Weimar Republic had no SL for its first few years. The various Presidents and Chancellors were all somewhat faceless bureaucrats. The military did not accept the authority of new government at first (recall their actions during the Kapp Putsch.) Later they seemed to, but I suspect that the secret rearmament programs went a long way in buying their acquiescence, if not full allegiance. Many older membes of the middle class (those born before 1890 or so) and the aristocracy remained monarchists. If they couldn’t have their Kaiser, then perhaps a king or other SL resembling a king. Virtually all Germans (like virtually all poeple everywhere) wanted order, a settled existence, security, and reliability, but a very large percentage felt they were getting none of these things from the Republic.
The government which was primarily center-left in orientation functioned reasonably well until the hyperinflation crisis of 1923. To deal with that, Stresemann was granted, essentially, extralegal powers to deal with it. He was a temporary SL. He fixed things and people almost calmed down.
I say almost because of the results of the March 1924 election, the “Inflation Election.” The coalition that served as the foundation for the Weimar government’s shaky stability was further weakened. Voters moved to the extreme parties on both ends of the spectrum. To me, this says that they were looking for a SL and did’t think they would get one from the centrists.
In 1925, someone who was viewed as a SL, though he really wasn’t one, Paul von Hindenburg, was elected President. He was also a Reichwehr Field Marshal. He was a war hero, a conservative, and a monarchist. He was seen by many as a substitute Emperor (in German, “Ersatzkaiser.”) Between Stresemann’s actions in 1923 and Hindenburg’s reassuring Presidency, the anxieties of the German people were relieved, and the “Golden Twenties” proceeded on to nearly the end of decade. However, beneath the calm surface there was still a lot of anxiety, Hints of that are visible in the art, music, and cinema of era.
The Great Depression changed things. Now a real, not an ersatz, SL was needed. The communists didn’t have one, not really. Unfortunately, the Nazis did.
The United States has no such tradition. We have certainly had strong Presidents in our history (Washington, Jackson, Polk, Lincoln, both Roosevelts, for example) but our system is designed to limit their powers. In my view, there is no generalized widespread yearning for a SL to take control and run things more or less unilaterally here as there was in Weimar Germany.
That is not to say that this has never happened here. Washington was urged to take the title of King, with all the powers that includes. He declined, and went on to preside over the Constitutional Convention in 1787. Lincoln and FDR both presided during periods of exceptional societal stress. Both took actions which they felt would improve things, which were subsequently halted by others. Lincoln attempted to abolish Habeas Corpus temporarily during the civil war. Some of FDR’s New Deals programs were unconstitutional. In both cases the courts stepped in and blocked these actions.
In my opinion, our yearning for a SL was very strong after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. The shock we felt as a society was immense. We collectively saw Bush as our SL and gave him new powers with the Patriot Act and the Iraq War Authorization to fight what we felt was an existential threat to our society. These powers came with a cost – the loss of some of our freedoms, but the SL knew best. But Bush’s tenure as SL was short. Americans are known for their skepticism towards their government officials. In Bush’s case, this took over within a year or two. Bush was soon seen as incompetent and was widely ridiculed well before the end of his Presidency
The current Republican nominee for President has some mannerisms which seem to persuade some like-minded Americans he will be such a leader. Some of his rhetoric is clearly meant to encourage this idea. He is the biggest, the smartest, the best. Only he can fix things. Only he can make America great again. Yet most of us are not convinced. For one thing, most of us already think he’s ridiculous. For another, there is at present no huge perceived threat to our society, no matter what his party says. We don’t need saving. He does have supporters, but they are much more attracted by his nativist (and racist and misogynous) message rather than by how strong a leader they think he will be. (The American right-wing fringe tends to be strongly, even violently opposed to any federal government.) Additionally, they can’t really define what exactly he would do as President. More importantly, his true supporters represent a smaller percentage of our society than the nationalists were in Germany in 1932. I think that much of his support comes to him because of his (current) party affiliation and because his name isn’t Clinton.
I can imagine circumstances under which a SL (a real one) could come into power here, but it would require a crisis so severe that our society was literally threatened. A global economic collapse like 1929-1933. (2008 wasn’t close.) Another major war, perhaps with use of atomic weapons. Environmental collapse later in this century. But we are not there now. Americans are famously skeptical about our leaders, even the great ones. We tend not to accept them at face value.
Hitler vs Trump
It has been widely reported in the media that the Republican nominee once kept a book of Adolf Hitler’s speeches by his bedside. This was originally reported in an article in Vanity Fair magazine in 1990, who quoted his first wife. This implies that he wanted it closely available, ready for quick consultation when needed. Maybe the Republican nominee learned something from them. The problem is, reading printed speeches teaches little or none of the speakers style.
Hitler was a spellbinding speaker, especially to like-minded Germans, or sympathetic ones, which most were. All you have to do is watch a few minutes of one of his speeches to see for yourself. They are available all over the internet.
Regarding Hitler’s speaking style. His whole approach to speaking was emotional. He appeared to speak from the gut and his style was meant to reach the gut of each member of the audience. He had a number of techniques that he used. There are photos of him practicing in front of a mirror – his style was carefully planned and rehearsed.
He would generally pause for a short while before he began to speak. He would look at his audience, or down at his notes, if he had any. This would get the crowd excited with frustrated anticipation. When he did start, everyone latched on with full attention. He changed his volume constantly. He would speak softly, even whisper, then shout at full volume. He also varied his tempo, starting at a slow pace then building speed until he was racing, seemingly out of control. He used big arm movements and choppy hand gestures. He looked either at his audience or up, as if he was looking at the stars. He did not look down at his notes – it and when he had notes, they were there mostly for the long pause at the beginning.
When speaking Hitler kept it simple. He spoke about concrete things, concepts which had great emotional significance to Germans: the land, the people (“das Volk”), the Fatherland (“die Vaterland.”) As we have seen, he had emotionally charged issues that he used over and over: the Stab in the Back, the November Criminals, the War-Guilt Clause, the Blood-Banner and groups he blamed for these things, most commonly the Communists and the Jews. He hammered simple phrases home by repeating them over and over. His audience clearly understood his message when he was through. He also maintained a narrow focus. His speeches only contained a handful of themes, never long lists of issues.
The Republican nominee does emulate some of these techniques. He does use hand exaggerated hand gestures. He does maintain eye contact with his audience. He attempts to use concepts and issues in a similar manner as did Hitler, but they aren’t on topics which resonate with most Americans. “Make America Great Again” is so vague it is meaningless. “Law and order” is a retread from Richard Nixon’s first campaign. Both terms are considered by many, myself included, to be dog-whistles connoting racism and ethnocentrism. This lack of appeal is true for his pet issues, such as they are. Aside from these things, I don’t much in similarity in their speaking styles.
There is a much better impersonation of Hitler available. I think that the Republican nominee should perhaps review film clips showing Adenoid Hynkel, Dictator of Ptomania. These can be seen in Charles Chaplin’s marvelous comedy, The Great Dictator.
Links to the first seven parts (the history itself)
Part 1: The Creation of the German Empire; The Collapse of The Western Front (August-November, 1918; Armistice Day; “The Stab In The Back” — www.dailykos.com/...
Part 2: Ebert Sets Up His Government (November, 1918); The Christmas Battle And The Spartacist Uprising (December, 1918-January, 1919); Election of the Constituent National Assembly (January, 1919); The Revolution Continues (February-March, 1919); Adolf Hitler in 1919; The Versailles Treaty (July, 1919);The Weimar Constitution (August 1919) — www.dailykos.com/...
Part 3: The Kapp Putsch (March, 1920); The Ruhr Uprising (March, 1920); Aftermath Of The Kapp Putsch & The Ruhr Uprising; The Sturmabteiung (SA); The Treaty Of Rapallo; The Black Reichwehr — www.dailykos.com/...
Part 4: Reparations And Inflation (1922-1923); French and Belgian Armies Occupy The Ruhr (January, 1923); Hyperinflation and Collapse Of The Mark (1923); The Kampfbund; The Beer Hall Putsch – Precipitating Events; The Putsch; The Putsch – Aftermath — www.dailykos.com/...
Part 5: The Mark Is Stabilized; The Dawes Plan; Reichstag Elections Of 1924; The Locarno Treaties; Cultural Reflections Of The Times; Reichstag Elections Of 1928; TheYoung Plan; The “Liberty Law”; The Ruhr Iron Strike — www.dailykos.com/...
Part 6: The Great Depression; The Beginning Of Authoritarian Government; Chancellor Heinrich Brüning; The Resurgence Of The SA; The 1930 Elections; Reelection of President Hindenburg; Chancellor Franz von Papen; The “Prussian Coup” — www.dailykos.com/...
Part 7: The July 1932 Elections; The November 1932 Elections And Papen’s Resignation; Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher; Chancellor Adolf Hitler; The Reichstag Fire; The Reichstag Fire Decree; The Enabling Act Of 1933; Gleichschaltung (Includes “The Decapitation Of The SA”) — www.dailykos.com/...