ASHR talk: “Lay rhetorical theory and argumentum ad hitlerum”

[Image from here.]

Although Adolf Hitler and rhetoric are deeply entangled in popular culture, and argumentum ad hitlerum a pervasive fallacy in public discourse, there is very little recent scholarship in rhetoric about Hitler. While the reasons for avoiding Hitler are both varied and valid, in this paper I want to argue that those are also the very reasons we should be teaching, writing, and talking more about Hitler, his rhetoric, and the conditions of persuasion.

Briefly, the case of Hitler appears simultaneously too obvious and too complicated for scholars and teachers of rhetoric to pay much scholarly or pedagogical attention to him or his rhetoric. Hitler appears to be the example of the powers of bad rhetoric, a man who, in Kenneth Burke’s words, “swung a great people into his wake” (164); that is, the story of Hitler appears to confirm lay rhetorical theory’s monocausal narrative of rhetoric being a powerful rhetor whose discursive skill transforms the irrational masses into unthinking tools.

This narrative of Hitler and his rhetoric seems to confirm lay rhetorical models of persuasion, a model encapsulated in the notion of a purely agentic speaker who shoots an arrow (the message) into the head of the target audience. This model assumes an asymmetric relationship between rhetor and audience (the rhetor has the power and the audience is a passive recipient, or not, of information). This model also assumes that an “engaged” audience is not purely passive in reception, but engages critical thinking as a kind of “filter” (the metaphor often invoked) of the rhetor’s message. The role of the audience is to judge the message. That is, the dominant popular way of describing and imagining participants in public deliberation is as consumers of a product—they can be savvy consumers, who think carefully about whether it really is a good product, or they can be loyal consumers, who always stick to one brand, or they can be suckers, easily duped by inferior products (and so on).

This isn’t how communication works, as both theoretical arguments (e.g., Biesecker’s 1989 “Rethinking the Rhetorical Situation”) and empirical work (especially work on confirmation bias) clearly show, but that isn’t my point. Regardless of how scholars model the complicated relationship among audiences, context, texts, and intentions, in popular culture, there is still the tendency to describe audiences using a consumer/marketing model.

Popular conceptions of Hitler fit neatly with that model—he was a witch doctor, in Burke’s terms, who sold snake oil (ignore the mixed metaphors) to a gullible and desperate audience. This (false) narrative of what went wrong in Weimar Germany ensures that people will not recognize when we are making the mistakes that Hitler’s backers made—because 1) we have defined Hitler’s supporters as hopelessly other (no one sees themselves as a potential mark), and 2) we’ve misdefined the mistakes.

argumentum ad Hiterlum is the consequence of that othering—we accuse any effective rhetor who is popular with an out-group of being Hitler. In addition, there is a kind of timelessness of judgment, and we tend to see our perceptions acontextually—we assume that we would have looked at Hitler then as we look at him now—knowing what we know now. But Hitler didn’t look like Hitler—while there was always evidence that he had genocidal, expansionist, and militaristic aims—but that rhetoric could be (and were) dismissed as mere metaphor not to be taken literally. That his arguments were, to the elite, clearly nonsensical and profoundly dishonest (perhaps delusional) meant they thought he could be easily outmaneuvered. That his arguments were, to many people (elite and non-elite), common and familar (racism, German exceptionalism, social conservatism, vague anti-elitism) meant that they thought he could be trusted to understand how common people think.

He had many arguments and qualities that made some groups uncomfortable—Nazis’ (deserved) reputation for hostility to Christianity, and Hitler’s own intermittent claims of being Christian, concerned many conservative Christians, both Lutheran and Catholic. That he would later work to reduce their power, and had plans for marginalizing the established churches entirely, makes many Christians believe they would not have supported him (there is even the blazingly counter-factual claim that Hitler did not have the support of Christians, as well as the hyperbolic claim that he “persecuted” Christians). The fact is that Christians’ support of Hitler was crucial—the Catholic Party supported “The Enabling Act” (the act that made him dictator) unanimously. (Only the Communists and Social Democrats voted against it.)

Later harassment of Christian churches made some Christians regret their support (such as Niemoller), but many found ways to dissociate the Nazi attacks on church power from Hitler himself, insisting that it must be happening without his knowledge. Christians supported Hitler; they shouldn’t have, but they did. And even those who regretted supporting him did so because of Nazi weakening of Christian power structures, not out of a principled opposition to his treatment of Jews, his authoritarian government, the abrogation of human rights, the factionalizing of the judiciary, or the expansionist and inherently genocidal war. Those who stopped supporting him did so when, as Niemoller famously said, they came for him.

Understanding why so many people supported Hitler means, not seeing his supporters as dupes blind to his obviously evil character, but understanding why people across social and educational groups very much like us thought it made sense to support him, why his rabid antisemitism, militarism, rhetoric of victimization, and history of inciting and rationalizing violence against his critics was either attractive or dismissible.

And that means understanding that Hitler didn’t rise to power primarily because of his rhetoric.

Scholars of Hitler and Nazis, while acknowledging that Hitler was an impressive public speaker, emphasize other factors as more important than his personal ability to give a great speech. These include:

• • the important role of calculated and elite support for Hitler, essentially strategic politics. von Papen and Hindenberg weren’t persuaded by Hitler’s rhetoric—they thought he was a putz who could be played;
  • the role of Nazi, rather than Hitler’s, rhetoric. Memoirs, autobiographies, and various comments—even from before backing Hitler started to look like a mistake—show that many people came to Nazism via speakers other than Hitler, or not through speeches at all (such as via newspapers and magazines, or even through a desire to participate in the violence of the Freikorps). After the Nazi takeover in 1933, much of the rhetoric that would have persuaded people originated with Streicher, Goebbels, or the army of speakers and writers—most of whom were following Goebbels’ direction, and not Hitler’s.
    Even when it was Hitler’s direction, he was persuasive, as even he acknowledged, because he could count on his base only hearing (and only listening to) his version of events. After years of presenting the Soviet Union as the materialization of the Jewish-Bolshevik threat against which Germany and Germans must be implacably opposed, in 1939, Hitler announced that the USSR was a valuable ally and trusted friend. In 1941, he insisted on an about-face from Germans once again when the USSR reverted back to the nation with whom Germany was in an apocalyptic battle. Hitler attributed his success on that (and other instances in which public opinion had to be changed quickly) to complete control of media: “We have frequently found ourselves compelled to reverse the engine and to change, in the course of a couple of days, the whole trend of imparted news, sometimes with a complete volte face. Such agility would have been quite impossible, if we had not had firmly in our grasp that extraordinary instrument of power we call the press—and known how to make use of it” (Table Talk 480-1; see also 525).
  • that much of the conversion that happened during the Nazi regime was some version of strategic acquiescence. Historians emphasize that groups like the military chose to support Hitler despite misgivings because they believed, correctly, he would build up the military and fulfill the dream of German hegemony of Europe, finally achieving what had been the territorial goals of the Great War. There remains considerable debate as to exactly how much popular backing Hitler really had, since expressing criticism was so dangerous, with scholars like Gellately arguing it was considerable and others like Kershaw arguing that coercion played an important role. But all of them agree that much of the compliance was the consequence of changes to material conditions—the (apparently) improved economy, lower unemployment, a reduction of street violence, a conservative social agenda, a more reactionary judiciary less worried about the rights of the accused, recriminalizing of abortion, homosexuality, and birth control, and just the sense that Germany was again a respected and feared power. That is, much of Hitler’s support wasn’t because of his rhetoric, but his policies. His successful acquisition of territory without provoking war was the cause of his greatest popularity (in 1939, although some put the height in 1941, when the western Blitzkrieg had done so well)—in other words, propaganda of the deed.

I’m not, like some scholars in the 80s, rejecting Hitler as a factor at all, but simply pointing out that the situation isn’t accurately described by the monocausal narrative promoted by lay rhetorical theories.

People in Germany did change their minds—it’s generally agreed that large numbers of Germans came to new positions on such questions as whether they would participate personally in genocide (Ordinary Men), the ideal relationship with the USSR, the plausibility of a two-front war, and various other points. But they didn’t do so because, believing one thing they listened to a Hitler speech and suddenly believed something else entirely. Hitler’s rhetoric was effective because (and when) it fit with things his audience already believed, needed to believe, or needed to legitimate. His rhetoric was effective because (and when) it was not unique, and he alone was not creating the wake into which Germans would be drawn.

My point is that the popular fascination with Hitler gives scholars of rhetoric the opportunity to promote, not just better understandings of Hitler, but more nuanced understandings of the complicated ways and forces that cultures change beliefs.