Along in the late 1970s, I attempted to pick up and read Mein Kampf (Hitler's book). I think I had the book checked out of the base library for about four weeks, and never got more than a quarter of the book read. It was one of those that you'd go through three pages, stop, and then ask yourself what exactly was being laid out. I had some professor later in life who made the observation that the book was designed (unintentionally) to be a 'think-like-Hitler' lecture. I eventually skipped around in the book and read some passages more interesting than others, and then came to drop the attempt to read the whole thing.
One piece of the book which did stick with me....was a passage where he lays out the necessity of telling a 'big lie'.
The 'big lie' idea is where a political figure goes and tells a lie of such greatness or size....that you really can't believe someone would be that deceptive or smart enough to tell such a 'whopper' (my southern vocabulary at work).
A fair number of Germans believed in the 'big lie'....to the extent that they sat around after 1918.....sipping beer and talking about the 'big lie' of how they lost the war. To be truthful, there are probably at least a dozen official historical accounts of how Germany lost the war, and you can dig down into another fifty-odd accounts of the loss.
Hundreds of thousands of German men sat there in the decade after the war and eagerly discussed their account of the war, and wanted to dish out blame. The Hitler narrative with the 'big lie' was that German general Ludendorff was chiefly led to be blamed, and this story ran back to Jewish controlled media. The issue with this long intense discussion is that these 'whiners' spent countless hours discussing this loss, and the blame/fake-blame on Ludendorff. Sadly, Ludendorff had become a major figure in Germany in the 1920s.....a leading political (nationalist in nature), and he had a bit of negativity against Jews. In the Weimar Republic world of players....he was one of the top five people you'd refer to.
Maybe in some way, the Jewish slant on this was correct, and maybe Ludendorff is a major reason of the loss (I personally discount this). Hitler's belief in the press stories and the slant of the news? It simply drove him to discuss and use the 'big lie' himself in his campaign.
In simple terms, the 'big lie' was mostly about propaganda. You don't really need to say it's even political propaganda....it could be involve dozens of non-political topic areas.
I've always thought of the 'big lie' as having three central themes:
1. It can usually only be successful if you use it against one single source or target. Multiple-targets confuse people and just makes the whole attempt fairly marginal.
2. No matter what goes wrong, never take blame. Never apologize. Never look back and offer a humble regret.
3. Repeat over, and over, and over. If folks didn't believe the 'big lie' on Thursday....restate the 'big lie' in bolder text on Saturday. Get supporting characters to repeat the bolder message. Eventually, everyone will believe some portion of the 'big lie'.
It's been roughly 93 years since Mein Kampf was written, and even today....it has some basis on how we live and survive in our little world. You could ask people about the techniques to the 'big lie', and most would agree....it's a major part of their world today.
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