World Wars in the Media, Tuesday
"Last week, we were talking about the amount of dancing going around during the 1920s, relief after the end of a war, that kind of thing," Mitchell started, regarding the class. "Which was nice for those of you on this end of the Atlantic, or at least outside of Germany, which was wracked by poverty in the wake of the Treaty of Versailles. In 1919, a bloke called Adolf Hitler joined the German Workers' Party, a party of no real influence. They advertised a bit, never got more than a few dozen in until Hitler prompted them to start rolling the presses, which they did. Turns out he had a real gift for public speaking, especially around the discontented, looking for a quick break."
"That got them some money. With that money, they organised more meetings. More people started to turn up: soldiers who had nowhere to go, people who hated what Versailles had done, people living in fear of a Communist uprising, the likes of which had happened in Russia. As numbers grew, he invented a few tricks, got them a banner," he pointed at the image projected on the wall behind him, "to rally behind. Made a big deal of it, stirred them up with some drama and good speaking. In the process, he made himself indispensible. By 1921, he got them to make him head of the party by threatening to leave otherwise. His popularity kept on growing, discontent in Germany got greater and greater as the economy completely collapsed under the weight of all the payments they had to make after the war, and the little bastard got a little overconfident."
He clicked away from the symbol. "On November 8th 1923, he and some of his men broke into a beer hall in Munich and tried to bully several important leaders into giving him power over the state..." He shot a half-smile into the classroom. "It didn't go very well. He and his men tried to march on the War Ministry in Munich as a last-ditch effort, but they were contained by the police, and Hitler was put on trial for high treason. Which was possibly the worst thing that could have happened: the Nazis, already learning their way around blatant propaganda, got some of their best journalists on the job, and the rest was all up to Hitler's skills as a demagogue. By the end of it, he was lucky to get a jail sentence at all: even the judges were enarmoured with him."
"In the end, he went to prison, spent some time in a depression, and wrote the infamous book 'Mein Kampf' about his racist and nationalist ideas. Prison had given him time to think -- it just wasn't good. Instead of taking the government by force, he would do so by the rules of the system, by legal means, no more military coups that he couldn't follow up on. He reorganised his parties, called on public support, and waited. After all, the German economy had stabilized, and the discontent he'd been feeding on had vanished into thin air." He took a breath, and considered the class. "He wouldn't make another move until 1929," he said, "When, as you might recall from last week, the stocks crashed and economic crisis set in again. Hitler sprang up immediately. He promised everyone everything they wanted, and did so convincingly. Built up a large backing, swayed politicians..."
Mitchell made a few movements with his hands to indicate exactly the size of the waves he'd been making. "First, he succesfully got the Nazi Party elected as second biggest party in the country. He turned his elected party members into a giant propaganda machine; even at roll-call at the Reichstag, the German seat of government, they would call out his name or the Nazi greeting before sitting down. More elections followed with greater results; then behind-the-scenes scheming set in as Hitler used his popularity with the people to worm his way on up until on January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler was declared Chancellor of the German state."
"The other politicians thought they could keep a leash on him by limiting the amount of Nazis in government, but he was one shrewd little prick. His flunkies had encouraged one Marinus van der Lubbe to set fire to the Reichstag itself - and helped out, at that. Hitler jumped on the opportunity, declared it the work of Communist sympathisers, and called upon the German people to stop being weak - to turn absolute power over to him on terms of the Emergency Decree, which also put an end to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, privacy, and just about anything else."
He took a deep breath. "1933," he said, "was the defacto beginning of World War Two. In the wake of nationalism, expert propaganda had brought us to the brink again. And the rest of the world wasn't watching closely enough. Now, my question to you all, those of you from around here, and those of you who aren't: how likely do you think your own home's chances are of being taken over by propaganda? How likely do you think the Germans thought it was?"
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"That got them some money. With that money, they organised more meetings. More people started to turn up: soldiers who had nowhere to go, people who hated what Versailles had done, people living in fear of a Communist uprising, the likes of which had happened in Russia. As numbers grew, he invented a few tricks, got them a banner," he pointed at the image projected on the wall behind him, "to rally behind. Made a big deal of it, stirred them up with some drama and good speaking. In the process, he made himself indispensible. By 1921, he got them to make him head of the party by threatening to leave otherwise. His popularity kept on growing, discontent in Germany got greater and greater as the economy completely collapsed under the weight of all the payments they had to make after the war, and the little bastard got a little overconfident."
He clicked away from the symbol. "On November 8th 1923, he and some of his men broke into a beer hall in Munich and tried to bully several important leaders into giving him power over the state..." He shot a half-smile into the classroom. "It didn't go very well. He and his men tried to march on the War Ministry in Munich as a last-ditch effort, but they were contained by the police, and Hitler was put on trial for high treason. Which was possibly the worst thing that could have happened: the Nazis, already learning their way around blatant propaganda, got some of their best journalists on the job, and the rest was all up to Hitler's skills as a demagogue. By the end of it, he was lucky to get a jail sentence at all: even the judges were enarmoured with him."
"In the end, he went to prison, spent some time in a depression, and wrote the infamous book 'Mein Kampf' about his racist and nationalist ideas. Prison had given him time to think -- it just wasn't good. Instead of taking the government by force, he would do so by the rules of the system, by legal means, no more military coups that he couldn't follow up on. He reorganised his parties, called on public support, and waited. After all, the German economy had stabilized, and the discontent he'd been feeding on had vanished into thin air." He took a breath, and considered the class. "He wouldn't make another move until 1929," he said, "When, as you might recall from last week, the stocks crashed and economic crisis set in again. Hitler sprang up immediately. He promised everyone everything they wanted, and did so convincingly. Built up a large backing, swayed politicians..."
Mitchell made a few movements with his hands to indicate exactly the size of the waves he'd been making. "First, he succesfully got the Nazi Party elected as second biggest party in the country. He turned his elected party members into a giant propaganda machine; even at roll-call at the Reichstag, the German seat of government, they would call out his name or the Nazi greeting before sitting down. More elections followed with greater results; then behind-the-scenes scheming set in as Hitler used his popularity with the people to worm his way on up until on January 30th, 1933, Adolf Hitler was declared Chancellor of the German state."
"The other politicians thought they could keep a leash on him by limiting the amount of Nazis in government, but he was one shrewd little prick. His flunkies had encouraged one Marinus van der Lubbe to set fire to the Reichstag itself - and helped out, at that. Hitler jumped on the opportunity, declared it the work of Communist sympathisers, and called upon the German people to stop being weak - to turn absolute power over to him on terms of the Emergency Decree, which also put an end to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, privacy, and just about anything else."
He took a deep breath. "1933," he said, "was the defacto beginning of World War Two. In the wake of nationalism, expert propaganda had brought us to the brink again. And the rest of the world wasn't watching closely enough. Now, my question to you all, those of you from around here, and those of you who aren't: how likely do you think your own home's chances are of being taken over by propaganda? How likely do you think the Germans thought it was?"
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