When people think of Adolf Hitler, nothing good ever comes to mind. And this is rightfully so, the man was a monster. He committed atrocities that are unfathomable to people. But as much as I hate to say it, the man was a bit of a genius. He was able to convince millions of Germans to blame all their country’s problems on one group of people using only his words. He had a way of talking that caught people’s attention, then he was able to persuade them to do basically whatever he wanted. The way that Hitler was able to speak to the people was undeniably impressive. But people do not always look at Hitler in the bad light. Some people do look at him for the mind behind all the talking, and one of those people is Kenneth Burke. In his book “The Rhetoric of Hitler’s Battle”, he talks about how people always look at Hitler for what he did to the Jewish people. Now this is not necessarily a bad thing, because what he did was undeniably awful. But there’s more to the story than just what he did to these people. But it is important that people look at Hitler’s actions and his words so that we as a country can avoid it from happening again. He laid out his plan, so we need to look into it and study it to prevent a reoccurrence of the same actions. 

Burke specifically talks about Mein Kampf throughout the passage. Mien Kampf, for those who do not know, was Adolf Hitler’s autobiography in which he describes what he thinks the future plans for the German state should be. Hitler’s ideologies that remained constant throughout his book: anti-Semitism, anti-communism, a call for a dominant “Aryan” race, and demanding extreme German nationalism. He also talks about his own battle, growing up in poverty and his tough childhood, and how that has shaped his ideologies. Burke encourages us to look at Mein Kampf with unjudging eyes, and to really look into what he was saying. On page 33, Burke also says “let us try also to discover what kind of “medicine” this medicine-man has concocted, that we may know, with greater accuracy, exactly what to guard against, if we are to forestall the concocting of similar medicine in America.” This is one of the more important quotes in this book, because it tells us the reason why he is looking so far into Hitler’s book. Burke says we, as a group of people, need to analyze what and how Hitler was able to convince the German people to follow him as a leader, so it does not happen here in the United States. 

Burke also makes note of the fact that Hitler was also very careful when considering what he wrote and what he said to the people. One example of this was how Hitler referenced a geographical hub in which the “materialization” could take place. For him, this was in Munich. In Mein Kampf, Hitler compares the necessity of having such a place by comparing it to Mecca and Rome, two of the most important religious locations in the whole world. The reason for having such a place, he says, is it “can at length give a movement that force which is rooted in the inner unity and in the recognition of a hand that represents this unity.” (Pg. 34) Hitler wants Munich to symbolize a place that can be utilized so everyone can look to one place in the times that he needs to communicate to his people. In addition to talking about needing a central place where all eyes can turn to, Hitler also describes what it takes to be a good leader. In particular, he says what a leader needs to do to be efficient, and that is “to prevent the division of the attention of the people, and keeping it focused on a single enemy.” Hitler essentially told us what he would do if he was a leader, but no one knew it would actually end up happening. Burke makes a big point out of that as well; he says Hitler “was helpful enough to put all his cards on the table” (Pg. 33) Hitler laid out his plan in Mein Kampf, but at the time that he wrote it, Hitler was in prison, so no one read it with the thought in mind that this would be how Adolf Hitler would become the socialist leader of Germany. But the fact that he laid out his blue print brings us back to the fact that this is why he cannot immediately write off Adolf Hitler. We need to read and analyze his thought process so we as a country and avoid anything close to this from ever happening again.    

 Burke then goes on to say “Already, in many quarters of our country, we are “beyond” the stage where we are being saved from Nazism by our virtues. And fascist integration is being staved off, rather, by the conflicts among our vices.” (Pg. 33) Burke believes that us a nation are too advanced for us to fall for someone trying to take over a country like Hitler did. Burke says that unlike Hitler did with the German people, someone would not be able to unite all of us for one cause through our “virtues”. People nowadays care more about their “vices”, or the behavior that mom and dad might not approve of. People do not want to do anything that will not help their own personal needs. When Adolf Hitler was going through his rise to power, Germany was no longer a world power. They lost World War I and was going through political and economic turmoil. Right now, the United States is one of the strongest countries in the world, so if someone came in and started to try and become a political leader, he says it would not work because people just would not care. They do not think that it would benefit them or their everyday life to back a potential new leader like the German people did for Hitler. He was not only able to get almost all of a country to back him; he was able to convince all of his followers that they should blame one group of people for all of the country’s problems. He portrayed the Jewish people as both a devil figure in a spiritual sense and as a plague in the sense that they have to be eliminated. The German people at the time were practicing Catholics, so if a war hero and someone high in power like Hitler told regular people that the Jewish community was the devil, they would have no choice but to believe him. He was a tactical genius for this; Hitler used already existing beliefs in religion to sway the German people to side with him. 

The life of Adolf Hitler is undeniably one that will be discussed for years to come. He is the cause of millions of lives lost and is the infamous leader of the holocaust. His actions are ones that will never be forgiven. But it is important to look into what he did so we can prevent it from happening again. He laid out the blueprint for how he thinks a leader can gain control of the people, and he put into use. Burke points out the ways that Hitler was able to convince the people of Germany by using various comparisons in Mein Kampf. Not only in his writing, but also in the way he spoke; Hitler did not need to use physical force to command these people, but just used the power in his voice. Burke pointed out the various ways that Hitler used “rhetorical devices”, and broke down why it is important to not brush by Hitler’s life, but to get into his mind and prevent it from ever happening again. 