Homiletics with Hitler

In the realm of public speaking, few people in modern history could persuasively capture an audience like Adolf Hitler.

On Hitler's oratory skills, Geoffrey Blainey writes:

"His disciplined appearance, his black hair brushed flat across the forehead, and his homely conversation at private occasions seemed to mark him as a restrained individual - until he mounted a public platform and shouted into the microphone.  Whereupon the lamb became the tiger.  He could speak with fervour for an hour, even two hours, not a note in front of him.  He spoke with such energy that sweat poured from him.  The sweat he replaced with mineral water, pure German water, sometimes consumed at the rate of more than a dozen small bottles during one speech.

Guided by a voice coach he improved his gestures and his oratory, adding a rasping eloquence to a natural frenzy.  On the platform he displayed magnetism as well as blind rage.  He fired up his audiences, and in turn their alternations of reverent silence and enthusiastic applause inspired him.  It was as if the mood of a pop concert - a phenomenon not yet known - was taking over the once dignified theatre of German political life." 

Excerpt from "A Short History of the 20th Century" by Geoffrey Blainey.