Edison Community College
Adolf Hitler: Oratory Genius
By Caitlin Grote
Communications 121 

In the United States, every history class has some unit over the actions and oratory of a single man, who ruled a country with his own persuasive energy and finesse. This man was born a nobody, and died one of the most powerful men in the world. Adolf Hitler was born April 20, 1889 to Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl. He was the fourth of six children. After an average childhood, young Adolf discovered a love of warfare through a book belonging to his father about the Franco-Prussian War. Later, after the death of his father, Adolf dropped out of school and began working as a laborer and painter. In his late biography, he states that he first became an Anti-Semite in Vienna. When World War 1 broke out, Hitler joined the Bavarian army as an Austrian foot soldier. After Germany’s loss, Hitler became embittered and his ideological development began. He decided to get into politics, and having no experience of his own, Hitler began to study the doctrines of famous Marxists such as Anton Drexler. After joining the German Workers Party, or the DAP, and began his mentorship under Dietrich Eckhart. The DAP became the National Socialist German Workers Party. After a mutiny, Hitler, using manipulation, became the party leader for the NSDAP. This period, around July 1921 and on, marked the beginning of Adolf’s career as a politician and orator. 

As the chairperson of the NSDAP, Hitler began giving speeches to packed houses of people. One of the oratorical strategies Hitler is well known for is the use of scapegoats. He knew how to sympathize with the German people’s problems, and then blame those problems on those who were in power. He convinced the people that he was one of them, a laborer, a lover, the average oppressed German. Adolf Hitler knew his audience, one of the fundamental requirements of a great orator, and he knew how to manipulate them. 

He used the three essentials of any good argument, Ethos (ethics), Pathos (Feelings), and Logos (logic). More importantly than just talking about them, his speeches had the ability to influence these fundamentals in those he spoke to. In large groups and small, between Adolf’s eyes and rhetoric, his speeches were hypnotic to all who attended. Hitler possessed an innate knowledge of crowd psychology. He used peer pressure to his advantage, strategically placing those loyal to him within the crowds to start the chants of “Sieg Heil” that grew to include the entire mass.  The now shortened “Nazi Party” began to base their doctrine on Italian fascism. 

Another way that Hitler became a skilled orator was by studying the dictator tactics of Benito Mussolini. He tried to emulate Mussolini’s March on Rome, and was highly effective, gaining the support of thousands of new followers. There is even a story of him interrupting a speech, and, by force of pistol, gaining three nationalist followers who were sternly against him. Unfortunately this victory was short lived, as Adolf was soon arrested for High treason and sentenced to five years in jail. Even in the depths of his despair, when he contemplated suicide, Hitler continued communicating with his followers through letters and frequent visitors. It was also at this time that he wrote his autobiography, Mein Kampf or “my struggles”. 

After being released from jail four years early, Adolf’s political ambitions were not only renewed, but also strengthened. Hitler was nominated as president and after coming close, was appointed as chancellor under President Von Hindenburg.  With this new power, Hitler urged through an act that appointed the chancellor as president upon the death of the prior, kind of like our current arrangement with the vice president. Suspiciously enough, the day after this act was passed, President von Hindenburg mysteriously passed, and little Adolf became Adolf Hitler, Führer und Reichskanzler (leader and chancellor), one of the most powerful men in the civilized world. 

What happened after is well known. Hitler gained the support of his fellow citizens and allied with Italy and Japan and launched a full-scale war, against the other countries of Europe and Asia, and the Jews, gypsies, homosexuals and handicapped of the world. The military aspect is not the focus here. Even though Hitler was a military genius and anti-Semite, almost none of his success would have been possible without strong diplomatic skills. Germany, Italy, Japan and the other minor axis powers were sticks, that alone were easily broken, and together formed a mighty faggot that none could fracture, or so it seemed. The Second World War lasted 6 years, from around 1939-1945. The effects of the war and the holocaust, also Hitler’s doing, still haunt the world today. 

The effects of Hitler’s communications in the 30’s and 40’s affected millions of people across Europe, in an event that will forever be remembered as the Holocaust. Hitler’s hatred for those different than him, Jews, gypsies, handicapped, homosexual, anyone who was not of Adolf’s “master race.” He isolated these people into concentration camps. Hitler used his skills as an orator to brainwash millions of youth and citizens of Germany into joining his private police, the Gestapo, and his Hitler Youth, and other military groups dedicated to the service of the Führer. These brainwashed masses were prepared to do anything their precious leader asked of them, even kill. 

Even those in the camps had submitted themselves to Hitler’s will, and eventually stopped resisting, resigning themselves to their doomed fate. Those who eventually escaped entrapment faced severe psychological and physical trauma, most never completely recovered. Aside from the victims, Hitler also impacted those whom he brainwashed, after his suicide and the end of the war, these people had no more purpose, many killed themselves or ended up in asylums. Outside of Germany, the war travelled across Europe and into Asia and the United States, bringing the U.S. out of the Great Depression, and many other countries into financial wormholes. Even now, associations such as N.A.T.O. (disbanded), the United Nations, etc. came out of Hitler’s oratory conquering of the eastern world. 

In the end, even though he eventually failed in his world conquest, Hitler’s oratory left a scar on the world that remains to this day. He killed hundreds of thousands of people, who’s families are forever impacted. World War 2 led to advances in science, such as the Atomic Bomb, and diplomacy, with the eventual creation of the United Nations, and many other areas. Moreover, almost all of them can be traced back to Hitler’s communicatory skills. The impact of Adolf’s communication, oral, nonverbal etc, can be seen both then and now in many aspects of life, and proves that he is and was one of the greatest orators of all time. 

While some editing may have been done for grammar or clarity, the choice of topic and discussion in this and other Communication 121 student Term Projects is solely the result of the research completed by the student. Read the County News Online introduction for these papers here.