Introduction

A 'demagogue' is a leader who can 'rouse the masses' with his speeches.  Hitler had the power to arouse mass support.  How? 

After you have studied this webpage, answer the question sheet by clicking on the 'Time to Work' icon at the top of the page

1.  Order and Hope

from Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich (1970).  Speer was Hitler's chief architect and his Minister for Armaments.

My mother saw an SA parade... 

The sight of discipline in a time of chaos, the sense of energy in an atmosphere of universal hopelessness, seems to have won her over.  At any rate, without having heard a speech or read a pamphlet, she joined the [Nazi] party.

Interrogating the sources:

For each source – looking at all the details of its provenance – how true do you think its account is likely to be? 

2.  Hypnotic excitement

Professor K A von Muller, a German History professor, remembering a Nazi rally in 1923:

Suddenly there was a movement at the back entrance. Words of command.  The speaker on the platform stopped in mid-sentence.  Everybody jumped up, saluting.  And right through the shouting crowds and streaming flags came the one they were waiting for...

He passed by me quite close...  I saw his thin, pale features twisted as if by inward rage, cold flames darting from his staring eyes, which seemed to be searching out enemies to be defeated.

Did the crowd give him this mysterious power?  Did it come from him to them?

3.  Emotions and patriotism

Karl Ludecke, an early follower of Hitler, remembering the first time he heard Hitler speak (in 1924):

He was holding the masses, and me with them, under an hypnotic spell by the sheer force of his beliefs...

I do not know how to describe the emotions that swept over me as I heard this man.  His words were like a whip.  When he spoke of the disgrace of Germany, I felt ready to spring on any enemy...

Of course I was ripe for this experience.  I was a man of thirty-two, weary with disgust and disillusionment, a wanderer seeking a cause, a patriot seeking an outlet for his patriotism.

4.  Religion and militarism

William Shirer, Berlin Diary, 6 September 1934.  Shirer was an American news reporter.

This morning's opening meeting ... was more than just a gorgeous show; it also had something of the mystery and religious fervour of an Easter Mass in a great Cathedral...

A highly-trained group of fanatical Nazi youths broke into a perfect goose-step...  I felt for the first time this morning how it touches the strange soul of the German people.  They jumped up and shouted: "We want one Leader!  Nothing for us!  Everything for Germany!  Heil Hitler!"