1. Mein Kampf: Hitler on Propaganda

I am currently reading Mein Kampf (Finally! This is a book that I have been intellectually salivating for since the time that I was in JC) As of now, my comments about this book are as follows, "Intellectually uninspiring but highly important as it is historically revealing from hindsight." What am I to expect? I knew all along that Hitler was no intellectual. But still, there are many important points to highight.

Having learnt much from the "superior" war propaganda being unleashed upon the German soldiers in WW1, Hitler argues on how to perfect the art of Propaganda:

Is propaganda a means or an end? It is a means and must therefore be judged with regard to its end. It must consequently take a form calculated to support the aim which it serves.

The German nation was involved in a struggle for a human existence and the purpose of war propaganda should have been yp support this struggle; its aim to bring about victory.

When nations on this planet fight for existence.....then all considerations of humanitarianism or aesthetics crumble into nothingness. As such, these two concepts are inapplicable to propaganda.
Propaganda must be addressed always and exclusively to the masses. It must attract the attention of the crowd by form and color. Its function lies in calling the masses' attention to certain facts, processes and necessities.

Consequently, the greater the mass it is intended to reach, the lower its purely intellectual level will have to be. This is because receptivity of the masses is veyr limited. thier intelligience is small but thier power of forgetting is enormous.

It was absolutely wrong to make the enemy ridiculous (as the German authorities did in WW1) becuase actual conflict with the enemy would arouse an entirely different conviction and the results would be devastating. By contrast, British war propaganda rightfully prepared thier side for the terrors of war and thus helped to preserve them from disappointments.

Next, propaganda is not to weight the rights of different people but to exclusively emphasize the one right which it has set out to argue for. It is to serve our own right, always and unflinchingly.

This sentiment and message should not be complicated but bery simple and all of a piece. This way, it does not lead to no half-statements that might have given rise to doubts.

As a whole, all pieces of propaganda must have a common outline and never depart from it. This then must be performed with steady, consistent emphasis which would allow our final success to mature.

Up next, Hitler on Race and Nation