From The Rape of the Masses by Serge Chakotin, D.Sc., 1939

. . . Münzenberg [32] gives curious evidence of the spirit in which important sections of the workers have passed into the Hitlerist ranks. Workers who formerly were in the Socialist organizations and had become Strom Troopers were saying in 1932 ; �We have not changed. But among you Socialists everything is too slow-going. Adolf is working more rapidly. And if he betrays us he will be hanged by us.� The outcome of this line of argument was seen in the massacre of June 30, 1934, when Hitler had his former friends, the leaders of the opposition within his party, who believed in his Socialist intentions, executed.

( page 167 )

 

. . . Goebbels [32] declares in effect that �propaganda must tend to simplify complicated ideas�. Hitler, in his book [31], writes : �to win over the masses it is necessary to take into account in equal proportions their feebleness and their bestiality�, and : �the greater the mass of the men whom it is desired to reach, the lower must be the intellectual level of the propaganda.� . . .

( page 176 )

 

. . . It has often been said, in the democratic countries, that Hitler was enabled to impose himself on the German people by Germany�s defeat in the War, since �defeat always engenders reaction� .This assertion, as Münzenberg says in his Propaganda als Waffe, is mistaken, since �history shows us many examples in which a military defeat has been the cause of a popular revolution of a socially progressive character.�

Another �idea� of Hitlerist propaganda, which has moved the whole world, is that of anti-Semitic persecution, as the logical consequence of the �racist theories� adopted, in their ignorance of modern biology, by the persons who are at the head of Germany today. It is the brutality of this propaganda that has rendered it odious and has facilitated the mobilization of the anti-Hitlerist forces abroad.

Another characteristic of Hitlerist propaganda is its frenzied social demagogy in internal politics. Hitler realized that in order to win over the masses they must be humoured, and, while pursuing his mediaeval nationalist ideas, he gave those ideas a social basis ; hence the hybrid formula of National Socialism. The socialism in this case is simply a bait, devised to catch the worker and peasant masses without irritating the middle classes, on whom he principally depends. He did not hesitate to promise to each social stratum the entire fulfilment of its aspirations—better wages for the workers, bigger profits for the employers, higher prices for the peasants, cheaper food for the townsmen, and so on. He speculated on the failure of his audiences to see the inconsistencies in his promises—and he was right. As Münzenberg well says [32], Hitler launched a slogan in between the Socialist �All for all� and the capitalist �All belongs to one�— the meaningless slogan �To each that which is his�. Yet, camouflaged by the fireworks of propaganda, this demagogy succeeded. The two slogans of this propaganda which served as snares for the proletariat, lending this �Socialist� party some sort of justification for its title, were Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz, �the service of the community before the service of the individual�, and Brechung der Zinsknechtschaft, �the braking of the bondage to interest� ; needless to say, when the party attained power these promises were not kept.

( pages 177-8 )

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31. A. HITLER : Mein Kampf (English edition : Mein Kampf.
      Translated by James Murphy.   Hurst & Blackett, 1939.)
32. W. MÜNZENBERG : Propaganda als Waffe   Éditions du Carrefour, Paris, 1937.

( Bibliography, page 290 )

New York : Haskell House (1939) 1971.