objectively the truth, so far as this is favorable to the others, in order then to present it to the masses in strict honesty, but rather to serve its own side ceaselessly.[116]

If one’s own propaganda even once accords just the shimmer of right to the other side, then the basis is therewith laid for doubt regarding one’s own cause.  The masses are not able to distinguish where the error of the other side ends and the error of one’s own side begins.[117]

But all talent in presentation of propaganda will lead to no success if a fundamental principle is not always strictly followed.  Propaganda has to restrict itself to a few matters and to repeat these eternally.  Persistence is here, as with so many other things in the world, the first and most important presupposition for success.[118]

In view of their slowness of mind, they [the masses] require always, however, a certain period before they are ready even to take cognizance of a matter, and only after a thousandfold repetition of the most simple concept will they finally retain it.[119]

In all cases in which there is a question of the fulfilment of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually depends on its solution ...

     ...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way
     before them, without tiring and doubting the task.[120]

In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single opponent.  The more unified this use of the fighting will of a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push.  It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to one category, because the recognition of different enemies leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin doubting their own cause.

When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the question whether really all the others are wrong and only one’s own people or one’s own movement is right.[121] (Document 13-II, post pp. 229-231.)

It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such conveniently broad and simple terms as “Jews,” “democrats,” “plutocrats,” “bolshevists,” or “Anglo-Saxons,” which so far as possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind.  The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a racial folk of industrious workers.  It then became possible to plunge the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from attaining her rightful place in the sun.