PDF file: History - Advanced Higher - Germany - Education Scotland

Source D
Hitler writes in ‘Mein Kampf’ about the representative individual.
When from his workshop or big factory in which he (the individual) feels very small,
he steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of
people of the same opinion around him … he is swept away by three or four thousand
others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm, when the
visible success and agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of the new
doctrine and for the first time arouse doubts in the truth of his previous conviction -
then he himself has succumbed to the magic influence of mass … suggestion.
Source E
In ‘Mein Kampf’ Hitler comments on the masses.
The receptive powers of the masses are very restricted, and their understanding is
feeble. On the other hand, they quickly forget. Such being the case, all effective
propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials and those must be expressed as
far as possible in stereotyped formulas. These slogans should be persistently
repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put
forward.
Source F
An interview with Hitler in 1924.
I noticed that he barred in particular any reminder of the putsch and any question
concerning his policy towards the Party schism … I gladly eschewed the subject as
too delicate. But the lesson it taught was another matter, which Hitler himself took
up. ‘From now on’, he said, ‘we must follow a new line of action. It is best to attempt
no large reorganisation until I am freed … When I resume active work it will be
necessary to pursue a new policy. Instead of working to achieve power by armed
conspiracy, we shall have to hold our noses and enter the Reichstag against the
Catholic and Marxist deputies. If outvoting them takes longer than outshooting them,
at least the results will be guaranteed by their own Constitution!’
(Reported in I Knew Hitler, Kurt Ludecke, London 1938,pp.217-218)
Source G
The growth in membership of the NSDAP.
1924 55,000
1928 70,000
1931 130,000
1933 850,000
1935 2,500,000
1939 5,300,000
1942 7,100,000
1945 8,500,000
History: Germany: Versailles to the Outbreak of World War II - 1918-1939 (AH) 68