The author Kenneth Burke wrote in The Rhetoric of Hitler’s “Battle” a detailed description of how Hitler was able persuade so many people. Hitler is a known figure for causing the second world war and this is why Burke took interest in Hitler’s thoughts and wrote about him. The fact that Burke analyzed Hitler is very important because the rhetorical methods Hitler used are being used in the modern world politics such as the commercial use rhetoric and the projection device. According to burke Hitler used four rhetoric methods and they are inborn dignity, projection device, symbolic rebirth, and commercial use and out of those four rhetoric methods the one that stood out to me the most was the inborn dignity rhetoric because of what it stood for and what kind of mentality it can foster. The inborn dignity is a rhetoric based on the idea of being superior to other races and uniting the Aryan race, this idea encourages racism and mob mentality and both of those things are important factors for Hitler’s rise to power which is why burke mentioned the inborn dignity. According to Burke “Hence, the categorical dignity of superior race was a perfect recipe for the situation.” In this quote the “situation” is the economic collapse of Germany and that economic instability of the nation was a factor for the success of the inborn dignity rhetoric because when the nation was having high unemployment rates and a plummeting economy they needed something to cling to and believe in and Hitler provided that with his idea of the Aryan superiority (Burke 41). And because of that inborn dignity is arguably the most important rhetoric Burke mentioned in his writing due to the effects it had on some of the German citizens.

It was important for Hitler to have the inborn dignity rhetoric because it made his supporters believe that they are innately superior to the Jewish people and by believing that they justified the mentality of us against them. Hitler claimed that the Aryan is “constructive” and then claimed that the Jewish people are “destructive” by separating the two Hitler gave his supporters the mentality that they are fundamentally different from other races and always argued that they are superior to any other race. Burke suggests that the inborn dignity was used to separate themselves from the other Europeans and that made it easier for Hitler to convince his supporter that invading neighbor countries and attacking the Jewish people was justified. And in Burke writing he wrote the following “The yearning for unity is so great that people are always willing to meet you halfway if you will, give it to them by fiat, by flat statement, regardless of the facts.” (Burke 41) Analyzing Burke words here make me think he is trying to emphasize on the mob mentality how gullible people can be under the right circumstances.

Before the second world war Germany had a very instable economy with many citizens living in poverty, including Hitler in his childhood, and Burke thinks that this instable economy of Germany was one of the reasons for Hitler’s rise to power and the effectiveness of his inborn dignity rhetoric. Using the ideology of separating a group of people and uniting yourself against another group was the source of Hitler’s political rise. Spreading keywords such as “international Jew” and “Jewish cunning” with constant repetitive use of the keywords was an effective way of making the people believe that what they were told was the truth (Burke 35, 43). After believing that truth it became evidence that justified their hatred, even if that truth was based on no evidence, like the repeating “Jewish plot” and by the repetitiveness of claiming that it is a fact made the people truly believe that it is a fact (Burke 35). Analyzing Burke’s use of Hitler words made me feel as if he wants to say that Hitler by simply focusing on one group of people managed to foster a mob mentality for his supporters that made them convinced of their hatred towards the Jewish people without giving them any real proof to support what he is saying about the Jewish people.

Furthermore, by analyzing the words of Burke I realized that the commercial use rhetoric succeeded only because of the inborn dignity rhetoric. According to Burke the financial backing Hitler received was from Aryan financier and they back Hitler because of his policy that was trying to exterminate the Jewish people who competed against those Aryan financiers, and by doing that the “Aryan” finance was left in control (Burke 40). And this is why the inborn dignity plays a very major role in Hitler’s campaign, first of all the inborn dignity was able to foster a mob mentality using the rhetoric to attack and unite against the Jewish people and then attracted rich financiers to his cause because it was advantageous for them to help Hitler exterminate the Jewish people so they could have complete control over the German economy.

Analyzing the rhetoric methods used by Hitler made me realize how much of the same rhetoric methods are being used in the modern world politics. In the same way Hitler blamed the Jewish people for everything, politicians in the modern world are blaming different races of things they did not commit. In the modern world some politicians base their policies not on what is beneficial for the nation but on what can attract more financial backing, much like how Hitler was not benefitting the German nation but still managed to gain financial support. Hitler used the symbolic rebirth to gain support and loyalty, and this same rhetoric used in the United Kingdom when they left the European Union, to gain a more stable economy and lower unemployment rates. Although I am saying the same rhetoric methods used by Hitler are used in the modern politics I do not think his rhetoric methods are always used for malicious purposes.

Kenneth Burke the author of The Rhetoric of Hitler’s “Battle” wrote in great details how Hitler was able to rise to power and persuade many people into having a specific mentality that made them push and unite against a specific group of people. Analyzing Burke’s thoughts on the inborn dignity suggests that he believes Hitler used this concept in a time where Germany was facing an economic collapse to give the citizens of Germany a purpose to unite against and it made them feel like everything they did was justified because they were doing it for the superior race. Burke analysis on Hitler’s rhetoric methods is a very important for modern society because the purpose of it is to help people become aware of how Hitler was able convey his ideas to his supporters and why they accepted his ideas and followed him and by understanding why something happened you can learn how to prevent it or at least identify when it is happening again. In the end I think that the author Kenneth Burke was able to write in detail about Hitler’s rhetoric and help me understand how Hitler was able to convey his ideology to his supporters and how he started fostering mob mentality to them.
