Klemperer asks himself why so many decent people he knew would all remark of Hitler: "You can't resist him." His conclusion is that National Socialism was a religion and its publicly staged spectacles, with their floodlights, bands and "Blutfahne" (blood banners) "a mixture of religious and theatrical ceremony." Nazi phrases like "the 13th hour" are a deliberate misappropriation of the language of the Gospels, with the Fuhrer being seen as Germany's Redeemer. Goebbels, the malignly influential Minister for Propaganda, had a cynical disregard for intellectual judgments; he banks on the intoxication of the masses. (Phillips)
Klemperer realized that the Nazis were systematically poisoning language with "tiny doses of arsenic." As language governs what people think and believe and thus how they behave, this was an insidious and systematic corruption of the culture in which Germans lived.
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