Given The Large Number Of Texts produced by National Socialists during the period 1933–45 and before, why begin this analysis with the opening greeting from a letter sent to Hitler by a young teenager: “Lieber, guter Onkel Hitler”? The intention here is to shift the focus from the language of and in National Socialism to discourse in National Socialism, with a particular emphasis on language use in context as a shared, communicative phenomenon. In this article I will argue that in analyzing National Socialist discourse as part of communicative practice, the letter should be considered as constituting a significant text-type, as revelatory in its use of language as speeches and propaganda texts. The significance of letters lies in their combination of fixed, recognizable, yet also malleable features. Letters are “defined partly by the functions of communication,” yet “letters may include poetry and narrative; they remain as letters and as a distinct genre in terms of the purposes they serve.” Thus, letters provide the analyst with certain ritualized linguistic features, such as the opening and closing greetings, while also varying in style and content. Moreover, letters can reveal a great deal about the relationship of the writer and the addressee, including potential imbalances in power and a shared language (or lack thereof). Unlike the speeches and printed propaganda texts produced by National Socialists, letters provide insights into the instrumentalization of National Socialist language by the writer and the negotiation of status, power, information, ideas, and wishes that constitute the letter as a text-type.

My analysis will draw in particular on the historical sociolinguistic concept of language history “from below,” which stresses the importance of including long-ignored texts in linguistic studies, texts produced by “ordinary” people, those who did not hold positions of power and are not the authors of official, authoritative texts. The corpus for my analysis consists of four letters written to Hitler and other NSDAP leaders between 1924 and 1945, published in an edited volume by Henrik Eberle entitled Briefe an Hitler in 2007. As the analysis will show, the letters show evidence of a participatory discourse between individuals, who may not have been members of the NSDAP, and leaders of the party.