In this paper I would like to investigate the manipulative mechanisms of the Nazis by first looking at manifestations of manipulation in general. Then I will consider why those manifestations are chosen and under which conditions the addressee accepts or rejects them, by considering insights of Relevance Theory (Sperber and Wilson (1086, 1995)), Sperber (2000) and Taillard (2000). After that I will apply these insights to the Nazi texts and I will show how the Nazis most likely manipulated the German people and why
the Germans allowed the manipulation.
     Manipulation according to Puzynina (1992) paraphrased in Galasinski (2000): is ‘..an attempt to affect the target in such a way that her or his behavior/action is an instrument of attempting the goals of the manipulator, who acts without using force but in such a way that the target does not know the goal of the manipulator’s actions’. Some (Miller and Stiff) see manipulation as a form of persuasion. Indeed persuasion (Taillard 2000) can be overt and covert and the more it is covert, the more persuasion becomes manipulative.
    In language manipulation can be manifested by omission and commission. Under explicit commission fall lies, half-truths (distortions) and equivocations. Under implicit commission fall misleading underspecified explicatures and false implicatures.
Also marketing strategies of slogan repetition and emotional appeal play a role. Further the use of substandard language, figurative speech and connotative vocabulary have manipulative effect. I will show that in the speeches and writings of Hitler (Berg and Selbmann  eds. 1988, Hitler 1942 and Müller-Bohn 1988) the NSDAP all of the above manipulative manifestations are to be found.
     Sperber and Wilson (19886,1995),) propose a model of communication embedded in cognition and Sperber (2000) and Taillard (2000) have made attempts to explain persuasion from the speaker’s and hearer’s point of view.
      Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995) distinguish two levels of speaker intention - an informative intention and a communicative intention. The informative intention makes certain assumptions manifest to the audience. The speaker’s communicative intention involvesto have her informative intention recognized. The informative intention on the other hand is fulfilled whenever the intended assumptions are part of the addressee’s cognitive environment. Manipulation can only be effective if the informative intention is fulfilled, it fails if the hearer only recognizes the communicative intention, but does not make the informative intention part of his set of beliefs.
    The speaker may have tried to be optimally relevant but failed, or he may have intentionally tried to seem optimally relevant (for instance when he is lying). In manipulation pretending to be optimally relevant is usually the speaker’s intention.
      Sperber and Wilson (1986, 1995) argue that making an audience to believe something maybe accomplished either in an overt (ostensive) way or in a “covert” manner. In the latter case the informative intention is not made mutually manifest and leaves it to the audience to discover the information, or not. Covert communication is often used in manipulation to hide the manipulative intention.
    Sperber (2000) shows how the possibilities of deception and manipulation are part of communication. He assumes that there is a “logico-rhetorical module” that allows the addressee of a persuasion or manipulation to check the message for internal and external consistency. Trust is an important factor in this and affects the amount of processing invested by a hearer and the actual meaning change.
     The Nazis used the above mentioned manifestations and mechanisms of manipulation to prevent proper coherence checking on the side of the audience. Moreover, some people were biased already and so their coherence check of the input propositions fell in with their existing beliefs. Furthermore the Nazis made sure their argumentation to support their claims (lies or not) were logical and persuasive. Often the addressees were prevented from checking the truth since all opposition parties and others opposing the system of the Nazis were soon after the Nazis coming into power forbidden and many were put into prison or concentration camps. The press was censured and only Nazi views presented. Foreign news was either not available or censured and selectively given.
    According to Sperber (2000), trust plays a big role in the addressee to accept and belief a proposition and its cognitive effects. So it was one of the major tasks of the Nazis to establish trust. They gained this trust by making emotional appeals to make the people accept their views without engaging into too much objective coherence checking. They were also impressing the people by creating work for them who had been in recession for a long time. Moreover, Hitler gave himself as the good Führer who looks after mothers and children and who creates recreation programmes like Kraft durch Freude for everyone. On the personal level Hitler tried to portray himself as a hardworking, moral, to some degree religious and modest individual. His affair with Eva Brown, as well as the darker activities of the Nazis were kept hidden as much as possible up to almost the end in order to keep up the trustworthy image.
     I am confident that the manifestations, mechanisms and defense mechanisms of manipulation described could be observed in many other totalitarian systems in Europe, Africa and elsewhere.

References:
Berg, R. and R. Selbmann (eds.) (1988)  Grundkurs Deutsche Geschichte,:Bielefeld:
     Cornelsen.
Hitler, A. (1942) Mein Kampf, Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP,
Müller-Bohn, J. (1988) Adolf Hitler, Verführer der Christenheit. Lahr-Dinglingern,
      St.Johannis-Druckerei, C. Schweickhardt.
Sperber, (2000) ‘Metarepresentation in an evolutionary perspective’, in Sperber, D. (ed.)
      Metarepresentations. Oxford:Oxford University Press.
Sperber, D. and D. Wilson, (1986, 1995) Relevance, Communication and Cognition,
       Oxford:Blackwell
Taillard, M.-O. (2000) ‘Persuasive Communication: The Case of marketing’ UCL-
       Working Papers in Linguistics Vol. 12., p. 145-174.