Adolf Hitler and Hegemony

Hegemony is all about "the 1%." According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, hegemony is defined as "the social, cultural, ideological, or economic influence exerted by a dominant class." In class, Vince described it as the 1% convincing everyone else that what they (the 1%) want is what is good for everyone. During the Nazi regime, Adolf Hitler (and the high-class, high-ranking Nazi officials, too) used hegemony in order to brainwash the German people into believing that yes, minorities such as Jews, Gypsies, etc really were out to get them.* All of this was an effort to reach a Weltanshauung, or a German worldview.  As this video shows, Hitler used the power of words to sway the youth of Germany into adopting his view of what a country should be; as history shows, Hitler used brainwashing and his own charismatic charm to create in Germany's youth the idea that what they were doing was good, when every word Hitler says is contradicted by Germany's action. And although this video doesn't explicitly describe hatred for minorities and even though "altruistic" is used to describe German society, it's important to think of this video and Hitler's words in context with his ideology and the world events around this time. (The subtitles are hard to read, so I typed them out for you.)

The Introducer: Again we experience the hour that makes us proud and happy. By your order here stands a youth-- a youth that knows no class distinction. The youth of our nation is shaped in your image. Because you are the epitome of altruism... this youth wants to be altruistic. Because you are the ideal of loyalty... we also want to be loyal. Adolf Hitler, leader of the German youth, will speak!

Adolf Hitler: My German youth, after a year I again greet you. You here today are only a part of what is spread over all Germany. We want you, my German boys and girls, to absorb all that we expect of Germany. We want to be one people, and you, my youth, are to be that people. In the future there must be no ranks or classes. And you must not let them [be able?] to grow in you. We want to see one nation and you must educate yourselves for it. We want this people to be obedient, and you must practice this obedience. We want this people to be peace-loving and also to be courageous. You must be peaceable and courageous at the same time. We want this nation to be hard, not soft, and you must steel yourselves for it in your youth. You must learn to accept privations and never collapse. No matter what we create today or what we do today... we will pass away. But in you Germany will live. And when nothing remains of us, then you must hold in your fist this flag we tore from nothing. I know this cannot be otherwise because you are the flesh from our flesh and the blood from our blood. The same spirit that dominates us burns in your young minds. As the columns of our movement sweep through Germany today, then I know you will join with them. And we know around us is Germany, in us Germany marches, and behind us Germany followed.

In 1939, Hitler was eager to take control of Poland. He couldn't do this without reason. He staged an attack on a Poland-based German radio station. The German people had already been told via propaganda that Germans in Poland were being abused by native Poles, so they believed Hitler when he blamed the Poles for the attack. The photographs of the Poles doing this helped Hitler's argument (although the "Poles" in the pictures were actually Germans dressed in Pole clothes). On the last day of August 1939, war on Poland began with the full support of Germany.*

As a way to reach the common people, propaganda is a useful tool of hegemony. Hitler, of course, knew this. "All propaganda has to be popular and has to accommodate itself to the comprehension of the least intelligent of those whom it seeks to reach," he says in his book Mein Kampf. Clearly, Hitler had hegemony figured out.

*Bartoletti, Susan Campbell. Hitler Youth: Growing Up in Hitler's Shadow. New York: Scholastic, 2005. Print.