Hitler's Table Talk

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480 A PROPAGANDIST "VOLTE FACE*
cause possessed therein the greatest power that one could
possibly imagine.
Wherever it may be, this fetish of the liberty of the press
constitutes a mortal danger par excellence. Moreover, what is
called the liberty of the press does not in the least mean that
the press is free, but simply that certain potentates are at
liberty to direct it as they wish, in support of their particular
interests and, if need be, in opposition to the interests of the
State.
It is not easy, at the beginning, to explain all this to the
journalists and to make them understand that, as members of a
corporate entity, they had certain obligations to the community
as a whole. And endless repetitions were necessary before I
could make them see that, if the press failed to grasp this idea,
it would end only in harming itself. Take the case of a town
with, say, a dozen newspapers ; each one of them reports the
various items in its own way, and in the end the reader can
only come to the conclusion that he is dealing with a gang of
opium-smokers. In this way the press gradually loses its influence
on public opinion and all contact with the man in the
street. The British press affords so excellent an example that
it has become quite impossible to gauge British public opinion
by reading the British newspapers. This has been carried to
such a pass, that as often as not the press bears no relation
whatsoever to the lines of thought of the people.
That is exactly what happened in Vienna before 1914, in the
time of Burgomeister Lueger. In spite of the fact that the entire
Viennese press was in the hands of Jewry and in the pay of the
Liberals, Lueger, the leader of the Christian Social Party,
regularly obtained a handsome majority—a fact which showed
all too clearly the hiatus existing between the press of Vienna
and public opinion.
As, in the military sphere, the aircraft has now become a
combat weapon, so the press has become a similar weapon in
the sphere of thought. We have frequently found ourselves
compelled to reverse the engine and to change, in the course of a
couple of days, the whole trend of imparted news, sometimes
with a complete volte face. Such agility would have been quite
impossible, if we had not had firmly in our grasp that extra-