The Heil Hitler greeting perverted human communication - a sociologist!

Societies have always been shaped 

more by the nature of the media 

by which men communicate 

than by the content of the communication.

Marshall McLuhan

And now for some real nonsense from the SZ paper courtesy a, yep you had a hunch, a sociologist. He does not disappoint. Forget Auschwitz, forced labor, millions killed to achieve an empire of six years out of a conservatively planned 1,000. The real perversity of Dear Leader Adi was that he twisted a human interpersonal form of daily communication. Boy was he an asshole.

The Hitler greeting perverted human communication

 (Google translate, emphasize mine)

Sociologist Tilman Allert dissects the "German salute" - and thus analyzes the Hitler state in an overwhelming manner.

Review by Robert Probst

"Folks, if you enter, your salutation shall be 'Heil Hitler'!" There were such door signs in NS-Germany and not only in the privacy, the "German greeting" had been decreeed by the party and the state, also in school, in the correspondence, in the public. And the Germans came along.

The greeting community as a community of sentinels is interpreted in a general way when it comes to the millionfold, daily uplift of the right arm, with the hand flattened, up to the eye level in the Nazi state. Or as a forced routine, since any departure from the summer of 1933 was subject to sharp sanctions.

Introducing Dear Leader Adi with gesture control.

However, the often praised study by Tilman Allert on the "history of an ominous gesture" from 2005 , which has now been updated in an updated version , teaches that this is, however, very much more than a stark case of political speech and gesture control (And extended by a chapter of the greeting in the GDR).

The Frankfurt-based sociologist Allert has set out in the tradition of Georg Simmel "to find the totality of his meaning in every detail of life." His aim was to isolate the Hitler-Greeting analytically and thus provide the key to the meaning and functioning of the Nazi dictatorship. Allert achieved this in an impressive way.

Be prepared that sociologist speak may puzzle you.

The meaning of the salutation as a primal form of the social for the coexistence of a society, the penetration of politics into private life, the dismantling of the gesture and the language formula "Heil Hitler" into its individual parts, the integration of the greetings into the "Volksgemeinschaft" by an ever-repeated oath to a charismatic leader - it is worthwhile to recall this again and again, even if sociologist speak demands high concentration.

Hitler deep down was a wicked deformer of traditional communication. Communication so contrary to basic principals like "How are you doing, sucker?"

But the essence of this essay is clearly understandable - and disturbing. Hitler confounded the greetings and thereby deformed the basic principles of human communication and perverted it, writes Allert. This goes far beyond the theory of conformity.

Brace yourself because we are now coming to the sociologist's crescendo. He is about to climax compulsively: the Third Reich mass crimes via greetings!! A sociologist never disappoints.

"Homily Homage to Hitler"

The "universal homage of Hitler" had led to the "blindness towards the present"; A "culture of indifference" and the decline to the "civilizing regression", which ultimately led - in short, to the mass crimes in the Third Reich.

OK, not all did agree with his bullshit but ...

This conclusion has been dared; it was not without contradiction in the first publication. And the historian lacks, of course, the scarcely-founded basis for the encouragement and reach of the Hitler greeting. Still, it is upsetting how the most humane of all gestures could be so collectively and thoroughly directed into the Inhumane and the direction of barbarism.

Oh, absolutely upsetting.

Tilman Allert: The German greeting. Story of an ominous gesture. S. Fischer Verlag, Frankfurt 2017 , updated and extended reprint, 160 pages, 9.99 euros.