Adolf Hitler's cult of personality was a prominent feature of Nazi Germany (1933–1945), which began in the 1920s during the early days of the Nazi Party. Based on the Führerprinzip ideology, that the leader is always right, spread by incessant Nazi propaganda, and reinforced by Adolf Hitler's success in fixing Germany's economic and unemployment problems by remilitarising during the global Great Depression, his bloodless triumphs in foreign policy prior to World War II, and the rapid military defeat of the Second Polish Republic and the French Third Republic in the early part of the war, it eventually became a central aspect of the Nazi control over the German people.
The Hitler myth of an infallible multi-faceted genius with messianic and superhuman qualities approached deification. It was weaponized as a tool to unify the German people behind the personality, opinions, and goals of Hitler and was also insurance against the Nazi Party fragmenting into warring factions or a coup d'etat by the Wehrmacht.
Adolf Hitler's image in propaganda and the mass media
Beginning in the early years of the Nazi Party, Nazi propaganda depicted the Nazi leader Adolf Hitler as an iconic figure who was the only person capable of saving Germany. Following the end of World War I and during the interwar period, the German people suffered greatly under the Weimar Republic and, according to the Nazis, only Hitler as a messiah could save them and restore Germany's greatness, which in turn gave rise to the myth of the "Führer-cult". As early as a few days after Benito Mussolini's "March on Rome" on 28 October 1922, a Nazi Party speaker announced to a beer-hall crowd that "Germany's Mussolini is called Adolf Hitler", thus giving a boost to Hitler's cult of personality, which was only just getting started. In December 1922, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter claimed that Hitler was no longer the drummer of the Nazi Party, but was in fact the only leader who could rescue Germany.
After the failed Beer Hall Putsch in November 1923 and Hitler's imprisonment, he set out to construct an image of himself that would appeal to all sections of the German people. He developed over time a self-image with nationalistic and religious overtones which made him appealing to all Germans, and which prompted him to proclaim, "I have awakened the masses".
The Nazis deliberately chose their party's name, the "National Socialist German Workers' Party", as a way to appeal to Germans with both left-wing and right-wing sensibilities. When Hitler took over the party as its Führer ("leader") in 1921, he insisted on adding "National Socialist" to the party's name, which up to that point had simply been called the German Workers' Party. Despite Hitler and the Nazis claiming to be socialists, they were not, and it was used merely for propaganda purposes and to attract new members. Once the Nazis were in power, they suppressed trade unions and persecuted left-wing opponents such as communists and socialists.
Nazi propaganda chief Joseph Goebbels' newspaper, Der Angriff ("The Attack"), played a large role in the creation of the Führer myth. From its early days of publication, photos and drawings of Hitler were common. The myth made Hitler seem mystical to many Nazi Party members. Hitler was regarded as a model in every aspect: he was regarded as one of the people, a worker and a soldier who put his life on the line to fight for Germany during World War I, but at the same time, the image presented was a heroic one, with Hitler depicted as a genius with almost superhuman qualities, close to a god to be venerated. After the Nazis came to power, Hitler annually received over 12,000 letters of adoration and praise from Germans of all classes and vocations, from all over the country.
In 1930, Hitler allegedly told Otto Strasser, “For us the Idea is the Führer, and each Party member has only to obey the Führer”. During five election campaigns in 1932, the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter ("People's Observer") portrayed Hitler as a man who had a mass movement united behind him, a man whose sole mission was to save Germany, who was the "Leader of the coming Germany". During the campaigns, Hitler took on a quasi-religious status within the party. The Völkischer Beobachter ran the headline "The National Socialist movement is the resurrection of the German nation", with the article quoting Hitler as saying, "I believe that I am instrument of nature to liberate Germany". Similarly, Goebbels wrote in Der Angriff that Hitler was "the Greater German, the Führer, the Prophet, the Fighter that last hope of the masses, the shining symbol of the German will to freedom". During those campaigns, Hitler became the first politician to campaign by air, flying from city to city under the slogan Hitler über Deutschland ("Hitler Over Germany"), sometimes visiting up to five cities in a day to make speeches before mass audiences. Hitler's charismatic and mesmerizing speaking abilities played a major role in his attraction to the German people. Hitler's oratory skills were enhanced by his ability to continually raise the pitch of his voice, sometimes by octaves, leading to a crescendo; it has been speculated this was as a result of the mustard gas attack that damaged his larynx during World War I.
During the 1932 German presidential election the Nazis pioneered new campaigning tactics, such as direct mailing and transporting Hitler across the country by airplane, allowing him to perform at several rallies in a single day. Furthermore, they would also hire venues that were deliberately too small in order to encourage overcrowding and present the perception of greater popularity for Hitler. The events would last for several hours, with Hitler's actual appearance being delayed (through continual and misleading announcements on his time to arrival) in order to generate further crowd anticipation.
As Germany's economic crisis – caused by the onset of the Great Depression – continued and grew, and as the Nazis gained political power by virtue of the number of seats they held in the Reichstag, Goebbels' propaganda machine created an image of Hitler that personified the people's anger at the Weimar Republic's inability to solve their problems. Hitler was, the propaganda said, the only man who could save Germany and create a new social order, the "people's community" (Volksgemeinschaft); Hitler was "the hope of millions", the flesh-and-blood instantiation of national salvation. According to historian Ian Kershaw, "[The people] projected onto Hitler their own beliefs, wishes and desires. He incorporated them in a vision of complete national rebirth." Goebbels cultivated an image of Hitler as a "heroic genius". During the existence of Nazi Germany, every year on the eve of Hitler's birthday, Goebbels would deliver a speech titled "Our Hitler", in which he lauded all the many supposed virtues of Hitler's personality and ideas.
The myth also gave rise to the concept behind the saying "If only the Führer knew": when the German people were dissatisfied with the way the country was being run, they blamed it on Nazi bigwigs but fell short of laying any blame on Hitler himself, instead exempting him from culpability. They believed that if Hitler knew what was happening, he would set things right. The Night of the Long Knives in 1934 – a murderous purge of Hitler's opponents inside the Nazi Party and in its paramilitary arm, the Sturmabteilung (SA), as well as numerous others – was presented to the public as Hitler preventing chaos by preemptively suppressing a coup attempt. This helped to reinforce Hitler's image as the protector of the German people.
The cult of leader was evidenced in Nazi propaganda films by Leni Riefenstahl, such as 1935's Triumph of the Will, which Hitler ordered to be made. The film showed the 1934 Nuremberg Rally, which was attended by over 700,000 supporters, and is one of the first examples of the Hitler myth filmed and put into full effect during Nazi Germany. The mysticism is evident from the start when Hitler begins to descend from the clouds in an airplane, and as the rally finishes with a climax uniting Hitler, the Nazi Party, and the German people, with Rudolf Hess saying, "The Party is Hitler. But Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler. Hitler! Sieg Heil!" Those Germans who watched the film were exposed to the full force of the Führer myth.
In 1934, Hitler's chosen successor, Hermann Göring, said, "There is something mystical, inexpressible, almost incomprehensible about this one man. ... We love Adolf Hitler because we believe, deeply and steadfastly, that he was sent to us by God to save Germany. ... There is no quality that he does not possess to the highest degree. ... For us the Führer is simply infallible in all matters political and all other issues concerning the national and social interest of the people".
Nazi propaganda relentlessly aimed to persuade Germans to have faith and confidence in the ideas of Hitler. The extent of how images of Hitler were used in Nazi propaganda was summarised in 1941 when a Nazi newsreel stated that "a newsreel without pictures of the Führer was not regarded as up to standard".
British historian Ian Kershaw's book The "Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the Third Reich was published in 1987. In it, he wrote:
Although the political ideology of Nazism mattered to Hitler himself, many Nazi Party members were indifferent to it, since to the majority of them he was the embodiment of Nazism.
Führerprinzip
The Führerprinzip ("leader principle") was the fundamental basis of political authority in Nazi Germany. This principle can be most succinctly understood to mean that "the Führer's word is above all written law" and that governmental policies, decisions, and offices ought to work toward the realisation of this end. The principle also extended to the leadership of other organizations, who were expected to have the last word in their purviews.
The Führerprinzip was given credence during the Night of Long Knives in 1934 when Hitler ordered a number of extrajudicial executions because of an alleged imminent coup by the SA under Ernst Röhm – the so-called "Röhm Putsch". Hitler gave a speech at the Reichstag and said, "The National Socialist State will wage a Hundred Years’ War, if necessary, to stamp out and destroy every last trace within its boundaries of this phenomenon which poisons and makes dupes of the Volk (Volksvernarrung)" and argued that "in this hour, I was responsible for the fate of the German nation and was therefore the supreme judge of the German people!" Nazi propaganda claimed that Hitler's actions had saved Germany.
Führer Myth
The "Führer Myth" utilized propaganda and the Führerprinzip to portray Hitler as an infallible genius who was above party politics, and was totally dedicated to protecting and saving the German people from both insidious outside forces, such as "Jewish Bolshevism", and from internal factors such as conservative, centrist and liberal politics and politicians who supported democracy and were the backbone of the Weimar Republic. To a lesser extent, religion was included in the Nazi's litany of destructive internal forces, but because the German people – both Protestants and Roman Catholics – were very attached to their religious beliefs, this aspect of Nazi ideology was soft-pedaled, and its presentation was inconsistent.
The power of the myth was so embedded into German society that the ballot cards for elections and plebiscites in the early 1930s did not refer to the "Nazi Party" but rather the "Hitler Movement". Although "National Socialism" had been used by other political parties before the rise of the Nazis, Nazism was Hitlerism in simple terms.