Encourage. Unify. Destroy.

     Many times, we talk about the rhetoricians who pushed society forward and used their theories and uses of rhetoric for the good of society and philosophy. What we tend to forget is the power these rhetoricians carried; we forget this because power has been associated with a negative connotation as of late. Hitler had power. He controlled an entire region. He convinced a nation that killing millions of people was for the good of society. He was the perfect example of a successful rhetorician. This thought can make some uncomfortable. We would like to to look at Hitler and only categorize him as a monster and a cult leader. The truth is, he advocated for peace. "I am acting in the sense of the Almighty Creator: By warding of Jews I am fighting for the Lord's work, (italics his)" (Burke 198). 

Hitler did not begin his army by forcing people to join and fight with him. He knew that this would only turn people away. Instead he encouraged. He encouraged the Aryan people to see his views on the Jews, and how they would be so much better, as a whole, without them. "But the rationalized family tree for this hate situates it in 'Aryan love,'" (Burke 199). He used his rhetorical skills to justify to his fellow Aryan's the reasoning behind his hate. Yes, he had to justify himself. In order to gain a following, he had to respect the "weak and unstable characters," (Burke 193) in order to gain respect himself. He used rhetoric to make it seem like he was doing the best thing possible for their race, their nation, their world. 

Once encouraged, he says it was easy to unify them. To him, it was easy. Hitler is characterized as rash but according to 'Battle', Burke shows us how careful and detailed his thought process was when it came to gathering a following. "Once Hitler has thus essentialized his enemy, all 'proof' henceforth is automatic," (Burke 194). There were steps to Hitler's destruction of the Jewish population, just as so many rhetoricians have had steps to political power or wisdom or knowledge. People often forget the power that words have when paired with reason, emotion, and intellectual ideas. We read so many pieces like this, so many just in this class even. But we don't see those articles as having power. We see Hitler's 'Battle' as having power though. The key to remember, I believe, is that everything we say has power. If we, as students of rhetorical theory, remember we have equal power to destroy parts of society and to raise it up, we will remember how careful we should be to lay out our ideas. And as Burke says in the beginning of his article,

"...and let us watch it, not merely to discover some grounds for prophesying what political move is to follow Munich, and what move to follow that move, etc.; let us try also to discover what kind of 'medicine' this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America," (Burke 191).