Among the most famous statements in Mein Kampf are those in which Hitler formulated the primary methods of Nazi propaganda. Perhaps based on the system of leading motives (Leitmotiven) that his creative hero, Richard Wagner, ostensibly practiced in music drama, Hitler was adamant that major principles of National Socialist ideology should be repeated relentlessly so followers would acquire a familiarity with them verging on religious certainty. In his words, the “most brilliant propaganda technique will yield no success unless one fundamental principle is borne in mind constantly and with unflagging attention. It must confine itself to a few points and repeat them over and over.” The “art of propaganda,” in his view, consisted of “putting a matter so clearly and forcibly before the minds of the people as to create a general conviction regarding the reality of a certain fact.” It was through this process of propagandizing with a hammer, as it were, that Nazism bridged the gap between theory and practice: by drilling its followers in ritualized, popular forms, ideological principles became a liturgy in action.

Part I of this book will demonstrate how the Völkischer Beobachter repeated the main themes of Nazi culture with liturgical regularity while working to establish that these points were indeed eternal verities and ideals based on a solid foundation of truth. The newspaper claimed that Nazi ideals were fundamental components of Western intellectual and artistic tradition and insisted that important creators and works from the ancient world through the romantic period shared similar principles. The most prominent of these themes were: establishing that major figures were of German or Aryan racial origins and that their works were representative of Nordic culture; highlighting the volkish (folkish) or volkstümlich (popular) impulse behind even the major works of Western high culture (partly as a way of mitigating intellectual pretension); emphasizing the political and nationalist significance of great artists and their works; and, most intensively, insisting that anti-Semitism was a major current in the Western cultural tradition.