Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler

cases, only a small impulse will be given, but no definite conviction will be created; because
the leaflet can do nothing more than draw attention to something and can become effective
only by bringing the reader subsequently into a situation where he is more fundamentally
informed and instructed. Such instruction must always be given at the mass assembly.
Mass assemblies are also necessary for the reason that, in attending them, the individual
who felt himself formerly only on the point of joining the new movement, now begins to feel
isolated and in fear of being left alone as he acquires for the first time the picture of a great
community which has a strengthening and encouraging effect on most people. Brigaded in a
company or battalion, surrounded by his companions, he will march with a lighter heart to
the attack than if he had to march alone. In the crowd he feels himself in some way thus
sheltered, though in reality there are a thousand arguments against such a feeling.
Mass demonstrations on the grand scale not only reinforce the will of the individual but they
draw him still closer to the movement and help to create an esprit de corps. The man who
appears first as the representative of a new doctrine in his place of business or in his factory
is bound to feel himself embarrassed and has need of that reinforcement which comes from
the consciousness that he is a member of a great community. And only a mass
demonstration can impress upon him the greatness of this community. If, on leaving the
shop or mammoth factory, in which he feels very small indeed, he should enter a vast
assembly for the first time and see around him thousands and thousands of men who hold
the same opinions; if, while still seeking his way, he is gripped by the force of masssuggestion
which comes from the excitement and enthusiasm of three or four thousand other
men in whose midst he finds himself; if the manifest success and the concensus of
thousands confirm the truth and justice of the new teaching and for the first time raise
doubt in his mind as to the truth of the opinions held by himself up to now – then he
submits himself to the fascination of what we call mass-suggestion. The will, the yearning
and indeed the strength of thousands of people are in each individual. A man who enters
such a meeting in doubt and hesitation leaves it inwardly fortified; he has become a member
of a community.
The National Socialist Movement should never forget this, and it should never allow itself to
be influenced by these bourgeois duffers who think they know everything but who have
foolishly gambled away a great State, together with their own existence and the supremacy of
their own class. They are overflowing with ability; they can do everything, and they know
everything. But there is one thing they have not known how to do, and that is how to save
the German people from falling into the arms of Marxism. In that they have shown
themselves most pitiably and miserably impotent. So that the present opinion they have of
themselves is only equal to their conceit. Their pride and stupidity are fruits of the same tree.
If these people try to disparage the importance of the spoken word today, they do it only
because they realize – God be praised and thanked – how futile all their own speechifying has
been.