Napoleon On War And Hitler On The Art of Mass Hypnosis

An excerpt from, “Napoleon On War” Edited By Bruno Colson, Translated By Gregory Elliott, Oxford University Press, 2015, Pg. 57-58:

On the eve of battle, men experience particular feelings. Napoleon found them well expressed in the Iliad:

Homer must have waged war: he is true in every detail of his battles. Everywhere we have the very image of war. In the night before the engagement at . . . , I think I am on the eve of Jena and Austerlitz.

It is the same anxieties about the great event that is about to happen, the feelings that disturbed him, and which are experienced by all military men. The terrain is always to be found there. It is painting the truth.

Immediate danger is what soldiers must face. The leader sometimes has to look further ahead:

[. . . .] this is because men think only of avoiding a present danger, without bothering about the impact their behaviour might have on subsequent events; this is because the impression of a defeat is erased from the mind of most people only gradually, over time.

Danger in war is a factor of equality between men:

[. . .] nothing is more conducive to equality than war, where everyone shares the same fate and runs the same risks.

The supreme commander must demonstrate that he is exposing himself to danger. Napoleon wrote as follows to his brother Joseph, who was setting off to command the army of Naples:

Do not listen to those who would like to keep you far away from the gunfire; you need to prove yourself. If opportunities arise, expose yourself conspicuously. As to real danger, it is everywhere in war.

Napoleon genuinely adopted this line of conduct. No monarch of his time exposed himself to gunfire as much as he did. On the vessel that took him to the island of Elba, he offered this explanation to his entourage:

Few men, he said, have exercised greater influence over the masses than me. But only stupidity would make me say that everything is written on high and that, were a precipice to be placed in front of me, I should not turn away to avoid falling down it. My belief is that of any reasonable being and in war, where the danger is pretty much equal everywhere, one should not quit a place that is known to be dangerous to go and position yourself where death can also reach you and resign oneself to the fate of one’s situation. Confirmed in this thought, you must become master of your courage and sang-froid, which is communicated to the men under your command; the most gutless of them will do themselves the honour of courage.

An excerpt from, “The Occult In National Socialism: The Symbolic, Scientific, And Magical Influences On The Third Reich” By Stephen E. Flowers, Ph.D., Inner Traditions, 2022, Pg. 227-230:

Elsewhere I wrote about the conscious use by the Nazis of symbols and signs as modes of effecting meta-communication as a form of magic. This is not merely an interpretation on my part, but rather was an actual intentional act on the part of Hitler. It is quite evident from the text of Mein Kampf, where this idea is emphasized. At one point, Hitler reminisces about the generation of the Party symbol.

Up until then [1920] the movement possessed no party insignia and no party flag. The abscene of such symbols not only had momentary disadvantages, but was intolerable for the future. The disadvantages consisted above all in the fact that the party comrades lacked any outward sign of their common bond, while it was unbearable for the future to dispense with a sign which possessed the character of a symbol of the movement and could as such be opposed to the International.

What importance must be attributed to such a symbol from the psychological point of view I had even in my youth more than one occasion to recognize and also emotionally to understand. Then after the War, I experienced a mass demonstration of the Marxists in front of the Royal Palace and the Lutsgarten. A sea of red flags, red scarves, and red flowers gave to this demonstration, in which an estimated hundred and twenty thousand persons took part, an aspect that was gigantic from the purely external point of view. I myself could feel and understand how easily the man of the people succumbs to the suggestive magic of a spectacle so grandiose in effect. (p. 492).

Hitler later explains how he designed the flag of the movement. The colors of the flag are the ancient colors of the German standard, but Hitler explains the colors as “in red we see the social idea of the movement, in white the nationalistic idea, in the swastika the mission of the struggle for the victory of the Aryan man” (pp. 496-97).

Elsewhere Hitler shares his idea that the nighttime rallies he so favored were especially effective because the mind of an individual becomes more receptive and susceptible to suggestion after dark. This nighttime staging of speeches was also essential in the early days when he was trying to change people’s minds about National Socialism: “At night . . .they succumb more easily to the dominating force of a stronger will” (p. 475).

Hitler’s field of mastery was, as all have recognized, as a speaker before an audience. He himself says, “But the power which has always started the greatest religious and political avalanches in history rolling has from time immemorial been the magic power of the spoken word, and that alone” (pp. 106-7). He also gives insight into how the act of speaking before an audience, friendly or hostile, has a transformative effect on the psyche of the speaker.

The man who is exposed to grave tribulations, as the first advocate of a new doctrine in his factory or workshop, absolutely needs that strengthening which lies in the conviction of being a member and fighter in a great comprehensive body. And he obtains an impression of this body for the first time in the mass demonstration. When from his little workshop or big factory, in which he feels very small, he steps for the first time into a mass meeting and has thousands and thousands of people of the same opinion around him, when, as a seeker, he is swept away by three or four thousand others into the mighty effect of suggestive intoxication and enthusiasm, when the visible success and agreement of thousands confirm to him the rightness of the new doctrine . . .then he himself has succumbed to the magic influence of what we designate as “mass suggestion.” (pp. 478-79).

Here he is apparently teaching his followers how to proceed, but in fact he is giving us insight into his own inner experience. He concludes this section by saying that such a speaker succeeds in becoming a “member [Glied] of a community [Gemeinschaft].” As such a member he forges a link between himself and the community and between and among all other members of that mass.

Hitler has rightly been characterized as a master of the use of hate in his political system. He aknowledged this on many occasions. His use of this was not altogether emotional, however. It was part of his understanding of how to lead and manipulate, if you will, the masses.