here is a question of the fulfilment
of apparently impossible demands or tasks, the entire
attention of a people must be concentrated only on this one
question, in such a way as if being or non-being actually
depends on its solution_ ...

...The great mass of the people can never see the entire way
before them, without tiring and doubting the task.[120]

In general the art of all truly great popular leaders at all
times consists primarily in not scattering the attention of
a people but rather in concentrating it always on one single
opponent. The more unified this use of the fighting will of
a people, the greater will be the magnetic attractive force
of a movement and the more powerful the force of its push.
It is a part of the genius of a great leader to make even
quite different opponents appear as if they belonged only to
one category, because the recognition of different enemies
leads weak and unsure persons only too readily to begin
doubting their own cause.

When the vacillating masses see themselves fighting against
too many enemies, objectivity at once sets in and raises the
question whether really all the others are wrong and only
one's own people or one's own movement is right.[121]
(Document 13-II, _post_ pp. 229-231.)

It has been the aim of Nazi propaganda, then, to unite the masses of
the people in hatred of certain enemies, designated by such
conveniently broad and simple terms as "Jews," "democrats,"
"plutocrats," "bolshevists," or "Anglo-Saxons," which so far as
possible were to be identified with one another in the public mind.
The Germans were represented to themselves, on the other hand, as a
racial folk of industrious workers. It then became possible to plunge
the people into a war on a wave of emotional hatred against those
nations which were pictured as combining to keep Germany from
attaining her rightful place in the sun.

The important role which propaganda would have to play in the coming
war was fully recognized by Ewald Banse, an ardent Nazi military
theorist of the geopolitical school and professor of military science
at Brunswick Military College. In his book _Raum und Volk im
Weltkrieg_ (_Space and People in the World War_) which appeared in
1932 (an English translation by Alan Harris was published under the
title _Germany Prepares for War_ (New York, Harcourt, Brace and Co