The power of speech...

Power is what all wanted in political journey. The speech power of a leader can change everything in a few minutes. For that, a leader must have good persuasive and rhetoric skills. The two best leaders that we can associate with this is Adolf Hitler and Winston Churchill. Their speech is one of the well know speeches in the world and people are still amazed by it. It is worthy to note that the political situation that both leaders were in is the same. They both delivered the speech during the world war two.

         

   Firtsy, Winston Churchill is the most prominent figure in Britain at that era. He was the prime minister. The nation had to fight in order to protect their country from invasion; therefore entering the war was not a personal choice that Churchill made. Churchill did not persuade the nation that it was a’ just war’ he had to persuade the country to continue fighting and remain positive. Throughout the speech, choices are made by the speaker in terms of personal pronouns and this pronoun represents someone. When addressing the nation and the House of Commons each leader uses the first person pronoun ‘I’ on a number of occasions. ‘I’ appears to be used by both leaders much more frequently when addressing the House of Commons. I would be inclined to suggest that the reason for this is because each Prime Minister is solely persuading the Government; therefore the beliefs he is expressing are his personal ones. ‘We’ is used more often when addressing the nation as it can refer to the Prime Minister and the Government who are in support of each other. In his address to the nation Churchill uses inclusive ‘we’ a number of times to refer to himself and the people of Britain and thus encourage solidarity.

            In today’s society people often express disbelief that somebody like Hitler could gain and maintain the support of a nation.  It is a credit to his skills of rhetoric and persuasive that he was able to maintain an image of such righteousness person. In the speech of May 4, Hitler spends much of the beginning of the speech condemning the enemy and assuring the people of his own purity and good desires. In this speech he does not miss any opportunity to elevate other’s opinions of himself.  In fact, he never once speaks about himself without directly or more often indirectly attaching some positive attribute to himself. Then, he attempts to create negative emotions when he talks about Winston Churchill. He frequently used “we” to show that he is one the person among them.

In a nutshell, both speakers’ greatest skills lay in exploiting the emotions of their listeners to provoke them to action. The skills are important to be a great leader.