View source for Library:The Language of the Third Reich

{{Book
| title    = The Language of the Third Reich
| author   = Victor Klemperer
| year     = 1947
| isbn     = 978-0-485-11526-0
| isbn_verified = 
| role     = Analysis
| domain1  = History
| domain2  = Culture, Religion & Society
| tactic1  = Propaganda Technique
}}
'''''The Language of the Third Reich''''' is a 1947 book by Victor Klemperer.

== Summary ==
Victor Klemperer was a Jewish professor of Romance languages in Dresden who survived the Nazi period, protected in part by his marriage to a non-Jewish wife, Eva. Throughout the period he kept secret notes on how Nazi language worked. He published them in 1947 as ''LTI – Lingua Tertii Imperii'' ("the language of the Third Reich"). The English translation by Martin Brady appeared in 2000.

=== How words were changed ===
Klemperer shows how the regime changed the meaning and use of ordinary words. "Fanatical," once an insult, became praise. Superlatives multiplied. Mechanical and military metaphors spread into everyday speech, and abbreviations and euphemisms disguised persecution.

=== How propaganda spreads ===
His central observation is that propaganda worked less through individual speeches than through endless repetition of words and phrases that people absorbed without noticing, until even opponents of the regime used them.

=== Relevance to Bullshitopedia ===
Klemperer's book is a detailed eyewitness record of how language itself can carry propaganda, a reminder to watch the words used to describe events, not only the claims made about them.

== Related entries ==
* [[Jews murder Christian children for their blood]]
* [[The Wehrmacht fought a clean war]]
* [[Library:Denying the Holocaust]]

== External links ==
* [https://openlibrary.org/search?isbn=9780485115260 Open Library record]