The Power of Language + Nazi Rhetoric

The anti-Semitic rhetoric of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP during the decade preceding WWII illustrates the conception of how language defines a time period and how it also promotes social discourse. The racist vitriol propagated by the Nazi party was rhetoric implemented to shift and manipulate an already prevailing prejudice. (History of Anti-Semitism in Germany) Anti-Semitism predated Nationalist Socialist rhetoric and it’s quite fascinating as well as disconcerting how they were capable of manipulating a popular worldview in order to acquire mass appeal and support. It’s a strong demonstration of how “socially significant world views have the capacity to exploit the intentional possibilities of language through the medium”. (Bahktin 290) Considering how the mainstay of National Socialist campaigning was based strongly in propaganda, the part itself even created their own publications about the artistry and strategy involved in propaganda and all that it encompasses.  


The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle by Kenneth Burke analyzes Nazi rhetoric by citing specific tropes that are central to party ideology. (Burke 202-04) Some of these characteristics are as follows:

 

“The Common Enemy”: Jews were targeted by the NSDAP as a strategy to unify the German nation. The Nazi party relied on the prevailing prejudice of anti-Semitism and an already strong nationalistic sentiment felt by the German people. The language used in order to ostracize and persecute the Jewish people placed a duality of good vs. bad in the mindset of Germany. Jews were equated with the “evil” of the world and religious prejudice characterized them as devils. Anything qualified with the word Jewish received a negative connotation because of the high anti-Semitic feeling felt in the culture that was exacerbated by Nazi propaganda. They exploited their propaganda instruments by using text-images to create a discourse defining what “Jew” meant, inevitably cultivating an image of a common enemy that the Aryan German public could defeat and overcome.

“Projection Devices”: The Jewish people served as projection devices for Germans to ease their psyches over the chaos and hardships that ensued in Weimar era. Instead of unpacking the complexities of these issues, it was far more simpler to channel blame at one source, one common enemy. This oversimplification as rhetorical tactic serves to identify a problem and thus a solution, unfortunately that solution devolved into the vicious persecution of Jewish Germans and the desire for their destruction. This intersects with the “symbolic rebirth” trope and that was the ultimate goal of the Nazi party, to create a pure, unified Aryan state that would then be capable of having the strength for expansion. 

“Commercial use”: Burke defines “commercial use” as a way of selling a specific agenda. Germany suffered major economic hardship when the Great Depression hit in 1929, unemployment skyrocketed in the days preceding Nazi consolidation of power in 1933. The NSDAP capitalized on these problems by providing what Burke calls “a noneconomic interpretation of economic ills”. Once again, the Jews were blamed. This illustrates the common enemy ideal and the scapegoat projection device. Rhetoric here simply appealed to self-interest mainly and predicated on German anti-Semitic thought. 

The rhetoric employed by Adolf Hitler and the Nazi party demonstrates how language promotes social discourse by defining shared cultural terms and shifting worldviews. The interaction of Burke's rhetorical tropes intersecting with one another also illustrates how language is a blending of thought and it is multi-faceted. This usage of language was so powerful that it created an environment that allowed for vicious Jewish persecution to flourish into one of the most awful mass-extermination operations in history.