Hitler: Ascent: 1889-1939

by Volker Ullrich

the National Socialists kicked off their campaign, making use of the latest technology. Goebbels distributed 50,000 gramophone records of him delivering a campaign speech. A ten-minute sound film, designed to be shown on big-city squares, depicted Hitler as the coming saviour of the German people. Shrill posters reinforced the central message that Nazi propaganda had been advancing since mid-February: “Down with the system! Power to the National Socialists!”32 In his first campaign speech, on 27 February at the Sportpalast, which the Völkischer Beobachter covered in a story headlined “The Signal to Attack,” Hitler told 25,000 listeners that the “gigantic battle ahead” was not just about the presidency but about the “system” created on 9 November 1918, which in its thirteen years of existence had led Germany to the brink of the abyss. This was the tenor of all Hitler’s subsequent speeches: “For thirteen years we’ve been plaintiffs. Now the hour is at hand, my ethnic comrades. On 13 March, after thirteen years, we must become judges over that which has been destroyed by one side and over those internal values of our people which the other side has built up again!”33 Describing the audience’s reaction, Goebbels noted: “The people were beside themselves. An hour of euphoria. Hitler is a true man. I love him.”34