I am reading a book about Adolf Hitler, researching Germany’s political upheavals between the world wars. 1
I read the following extract from his magnum opus Mein Kampf with disbelief:
“When you lie, tell big lies…’in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters, but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously…The grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down.’
Sound familiar? Have we advanced since Hitler wrote this in mid-1920s?
1 Hitler: A Study in Tyranny by Alan Bullock, p.70. Published by Penguin Books
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